Page 40 of Gumbo, Ghosts, and Deadly Deception
I didn’t even know if I was right about my far flung guess but I might as well discover I was wrong right off the bat.
To my amazement, the name got a reaction. There was a flicker of recognition in the doorman’s eyes before his expression smoothed. He barely glanced at my driver’s license before he stepped aside.
“Where can I find Lucien?” I had no interest in just wandering around the Dungeon.
“Who’s asking?”
“Harper Bergeron. Midnight House.” I figured he’d already seen my ID so what difference did it make?
He nodded, but he didn’t say anything beyond, “In the back.”
That wasn’t particularly helpful. But I just gave him a smile and started into the bowels of the bar, passing black walls and fake skulls along the way. At least I had dressed appropriately. I had on a sweatshirt with a sugar skull on it in honor of the season. Hopefully it didn’t make me look like I was trying too hard.
I passed a couple of counters where patrons were resting on stools in the dim space. The glaring contrast between the afternoon sunlight and the bar was disorienting. It could have been midnight in here for the lack of light. The air smelled like liquor, with just a hint of something else.
The bartender leaning on the bartop in the room furthest from the front looking bored was your standard NOLA bartender in her twenties or early thirties, wearing a black corset, with hair dyed blue, and a lip ring. Her bare arms were covered in tattoos.
There was no one drinking in this room and I could see she was scrolling through her phone.
“Hi, can you tell me where Lucien is?” I asked.
She gave me a look I couldn’t decipher. But she didn’t peel herself off of the bartop as she just said, “I don’t know.”
I stood there for a second, not sure what to do. There were three doors and I just decided to knock on them.
The bartender didn’t act like there was anything odd about that. I imagine she’d seen all manner of strange behavior. After I knocked on the third door I actually got a response.
"Come in," a female voice called out.
I opened the door and stepped into a small, well lit, but not harshly bright room that looked like it had been decorated sometime in the 1940s and never updated. There was a round table in the center surrounded by four chairs, a small bar cart against one wall, and a desk that held a very modern desktop computer with dual monitors and an ergonomic chair.
Sitting at the table was a woman I'd never seen before.
She was probably in her seventies, with silver hair pulled back in an elegant bun and sharp blue eyes that seemed to take in every detail of my appearance in a single glance. She wore a simple black dress and a single strand of pearls, but there was something about her posture that suggested money, power, and the kind of confidence that came from decades of getting exactly what she wanted.
"Ms. Bergeron," she said, gesturing to the chair across from her.
So the doorman had tipped her off with a text. It was oddly reassuring to be expected and acknowledged.
"Please, sit. I'm Lucien Marquette."
Marquette. Then it hit me. Lena Marquette was the third member of the Bergeron Circle, the woman I'd been planning to track down. Or, more accurately, have Maggie track her down. Was Lena Lucien? Or related to Lucien?
"Lena?" I asked, settling into the chair.
She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Lucien is my professional name. Has been for forty years. Lena Marquette died in 1984, along with everything else from that winter."
“It seems like a lot went down that winter.”
“It did.”
When she didn’t elaborate, I slide the Tower card across the table. “Delia DuMont was murdered. She left me this.”
“So I heard.” Lena didn’t really look at the card.
I stared at her, trying to process this revelation. "Why did Delia write your name on the card? You were the fourth in the Circle, right?"
Lucien finally picked the card up. “The Tower’s a warning. Sudden upheaval. Collapse. Back in the day, the Circle used it to signal danger. Someone in the fold working against us.”
