Page 39 of Gumbo, Ghosts, and Deadly Deception
Then suddenly I stood straight up.
Basement.
Ginger kept insisting underneath…basement…
Dungeon.
The Dungeon.
The bar in the Quarter.
#25. An address? No. Twenty-five was a quarter. The Quarter.
That had to be it.
“Abigail, I think that’s it. It’s a dungeon.” I set the tea in front of her.
“Okay,” she agreed cheerfully. “Glad I could help!”
My heart was racing, which meant that now sleep was really going to be impossible. I couldn’t go to the Dungeon until tomorrow afternoon anyway so I needed to strive for patience.
Might as well be a friendly hostess. “What brings you to New Orleans? Are you meeting up with someone or traveling solo?”
“I’m here for Homecoming weekend. I graduated from Tulane last year and moved back to California. I’m meeting up with friends all weekend.”
That reassured me. I felt oddly concerned for Abigail’s safety running around New Orleans by herself being super friendly. Which was ironic, given that I had her staying in a room where a potential murder had occurred.
Also, she had attended Tulane so she was at least familiar with New Orleans.
“That sounds fun. I went to Loyola,” I told her. “I’ve lived here my whole life though.”
“It must be so cool to have a house like this.” She sipped her tea and glanced around the kitchen. “Though your WiFi is a little dicey.”
“Everything is a little dicey,” I remark. “She’s a beautiful lady but lawd, is she high maintenance.”
Abigail laughed. “Then I know she and I will get along just fine. So Hollis isn’t your husband? Or boyfriend? He’s super cute.”
I was pretty sure Hollis would hate that description of him. I hated it too. At least coming from Abigail. But far be it for me to stand in the way if they shared some sort of mutual attraction. “He’s a good guy.”
Then my best intentions flew out the window and I heard myself say, “But cranky and set in his ways.”
Neither of which was one hundred percent accurate or anything that bothered me.
I was just jealous.
Maybe Hollis didn’t have a Harper situation.
Maybe I had a Hollis situation.
The Dungeon was the kind of place that you could walk past a hundred times without noticing. The sign wasn’t substantial and if you were the timid type you might feel like it was a place you shouldn’t just enter randomly. Like you had to be in the know. It had definitely catered to the goth crowd in decades earlier but had settled into a mix of both local and tourists as patrons in recent years.
The doorman was built like a refrigerator, arms crossed over his chest. He gave me a slow, unimpressed once-over. “ID.”
“Seriously?” I asked. That wasn’t a question that was asked very often anywhere really. It was also only four o’clock in the afternoon so I wasn’t sure what mischief he thought I might be capable of.
He nodded.
Given that he looked like he could benchpress a car, I dug around in my bag and pulled out my driver’s license. “I’m here for Lucien,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt.
