Big Easy Bonanza

panhandles over on Frenchmen, right? With her filthyass dreadlocked boy friend. The one who hasn’t been there lately? Hey! Hey, don’t cry, my baby. Let’s just step into my office and you can tell Miss Diva all about it.”
    She followed me to the back of the bar and into the little hall, her boots clomping, my heels clicking. Barkus heard us and started barking as soon as we crossed the hall to the office. She had to know there was a dog in there. She had two ears, each sporting approximately nineteen piercings, but still, they were ears. But the minute I opened the door, and he rushed her and tried to kill her with kisses, she bellowed, “What the hell is that thing? Get away from me!”
    She pushed him away. Actually
pushed
my poor sweet baby with both hands, causing him to land back on four feet, puzzled and whimpering.
    I picked him up, administering consoling cuddles. “This is Barkus. Say hello, Barkus.”
    On cue, Barkus barked once, and I popped a tiny treat in his mouth. He is without doubt the cutest dog in the Marigny.
    “I’m, like, a cat person,” said Wendy, confusing me with someone who’d care.
    All righty, then. Miss Thing was a cat person. Once she got over confusing a long-haired chihuahua with a pit bull, she unspooled her sad little yarn.
    The gist? One filthyass missing boy friend. It happens, my baby. Boy friends come and boy friends go, and most of them aren’t worth tracking down. God knows Diva knows about that noise. I figured I’d give her a shoulder and a vodka and cranberry and send her on her sorry way. But this lost boy friend story had a little twist to it.
    “See,” she said, “the guy my boy friend worked for…”
    I interrupted. Just couldn’t help it. “That kid
worked
?” I’d been seeing him panhandling for at least a year, white kid with dreads. And it wouldn’t take a PI of Diva’s caliber to spot a clear aversion to soap and water. God, what a wreck. Why anyone would miss him I had no idea.
    Wendy said, “You don’t have to be so judgmental. We’re not criminals, you know. Geo worked for an artist. A metal sculptor. He helped him…you know…haul stuff. And, like, make, you know….art.”
    “And?”
    “The sculptor was Ramsay Erickson. You know who I mean?”
    Sure I knew. Everyone did. “The guy’s who’s doing that sculpture for Armstrong Park. The one of the giant musical instruments. Real handsome dude.”
    “Geo was around Erickson’s place a lot. He saw things he shouldn’t have—if you know what I mean. One day he went to work and just…never came back. I’m just so afraid he…”
    Her skinny little face collapsed. I handed over the requisite box of tissues, as much a standard issue item in a PI’s office as a shrink’s. Though if you are Diva Delish, yours is encased in a spiffy red holder, with tiny plastic revolvers glued to it.
    Between embarrassing displays of emotion, the client finally managed to explain that she thought her boy friend Knew Too Much. Oh, yeah! Dum de dum dum! Knew Too Much. The most popular murder motive on the third planet from the sun. And the best, babycakes. Hands down the best…but what was there to know about a guy like Ramsay Erickson? Ramsay had it all—fame, looks, money…what could he be hiding? ’Course, there’s always somethin’—look at Diva.
    Miss Thing’s story was so not ringing true. She’d lived with this guy, God help her! “All right, my baby,” I said. “Geo told you he saw things. Who leaves
that
lyin’ in the middle of the road? Please do not try and tell Miss Diva Delish you didn’t ask him what he saw, or she will have you drummed out of the International Sisterhood of Females Able to Breathe.”
    “He wouldn’t tell me.”
    Right. “So what could he know? You think Ramsay was casting bodies in the sculptures?”
    She actually looked shocked. “You are a sick and twisted person!”
    “I try, my baby. You got a little bitty advance for Diva?”
    She said the secret word.
    All righty then. She might have been a fashion tragedy, but her money was as good as Kate Moss’s. So the next morning found me armed with a picture of Geo and risking my Jimmy Choos over at the big ol’ compound in the Bywater where Ramsay Erickson had his studio. Only it was more of a factory than a studio. He even had his own fab shop, which, to Diva’s deep disappointment, did not mean what it sounded like.
    I found Erickson taking a break. He was a lanky dude with shoulder-length