The I-10 Incident: Book 1 in the Going Away Parties Murder Mystery Series

By Kim Marie Coleman

The I-10 Incident is a story about a traffic accident that leads to multiple murder investigations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781682226230

Book preview

Party

Preface

This is a fictional story about imaginary characters in a fictional city that resembles New Orleans, Louisiana in some ways. The author did not base any part of any storyline on real people, real relationships, or real events. Although some of the location names in this series exist in real life, the author is not depicting the real world. Every aspect of this series is about understanding the characters.

This ongoing series is about fictional characters living in a fictional world while working at a fictional mortuary during 2014, and one of them is a serial killer. This is not a courtroom drama. This is not a forensics investigation series. This is not a detective story. This is not erotica. Knowing facts is not the key for solving the mystery of the storyline because this series is about Casual Serial Killers, an invention of the author. Understanding the characters is the key.

In other words, this series is an adult fairytale from the author’s imagination with foul language, violence, immoral behavior, and explicit sexual content.

There will be a 2015 sequel series.

Chapter 1: Welcome 2014

Soulmates

The single most powerful force in the universe is the subconscious urge to solve a mystery; that alone explains why some people feel condemned to live loveless, lonely lives while others feel irresistibly driven to remain in relentlessly, repressive relationships. It is this defining characteristic that distinguishes humans from other living creatures because the ability to recognize an anomaly is what gives purpose or removes all purpose in a person’s life. This is the actual basis of the bond between soulmates. Ironically, the subconscious connection that makes two people perfectly suited for each other might not coincide with their conscious thoughts and deliberate actions. Only soulmates can complete each other whether they realize it or not. Soulmates belong together whether they know each other on not.

The December 2013 Retreat

Maxine whispers to Eli, Please meet me alone in my hotel suite at midnight; I am ready to share an intimacy that is long overdue between us.

Eli’s heart is racing with anticipation because he has been in love with Maxine since the day he met her. He is twenty-five-years-old and she is forty-eight. As he watches her walking away from him, he feels a giddy excitement. He wants to dance. It is nine o’clock in the evening on Saturday, December 21, 2013. The two owners of The Vics Mortuary are hosting this closing celebration of a weeklong work retreat. The eighteen employees are there with clients, benefactors, and outside contractors. They are in a massive ballroom at a French Quarter hotel. It is an informal occasion with a lavish buffet and only top-shelf liquor. Alexander, the son of the mortuary owners, is wearing a suit; his clique of coworkers — Big Connie, Gerald, Martin, Maxine, and Peter — is also wearing professional attire. Alexander’s twin, Alexandria, is wearing a casual outfit; her clique of coworkers — Annie, Mark, Patricia, Vanessa, and Zachary — is wearing casual outfits as well. Clive, the traditional mortician for the mortuary, is wearing a black suit with a black shirt, a black tie, black socks, and black shoes. Like Clive, his clique — Eli, Joe, Lily, Natalee, and Tina — is wearing clothing that best reflects who they are.

I’m going to dance with the most calming spirit in this ballroom, Eli is thinking. I must contain my excitement until midnight. Even this mandatory office party cannot destroy my natural high.

As Eli approaches Victoria, his keen sense of hearing betrays him. His photographic memory conspires with his sense of hearing by creating a permanent, mental snapshot of the moment. His mood changes. The thrill is gone. Eli strengthens his commitment to existential nihilism when he overhears the angelic voice of serene Victoria whispering to her tyrannical husband, Victor.

Close this fucking mortuary or so help me God, Victor, I’ll make you regret the day you were born, Victoria is whispering with a smile to conceal her anger from everyone in ballroom.

Eli had been approaching The Vics from behind to ask Victoria to dance, but he turns away quickly and rushes to compliment his vain coworker, Lily, before Victoria or Victor realize that Eli was near enough to hear Victoria.

Your radiance almost makes me believe there is a God, Lily, Eli says. Please dance with me.

Extending his hand, Eli waits for Lily to initiate the physical contact between them. He knows that Lily cannot resist a man allowing himself to be vulnerable in her presence. Everyone knows that Lily hates to be touched. She delays responding to Eli for a moment while photographers capture Eli’s supplication for Victor’s scrapbook of the party. Lily smiles with an air of superiority.

You flatter me, Eli, Lily says. You must be a member of my fan club.

Who isn’t? Eli asks, still extending his hand toward her, waiting for her to accept his invitation to dance.

The people surrounding Lily are grinning, partially because of the photographers, but mostly because of Eli’s risky request. Lily has no fan club. Despite her local notoriety as the most accomplished entertainment and recreation expert in the Greater New Orleans area, she has a reputation for being unknowable. Her husband, Richard, is twice her age and he is equally mysterious. The private joke in wealthy social circles is that Richard is the bald eagle who caught the elusive jackrabbit.

Yes, Eli, Lily says, it will be my pleasure to dance with you.

Elsewhere in the ballroom, Big Connie is coaching entrepreneurs from her citywide network.

I’ll be sending all of you revisions to your contracts with the mortuary on Monday morning, Big Connie says. Victor is looking forward to our plan to create a presence for The Vics Mortuary at Clive Community College of Mortuary Science in Jacksonville, Louisiana. Clive has a monopoly on mortuary services in that small town, and we are going to have a monopoly on supplying every piece of equipment, every lab coat, and everything sold in the bookstore for students at the college.

In one corner of the ballroom, Peter is sitting at a table, working back and forth between a PC and a Mac to display silent videos, candid photographs from the party, and blogs from the mortuary’s Online Deathwatch website on the high definition, flat-screen monitors on all four walls of the ballroom. It is not his responsibility to provide this service at this party. Rather, computers are Peter’s passion. He worked very hard all year to finally convince Victor that online funeral services should have a prominent role in the future of The Vics Mortuary.

Mark is dancing with Alexandria.

We have to talk about what you said to me on Tuesday, Mark says.

This has been a most interesting retreat, Alexandria says, pretending she did not hear Mark. I was surprised about how well Natalee and Zachary related to each other during the retreat.

Why are you avoiding this conversation? Mark asks.

Perhaps it is because I’m behind you, Zachary says. May I impose upon you to allow me this dance with Alexandria?

By all means, Mark says to Alexandria’s lover, Zachary. Alexandria was right to ignore me. This is a party. I should not be talking about work.

Mark walks away.

Zachary says to Alexandria, Our curious coworkers have been asking me questions about the Friday session, too. Perhaps the inexplicability of my conspicuous affinity towards Natalee confounds the imagination when one considers the awkwardness of living in such close proximity to her and working so closely with her on a daily basis, despite our prior business conflicts and despite the contentious nature of my underlying relationship with her.

Perhaps they’re instigators who enjoy a good rivalry, Alexandria responds.

That’s what I said, Zachary replies. You brevity amuses me.

Near the entrance to the ballroom, Patricia is talking about the New Orleans Saints. In one corner, Joe is talking to Annie about how far they have both come since growing up during different decades in the same public housing project. At the bar, Martin is talking to golf buddies about tomorrow’s tee times. In another corner, Gerald is ingratiating himself with Alexander. In the middle of the ballroom, Vanessa is enjoying the celebrity of her fair complexion and naturally straight hair that flows past her thin waist. At the buffet station, Tina is giving warnings to the servers between intermittent monologues to her assistants about her granbabies. Overall, it is a typical party of The Vics Mortuary.

Side Story: Eli’s World

Generations are important in New Orleans because families continue…living for decades in the same residences, working within the same socioeconomic circles, indoctrinating youths with the same religiopolitical perspectives, and developing subtle social behaviors to maintain centuries of post-Civil War prejudices beneath the veneer of a New Orleans style of Southern hospitality. When Eli began working at The Vics Mortuary, his world became a microcosm of everything New Orleans — past, present, and future. He became like a signature dish on a Louisiana menu: the gumbo.

A chunk of beef. A sip of broth. A crab claw that one has to crack. A piece of sausage made from who knows what. Sometimes a mixture of so many different things in one bite that it is hard to describe what is actually there.

Mark was a link between European ancestry and old money Louisiana. Martin was a Passe Blanc, a Black person who could pass for a White person. Maxine was a Bayou St. John Middle American. Peter was the link between old money generations and the nouveau riche because of his grandfather’s role in creating the organization called Pulsars. Zachary was the nefarious billionaire with international business connections. Eli was formerly the working class teenager who socialized among old money heirs, and he became the man who owns the only piece of property that Clive does not own in the square city block where The Vics Mortuary relocated after Hurricane Katrina.

Mark brought the Ninth Ward and Jacksonville into the mix when he gave Vanessa an apprenticeship; a Ward in New Orleans is a voting district. Martin brought Pulsars into the mix when he gave Penelope’s resume to Mark. Lily brought the Northshore into the mix. Maxine tied everybody at the mortuary together through creative accounting. Peter invited the world to the mortuary through Internet funeral planning. Zachary tied the nouveau riche to low income America through Joe. By living in Algiers, Joe brought the Westbank into the mix. Finally, Eli became the eidetic oracle, who had a history that integrated cultural aspects from all of these worlds. It is no small wonder that NOPD detectives have been trying for years to find a reason for investigating the employees at the tiny business that generates millions of dollars in revenues annually by celebrating death at an extravagant ball on the last Saturday of every month.

As children, Eli’s parents lived on the same city block of Central City Avenue. Their homes were walking distance — low income residents’ walking distance — to Treme supermarket, Q. Lee laundry & cleaners, a Prout’s nightclub, a Gertrude Geddes Willis funeral home, Chez Helene’s restaurant, Circle Food Store, Woolworths, Rubensteins men’s clothing store, Tip Top shoe repair, and the department stores of Krauss, Maison Blanche, and Sears in one direction. They were walking distance to the Carver Theater, Dookie Chase restaurant, Ruth’s Chris and Crescent City steakhouses, the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, one of the Schwegmann Bros. Giant Super Markets, Al Scramuzza's Seafood City, and a K&B (Katz & Besthoff) drugstore in the other direction. It was a working class neighborhood in the Seventh Ward. It was near the famous corner of Orleans and Claiborne Avenues during the years before the Interstate 10 construction transformed the area. The residents of that neighborhood had easy access to everything that everybody loved about living in New Orleans; they were not homeowners like many of the residents living Backatown and in other parts of the Lower Ninth Ward, but they lived like Middle Americans.

In the middle of the block where Eli’s parents lived, there was a grocery store with a boutique butcher’s shop in the back. On one corner, there was a dry cleaners that published a daily report about races at the Fairgrounds. Next to the dry cleaners, there was a bar with residences upstairs. Near the other corner of the block, there were a beauty parlor and a barber shop with residences upstairs and in the back. The other buildings on the block were rental residences with more occupants than bedrooms. Within a few blocks in either direction along Central City Avenue, there were dozens of small businesses, including a coin-operated laundromat, a snowball stand, a sweetshop, a motel, and a liquor store. Almost every family living on that block with Eli’s parents had at least five children in every generation on both sides of the family. Across Central City Avenue, there were hundreds of families in the public housing project where Annie and Joe lived during different decades.

Eli’s parents were living in the same city block when Eli was born in 1988. Eli had no siblings, but he grew up in a neighborhood that always made him feel like he was from a really big family. The children had numerous pastimes, including kites, marbles, jacks, and spinning tops. Bicycles and skates were popular after Christmas. Homemade wooden skateboards with wooden handlebars, roller-skate wheels, and bottle-cap ornaments were popular as well. Children played games such as Colors, Momma Your Bread’s Burning, Hopscotch, and a version of cricket called Cool Can. There was always something to do and always somebody with whom to enjoy growing up in Eli’s Seventh Ward neighborhood. The only thing that separated the youths of this neighborhood in later years were the differences between attending public high schools and Catholic high schools as teenagers.

End Side Story: Eli’s World

Maxine and Eli

At midnight, Eli knocks on the door to Maxine’s suite. He has cancelled a prior arrangement to enjoy the company of the mayor’s daughter overnight. He is recalling Maxine’s words, I am ready to share an intimacy that is long overdue between us. This is the first time that Maxine has invited Eli to share intimacy with her. Having fantasized about her while having sex with other women through this first year of his employment at the mortuary, Eli can barely maintain his usual demeanor of nonchalance. He has showered and he is not wearing cologne to match Maxine’s obsessive-compulsive attention to personal hygiene and simplicity.

I am so glad you came, Maxine says.

How could I resist, Eli replies.

After Eli enters, Maxine locks the door and gives Eli the drink that she is holding.

I know you do not drink alcohol, she says, but I am hoping you will indulge me by drinking with me. It is Blanton’s bourbon, my favorite, but of course you know my favorite drink. I have been drinking all night, and I feel wonderful. I am not intoxicated. I just feel great. I am so glad you came. Will you drink with me?

Of course I’ll drink with you, Eli says. I drink all the time.

I did not know that, Maxine says. You never drink in public, which is odd for a bartender. I do not want you to get intoxicated, though. I am not intoxicated.

You don’t seem intoxicated, Eli says honestly, sipping the bourbon.

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