Who Dat Whodunnit Read Free

closing the jeans.
    I was going to have to start being a little more careful with my diet.
    “I thought this was supposed to be a dressy thing—why are you wearing jeans?”
    “Do you think Mom and Dad are going to be dressed up?” I rolled my eyes. “Besides, our branch of the family is always expected to be a freak show.”
    “Why are we going, anyway?” he asked as I followed him back into the bathroom. I leaned against the door frame as he started shaving. “Mom hates these command performances, doesn’t she?”
    “She’s not the only one,” I replied.
    Dinner parties at the home of my paternal grandparents were always tedious affairs, where the only saving grace was the good liquor. Get-togethers at my maternal grandparents’ graceful Garden District mansion were always a good time—you never knew what was going to happen, and that was part of the fun. But the Bradleys were the antithesis of the Diderots—boring, stuffy, and extremely concerned about appearances. Papa Bradley disliked my mother intensely—and the feeling was more than mutual. He blamed her for turning my dad into a “French Quarter bohemian”; she thought he was an uptight racist classist bourgeois bastard. On more than one occasion he’d said something offensive and Mom had blown up.
    At the Diderot house, a lively family argument would ensue. Papa Bradley just curled his lip disdainfully and drank more Scotch, his disapproval of his second son’s family written all over his face.
    Frankly, I much prefer the Diderots. I try to avoid the Bradley side as much as possible. It’s not fun to be part of the black sheep branch of the family tree.
    Even my brother Storm’s law degree and marriage to a Garden District blueblood didn’t make up for the “sins” of our parents. My sister Rain, who’d married a doctor and was very active in all the correct Uptown charities, hadn’t set foot inside the State Street house in years.
    And I suspect Papa Bradley didn’t like to admit to many people he had a gay grandson with two long-term partners and his own private eye business.
    I can only imagine what he’d think if he knew I was also a bit psychic.
    “But it’s an obligation.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t want to go any more than you do.”
    Frank frowned at me in the mirror. He rinsed off his razor before going back to work on his neck. “I don’t mind your Bradley relatives as much as you do.”
    “That’s because they aren’t your relatives,” I retorted. As soon as I said it, I was sorry.
    I’d never met any of Frank’s relatives. I knew he had parents up in one of the Chicago suburbs, and a sister with a family in Birmingham. Other than that, he didn’t talk about them. I quickly added before the vein in his forehead started throbbing, “Besides, much as I loathe my cousin Jared, he does play for the Saints”— mostly on the bench ,I thought—“and they are going to the Super Bowl, so if Papa Bradley wants the whole family there to toast this momentous occasion, we have to go. It’s just one evening.” I sighed. “I guess this kind of thing means a lot to him.”
    “Do you think MiMi will get drunk?” Frank winked at me as he rinsed his face.
    I glanced at my watch and raised an eyebrow. “It’s six thirty—she’s already been drunk for hours.”
    No one in the family really blamed MiMi for getting drunk. “It can’t be easy being married to that horrible old bastard, If drinking keeps her from putting a bullet in his head, who are we to judge?” was what Mom always said whenever one of us suggested getting her help or possibly staging an intervention. She had a point. Hell, if I’d spent fifty years married to the old bastard, I’d probably have my first drink at lunch, too. Mom also liked to point out that she rarely made a spectacle of herself in public—although there was that one time at Galatoire’s we weren’t allowed to talk about. No one on our side of the family had been there to