Chapter 20 Quinn
TWENTY
Quinn
Closed Membership Policies: Historically, many traditional krewes limited membership based on race, gender, religion, or social standing, reinforcing rigid social boundaries within Carnival culture.
These exclusionary policies shaped the structure and reputation of elite krewes for generations, embedding hierarchy into the fabric of their traditions.
The alarm cuts through the quiet at seven sharp.
I reach across the mattress before my eyes open, searching for him without thinking. My hand meets cool sheets instead of skin. The cotton is smooth under my palm. Flat. Undisturbed.
For a second, my body waits for the weight of him to shift back toward me but it never does.
I blink my eyes open at the ceiling.
I replay last night in fragments. The way Keller held me after, the steadiness in his voice when he talked about his mother, how he described her laugh as loud and unapologetic, the jasmine scent that reminds him of her.
He shared something real with me. Something he keeps close.
I stare at his pillow. I'm not sure if it is a good thing I slept through him leaving, or that it's worrisome. As a woman, I shouldn't sleep so hard. I'll be a terrible mother.
A flicker of something moves through my chest. Not quite hurt. More like a question I do not want to ask myself: Why didn't he wake me?
I push the thought down. He has a life, a business and people who depend on him showing up places at specific times. He probably had an early meeting.
He didn't owe me a goodbye. That doesn't change the part of me that wanted one anyway.
I roll onto my back and stare at the pale morning light filtering through the curtains and waving fluidly on the ceiling. The room is quiet except for the soft hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen that I can hear from here.
Last night was different. That wasn't just the sex, though that was amazing. Fucking phenomenal. It was after, the way he pulled me close, the way he shared intimate parts about him.
We laugh well together, have a fun, sharp banter. But in bed, that was stripped away. I got to see more of the unguarded, uncharasmatic Keller.
Running through our conversation makes me think about my own mother. Gone when I was barely a teenager. I was old enough to remember her clearly, but still robbed of so much of the important time a girl needs from her mother.
I sit up and swing my legs over the edge of the bed. The wood floor is cool under my feet. I grab my phone from the nightstand and check the screen.
I'm disappointed to see there is nothing from Keller. Oh, God. I can't take myself. If I turn into a clingy girl after one night of mind-blowing sex and a little bit of pillow talk, I'm officially never letting myself like a man again. That's pathetic.
I set the phone back down and stand. I need coffee. I need to stop overthinking.
I walk into the bathroom to get my camisole off the back of the door and head toward the kitchen.
The kitchen floor creaks under my feet as I pad across the worn hardwood. I reach up and twist my hair into a loose knot at the back of my head, securing it with the elastic I keep around my wrist.
The coffee maker sits on the counter. I grab the canister of grounds from the cabinet and scoop enough for a strong pot. The machine gurgles to life, and the smell of brewing coffee fills the small space.
The morning light slants through the room brighter now than when I woke up. I turn toward the island and notice there's writing in big black letters on the brown paper bag from Elephant Thai. It's flattened, smoothed out with care.
He left a note.
I cross to the counter and pick up the bag. Keller's handwriting is clean. Deliberate. Each letter formed with intention.
Quinn— Had to catch an early flight. Didn't want to wake you. Last night was worth the wait. I'll make up for the early exit.
—K
I read it once, my hands shaking slightly and my heart pounding so hard I'm worried I probably shouldn't add caffeine to my bloodstream.
I read it again. Slower this time. My thumb traces the letters of my name. A smile pulls at my mouth before I can stop it.
An early flight. Not a meeting. Not the tables. A flight. He went somewhere but didn't mention it last night. And he calls me the mysterious one.
The questions surface, but I push them aside. He does not owe me an itinerary. We are not there yet. We might never be there.
But this small gesture, the care he took to leave something behind instead of just disappearing, means more to me than I care to admit. I didn't realize how disappointed I was to wake up to find him gone.
The warmth spreads through my chest and settles there.
I look at the bag in my hands. The practical thing would be to throw it away. It's trash, paper that held takeout containers.
Instead, I fold the corner down carefully and set it on the counter near the wall, away from the coffee maker and the crumbs and the everyday mess.
The choice happens without thought. Without strategy. I am not pulling back or finding reasons to retreat.
The coffee maker beeps, so I pour myself a cup, black, and carry it to the kitchen table. The chair scrapes against the floor as I pull it out and sit.
Morning light warms my face. I add creamer and a single spoonful of sugar, my mouth watering in anticipation.
I take a breath, let it out, and take my first sip of coffee. My tastebuds jolt awake and savor that first, precious taste of my favorite morning ritual on my tongue.
Then I pull my laptop toward me and open the lid.
The screen glows brightly in the morning light. I take another sip of coffee and scroll through my phone while the system boots up.
Three news alerts. Two about the city council budget negotiations. One about a warehouse fire in the Ninth Ward. Nothing relevant to my cases.
I swipe to my email. Fourteen new messages since last night, before Keller got here. Most are automated reports from the monitoring systems I set up last week. One is from Martin, flagging a meeting tomorrow afternoon about resource allocation. One is a reminder I set for myself.
Revisit override logs. October 10-13.
The reminder sits in my inbox, bold and unread. I starred it three days ago and wanted to remind myself to follow up.
I lean back in my chair and wrap both hands around my coffee mug.
A thought hits me. I wonder what Keller would think if he knew who and what I'm looking into. A pang of guilt gets stuck at the top of my throat.
Last night was personal. This morning is professional. The two exist in separate spaces inside my head. They have to.
My latest indication shows that Stone Intermodal didn't do anything wrong, at least as far as the manual changes are concerned. It doesn't fully absolve them, but it's looking better. And, I remind myself, Keller has no part in the logistics business.
Not that it means he wouldn't be furious if he knew I was the only thing between a federal investigation and his family. He would hate me.
Before, I worried about the work ethics of sleeping with Keller Stone if I'm looking into Stone Intermodal. Now, I'm worrying about how Keller might view my role, the fact that I'm digging into his family, and never shared it with him.
No matter how I try to justify it, I know if he ever were to find out, it would be a deal breaker. I also know the chances of him ever knowing are slim to none. The only way he could possibly know is if my findings suggest wrongdoing by Robert, Ridge, or someone else in the Stone family.
And if that becomes the case, then we have bigger problems, anyway.
I finish my coffee and rinse the mug in the sink. The water runs cold over my fingers. I dry my hands on the dish towel hanging from the oven handle and grab my bag from the chair by the door.
Time to work.
The fluorescent lights hum above my desk. I've been staring at the same document for twenty minutes.
The interview memorandum sits in my hands, three pages of single-spaced text generated after homicide brought David Parsale in for questioning based on my referral with the flagged anomaly.
I scan the header again. It was conducted yesterday and lasted only forty-seven minutes. Voluntary appearance, no counsel retained.
That last detail sticks with me. A man who made three manual routing overrides the morning after his CEO was murdered, and he walks into a police interview without a lawyer.
I flip to the substance of the transcript summary.
Parsale acknowledges the overrides. All three of them.
He doesn't deny it. He doesn't hedge, qualify, or claim faulty memory.
When asked why he made the changes, his answer is straightforward: verbal instruction from "executive office" to pre-designate specific inbound shipments for temporary isolation pending further review due to "security instability. "
Manual overrides, by themselves, are not unusual during executive-level disruptions. That's his position.
He claims no knowledge of the fentanyl contents at the time.
He did not personally flag the shipment later seized by Customs. He was not in direct contact with Robert Stone in the days prior to the murder.
Phone records show his movements the night of the mugging, which are nowhere near the Warehouse District.
The detective's summary tone reads neutral, almost dismissive. The concluding paragraph states there is no probable cause connecting Parsale to the homicide.
From a homicide lens, this is a closed loop. I read that line twice. Then I read the whole section again.
What catches my attention isn't what Parsale said. It's what he didn't specify.
He repeats "executive office" multiple times throughout the interview.
When asked directly whether the instruction came from Ridge Stone, he reportedly stated, "Not personally.
" When asked who delivered the instruction, he responded that he received a call from an executive liaison, but could not recall the exact person because it was so routine that it didn't raise any reason for him to make a note.
He listed off ten people who might have instructed it, but since there is no paper trail or electronic trail, there is no way to be sure.
There was no written directive issued, no follow-up email documented the instruction, and no crisis memo circulated company-wide that morning reflecting such selective isolation of shipments.
The memo notes he appeared cooperative. Calm. Consistent. No visible deception markers. No timeline inconsistencies.
I set the pages down on my desk and lean back in my chair.
From the detective's perspective, this reads like a corporate crisis tightening after a CEO's murder. Logical. Expected. Unremarkable.
From my perspective, this reads like targeted action.
I have studied operational patterns at Stone Intermodal for months. Manual overrides occur, yes. But not in clustered pre-arrival entries, and not without documentation during a period when liability exposure would demand a written record.
Companies that lose their CEO to violent crime don't go paperless on routing decisions. They create trails and cover themselves, documenting everything twice.
Unless they don't want a trail.
I close the report and stare at my screen.
The cursor blinks in an empty search field. I don't type anything. I just sit with the weight of what I read.
After a minute, I pick up the phone and dial Trenton Kree, the lead detective. He answers on the third ring. His voice is tired, and the background noise suggests he's at his desk, probably buried under the other nine cold cases competing for his attention.
"Mercer. Got your message. You read the Parsale summary?"
"Just finished."
"And?"
"I wanted your gut read."
He exhales. Papers shuffle on his end. "Parsale didn't strike me as hiding anything. Wasn't defensive. Didn't seem coached. When I pressed him about who issued the directive, he defaulted to 'executive office' like it was obvious protocol."
"But he couldn't name anyone specific."
"Couldn't or wouldn't, I don't know. But I didn't feel like stonewalling. Felt more like he genuinely didn't think it was his place to question it."
I tap my pen against my notepad. "Companies lock things down when leadership gets killed."
"Exactly. Nothing about this guy suggested homicide involvement. He's a port operations manager. Been with Stone for twelve years. Clean record. No priors. No unusual deposits. No lifestyle inflation."
In fairness, Agent Kree’s job is to decide whether Parsale had anything to do with the mugging itself. Mine is to decide whether something inside Stone Intermodal made that mugging more than random.
Different angles, same dead man.
"So he was just following orders."
"That's my read."
I pause. Then I ask the question that's been circling in my head since I started reading.
"Thanks, Kree. I appreciate the time."
"You see something I'm missing?"
I consider my answer carefully. "Not yet. Just filling in gaps."
"Well, from my end, Parsale's not the guy. If there's a connection to the Stone homicide, it's not through him."
"Understood."
If Parsale didn’t originate it, then the directive came from somewhere in that tier. Not the public face of the company. The layer that moves before statements are drafted.
I scroll back up to Ridge’s name and then down again, tracing the line beneath him. The people who would execute instructions without ever appearing in a press conference.
Robert Stone's death was barely known at the time of these changes. That kind of response doesn’t happen without awareness.
And awareness implies context.
The question isn’t whether Parsale followed orders. It’s who was positioned to give them, and why the hell did they deliberately not leave a trail?