Murder in the Rue Chartres Page 8

  The upstairs was frozen in time, like Miss Havisham’s wedding banquet. The wall clock was stopped at 3:37, which was probably when the power had gone out in Lakeview that morning as the storm started moving in. I took a deep breath and headed for one of the bedroom doorways.

  Iris Verlaine’s house had only two bedroom suites, one at each end of the hallway. One was obviously a guest room; it was devoid of any signs that anyone had ever lived there. The bed was made and the closet was empty, other than some plastic hangers. I opened some of the drawers in the chest opposite the bed, but there was nothing inside any of them. I moved down the hall to the other bedroom suite, and sure enough, it was where she’d spent the last few moments of her life. There was a dark brownish stain on the rug and the chalk outline of where her body had fallen with the bullet. On her dresser were framed photographs—I recognized Joshua and assumed the man on her other side was Darrin, the other brother. There was a photograph of a severe-looking older woman who must have been her mother, and a studio photograph of a really old man who could only be her grandfather. I opened the closet doors and was struck in the face with the smell of mildew. All the ruined clothes looked expensive, though. I closed it back and walked over to her desk. There was still fingerprint dust all over. I started opening drawers and going through everything but found nothing—it looked to be primarily her bills and her bank statements. Iris was organized; every credit card had its own file folder, where she stored the bills by date; on each one was written in red ink the date she paid the bill, the amount she’d paid, and the check number. In every instance, she paid her credit cards on a monthly basis in full. She’d had American Express, several different versions of Visa and MasterCard, Discover, Shell, Amoco and Exxon, and every department store credit card you could think of. There were file folders for her bank statements, investment accounts, you name it—I leafed through them, not sure what I was looking for.

  There was nothing that would be of interest to me, as far as I could tell. I got a plastic garbage bag out of her bathroom and began filling it with her records so I could go through them more thoroughly later. You never know what you might find in someone’s financial records. It’s boring work, but it has to be done.

  But in the center drawer of the desk, the one that held her stationary and her pens, there was an unlabeled file folder. Venus and Blaine had left it behind, no doubt, because there was no reason for them to take it—her briefcase and purse had gone with them—but I opened it. The only thing inside it was an 8-by-10 black-and-white photograph of a handsome man and an incredibly beautiful woman. It looked as though it had been taken at a party; the hairstyles were years out of date. It had to be from the 1970s, given his feathered and layered hair and the size of the lapels on his tuxedo. She, too, had what we in New Orleans tend to now call “big Texas hair”—lacquered to within an inch of its life and teased and gigantic, and her makeup was thickly applied. Her cleavage was also prominently on display in her low-cut dress—and it was rather impressive. Her skin looked creamy and smooth, and her eyes were almond-shaped and cat-like underneath the thick mascara caked on her eyelashes.

  “The higher the hair, the closer to God,” I thought with a laugh as I took a closer look.

  They were both laughing with an amazingly carefree look on their faces, each holding a drink in their free hands. I could barely make out a place card on the table behind them…I looked closer. REX 1972.

  I turned it over.

  Written on the back, in Iris’s carefully measured handwriting, were the words, Dad and Aunt Cathy?

  And just below that, underlined twice: Chartres Street?

  Chapter Seven

  My cell phone rang just as I was getting ready to walk out my front door to meet everyone at the Avenue Pub.

  I’d smoked a little pot when I’d gotten back from Lakeview. Paige had mentioned that everyone in New Orleans was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, but I’d thought she was exaggerating, as she is prone to do from time to time. Now that I’d somehow managed to shake off the numbness and depression, I thought I was on top of the world. But on the way home, it had come over me without warning. Maybe it was the enormity of the wreckage I’d seen out there—I vaguely remembered starting to feel a little overwhelmed on my way out there—but I thought I’d successfully fought that off. I’d also been relatively fine while going through Iris’s house—but on the way back to my neighborhood it hit me with the full force of an almost complete emotional breakdown. It started as I passed under I-10 on Elysian Fields—my hands started to shake on the steering wheel. The harder I gripped it, the worse they shook. Before long, my entire body was trembling and I was having difficulty catching my breath. My eyes began watering, and all I could think was oh my God oh my God oh my God over and over again. My mind began racing, heading down into a deep dark space. It was horrible. I was aware of it and unable to stop it. The car started swerving a bit, and I slowed down to a crawl, and I finally managed to pull over into the deserted parking lot of an abandoned Exxon station. I sat there for a few moments, listening to my heart pound while I tried to focus on breathing normally. I cleared my head and focused on the breathing, closing my eyes. In and out, nice and slow, nice and steady, that’s it, just breathe, in and out, in and out. I don’t know how long I sat there, trying to get a grip on myself, but it eventually started to pass, leaving me breathing hard and still shaking a little, completely drenched in sweat. I managed to get the car back home and once I was safely inside my house I loaded my pipe and took a couple of hits. That seemed to help take the edge off, and I decided it might not be a bad idea to meet Paige and everyone over at the Avenue Pub for a drink or two—or three, or however many felt right.

  It was fucking scary as hell.

  *

  I glanced at the phone and didn’t recognize the number. The caller ID just said NEW ORLEANS. I generally don’t answer numbers that aren’t familiar to me, but I was in a good mood and chances are it was a wrong number, so I answered, “Chanse MacLeod.”

  “Please hold,” a woman’s voice said, and for a few seconds I listened to hold music—a horrendous Muzak version of something that sounded vaguely Andrew Lloyd Webberish—and was just about to hang up when a raspy, whispery voice said, “Mr. MacLeod?”

  “This is Chanse MacLeod.” Now I was getting annoyed. I’d reached the Prytania corner, and if this call wasn’t over pretty soon, I was going to hang up before entering the Avenue Pub. “Who is this?”

  “Percy Verlaine,” the voice replied, sounding like he was having trouble breathing.

  I stopped dead in my tracks. Percy Verlaine? Iris’s grandfather? Why the hell was he calling me? “Yes? What can I do for you, Mr. Verlaine?”

  “Are you free tomorrow at noon?” he asked, pausing between each word as though forming the words caused him pain.

  “Perhaps.”

  “Please come to my home for lunch. There are some matters we need to discuss.” And the phone went dead.

  Now I was annoyed. First of all, I hadn’t said I was free. Second of all, what on earth did we have to discuss? Unless he had some information about his missing son-in-law. Joshua Verlaine must have told him I was continuing the investigation Iris had started. That kind of worried me a little—if Iris had indeed been killed because she was looking for her father, that didn’t bode well for Joshua. After viewing the remains of the crime scene, I was relatively certain Iris’s death hadn’t been a random burglary. I couldn’t make any sense of why, though—unless, of course, her father hadn’t disappeared but been murdered himself—and what did that note on the back of the picture mean? Chartres Street?

  Maybe Percy Verlaine had some answers for me.

  I made a mental note to myself to find out if Iris’s fiancé was back in town yet, and I needed to talk to Darrin Verlaine as well.

  But as I crossed the street, I saw Blaine and Venus enter the Pub, and I remembered that Percy Verlaine was very rich. I’ve dealt with a lot of rich peop
le in my line of work, and one thing they all have in common is an incredible self-absorption. Of course you’re free when they need to see you. They don’t mean anything by it; it’s just what they are used to. Rich people are terribly spoiled, and the privilege that comes with their wealth doesn’t help in that regard. My landlady, Barbara Castlemaine, was like that too—she inherited Crown Oil from her husband. Of course, she was also my biggest client, and I was her security consultant, and Crown Oil not only paid the bills but was going to be my retirement as well, so I was always available when Barbara needed me for anything. And Percy Verlaine owned Verlaine Shipping outright—no stockholders, no board of directors to answer to—so he’d been making people jump when he snapped his fingers his entire life. And curiosity would eventually win out over my irritation. What did he want, and what information would he have to share with me?

  *

  “Percy Verlaine is a world-class grade-A bastard,” Paige said when I mentioned the phone call. Our burgers had already come—they were out of French fries so we had to make do with small bags of Zapp’s Cajun Crawtator potato chips—when I brought his name up, after listening to their recaps of their days. “He’d sell his mother to make a buck.”

  “Maybe, but he donates a lot of money to charity,” Blaine replied. The Tujagues were an old-line New Orleans society family. They weren’t in the same financial league as the Verlaines, but Blaine’s father belonged to both Comus and Rex, and his mother was one of those women who are always raising money for this charity or that charity. “All Mom has to do is call him up and he writes a big check for whatever she wants.”

  “Buying his way into heaven.” Venus looked tired, even more tired than she had the day before. She swung her head to look at me, and I noticed her eyes were rimmed with red. “What did you do today, besides get a call from the great and terrible Oz?”

  “I went out to Lakeview.” They all recoiled and looked away from me. “Yeah, I know, but I wanted to see Iris’s place and take a look around.”

  “You should go down to the Lower Ninth Ward.” Paige took another bite from her burger. “Lakeview is bad, but it’s nothing compared to what you’ll see down there.” She put her burger down. “Everyone in this country needs to go down there and see what it looks like for themselves. Not on television, but in person.” She shuddered. “I swear, you can still sometimes hear the people screaming for help.” She reached for her second glass of Jack Daniels and downed half of it. She raised her glass. “Here’s to you, Mr. President and your asshole cronies, may you all fucking burn in hell for eternity.”

  “Hear, hear.” Venus raised her own glass. “Here’s to FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers. May the ghosts of your victims haunt your dreams for the rest of your life.”

  I decided to change the subject before the conversation turned into what apparently was becoming the conversation in town—how much we all hated the federal government and the Army Corps of Engineers. “So, Paige, why don’t you like Percy Verlaine? How do you know him?”

  She finished her glass and signaled for another. Her eyes were starting to get a little glassy. “Percy? I dated one of the grandsons for a little while. Not long, maybe once or twice.” She shrugged. “Darrin. Man, was he a lousy lay. But the second date was a dinner at the big house in the Garden District. Oh my God. What a fucking nightmare. The old man wheezing with his oxygen mask…and he looks old as Methuse—Methus—whatever the hell that guy’s name was. The old one. Anyway, his eyes—mean as a snake. It was just me, Percy’s daughter—Margot, that was her name—and some friend of hers, me and Darrin. None of the others were there. I don’t know why Darrin took me to that, thought that it was a good idea. Maybe he figured having me meet the family was a way to chase me away—although I could have told him the bad sex was much more likely to get me to dump his bony ass. Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, yeah, the old man. Man, what a bastard. All he did was just sit there and belittle Darrin, his mother—but she was a cold bitch, that one was—and it was like that all through the whole lousy fucking meal. Just horrible, I kept drinking, gulping glass after glass of wine and praying for the last fucking course to come—and then finally, the old man looks at me and says, ‘I hope you’re enjoying that wine, Ms. Tourneur, it costs $75 a bottle, and you’ve drunk about $200 worth already.’ I just looked at him and said, ‘You got ripped off then, because it tastes like it should have cost about twelve bucks.’”

  “You said that to Percy Verlaine?” Blaine’s eyes about popped out of his head. “What did he do?”

  “He laughed and said to help myself, he liked my style.” Paige accepted a fresh glass of Jack Daniels from the bartender and laughed. “Needless to say, I never went out with Darrin Verlaine again. That whole fucking family is a major creep show.” She shuddered.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you’d dated Darrin Verlaine?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “What single straight man in this town haven’t I dated? Although it’s my studied opinion that Darrin Verlaine isn’t straight by a long shot. Not 100 percent straight, anyway.”

  “I’m heading home.” Venus stood up. She put a twenty down on the table. “I’m tired and—”

  “Venus hates it when we speculate on people’s sex lives,” Paige hiccupped. “Probly cuz everyone thinks she’s a lesbian.”

  “You’re drunk, Paige,” Venus said, more tired than angry. “And I’m tired—it’s been a long day. Good night.”

  Blaine pulled a twenty out of his wallet, laid it on the table, and they walked outside. I could see them through the window. Venus had her face in her hands and her shoulders were shaking. Blaine put his arms around her and gave her a long hug. Paige turned and followed my eyes. She looked back at me, her face flushed. “I’m drunk and I’m a bitch.” She started crying.

  I slid around the table and put my arm around her. She sobbed for a few moments into my shoulder, blubbering apology after apology, and then things started pouring out of her. “I’m such a horrible person, such a horrible person.”

  I held her. “No, shhh, no you’re not. You’re just drunk, that’s all.”

  “Oh yes, Chanse, I am a horrible person. You have no idea just how horrible I am.” She buried her face in her hands. “Sometimes I wonder if this is all my fault.”

  “What?”

  She threw an arm out. “This, all of this, Chanse. What happened here.”

  “Paige—” I sat there for a moment, trying to think of the right thing to say. “It was the goddamned weather. No one has any control over the weather, Paige, and hurricanes don’t happen to punish people. That’s just crazy talk.”

  “When all those preachers were talking about how God was punishing New Orleans for her sins…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Paige.” I cupped her chin in my hand and turned her so she was looking me in the eye. “That’s nonsense, and you know it. They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. And if that’s how their God behaves, the kind of thing their God is capable of, well, then fuck their God. He isn’t my God, and he isn’t your God, either. Those guys are cracked, insane, and you know that as well as I do.” I tried to make a joke. “Surely if they had a direct line to God, He’d tell them to do something about their hair.”

  She laughed, then hiccupped, and then turned away from me. “I’ve never told you anything about me, you know.”

  “So we’re even. You don’t know anything about me.”

  “I grew up in the Lower Ninth Ward, you know.” She looked into her glass. “What they used to call the Holy Cross District, on Caffin Avenue. My mother was a drunk, you know. She drank in the morning before she’d go to work. She was a functioning alkie. No one she worked with even knew she drank, but at night she’d be so drunk she’d fall out of her chair and just pass out on the floor. I used to have to put her to bed, clean up her puke.”

  “My mother drank too.”

  “It sucks, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” My mother’s weakness was
gin. She always smelled of sour gin. As soon as my father left for work in the morning, she’d get the gin bottle out from under the kitchen sink and fill a coffee cup with gin. By the time my brother, my sister, and I were ready to leave for school, she was weaving and hardly able to stand up. Our trailer was always dirty, because she was too drunk to clean, which would then send my father into a rage and they would scream at each other for hours, throwing things and calling each other nasty names. As soon as we were old enough, my sister and I started cleaning the house when we got home to try to keep the peace. Mom would sit in her reclining chair watching The Edge of Night and Donahue while we dusted and vacuumed and washed the dishes.

  “Mom would go out to bars every night,” Paige went on. “My dad left when she was pregnant with me—hell, for all I know they were never married; it wouldn’t surprise me—and so she would go out looking for men to buy her drinks and tell her she was pretty. It was so pathetic; even when I was a little girl I thought it was pathetic. I would hear her come in at night with whoever Mr. Goodbar for the night was, and lay there in bed, listening to them, swearing that when I grew up I was going to be different from her. I wasn’t going to be like her.” She picked up the glass and toasted me with it. “And look at me! I’m just like her.”

  “No, you aren’t,” I replied. “You’ve been through a hard time, is all, and there’s nothing wrong with having some drinks to dull the pain, Paige. It’s not a crime.”

  “But you don’t know the worst.” She stopped and threw the rest of the liquor down her throat. She belched and gave me a look. “When I was thirteen one of her men raped me.”

  It was as though time suddenly stood still. I no longer heard the television set, or the music someone was playing on the jukebox. It was like the entire bar had frozen in time. I couldn’t have heard that right; I couldn’t have.