82 Desire (20 page)

“Fine.” Skip opened the door for her. “My car’s right here.”

“I’ve only got a minute.”

“This is a murder investigation, Ms. Wallis. Don’t keep telling me how valuable your time is.” She wasn’t eager to arouse suspicion herself—this would have to be short, but she wanted this woman’s full attention, and she couldn’t get it in a car. Besides, Talba had a bad temper. Skip had to get her in a controlled situation. She drove to the nearest police station, which was the Eighth District (in the French Quarter), and secured the loan of a room.

Talba brushed her hair back with an angry swipe. “What the hell’s this about?”

“That attitude’s not going to get you anywhere.”

The Baroness sat down. Skip said, “What are you doing at United?”

The other woman shrugged. “I’m a good temp. They asked me back.”

“Don’t lie to me. You’re scared to death of something.”

Talba breathed deeply a few times, chest heaving. Finally, she seemed to come to a decision. “I can’t believe I’m so stupid. No way do I need money this bad! Look, I’m working for Allred’s client.”

Skip’s heart started to pick up speed, but Talba interrupted her fantasies of a coming revelation: “But I still don’t know who he is.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Talba.”

“I’m not!” She yelled it so loud Skip put her hands to her ears.

“Sorry. I just hate being called a liar when I’m not lying.”

Skip gave her the “come on” sign.

“He called me,” Talba said. “I guess he got my number from Allred. He knew everything I’d been doing at United, and he wanted me to go back.”

“If you don’t even know the man, why do you think he’ll pay you?”

“He said I’d find seven hundred fifty dollars under the mat and I did. I’d call that earnest money.”

“Okay. Tell me what he wants you to do.”

“Get the same file as before.”

“Dammit! Why didn’t you call me when this guy called?”

Talba shrugged, looking a little ashamed.

“Well? Did you do it?”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“I haven’t had the right opportunity.”

Skip could have chewed nails. “Talba, come on.”

“Look. It’s encrypted—it wasn’t before; they’ve done it since I was there last.”

“And you didn’t think this was important enough to tell the police? Have you forgotten a man was murdered? Is this some sort of game to you?”

The poet’s face told Skip she more or less
had
forgotten; Talba looked a bit like a child caught stealing. “I’m sorry—I didn’t think.”

Think. Skip tried to think. If they’d encrypted the system, it probably meant the information she needed was still inside it. She said, “How does encryption work?”

Talba said, “First of all, you’d only encrypt certain files.”

Skip nodded. “The ones you were trying to hide.”

“Yes. The encrypted files look like gobbledygook until you run them through a decryption program—talk about a rude awakening.”

“Are you telling me you found ‘Skinacat’—you just couldn’t read it?”

“No. Either someone’s removed it or changed its name. I remembered one of the names in it, and it turned out the guy had his own file. That one I couldn’t read.”

“Wait a minute. Just hold it a minute while I try to figure you out. When we talked Saturday, you couldn’t remember any of the names. You knew damn well they were important in a murder case, and yet you just couldn’t remember. And then, all of a sudden, you miraculously recovered your memory. And you didn’t tell me! What the hell’s wrong with you, Ms. Baroness Sandra Urethra?” Skip was so mad she wanted to pound her. It really bothered her how irresponsible people could be.

Talba looked as if she had been pounded. Tears slid into her eyes and spilled. “Oh, God. Oh, God, I don’t know. Oh, shit, how could I be so stupid? I was just all caught up with all my little petty things. I never thought…”

“Okay, okay, okay.” Skip was cooling down. “What was the name?”

“Marion Newman. I remembered it because of the school.”

“Is it a man or a woman?”

“A man, because, on the original list, it was actually, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Marion Newman.’ Somehow I suspect he’s the main guy in this, though.”

“The main guy in what, Talba?”

“In whatever he was screwed out of. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”

Skip would have liked to ignore the remark, but it might mean something. She said, “What makes you think that?”

“Isn’t it always?”

She was back to her arrogant self. Skip said, “Look, I’m delighted you’ve decided to cooperate, belated though it may be. Think carefully—is there anything else you can remember that might be helpful—anything at all?”

“No.”

“Thanks for thinking so carefully.”

“I
have
been thinking about this. Think I’m sitting here with my mind in neutral?”

“Where’s Mr. Newman from? Can you remember that?”

“Mr. Newman. Let me see.” She closed her eyes. “Belle Chasse. You know what? It might be Belle Chasse.”

“Well, that was so good maybe you should try for his street address.”

She waved a hand. “That was random. Can I go back to work now?”

“I wouldn’t if I were you. Somebody in there might be dangerous.”

The poet stood up, smiling. “Oh, girlfriend. They’re all dangerous.”

Having a vested interest in Talba’s not being missed, Skip dropped her off before heading back to the office, taking care to conceal her excitement. Marion Newman was a name she knew.

Nineteen

THE PLACE SHE’D seen it was in some record involving this case. She got out the cardboard box where she’d stored certain of Russell’s things she’d borrowed, and there on top was an address book. She pounced on it, perfectly remembering the name “Marion Newman” written in neat script on a blue line.

But it wasn’t there.

Okay, then, one of the Rolodexes. She plucked out the larger one first, the one from work. And there it was—black ink on a pristine white card. Go figure.

She cross-checked it against the home Rolodex, but it wasn’t there. So Marion Newman was strictly a business acquaintance. That made sense.

Probably no one was home now, or at best only his wife was, but Skip phoned anyway. A woman with a black accent answered.

Skip could hear her holler, “Mr. Newman? Mr. Newman. Ya girlfriend’s on the phone?”

Good time to hang up
, Skip thought, a
nd drive out to Belle Chasse.
This was a bedroom community in Plaquemines Parish, reached by taking the Mississippi River Bridge (aka the Crescent City Connection) and driving through quite a few miles of McDonald’s and Dairy Queens, and finally coming to, of all things, the same river you have just crossed.

Because of an exceptionally kinky meander, you actually run into the Mississippi again. Having gone due east on the bridge, you’ve fetched up on its west bank; if you were to cross it again (which you could, by ferry), you could drive back to New Orleans without crossing it a third time.

But you don’t have to cross it again to get to Belle Chasse—if you’ve reached that second bend, you’re there.

To the right is a development of nice-looking though aggressively neat houses. Skip drove through, looking for the Newmans’ address and marveling at what she saw. Nothing could have been farther from the French Quarter. About every second house had a wreath of dried flowers on the door, making her think of pagan customs involving harvests. Somehow, she didn’t think that was what this was about. It was probably part of the same non-pagan deal that caused each of the houses to have a leaded glass door. These were new houses and the doors, by the look of them, weren’t antiques—had obviously been made to order, to lend a look of modest grandeur. Then there were the mailboxes, sitting out on the road a good distance from the houses. Most of these were encased in little brick housings, like birds in cages. It was a phenomenon Skip hadn’t seen before.

I wonder
, she thought,
who lives in Belle Chasse?
There was no one outside.

The single exception was an old man in a straw hat riding a tractor lawn mower at the Newmans’ address.

Skip got out of her car and hailed him. “Can I talk to you a minute?”

He eyed her as if she came from Mars.

“Mr. Newman?” she said, and he nodded briefly. “Skip Langdon. Police.” She held up her badge.

“Police,” he repeated. He looked as if she’d told him someone was dead, and she wondered if that was what he thought.

“It’s nothing to worry about,” she said. “Just a long shot in a case I’m working on. Over in New Orleans.”

He pulled a bandanna from a pair of khaki shorts, took off his straw hat, and wiped his forehead. He grinned at her. “My grandson just got a car for his birthday. I thought you were here to tell me the worst.”

With the hat off, she saw that he was a handsome man, with a bit of a belly, maybe, but otherwise fit, and an inch or two taller than she was. He spoke with one of those very soft Southern accents designed to be pleasing, never to give offense, and to sneak up on you in the dark—the sort a Southern senator has, one with half his colleagues eating out of his hand and the other half running for cover at the sight of him. In a suit, he’d be the type to get the best table in every restaurant he set foot in, whether or not the maitre d’ knew him. He didn’t seem to go with the neighborhood.

She said, “My case involves a company named United Oil, and your name came up.”

“United Oil.” He said the words as if they were the name of an old girlfriend, one he remembered none too fondly. “In what context?” he said.

“I’m wondering if you ever knew a Russell Fortier.”

“Fella who disappeared? Don’t b’lieve I did.” He looked at her warily. This man was not only no fool, he was used to getting his way, and probably more manipulative than she was. She was going to have to tread lightly.

She smiled. “Well, that’s the context. You’re in his Rolodex.”

He gave a mock shake of the head, as if completely befuddled. “That so? Well, I called him once—called a lot of people over there, but none of ’em ever called back. Surprised he kept my number.”

Skip waited for more, but he seemed to be waiting as well.

Finally, she said, “Mr. Newman, it would be a great help to me if you’d simply describe your dealings with United Oil.”

“Now why should I do that?” He gave her a practiced, crinkly-eyed grin, the sort that had probably won over many an unsuspecting business associate—or female target.

She gave him one just as practiced. “To be a good citizen?”

He laughed. “That. And ‘cause I got nothin’ else to do. Thanks to United Oil.” He paused. “Come on in and have a lemonade with me.” He turned his back on her, one finger gesturing at his waist for her to follow, as if she were a grandchild. He padded toward the house, evidently quite confident that she would.

The house had one of those enormous kitchens with a counter separating it from a family room. Newman led her in there and rooted around in an overstocked refrigerator for a pitcher of lemonade. There was no sign either of the maid who’d answered the phone or of anyone else.

Newman poured and held up his glass. “Cheers.”

Skip nodded and sipped.

“Shall we?” Gallantly, her host pulled out a light-colored chair at a round kitchen table. She sat down at a place marked with a plastic placemat in the shape of a green and white frog, its mouth open, red tongue cocked for a plastic mosquito. The thing looked so hungry she was afraid to put her hand on it.

“Do you know anything about me, Detective?”

Skip shook her head, more or less mesmerized already; mesmerization was probably this one’s stock-in-trade.

“Shall I start at the beginning?”

“By all means.”

“I inherited a little company from my father—little oil company in Jefferson Parish named after our family.” He spoke softly and seriously, and a sadness came into his voice. When he said “our,” he made it two syllables, a pronunciation that somehow fit the word, giving it a proprietary, almost familial feel that managed to express what it meant to him. Skip found she was feeling moved and sympathetic, though the story hadn’t even begun.

“I grew up a child of privilege, taking everything for granted, never expecting to do anything but run my daddy’s little company and marry some nice woman and have fine sons who’d one day run the company. Well, I found the woman—Mary Alice Gingrich, God rest her soul. My wife died six months ago.”

“I’m sorry,” Skip said, and indeed she was near tears, so complete was this man’s dejection.

“Oh, so am I,” he said. “And would that she knew how much I loved her.” He lifted his eyes, which had been staring at his own plastic frog, the tongue of which seemed to have captured a stray cornflake. “Forgive me,” he said, and forced a smile, but it wasn’t the practiced, crinkly-eyed variety. This was a tired, apologetic one. “I have a lot of regrets these days and few people who’ll listen to me talk about them.”

He took a sip and continued. “We had daughters instead of sons—two of them. And I was so disappointed—though not in my girls, never for a minute—just that, for the first time in my selfish, narrow life I didn’t get what I thought it was my God-given right to have. I was so disappointed I made poor Mary Alice keep on trying until we had a boy, which we didn’t until nine years after our daughter Sarah was born.”

He looked at Skip, narrowing his eyes, perhaps, she thought, to keep her from seeing tears. “You know how they say a boy has the devil in him? Well, our boy
was
the devil.” He flailed a hand about. “Oh, I know all about hyperactivity and attention deficit and all the things they’ve attributed to children through the years. Sarah says that if Baxley were coming up today, he’d be diagnosed with ADHD. That may be; that may be. All I know is, first he made his mother miserable, and then his sisters, and—in the end—his father as well. When he was a baby, he cried, and when he was a toddler, he tore things up, and when he was ten or eleven, he drank, and when he was twelve, he shoplifted, and after that, he took drugs. Today, I could not honestly tell you where the boy is. He used to ask for money, but that has now become futile.”

He waved a hand in front of his face, as if swatting a particularly lazy fly. “But I wanted a son and I got a son, at the cost of the whole family’s happiness. Yes, that’s true, Detective. Everything was sacrificed at that altar. And I was angry because the boy was not what I expected. Angry, for God’s sake! My father had never spared the rod—and, in my arrogance, believing that was why I had turned out so almighty well, neither did I. The more I punished, the more he rebelled.”

Skip glanced nervously at her watch—when she’d said start from the beginning, she hadn’t meant from the beginning of time. She moved her head only slightly, wondering if she should say something, but Newman caught the gesture. “Bear with me, Detective, bear with me. I’ll tell my story in its entirety, or not at all.” He was definitely a man used to getting his way.

“Because my attention was on that evil boy—on turning him into a perfect little replica of Marion Newman, who in turn, is a near-perfect replica of my father, J. W. Newman—I neglected my wife and abused my two lovely daughters. By abused, Ms., ah, Detective, by abused, I mean I barely noticed them. Everything they did to please me—and it was considerable for a while; in Sarah’s case, it still is—was nothing to me because I was simply incapable of noticing.

“Francine, my older daughter, took the path of over-achieving and is now a psychiatrist in Atlanta, a path I believe she followed because of her own unhappiness in this family. She is also an activist in the lesbian community, and I have to wonder if this is a path she chose for the lack of good male models.”

This guy
, Skip thought,
gives new meaning to the term “self-flagellation.”
But if what he was saying was right, he no doubt deserved as much punishment as he’d meted out to poor Baxley and the girls. The fact that he had thought it out so well gave it a revolting fascination.

“You’re thinking of The Ancient Mariner, aren’t you?”

“The wedding guest, actually,” Skip said, and Newman was suddenly seized by great, shaking fits of laughter.

“I like you, girl. You’re a breath of fresh air.”

“Actually, Mr. Newman, I’m a police officer…”

“How come a cop knows her Coleridge?”

This line of inquiry always infuriated her. She didn’t let it go. “You sure are a man who divides people into roles you think they should fit.”

To her surprise he had another laughing fit. “Touché, Ms. Detective. I deserved that. But your point is well taken. You are a police officer, however overeducated. Let us get back to making good use of the taxpayers’ money.” He looked around him, as if hoping to get his bearings. “Where was I?”

“Francine.”

“Ah, yes.” He shook his head. “Francine. I am not her favorite person. As I say, she took the path of over-achievement, and Sarah …” He swept an arm around him, indicating his surroundings “… Sarah settled. She married the first boy who was nice to her, and to our surprise, the marriage worked. Or works, I should say. Sarah and Larry Neville are still married today, but I never expected to see my daughter the wife of an HVAC man.” He paused. “Living in Belle Chasse. Are you familiar with that term—HVAC? Neither was I till I had occasion to learn it. Heating, Ventilation, and Air-Conditioning. Quite a good business. I don’t know if you see what I’m getting at. If I had raised either of my girls to take over the business—to care about it at all—things might have been different. Maybe somebody—
somebod
y—could have talked some sense into me.

“As it happened, we were doing all right, while all around us, many wells were playing out, becoming less and less profitable. It was bound to happen to me sometime, but this was our family business and perhaps I still had some absurd notion that Baxley would turn around and I would pass the business to my son. This is where United Oil comes in—they made me an offer and I refused it. I had no one to advise me, no one else who had a stake in the business…”

His head moved from side to side in unconscious regret, and Skip forbore to ask the obvious:
What about your wife?
This was a man to whom a professional woman was an “overachiever,” a cop who knew a poem was “overeducated”; not a man who ran decisions past his wife.

In the hope of speeding things up, Skip said, “You lost the company?”

He laughed. “Bide your time, young woman. Just bide your time.”

What a control freak
, she thought.
He must run Sarah a merry chase.

“I ran that company for fifteen years, exactly the way my daddy ran it before me, and we ran it just like everyone else in the parish runs their company. Now, I’m not making excuses, I’m just telling you. We were as honest as anybody else, but maybe we weren’t all that careful about the royalties we paid to the landlord—the people we leased the oil field from. Maybe we were a little late, maybe we were a little inaccurate—but we did the best we could.”

Oh, sure.

“And one day, out of the clear blue, we got word that we were about to be audited by the State Mineral Board. Now why didn’t this happen to everybody else in the parish? Why didn’t it happen to United Oil? I don’t know why it didn’t, but my company ended up having to make a huge settlement with the fellow to avoid a suit and a scandal and criminal charges and everything else, and the upshot was, we went bankrupt. And now I live in Belle Chasse with Sarah and Larry and Jimmy. Mary Alice did, too, until she died. You know how hard this was on that woman? We used to live in a great big house out by the lake. She had the most beautiful garden you ever saw—loved her roses. And of course, she had her bridge group and her church … and then she had a bankrupt husband who was known to be ‘in some kind of trouble.’”