G.T. Herren - Paige Tourneur 01 - Fashion Victim (6 page)

“I’m sorry.”

“Take your time, don’t worry about me,” I said in a low, comforting tone— feeling like a ghoul. Flashbacks of all the times I’d interviewed spouses or parents or children or friends or neighbors of murder victims flashed through my mind.
This is why I didn’t want to do this kind of work anymore
, I thought, biting my lower lip.

But I had to get the story.

She took another healthy drink. “What are you looking for? Scandal? Who would have wanted to kill her? That sort of thing?”

I took a deep breath. “That’s not what I’m interested in, Audrey. I don’t know if you’ve read
Crescent City
or not since I took the magazine over, but that’s not what we do. I want to show what Marigny was like, warts and all, and let the readers decide what kind of a person she was.”

It wasn’t, after all, a
complete
lie.

“Interesting.” The cat started purring in her lap, and I bit my lower lip to keep from smiling— Audrey looked like one of those “take over the world” villains in adventure movies. “It seems like we’ve always been friends— I really can’t remember a time when Marigny wasn’t there, you know?” She pushed the cat off her lap and brushed away cat hair. “We had our ups and downs over the years— what friends don’t? But we always forgave each other in the end, and came back together. She wasn’t perfect, you know— even if she thought she was.” She smiled. “But when someone is your friend… you overlook all kinds of things. You make excuses for them, and because you let them get away with little things without saying anything, then they start with the big things. But the thing with Marigny was it was never
personal
, you know. She just didn’t think how her behavior would affect other people… she didn’t like hurting people, and was always sorry. She cared about me, loved me in her way. We were like sisters, in a way. No matter what happened with the men in our lives, we always had each other.” She pursed her lips. “We went to McGehee together, you know. She didn’t belong there— her family was nothing, really, and the other girls always made sure she never forgot that.” She barked out a laugh. “And she never did. She told me once if it took her the rest of her life, she would get even with those mean bitches.”

“And did she?”

She looked at me, her head cocked to one side, her eyes narrowed. “You could say that. You have to remember— Marigny might have been considered white trash by those rich society bitches, but she was a very beautiful young woman.” She gestured to herself. “I was a beautiful young woman, too. And I felt bad for her. I thought she behaved the way she did— you know, excuses— because of the way she’d been treated growing up. There’s nothing worse, no worse feeling, than wanting to fit in and being mocked, is there?”

But people get over it when they grow up
, I thought, remembering my own horrendous high school experiences. Aloud, I replied, “No, no there isn’t. And how did she get even with them?”

“She was a beautiful young woman. You do the math.” She gave me a brittle smile. “It was all so long ago. And it’s not really who she was anymore. After she got back from Paris— she didn’t care so much about that anymore.” She laughed again. “The girls who treated her like crap when we were in school were her clients— she designed their wedding dresses, their ball gowns…”

“Did she always want to be a designer, work in fashion?”

“She could always sew, I’ll give her that. But she used to have to make her own dresses, you know, for Mardi Gras balls and school dances. They made fun of her for that, too— but bless her heart, she always said she preferred to make her own because then she could have exactly what she wanted. She used to make dresses for me, too— she had a flair for it. But no, she never talked about going into fashion when she was a girl. She just wanted to get married, have kids, live in the Garden District in a big house and be queen of a ball. She was, you know— but she wasn’t Queen of Rex, she was Queen of Patroclus.”

“Patroclus?”

“It disbanded years ago. I doubt anyone even remembers it anymore.” She raised her eyebrows. “She was proud as she could be to be Queen of a ball, though. Her family might not have had much money… but her mother made sure she went to the right schools.”

“How many times was she married?” I asked. “I keep getting conflicting answers on that.”

“She was married five times that I know about.” She laughed. “She may have been married when she was in Paris, I don’t really know. She never liked to talk much about Paris— which I thought was odd.” She shrugged. “Five times here in New Orleans for sure. To be fair, she went through the first three in no time at all.” She wiped at her eyes. “But considering she didn’t get started until she was in her late twenties, though— she certainly made up for lost time. After we were out of high school and going to Newcomb, she was only interested in men that were already taken.”

“Married men?”

She nodded. “Or ones that were already seriously committed.” Her eyes sparkled maliciously. “Preferably the ones who were engaged to girls we went to McGehee with.”

The cat, purring, was rubbing against my legs. I reached down and scratched between its ears. “And you?”

“No, that was never my style.” She scratched her arm and looked away. “She always laughed at me, said it was my bourgeois upbringing. I just didn’t see the point in getting involved with men that I had no future with. But for Marigny, it was all about revenge.” She looked back at me. “Marigny was always about revenge.”

“Is that why she was writing a book?”

“Oh, it was finished.” She finished her drink and stood up. “Are you sure you don’t want anything? I’m going to have another.”

I demurred, and she moved slowly back into the kitchen. I got up and walked over to the bookcase and looked at the candle.

The name carved into it was ROME— but the candle had burned down some. There might have been other letters that had melted away.

“Jerome.” She said, startling me.

“I’m sorry—”

She made a gesture with her hand as she sat back down in her chair, her fresh drink in her other hand. “It has nothing to do with Marigny. My ex, if you must know. I don’t believe in any of that, but it sure made me feel better.”

I sat down again, and the cat leaped into my lap, curling up into a ball and closing his eyes. “Did Marigny get along with her ex-husbands?” I gestured toward the black candle. “Did she have any black candles in her house?”

“She was friendly with all of them except the last— him she really hated.”

“But why did her children use Mercereau as their last name? I figured they wouldn’t do that if…”

“Marigny did that.” She cut me off. “After the marriages failed, Marigny legally changed their names. She felt that if she was going to be raising them they should have her name.”

“Were their fathers okay with that?”

“They didn’t stop her, did they?” She made a face. “Marigny was married to her business more than anything else. The husbands always took second place to the House of Mercereau, and men don’t like that.” She waved her hand wearily.

“But you said she hated her last husband—”

“Tony was a leech,” she interrupted me angrily. “A complete leech. But Marigny was crazy about him, wouldn’t hear anything against him.” Her eyes flashed. “That was her vanity talking, of course.” She clicked her tongue against her teeth a couple of times. “She was past sixty— well past sixty— and she refused to even consider the idea that a man in his mid-thirties would only be after her money.” She shook her head. “What else would a thirty-five-year old man want from a woman almost seventy, besides her money?”

“What was his last name?”

“Castiglione.” She waved a hand, her face twisted. “He was a yat— a good-looking one, I’ll give you that— but I told her he was a mistake. She wouldn’t listen to me, of course— called me a snob.” She wiped at her eyes with her hands. “We had a terrible fight about that— both said some things we shouldn’t have— things that could be forgiven but never forgotten.”

I nodded, a little surprised. I’d always gotten the impression that Marigny was rather grand, and liked to put on airs. I couldn’t picture her dating a yat, let alone marrying one.

I’ve dated yats, myself— the word isn’t really defined well, but it comes from a way of speaking— people who are yats say “Where y’at” for “how are you.” It’s a weird New Orleans accent— they say “kitchen zinc” and “terlet” and “erster” for oyster. I’ve been told it originated in the neighborhoods settled by German and Irish immigrants in the 1800’s— the downtown neighborhoods, in particular the 9th ward and the Irish Channel.

Yats sound like they’re from Brooklyn or Queens— only they talk slower. The accent is associated with the working class… so of course anyone from Uptown would recoil from a friend who was dating one.

Snobbery is alive and well in New Orleans.

“Apparently she’d always resented me, for my family.” She turned her head and looked away from me. “All those years, that resentment about my family was brewing just below the surface. She called me a snob! Me!” She looked back at me, and polished off her second drink with a big gulp. “I’ve
always
thought the New Orleans caste system was horrible and unfair. Who cares how many fucking slaves your ancestors owned, or whether you’re French? But when Marigny got angry, there was no reasoning with her. She was convinced he was in love with her, and that was that.”

“And she married him?”

She nodded. “They lasted a little over a year. Her previous marriage lasted the longest— I guess her fourth? She was married to Roger for about eight years. None of the others lasted more than two— just long enough for her to have a kid and then poof, it was over. But Tony Castiglione was by far the worst. He destroyed her, broke her heart. And she was obsessed with him. She couldn’t let him go.” She barked out a harsh little laugh. “He had a mistress, you know. Marigny found pictures of them together— in Marigny’s bed.”

“Oh my God.” I blurted out involuntarily. “That must have hurt.”

“She was devastated— and then she got mad. And like I said, when Marigny was angry there was no talking to her, no reasoning with her. She wanted to get even.”

“Did she?”

She nodded. “She hired private eyes to follow him and find out who the girl was. She never told me who she was, mind you— and I didn’t ask. Marigny would confide in me from time to time, but she also kept a lot of stuff private. She’d agreed to co-sign a loan for him at the bank, so he could open his own training facility, and of course she backed out of that. He created quite a scene at the store— he threw a chair through one of the front windows and screamed at her— Jackson had to call the cops and have him taken away.”

Sounds like a motive for murder to me
, I thought. “So, there’s a police report on file?”

“I would assume.” She narrowed her eyes. “But that was over two years ago— why would he wait till now…” her voice trailed off. “Come to think of it, she did tell me she’d seen him the other day.”

“Where?”

“She didn’t give me any details, just that she’d seen him and she hoped it would be the last time she ever did.” Her voice shook. “I guess she got her wish, didn’t she?” She buried her face in her hands.

I said softly, “Thank you for talking to me, Audrey. I have another question for you— when Marigny went to Paris, did you stay in touch?”

She left her hands where they were, and nodded.

“Why did she go to Paris?”

Her hands came down slowly. “Why would you ask me that?” Her face flushed a bit. “She went there to work for Chanel and get some training so she could start her own business here, of course.”

“I’ve been told she didn’t work for Chanel— and the person who told me checked with Chanel.”

“I think it’s time for you to leave.” A muscle in her jaw started twitching.

“I—”

“Get out!” she screamed at me.

I turned off the recording function on my phone and dropped it into my purse as I stood up. “Thanks for your time, Audrey. I’ll see myself out.”

Chapter Seven

That was strange
, I thought.
Why would the Paris question spook her like that?

I started walking back to my car. Clouds had come in while I was inside, and the temperature had dropped. The air felt damp and had that peculiar feel to it that meant rain was coming— and one of those horrible drenching rains that flooded low-lying streets.

I just hoped I got back to my car before it started.

I walked faster and managed to get into my car just as the first drops began pelting its roof. My phone started ringing, so I fished it out of my purse and saw my best friend’s face smiling at me from the screen. I touched the screen to accept the call. “It’s about time you called me back.” I let my irritation show. “Where have you been?”

“Believe it or not, I don’t spend all my time sitting around waiting for you to call,” my best friend Chanse MacLeod drawled. “What’s so damned urgent it’s bunched up your panties?”

Chanse and I go way back— to when we were both undergrads at LSU, in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth. We’ve seen each other through pretty much every conceivable tragedy imaginable. He lives about two blocks away from me, on the other side of Coliseum Square. He’s a private eye, about six feet four, and pretty good-looking. He’s originally from a small town in east Texas and went to LSU on a football scholarship. He still keeps himself in shape— his size is kind of intimidating at first glance, especially when he’s scowling— but he’s a big softie, really. When I worked at the
Times-Picayune
, I used to do favors for him all the time— looking things up in the archives— and he paid me back by helping me on stories whenever he could.

“I need some help— I’m doing a story on Marigny Mercereau and—”

“She was murdered this morning,” he interrupted me, sounding much more alert. “You sure you want to be messing in that?”

I sighed. The last two times psychos had held a gun to my head, Chanse had rescued me. For the record, being rescued is galling. Granted, it beats being murdered by a psychotic, but I prefer to take care of myself, and having to be rescued like some stupid damsel in distress in a fairytale hardly fits into my self-image as a strong, independent woman who can take care of herself, thank you very much.