Jimmy Fox - Nick Herald 02 - Lineages and Lies (2 page)

“We need you to ID the deceased, if you can,” she said.

Nick had never been in a police line-up, but he thought this was how it must feel. Three sets of eyes watched him intently. Were they searching for signs of guilt, waiting for a blurted confession? Nick realized the two men must be detectives. The pressure was almost enough to make him believe he’d actually done … whatever they wanted him to admit.

The magnificence of the room momentarily distracted him. In more prosperous days of scholarly grants and anthology royalties, he might have stayed in a suite like this. Really first class: high ceilings, chandeliers, antiques, oil paintings, fresh flowers, French windows with extravagant layers of curtains. Bluemantle had been living like a high roller. Nice work for a dipso has-been genealogist.

The cleaning staff had waged a losing battle with Woodrow Bluemantle’s famously boorish habits during the past week or so of his stay. A suitcase that might have been a relic of Mississippi steamboat days disgorged his scruffy belongings. On desks, bureaus, and nightstands were a dozen or two of the mini-bar bottles—empty. The huge bed looked like Lake Pontchartrain during a hurricane.

Magazines, typed pages, reams of photocopies, and books lay scattered about on the carpet. An old portable typewriter crouched on a desk. A pen had leaked on a cushion of an exquisite damask sofa. Nick suspected the mess wasn’t all Bluemantle’s doing. Someone had been looking for something.

The corpse lay face up on the marble floor of the outrageously luxurious bathroom. Like a beached ship a nearly empty bottle of expensive brandy occupied a corner. Beside the body, a straight razor swam in a sickening wash of blood and amber liquid.

Nick and his guide stared for a moment at the horrible scene. “My papa used to use one of those to shave with,” the female cop said abstractedly. “To kill hogs, too.”

Bluemantle had been a traditionalist in trivial matters like shaving, an iconoclast in important ones like genealogy.

Nick felt himself go pale. He tried to swallow the snails of nausea crawling up his throat. True, he delved into human mortality every day, but only on paper. Death up close, with no intervening centuries and footnotes—especially the death of a friend—affected him with an unanticipated dread and sorrow.

“Do you know the deceased as”—she leafed a few pages back in her notebook—“Mr. Woodrow D. Bluemantle?”

“
Dr.
Woodrow D. Bluemantle,” Nick said.

Recovering a bit, he forced himself to pay attention, to bring the dead past to life, as he did for his genealogical clients. What had happened in his friend’s last moments?

Bluemantle had been shaving; that much was obvious. His face was still covered in lather withered and stained pink in a
few places where the blood from his crushed skull had been soaked up. Sprucing up for their evening together, the three of them? Probably he’d been drunk; that evidence seemed to be all over the hotel room and the grisly bathroom floor. Being soused was Bluemantle’s natural state, anyway.

Had he lost his balance, tripped over the dangling belt of the no-longer-white hotel terry-cloth robe he was wearing? Nick studied the sharp edge of the marble encasing the bathtub; there was a lot of blood there, some hair and scalp, too. Much of Bluemantle’s right fourth finger was missing, cut off at the middle knuckle. Maybe that’s what the detectives were searching for in the trash can.

Bluemantle’s eyes and mouth weren’t quite closed. He seemed to be merely half-asleep, dreaming about a point of great genealogical import. Perhaps the “very interesting new things” he’d mentioned to Nick, earlier in the day.

The female cop and Nick left the suite, followed closely by one of the detectives. He was a white man about thirty years old, wearing an ugly beige polyester suit, a badge on his belt, and a pistol under his coat. Passing them, he diplomatically drew aside one of the hotel executives. He spoke in a low, calm voice to her; she adamantly shook her head.

To Nick, the detective looked like a senior in high school, but he undoubtedly pulled a lot of weight.

Another plainclothes detective was knocking on a door down the hall. The bumptious guests had become timid.

Suddenly, the hotel woman held up her hands and declared, “We’ve done all we can, Detective Bartly! I’m sorry.”

Bartly turned, rolling his eyes in the universal gesture of a teenager making fun of a grownup who doesn’t get it.

“We’re trying to find another room to use,” the female cop explained to Nick, public servant to taxpayer. “Appreciate your patience. Please wait here.” She left him outside the suite, talked to Detective Bartly for a minute, and then crouched with the paramedics.

A chest-high strip of yellow tape barred the doorway now; Nick hadn’t seen who put it up. Bartly ducked under it. Nick followed him as far as the tape would allow. Looking through the foyer and into the room, Nick saw him take a few steps on the carpet and stop. The detective’s hands jangled change in his pants pockets as he regarded the crime scene his partner now diagrammed. Bartly seemed to be a human camera, and each nose-drawn breath was an exposure. He had a curly mop of sandy hair and wore thick round rimless glasses, tinted slightly green.

Not exactly NOPD standard issue, something of a misplaced, undernourished hippie, Nick was thinking.

“Where’s the crime-lab unit, Ty?” Bartly asked, walking over to his partner, a stocky young black man in shirtsleeves and latex gloves, a pistol holstered upside down under his left arm. Nick imagined the sinister weapon sliding smoothly into the detective’s hand and leveling at him in deadly accusation.

“Too many murders,” said Ty. “They’re dropping like flies tonight.”

“Too many of
our
guys under the magnifying glass,” Bartly countered. “That’s why we’re shorthanded. Put in another call.”

The two men continued to speak; Nick couldn’t decipher the meaning, but he was almost positive he heard his name mentioned once or twice. Bartly pointed to various areas of the room that needed attention. Then he turned and locked eyes with Nick.

Nick instinctively took a half step backward as the detective walked toward him.
Hey, not me, pal! I didn’t kill him.

“Dave Bartly, Detective, Homicide, New Orleans Police Department.” He didn’t offer his hand. “What’s it look like in there to you?” He tilted his head toward the suite behind him.

“A dead man,” Nick said, arching a thick eyebrow, his self-confidence creeping back. He could do sign language, too:
Look, treat me like a fool and we’ll get nowhere.

A slight grin tickled the edges of Bartly’s mouth. Nick knew he was dealing with a fellow smart-ass.

Bartly ducked under the tape. “What I mean is, do you think it was an accident or foul play?”

“That’s your job, Dave.”

“Would you mind coming down the hall so I can ask you a few questions?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact I do,” Nick answered, genuinely peeved now, fed up with the whole apparently disorganized circus. “I’ve been led around like a dog on a leash long enough.”

“Maybe you’d like a more formal chat,” Bartly suggested, testiness breaking through his politeness, “at headquarters.” Then, in a less aggressive tone, “I promise, no bright lights or rubber hoses.”

“Let’s get it over with, then.”

Bartly had commandeered a small service room at the end of the hall. Janitorial supplies filled metal shelving units. A card table and three chairs crowded together against one wall. Nick noticed above the table a calendar featuring a dramatic resurrection and pious quotations in Spanish. Mingled smells of cleaning fluids, cigarettes, and spicy meals reached his nose.

They sat on two rickety chairs.

“So, let’s start with how you’re involved in this thing,” Bartly said casually, as he opened his notebook and found the next empty space. “You seemed pretty curious back there.”

“You’re begging the question, aren’t you, Dave?”

“I don’t follow,” said the detective.

“You’re proceeding as if I’ve said something I haven’t. I’m not ‘involved in this thing.’”

“What’s your line of work, Mr. Herald?”

Police talk tacked elusively for a purpose, Nick realized: the sudden changes of direction were unnerving. “I’m a genealogist.”

Bartly nodded, diverted by a thought. “In a way, we’re both in the business of death, aren’t we, Mr. Herald?”

“The blood is usually dry long before I investigate,” Nick said, recognizing some imaginative depth in his questioner.

“I see what you mean. This one is ugly and very suspicious. Funny meeting a genealogist, like this. I’ve always been interested in learning about my own family,” Bartly said, almost apologetically. “You know, where we came from, whether we have anybody famous—or maybe infamous—way back.” Detective Bartly seemed pleased by his neat turn of phrase. “I guess you get that a lot, that sort of vague curiosity about family history.”

Nick wondered if this was another devious investigative maneuver. Under normal circumstances, he would have been happy to mention that Welsh research could yield Bartly results.
No free advice for someone trying to hang a murder rap on me.
the evening was beginning to feel distinctly like a ’40s noir crime film; unfortunately, it was distressingly real.

“Been at genealogy long?” Bartly asked conversationally.

“Long enough to know I’m not going to retire rich,” Nick answered. “Like you New Orleans cops with your cocaine deals and corruption cover-ups. I once taught English literature at Freret University.”

“Oh, yeah … I thought your name sounded familiar.” He looked at Nick with a show of new interest, but Nick was almost certain he was being finessed: Bartly must have known who he was at least since his conversation with Jillian. “Something about plagiarism, right? Made the papers and the TV.” The detective seemed to be waiting for Nick to elaborate, but getting no response, he cast another lure. “Always wondered what really happened with that.”

That makes two of us
. Nick had fought the charge and lost; colleagues he had considered allies heeded insinuations instead of facts. Former friends nursing old grudges turned on him overnight. An old wound. He didn’t intend to bare his scar to a stranger he hoped never to see again.

“I graduated from LSU, Criminal Justice,” Bartly said, apparently somewhat off the track again. “So, Mr. Herald, I’ll make this as short as I can. The deceased, Dr. Bluemantle, was a genealogist, too. There was a meeting here, right? You in on that meeting?”

“Just a spectator.”

“What were you doing up on the tenth floor tonight, Mr. Herald?”

“I had an appointment with Dr. Bluemantle, in the bar. I knew him professionally.” enough of the truth not to be an outright lie. “We were going to talk shop, discuss research strategies. He was late; I came up. Is that a crime?”

Bartly took and released a deep breath, as if practicing a meditation ritual designed to neutralize hostile vibes. “Okay, Mr. Herald. I know you’re not happy to be here. Bear with me. You’re acquainted with Ms. Jillian Vair. Want to tell me about that?”

“Not much to tell. I saw her for the first time today, at the Society of the
Allégorie
—”

“Come again?”

“The Society of the Descendants of the Passengers of the
Allégorie
. It’s a group of people who share some familial link with the passengers and crew of a ship that sailed into New Orleans during the French colonial period.”

“Oh. And you’re a member?”

“No.”

“But Ms. Vair is?”

“I don’t know. Possibly. I just met her this morning.” Nick massaged his forehead. “Look, I’ve already told you, I’m a genealogist. I go to things like that for fun, and if I’m lucky, a little profit.”

Bartly pressed on: “But you know Ms. Vair?”

“Yes, I’ve said that already, too. We had a dinner date.”

“And your appointment with Dr. Bluemantle? Sounds like a schedule conflict to me. You sure you got your story straight.”

“It’s not my
story
!” Nick shouted. His hands were shaking; he put them in his lap, below the table. He cleared his throat and then continued in his normal voice: “It’s how things actually happened. What’s so strange about three people planning to have a drink and then go out to dinner?”

Nick realized anew his reason for avoiding the police whenever possible—aside from guilt over the venial sins he occasionally committed for convenience, fun, or financial gain. Talking to a cop was like getting stuck in flypaper.

It would be easier to tell Bartly everything. More or less.

CHAPTER 2

D
roning April rain had drenched the perpetually soggy Crescent City since daybreak that Friday morning. It was just after ten, and Nick sat in the audience in one of the rococo meeting rooms of the Grande Marchioness Hotel. The program booklet for the seminar told him that the tall man wearing the sparkling Ray Bans at the lectern was Preston Nowell, Captain-Director of the Society of the Descendants of the Passengers of the
Allégorie.

Nick had come here mainly hoping to snare a few clients from this crowd of family-history enthusiasts who could afford five-hundred-dollar hotel rooms. It had been a lean winter for him. He owed too many creditors, his one employee was badgering him for back wages, and his corduroy sport coat, khakis, and Russell chukkas looked too slovenly even for the ex-academic that he was.