Jimmy Fox - Nick Herald 02 - Lineages and Lies (5 page)

Demonstrating the traditional omniscience of bartenders, Bennie told Nick one of the guests had suffered a fit, died in his bathroom; word was, he hit his head big-time awful.

“Say, you mighta knowed him. One a dem whatchmacallem, like you.” Bennie spoke with the mellifluous New Orleans accent of the Irish Channel and other working-class enclaves of the Big easy: quasi-Brooklynese stirred by a swizzle stick of French, Spanish, Italian, and Caribbean, with a dollop of Southern drawl like so much cane syrup to slow things down. “Wit dis lineage society bunch.”

Nick stood up quickly and reached for his wallet. “How much do I owe you, Bennie?”

“Nutin’, man. On de house. Come back and see us.”

“Bless your ancestors, my friend.”

CHAPTER 3

“T
hat’s it?” Detective Dave Bartly asked skeptically, when Nick had finished his explanation of the events leading him to the crime scene.

“Yeah, that’s it. More or less.” Nick had also volunteered his whereabouts for the afternoon: he’d worked at his office, alone, where he took two verifiable calls from clients; then he’d been at the downtown public library from roughly 5:15 to 6:15. This was his Friday to teach adult reading class.

It had taken the better part of an hour to give his account.

“Look,” Nick said, not appreciating Bartly’s veiled tone, “I’ve been more than cooperative!”

“We just want the truth.”

“So what do you think that was, chopped liver?” Nick snapped. “Why are you picking on me? Talk to the heckler. Now there’s a real suspect, if I ever saw one.”

Bartly pinched the bridge of his nose, as if struggling with a difficult essay question on a test. Then, once again, he jingled the change in his pocket.
The meditation routine again.
This guy’s definitely done acid before, and enjoyed it, cop or no cop, Nick
thought; that mesmerized dissociation with the moment was a dead giveaway of past trips into other realms of consciousness.

Nick was beginning, if not to like him, at least to respect his tenacity and weirdness.

“Mr. Herald, there’s no need to lose your temper. I assure you, we’re talking to many other people. This is nothing personal.”

“Well, it sure feels like it,” Nick said, somewhat mollified.

“We don’t know who or what’s important just yet. For example, do you know why Ms. Vair was up here? She found the body and called the front desk.”

“You’d better ask her that.”

“Okay.” The detective jotted a few words down. “From what I gather, Dr. Bluemantle had a few enemies. Would that be a fair statement?”

You don’t have enough pages in that notebook, buddy.
Nick simply shrugged an ambiguous reply.

Bartly pressed on. “You say he was wearing some kind of a ring when you last saw the victim alive? With a crest or a logo or something on it?”

Nick handed him the seminar program booklet, on which the Society’s insignia was prominently displayed.

“Keep it,” Nick said.

“Thanks a lot. I imagine that ring was valuable. Quite a few precious stones and gold, it looks like. Maybe we have a robbery here that turned violent.”

“People get killed in New Orleans for a lot less,” Nick said, by way of unfair indictment of NOPD for failing to read the minds of criminals before they struck.

“There’s one other thing: a room service guy reported seeing a woman in the hall about the time Dr. Bluemantle met his Maker.”

“Jillian, right?” Nick couldn’t help thinking of that bizarre meeting between Bluemantle, with a list of grievances, and God.

“Description doesn’t match her,” Bartly replied. “White female, short brown hair, thirties probably, nice looking, large breasts… . Not my words,” he hastened to add. “This is a horny young waiter giving us the details. We’re checking the women signed up for the seminar, but I understand they’re all a lot older than our mystery lady.”

“Battle-axes, every one. Can’t help you with that, either, Dave. The hall was full of cops when I got there. No stacked brunette. But I’ll certainly keep looking.”

“If I were single, I would, too.” He wrote in his notebook, paused, and gazed at his cheap ballpoint for a moment. “I was just wondering … you being the expert and all—mind if I give you a call on this case, if I have a genealogical question? Which seems pretty likely. We’ll put it on the meter, of course … Professor.” He grinned.

Nick decided Bartly was being deferential, not sarcastic. It was nice to hear the title again.

“Definitely, call me,” Nick said. “But I’m not billing for my help; maybe next time.” He felt an obligation to his friend to find the murderer; Bluemantle would have done no less for Nick.

“Fair enough, Professor. I’ll probably be in touch. So, I guess that’s all,” Bartly said. They stood up. “Before you go, can I see some identification? Standard procedure. Driver’s license—if you don’t mind.”

“Will this do?” Nick took a traffic ticket from his wallet. Another damn left turn on St. Charles Avenue the day before.
“New Orleans: the City of No Left Turns. Just look at that, Dave.” Nick was still angry over being ticketed, though it was certainly not his first such infraction. “This is what NOPD is worried about, while genealogists are keeling over at the Grande Marchioness!”

Bartly studied the ticket and jotted some further notes. He handed it back to Nick.

“Genealogist,” said the detective. “Singular, so far, and I hope it stays that way. But I get your hyperbole.”

“You didn’t skip English classes at LSU, I’m pleased to see.”

“I’ll take care of this for you,” Bartly said, obviously tickled to be verbally jousting with a man of letters. “You’ll be getting your license in a day or two. You can go now. And the department wishes to thank you for your assistance.”

He offered his hand this time.

Jillian Vair took a long drag from her cigarette and then sipped her Margarita. She savored each sip from the shallow glass, as if the bright green liquid and the encrusted salt around the wide rim were an antidote to a slow-acting poison sapping her strength.

They had come to this tiny French Quarter bistro after their separate sessions with the detective. Eleven o’clock was approaching.

She smoked almost reflexively, as one would blink or breathe.

“I quit … about a dozen times,” she explained to Nick after a minor coughing fit, her lungs protesting the latest insult to recuperation. “When I get too nervous, I just can’t help it.”

“Murders do that to me, too,” Nick said with flirtatious wit, eyeing her over a flute of fine champagne, which was serving to lift his spirits considerably. “Fortunately, my pacifier is comparatively benign.” He held up his glass. “If I were a physician instead of a lowly PhD, I’d advise you to give up the cancer sticks and steer clear of murders.”

A welter of emotions surged across Jillian’s beautiful face.
Resentment, anger, guilt?
Nick could only guess, and he wasn’t wild about doing so, for he didn’t want to discover some ugly truth about her. That would tend to put a damper on the young flame of their Romance.

She wanted to say something but stopped herself; a long, nervous drag bottled up her words.

Her reaction was out of all proportion to a comment intended merely to amuse. Nick couldn’t help wondering why.
And did I intend merely to amuse?

After more deep drags and sustained sips, Jillian regained a semblance of composure, and with it the charm he’d seen and admired that morning. Their relationship forged in the trauma of Bluemantle’s death and the unnerving investigation that followed, they were quickly becoming more and more attracted to each other—or so it seemed to Nick. His hand sought hers across the tablecloth.

New Orleans is a passionate city, where an impatient goddess of sensual desperation holds court. Love and hate move with startling speed here, below the slow-motion illusion of ease and comfort. All is transitory, evanescent, a magnolia petal turning brown, even the city’s legends, which are born and die anew
in different bodies with each telling. Disease, floods, hurricanes, wars, duels, and overnight regime changes have helped to shape the character of New Orleanians into a fickle, childlike, selfish, hot-tempered, melodramatic, beautiful thing.

Nick found his dinner companion to be interesting, intelligent, and refined, even if neurotic and mysterious. Often he forgot she had a cigarette trembling in her slender fingers. It seemed she was trying to conceal it through some sleight of hand. Very little smoke escaped from the cigarette or her mouth, and just the filter was left when she rubbed one out in the ashtray. She held it out of reach of the waiter—she’d bummed two from him already—as if she were afraid he was going to steal it. Not that she was being considerate to Nick or anyone else by trying to smoke unobtrusively: that was the last thing on her mind just now, her veiled expression told him. She wanted every last soothing curl of smoke. She needed it to subdue some inner riot.

“So, what did the detective ask you?” Nick asked nonchalantly, hoping to get the answers to Bartly’s questions without having to ask them, whatever they had been.

“If I had anything to do with Dr. Bluemantle’s death,” she said. “He didn’t come right out and say he’d been … murdered. But that’s the impression I got. That he had been—that he
thought
he had been, at least. The detective guy, I mean.”

“Bartly,” Nick added helpfully.

“Yes. Bartly. He told me not to leave town. They may need to interview me again. ‘Interview’—that’s what he called it! … can we talk about something else, please?”

“Sure,” Nick said, happy to change the subject. Murder wasn’t exactly a Romantic topic; and he was sick of thinking about Bluemantle, lying dead in the bathroom of his hotel room. Literally sick. The magnificent champagne and food and setting almost let him believe that Bluemantle’s death was someone else’s nightmare, and that Jillian was a wish granted by a particularly accomplished jinni … and yet, he still wanted to know what she might know.

“I love this place,” he said. “The owners, a man-and-wife chef team, hate publicity. Food writers don’t get in, I’m told. They’d rather have a few regular customers who understand the restaurant’s unique qualities than a busload of bickering tourists on a tight schedule. You won’t get rushed here, no matter what time it is. And the food—that’s the real clincher. I’ll put this place up against any one-star, magazine-touted restaurant in France. The one-stars are always innovating, working their tails off; the threes have crested and become corporations intent on squeezing every last euro from their brand names.”

Nick offered his companion the last of the delicious sampling of the day’s appetizers.

She nibbled a few items and agreed with his high assessment.

“I’d rather be a genealogist than a restaurateur,” she said. “even in a restaurant like this, as wonderful as it is. Genealogy sounds so—I don’t know—so different, so fascinating, so intellectual. Such a powerful weapon.”

Weapon? Odd way to put it.
“There’s a lot of drudgery in both professions,” Nick said between bites, trying not to let Jillian’s infatuation with genealogists go to his head. “But I don’t have to
worry about the inventory going bad, that’s true. Genealogical facts have an infinite shelf-life.”

Watching her, listening to her, he wondered if she could have killed Bluemantle. The old guy wasn’t a martial-arts expert, certainly; nevertheless, he was bigger and he had a dangerous temper. She could have surprised him in his room, hit him over the head, pushed him down. And what of the missing finger?

He surreptitiously studied Jillian as she tore a piece of bread from a crusty New Orleans loaf and spread butter on it. Were those delicate hands of hers capable of such a knife-wielding atrocity? What did she have to gain? Was the secret of Bluemantle’s undignified demise concealed there, within those luminous eyes of hers watching the candle, behind that opaque, but very, very pretty face?

“That look you’re giving me is full of question marks,” she said, startling him out of his reverie. “You’re curious about why I was in Dr. Bluemantle’s room, aren’t you?”

“Partly. I’m staring mostly because you’re nice to stare at. If you want to tell me or not, it’s okay.”

Her smile showed him she appreciated the grace period.

“Well, I’m really, really interested in genealogy,” she said, by way of beginning to explain her presence at the crime scene. “I’m interested in a lot of things, which is why I’ve been in college so long.” She laughed in that sad way of hers at the admission, which Nick didn’t find fault with in the least; he himself preferred knowing a little about many things, rather than a lot about one subject. “My father used to call me a professional student.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. When did he die?”

“He didn’t—hasn’t, yet. He’s … sick. Depression they said at first, then a few years ago they decided it was Alzheimer’s, or something physical like that, one of those awful wasting diseases of the mind. I don’t think they really know. Seems like every day the doctors have a new label to hang on him, but no new cures. He’s in a nursing home, out in Metairie. Usually he recognizes me, other times he’s almost a stranger.”