Murder in the Rue Chartres (20 page)

Only Iris knew for sure, and she too was dead.

But would I be able to prove it? What evidence existed besides what possibly was locked inside Cathy’s head—and after thirty-two years at St. Isabelle’s, she wouldn’t exactly make a credible witness.

I glanced at my watch. I wasn’t going to have time to stop to eat anywhere if I was going to make it to Jolene McConnell’s on time, so I drove out onto I-55, barely avoiding being crushed by a speeding eighteen-wheeler who didn’t slow or even attempt to change lanes. I flipped him the bird and started heading south.

As the countryside sped past my windows, I couldn’t stop wondering about how to proceed with my investigation. Iris must have believed there was a way to prove that Percy had killed Michael, but without being able to question her, I had no idea where to start looking. And even if I might not ever be able to prove Percy had killed Michael, it might be possible to prove Percy had killed Iris. It was difficult to wrap my mind around the notion that he’d killed his own granddaughter—but then again, he couldn’t have. He wasn’t physically capable of it—there was no way he could have gotten himself in that wheelchair up the stairs at her home. He must have hired someone to kill her—and that person wasn’t exactly going to confess.

This case was now growing beyond my abilities and access to information. I was going to have to give it all back to Venus, who’d have to go to the district attorney to get subpoenas for financial records, phone records, and so forth, to try to locate the money trail murder for hire always left behind in its wake. No matter how careful someone might be, there’s always some kind of paper trail. Even the wealthy and powerful can’t completely disguise moving money around, and most killers for hire don’t take checks; so there was evidence of unexplained cash somewhere…but again, it could take auditors and forensic accountants months, if not years, of searching through Percy’s accounts, and those of the company, to turn something up And even to get that ball rolling, I was going to have to give Venus probable cause, and without some evidence as to why Percy had Iris killed, no district attorney in his right mind was going to take on Verlaine Shipping’s wealth and power—and battery of attorneys.

Maybe Jolene McConnell somehow held the key.

*

I was about an hour north of Jackson and the highway was deserted when I noticed a green pickup truck—one of those gigantic monsters with double wheels in the back on both sides—coming up rather quickly behind me. I was plugging along at a respectable eighty miles an hour, so he had to be going about a hundred, minimum. I watched as he got closer and closer—with no indication of either slowing down or changing lanes.

“Slow down, buddy,” I muttered as my heart rate started to increase. If he didn’t slow down…

The green truck slammed into the back of my Cavalier.

I was thrown forward by the impact, and my head exploded with pain as it hit the steering wheel. Dazed, I screamed a few incoherent obscenities as my car started swerving out of control, onto the shoulder on the right side of the road. I could feel the dirt beyond the pavement starting to give way just as the back of my car reconnected with the highway. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw the truck go past on the shoulder, but the windows were tinted dark, so I couldn’t see the driver in that split second before the truck was speeding away down the open road. My heart racing, I kept fighting the wheel, reacting solely by instinct, my foot stabbing at the brakes as the back of the car kept fishtailing, hoping against hope that it wouldn’t go off the road and flip over, and then it swooped around and came to a stop. The engine stalled.

I sat there, hyperventilating and trying to catch my breath while I listened to the engine tick. After a few seconds I started the car and pulled over to the shoulder, black spots still dancing before my eyes, and shut the engine off again.

I don’t know how long I sat there. Finally, I opened the car door and got out onto shaky legs, holding the side of the car for support as I shook a cigarette out and managed to light it. Two puffs later, I walked around to the back of the car and took a look.

One of my rear taillights was broken, and the trunk had crumpled a little bit, but that was it.

I was lucky not to have been killed.

I leaned back against the trunk and took another drag on my cigarette. My heart rate was slowing down, and my mind was starting to clear. I pulled my cell phone out, but didn’t open it. I was a gay man out in the middle of nowhere, Mississippi—did I really want to call a county sheriff? Granted, there were no rainbow stickers, pink triangles, or SILENCE EQUALS DEATH bumper stickers on my car shouting to the world, HEY I’M A GREAT BIG HOMO, but nevertheless, my standard rule of thumb is never to deal with Southern county sheriffs if it can be at all avoided. Besides, all I knew for sure was that it had been a big green truck—I didn’t get the plate number, or even know if it was a Mississippi truck, nor had I seen the driver. And big green trucks were hardly rare in Mississippi—every other Jim Bob probably had one. Without a police report, my insurance company wouldn’t pay for the repairs, but again, I could just pay for it myself and my rates wouldn’t go up.

Still, it was incredibly unnerving.

“Another random highway incident,” I said out loud as I got back into the car, but froze as I placed the keys into the ignition.

Now, what were the odds of me almost being killed by a hit-and-run driver on my way back from seeing Catherine Hollis?

Iris had been killed the day after she’d gone to Cortez to see Cathy. I was almost killed on my way back from seeing her.

Like Venus, I don’t like coincidences, but as I started back out onto the highway, I couldn’t connect the accident to my visit. No one had known I’d gone up to Cortez other than Joshua Verlaine, and I doubted that he’d told anyone or that Dr. Bright was somehow behind it—since he, according to Nurse Amanda, was part of the cover-up of Michael Mercereau’s murder—no, that didn’t make sense either. If Nurse Amanda was right, and Catherine was being kept there as a prisoner, Dr. Bright had to know what I’d been told. And if by going there, Iris had signed her death warrant as well, how had anyone known what Catherine had told her?

You never know who’s listening, Amanda had said in the empty hallway before she’d led me outside. I hadn’t given that a second thought when she’d said it, but now…

*

Jolene McConnell lived in a neighborhood that looked like it had been built in the big boom of the 1950s, when every new housing development seemed to think that the ranch house style was the greatest thing to hit architecture since the pyramids. Although the houses had been maintained and the lawns kept up, there was a sense of tiredness to the neighborhood—a feeling that its best days were past and decline had set in. When I pulled up to the curb in front of her address, her house was like every other one on the block—other than the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the front yard. I got out of the car and walked up to the house, ringing the doorbell. I heard movement inside, and then the door opened.

“Mrs. McConnell?” I asked.

She nodded, and held the door open so I could come inside. She was still in her white nurse’s uniform, and the tired sense I’d gotten from the neighborhood was heightened by the décor of her living room. The white sofa and matching reclining chair were covered in plastic. The walls were painted a dull beige, and a brown shag carpet covered the floor. A dusty upright piano was shoved into a corner, and photographs in cheap frames lined its top. There was a painting of Jesus with a halo on the walls; other than that, they were bare. “You want some tea?” she asked in a quiet voice with a slight echo of the Lower Ninth Ward to it. “I just made some. It’s sweetened, though.”

“That would be nice, thank you.”

“Have a seat,” she said before walking into the kitchen. I sat down on the sofa, plastic squeaking underneath me. She came back in with two tall glasses of iced tea, handed me one, and sat down in the recliner. “You know, I don’t know what you think I can tell you. My brother’s been gone for over thirty years. If he wanted to be found, he’da been found by now.”

“Were you close to him, Mrs. McConnell?”

“Call me Jolene.” She reached up and removed her cap, letting her shoulder-length gray-streaked black hair fall. “No, I wasn’t close to my brother Michael.” She looked up at Jesus on the wall. “He was about five years older than me, and he never had much time for me growing up. After he got married, none of us saw him much, really. He sure never talked to us much…I think we embarrassed him, after he got used to bein’ around those fine high-falutin’ Uptown society folks. His wife, though, Margot—” her lined face creased into a smile, “I always liked Margot. She was always real nice to me.”

“Really?” No one yet had said a kind word about Margot, so I was a little surprised.

“Really.” She took a sip of her tea. “Margot paid for me to go to nursing school, and she was always giving me a call, meeting me for lunch, buying me things, you know. Michael was lucky to marry her—though you’d never know it from the way he acted.”

“They weren’t happily married?”

“Margot was miserable being married to him, but she loved him, God rest her soul, and did what she could to make the marriage work.” She looked up at Jesus again. “My brother was one of those men who should never get married, you know.” She shrugged.

“Meaning exactly what?” I asked, but even as the words came out of my mouth, I knew exactly what she meant.

“I guess there’s no shame in telling you now, since Margot’s passed on, and can’t be shamed by it anymore. He liked men.” She shook her head. “The way the Lord intended for a man to like women. Oh, it was horrible, just horrible. I remember this one time, when he was seventeen, Mama caught him with another boy, out in the back yard, and she screamed so loud she liked to brought the house down or wake the dead or both. When Daddy got home he beat Michael almost to death, and then he had to go see the priest. Father Darrin was such a good man…and Michael, I’ll never forget how Michael told Mama and Daddy he’d see them in hell one day.” She shuddered. “It made my blood run cold the way he talked to Mama and Daddy—until Daddy threw him out of the house. Why he couldn’t understand they were trying to save him from his own sin, I’ll never know.”

I didn’t answer. The house was still and quiet. I could hear my own heart beating, my breathing uneven and ragged. It was like being a little boy again and listening to my grandmother, who’d been a member of the Church of Christ back in Cottonwood Falls, lecturing me about sin and salvation.

“I told Margot about him, you know,” she went on. “Before they got married, and she just smiled and told me that all it took was the love of a good woman, and she was going to love him enough so he’d forget all about that. I prayed for her. She was such a good woman.”

“But if Michael liked, um, liked men, why did he marry her?”

“My brother was a terrible sinner, Mr. MacLeod. He married Margot for her money, of course.” She sighed. “I just pray he’s repented of his sinful ways, wherever he is, but I rather doubt it, don’t you? I mean, what kind of man would run off with another man, and never see his wife or his own children again?”

“Michael ran away with another man?” I repeated, thinking maybe I hadn’t heard her correctly.

She nodded. “Margot told me herself. The night before he left, he told her he was leaving her and going off with some man. It crushed her…I’ll never forget how she looked when she told me about it. The look on her face, well, it would have broke your heart right in two to see a woman look like that. I know it broke my heart.”

“It’s the first I’ve heard of this.” I stared at her.

She laughed. “Do you think Margot went around bragging about it? She didn’t tell anyone, besides me…I guess she didn’t want me to worry about Michael since he was gone.” She shook her head again. “Poor, poor Margot. She never married again, you know—and she was never the same after he left. How a man could do that to a woman, the mother of his children, is beyond me.” She gave Jesus another look. “I pray for him, you know. Every morning and every night, I pray that he’s repented and asked God for forgiveness for what he did to his wife and children.”

“Thank you.” I stood up. “For the tea, and for talking to me.”

“Well, if you ever do find Michael,” she said, getting to her feet to the squawk of plastic, “let him know I’ve forgiven him, but he needs to make his peace with God.”

I forced a smile onto my face, said, “I’ll do that,” and walked out to my car. My cell phone went off before I could put the keys in the ignition. I checked the caller ID; it was Venus.

“I’ve been trying to get you for hours,” she snapped as soon I answered.

“I’m in Mississippi, about to head home now…probably couldn’t get a signal,” I said, starting the car. “What’s so important?”

“Joshua Verlaine is dead.”

It usually takes about three hours, give or take, to drive from Jackson to New Orleans. After getting Venus’s call, I made it in just over two hours by breaking every speed law under the sun. I was able to maintain a good ninety-mile-per-hour pace once I got outside Jackson. There was little to no traffic, other than the occasional moving truck or eighteen-wheeler. I was able to weave around the slower-moving traffic without problems or having to even slow down. I kept an eye out for the big green pickup truck—I couldn’t help but feel there was a connection between the hit-and-run and everything that was going on. I may not be the sharpest private eye around, but I don’t believe in coincidences.