Murder in the Rue Chartres (27 page)

She took a deep breath. “I have it.”

I could barely control my own excitement. “Where is it, Valerie?”

She opened a drawer and pulled out her own purse. “Iris gave it to me that Friday afternoon.” She started rummaging through it. “After she came back from meeting with her grandfather.” She held it in her hand, and stared at it.

“Did you listen to what’s on it?”

She nodded. “I can’t believe…” she whispered, her face pale. “I was going to use it. I was going to make them give me the promotion. How could I have been so stupid?”

I chose not to answer that. “Ms. Stratton, can you hand that to me, please? It’s evidence in a police investigation.” I held out my hand, which was shaking just a little bit. This was it, the evidence I needed.

She handed it to me. “Here. Take it.” She wiped her hands. “I don’t ever want to see that thing again.” Her voice shook. “They would have killed me. I just never thought—”

“Valerie, you didn’t know this was why someone killed Iris—how could you have known? You’re not a psychic, nor are you a cop.” I held it in my hand. It was tiny; it would easily fit in a shirt pocket and be completely unseen. I had one myself, the exact same make and model. I bought it because it was much easier than taking notes. I could simply record my interviews and then download them into my computer and listen to them again later, even have them transcribed word for word. It seemed hot in my hand. “Are you okay?”

Now that the recorder was out of her hands, her color was coming back. “Yeah—yeah, I guess.” She took another swig of her coffee. “I think I’m going to take the rest of the day off, though.”

“So what do you think Lenny Pousson’s job is?” I asked casually, slipping the recorder into my pants pocket.

“We-ell—” she made a production of looking around to ensure no one was listening. “Like I said, no one really knows, and his job description is listed on the books as ‘assistant to Mr. Percy,’ but most people think he’s a thug. Hired muscle. He does the old man’s dirty work for him. No one’s really sure what that means, but rumor has it he was instrumental in breaking the workers’ strike back in the 1980s, when the yard workers went out on strike.” She shuddered. “He kind of gives me the creeps, you know what I mean? He used to always look at me like he was imagining what I looked like naked—and he was that way with Iris too. She couldn’t stand him.” She sighed. “Once she was running things, he was going to be the first change she was going to make. She told me so that Friday morning, you know, before she left to go meet with you.”

That was one thing I still didn’t understand—why had Iris felt the need to hire an outside investigator? She seemed to have been doing quite well on her own.

“Did she tell you why she was hiring me?”

“All she said was she wanted to hire a private eye to find her dad.” She shrugged. “It was weird. You know, in all the time I knew her, she never once talked about her father until that morning. But then, like I said, she liked to keep things close.”

“Yes, apparently she did.” I started to stand up. “Can you think of anything else that might help me out here? Anything else she might have said or done that last week—no matter how unimportant it might seem? You never know when something might be important.”

“No, not really.” She stared at me. “Do you think I’ve been helpful?”

“You never know.” I handed her a business card. “If you think of anything else Iris might have said or done that last week—about Lenny, her grandfather, anything—call me. Anything. It might seem like nothing, but again, you never know.”

“Well—” She looked at my card like it was a poisonous snake, then slipped it into her purse. “All right.” She pulled her purse out of her desk drawer and stood up. “I’ll walk out with you.”

“You listened to the recording,” I said as we walked to the elevator. “What does it say?”

Her eyes got wide. “No. I never heard anything, I never listened to anything, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She gave me a brittle smile. “And if anyone asks me, I never spoke to you.” The elevator doors opened and she stepped in. She held up a hand as I started to walk in. “Do you mind waiting for the next one?”

I was itching to get out of there and get home, but I could understand her caution. If two people had been killed because of what was on that recorder… “You might want to think about getting out of town for a while, “I said casually. “Is there somewhere you could go?”

She smiled as the elevator doors started to close. “I’ll find somewhere.”

It took another couple of minutes before another elevator came, and I could feel my own nerves starting to get the better of me as I waited. In the elevator on the way down, I pulled out the recorder. It was the same make and model as mine, which was good—I already had the software I needed loaded in my computer, and I didn’t need an instruction manual.

The sky was overcast as I got into my car—roiling black clouds moving in fast from the river, and lightning flashed over the west bank of the river as I started it up. My cell phone rang. It was Allen. I debated for a moment taking it, but the recorder was too important. Allen could wait.

I put the car into drive and headed home.

I couldn’t get home fast enough. The digital recorder felt like it was burning a hole in my shirt pocket. Iris had been a good detective—hell, she’d been a better one than I’d been thus far, but on the other hand, she’d had access to financial records at Verlaine Shipping that I hadn’t—and she’d had some idea of what she was looking for. I could guess what was on this digital file. It was the evidence she needed to force her grandfather to make her president of the company—whatever that might be. It was also the reason she’d been killed.

I parked in the lot beside the house and went inside as fast as I could. I switched on lights as I went—the storm was rolling in and the entire house was dark. I turned on my computer and while it booted up, I dug out the connection cable for my digital recorder. I downloaded the file into my computer and turned up the volume. My finger trembling, I pressed the play key.

The first few seconds were silence, and then it began with Iris talking.

“Hello, Aunt Cathy. Thanks for agreeing to see me. How are you?”

“I don’t know you. They said you were my cousin, but I don’t have any women cousins other than Margot, and they told me she died. But you kind of look like her, only you’re prettier.”

“I’m Margot’s daughter, Iris.”

“Margot didn’t have a daughter. She had two boys, Joshua and Darrin. They were sweet boys, but they never come to see me. Family doesn’t mean what it used to, I guess.”

“Well, I’m here to see you now. You don’t know me because I was born after you came to stay here. Aren’t you glad to see me?”

“I don’t know you. Why have you come?”

“I’m Margot and Michael’s youngest child. Iris Verlaine. You remember my father, don’t you? You remember surely that my mother was pregnant before you went away? Well, I’m their daughter. My father went away before I was born, too. I want to talk to you about him.”

“I don’t want to talk about your father. I won’t talk about him.”

“But I want to talk about him. I never knew him, and you’re one of the few people left who knew him who is still alive. My mother would never talk about him—and neither will my grandfather.”

“Then why should I? I have nothing to say about Michael, not now, not ever.”

“Please, Aunt Cathy, won’t you tell me about my father? Please?”

“Talking about your father is what got me locked up in this place, and I am never ever going to talk about him again.”

There was silence, and then Iris tried again.

“Well, can you tell me if my parents loved each other? Can you tell me at least that much?”

“Margot loved Michael very much. Almost too much, if you ask me. It wasn’t a healthy kind of love. Margot never understood that love sometimes means letting go. She always wanted to hold on to everything she loved.” Cathy laughed. “Margot wasn’t nearly as pretty as you are. There weren’t many men interested in her—I used to think Margot would marry the first man who paid any attention to her at all. And then your father came around. He was handsome, he was charming…and Margot fell for him very hard. She loved him, all right. She loved him far too much for it to be healthy.” More laughter. “But what do I know about it? What do I know about what’s right and what’s good and what’s healthy? Look where I am!”

“So she didn’t want my father to leave her?”

“Does any woman want to be left? I’m sure it destroyed her, made her bitter and angry—more so than she already was.”

“Did you like my mother? It doesn’t sound like you did very much.”

“I liked her well enough; she tried to be as nice to me as she could, given that I was just a poor relation…she was always kind to me, but no one in that house could ever let me forget I was just there on their charity. It’s a terrible thing, you know, to always be made to feel like you should be grateful for the least little kindness…but Margot did her best to make me feel like I was really her sister, not some poor cousin they’d taken in because it was either that or foster care… It was her father that was cruel. But his cruelty wasn’t just for me, it was for everyone…he enjoyed being cruel for the sake of cruelty. He was cruel to Margot, he was cruel to your Uncle Matthew while he was alive—I always thought it was a merciful release when Matthew got himself killed in that accident—just as Margot thought having children would change the way he treated her. It didn’t. Everyone was beneath Percy …and he thought Margot married beneath her. He hated Michael, because Michael just laughed at him, wouldn’t listen…he couldn’t get under Michael’s skin, and he knew it…he couldn’t control Michael the way he could control us…”

“He hasn’t changed. He’s still trying to control all of us.”

“Leopards don’t change their spots, do they? I hate Uncle Percy. I always have.”

“There are times when I almost hate him myself. If he weren’t my grandfather…”

“You want to know about your father? That wouldn’t please Uncle Percy, you know. He would hate that.”

“Yes, yes, I want to know. Please, won’t you reconsider and tell me? I’ve come a long, long way to hear what you know—no one has to know. It’s just for me. I want to know about my father.”

“You have to promise you won’t tell. I’ll get in trouble.”

“I won’t tell anyone. I swear to you.”

“I tried, you know. I tried to tell everyone, and all it got me was locked up in here. So I decided I wouldn’t talk about it anymore. Nobody wants to know the truth when it’s inconvenient, you know. It’s only when the truth is what they want to hear. You may not like it when you hear it. Do you promise not to tell anyone? You must promise!”

“It’ll be just between us, Aunt Cathy.”

“Your father was a wonderful man. He could make me laugh like no one else, and he was always up for a good time. And your mother, she didn’t mind. She had the boys to take care of, so she didn’t mind if he and I went out clubbing or to parties. She was very kind to me in that regard. Other people talked—thought I was sleeping with your father, of course. I had a terrible reputation; although if they really knew what I was doing it would have been much worse. Your father covered for me. He made it possible for me to do what I wanted by being my escort. Back then a woman’s reputation meant a lot, and I liked men.”

“Why didn’t you sleep with Dad?”

“I wasn’t his type.” Hysterical laughter. “But then neither was your mother.”

“What was his type?”

“I don’t want to say.”

“Please tell me.”

“You don’t want to know.”

“I’d rather know. Now I don’t know anything, please tell me.”

“Your father liked other men.”

Silence. “I suspected as much.”

“Your mother didn’t care as long as he was discreet. Discretion was everything in those days, Irene.”

“Iris.”

“So, I covered for him and he covered for me. We would go to clubs together, where I would meet men, where he would meet men, and we lived as we pleased, and it worked. I had an escort, so it was okay for me to go out, which I couldn’t do alone… Back then the only women who went anywhere alone were whores, and I was a Verlaine—a poor relation, but still a member of the family, and so I couldn’t risk a lot of talk… It would have gotten back to your grandfather, and then there would have been hell to pay. He was such a monster…but it was a good arrangement, and it would have gone on forever until I married—which I never wanted to do. I was not the marrying kind. Tie myself down to a man and lose all of my freedom, become one of those dreadfully dull Uptown women with no life other than her husband and her children? No, thank you, that wasn’t for me. I didn’t want anything to do with that, you can be sure of that. Your grandfather was desperate for me to marry; he wanted me to find a rich husband so he wouldn’t have to go on supporting me, but he couldn’t very well throw me out into the streets. He even tried to get me to marry that horrible Lenny Pousson…if you can believe that. How desperate would I have had to be to marry that son of a bitch?”

“You knew Lenny Pousson?”

“Oh, yes, I knew Lenny. Lenny was always around. You know, Lenny was in love with your mother, but he would have settled for me.” More laughter. “Poor Lenny. Since your father was a nobody from the Lower Ninth Ward, he thought he was good enough for your mother, too. He didn’t understand that your father was smart, handsome, and charming. So what if he was white trash? No one would ever talk to him and know it…Lenny was a yat, and would always be a yat. He thought he could marry into the Verlaine family and become a gentleman, as if that would be all it would take! But Percy was willing enough to let him marry me…as if I ever would. And then I found out exactly what kind of a monster Lenny was…and even then, Uncle Percy wanted me to marry him! He was perfectly willing to let me marry a monster, may he rot in hell for eternity.”