Murder in the Rue Ursulines (5 page)

“I don’t want to know what you’re doing.” I turned back to the screen in front of me. A man and a woman were copulating in a doorway. I aimed, fired and they both exploded. Five thousand points! In spite of myself, I grinned in satisfaction.
Everyone in New Orleans is going to want to play this game,
I thought to myself.  “You know, you’re probably right about this game.” I said as I took aim at another drunken tourist,  this one staggering out in the road carrying a forty-eight ounce daiquiri cup and wearing a feather boa. BLAM! Another twenty-five hundred points. “It’s kind of addicting.” I fired at a car with MICHIGAN plates crawling along at about five miles an hour while everyone in the car gawked at the buildings going by. It exploded, body parts flying everywhere, giving me another ten thousand points. I couldn’t help myself. I laughed out loud.

It was
fun.
“The New Orleans Tourism Board would probably pay you not to put this on the market.” I added, aiming at a couple of girls in sorority sweatshirts puking in a gutter. I missed, and shot a woman walking her dog on the other side of the street. I lost ten thousand points. Locals were worth a lot more than tourists.

“There.” Jephtha leaned back in his chair with a triumphant grin. One of his printers began to hum. Pages began coming out into the drop tray. “I told you it would be a piece of cake. I’m printing out the bill of sale right now. But—“ he held up a long and bony index finger, “this is the person who
bought
and registered
the computer. It doesn’t mean they still have it.” He picked up a page and whistled. “Glynis Parrish? As in Glynis Parrish, the movie star?”

With real regret, I turned away from
Tourist Season
and took the paper from him. Sure enough, there it was in black and white. A MacBook Pro, purchased at an Apple store in Beverly Hills. I definitely didn’t want to know how he got this. I stood up and smiled at Jephtha. “E-mail me an invoice, and I’ll get a check to you this week.”

“Aren’t you going to tell me if it’s
the
Glynis Parrish or not?” He stuck out his lower lip in a pout that made him look about ten years old.

I laughed and winked at him. “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.” I slipped the bill of sale into the folder with the rest of the e-mails, and tucked it under my arm. I called out a goodbye to Abby, and headed out the front door.

My cell phone rang just as I was getting into my car. I grinned. It was my best friend, Paige. “What’s going on, Paige?”

“Hey, you have dinner plans? Ryan has his kids tonight, and I thought he should have some quality time with them.” She said. She’d been dating Ryan Tujague for a few months now. Usually she blew off a guy after a couple of dates, so this could be serious. I was happy for her. She’d had a rather checkered past when it came to men.

I replied without missing a beat. “It’s really insulting that you only call me when your boyfriend blows you off, you know.” Paige and I met in college, and have been close ever since. Her favorite thing to do is give me shit—and over the years, she’s gotten really good at it. I don’t mind, because I know it’s how she shows affection. So I give her shit right back. People listening to us talk would probably think we couldn’t stand each other. Her sense of humor is a little warped, so we make a good pair. There’s nothing quite like watching a bad movie with her over a few joints and a bottle of wine. She worked as a reporter for the
Times-Picayune,
and
had even been nominated for a couple of Pulitzer prizes. One of the paper’s biggest stars, she was remarkably humble about it. When people complimented her on something she’d written, she’d just dismiss it with a simple, “Just doing my job, but thanks.” 

She’s also been a valuable resource for me with her access to the paper’s morgue. Through her job, she met a lot of people in town—and for some reason, people liked to tell her things.

Since the storm, though, she’d expressed a lot of dissatisfaction with her job, and was threatening to quit every other day. I doubted she ever really would—she loved being a reporter.  I couldn’t imagine her doing anything else, to be honest with you. She loved New Orleans as much as I did, even though what she saw in the city while doing her job often broke her heart. 

“But alas, my social calendar is open—which is really a rather sad commentary on me, isn’t it? So instead of telling you to go fuck yourself, which is I what I should do, I’ll be more than happy to let you treat me to Port of Call.” I looked at my watch. It was just past one.  “Say around six?”

“Great. I could really use a Port of Call burger.” She let out a sigh. “I am having the shittiest day; you have no idea. I am about ready to kill someone—I’ll tell you all about it at dinner.” She moaned. “And I don’t mean Ryan.” She hung up.

I found the list of phone numbers Frillian had given me. I dialed Glynis Parrish’s number. I stopped before pushing the ‘send’ button.

They’d only hired me to find out who was sending the e-mails. They’d said nothing about confronting the person. Technically, my work was done. All I had to do was call Loren, let him know that the e-mails had been sent from Glynis’ computer, and the job was over. Five thousand dollars for taking a meeting and spending about twenty minutes playing
Tourist Season
was really a pretty decent payday. I’d have to return the rest of the retainer they’d given me, but I could just drop a check to Loren in the mail.

But this had been way too easy, and that didn’t sit right with me.

I couldn’t get rid of the feeling there was more going on here than just these e-mails.

Just because Glynis’ computer had been used to send the e-mails didn’t mean that
she
had sent them. And they’d hired me to find out who had.

 I might as well get her side of the story before turning everything over to Frillian. They had said everything was fine between them and Glynis. It hadn’t quite rung true to me.

I hope I don’t live to regret this,
I thought to myself.

I hit the send button on my cell phone and it started dialing.

Maybe some day I’ll learn.

As I maneuvered my car into a parking spot on Burgundy Street in the Quarter, I couldn’t help but think,
Paul would have been so thrilled to meet Glynis Parrish.
When he was alive, we used to watch her television comedy series together every Thursday night. It was one of our favorite shows—even the episodes that weren’t quite up to its usual standard of excellence were better than every other show on the air. She’d played a young woman just out of college who’d gotten a job at a sports magazine (obviously based on
Sports Illustrated)
and found herself in ridiculous situations almost every week.

 The show had run almost seven years before Glynis pulled the plug, deciding to try to make it on the big screen. It was odd that she’d gotten a role in a movie being filmed in New Orleans after her ex-husband and his new wife had been so public about moving here. It could, of course, just be a coincidence. After all, before the failure of the levees, New Orleans had been actively courting film and television series.  With our economy in such a shambles since the disaster, the return of ‘Hollywood South’ had been a triumph for the city. I turned the car off and took a deep breath.

Paul.

It had been four years since he was killed, and while the passage of time had helped some, I wasn’t completely over it yet. I sometimes wondered if I ever would get over it. My therapist thought I was making progress, but I wasn’t quite so sure  Since his death, I’d dated a couple of guys, trying to move on with my life, but one after another, the relationships  fizzled out. My therapist suggested that they failed because I kept myself emotionally unavailable to anyone new. It sounded like pseudo-psycho bullshit to me, and whenever he brought that up, it never failed to piss me off. I’d made myself emotionally available to my last boyfriend, hadn’t I? And look how that had turned out. I’d started dating Allen, the guy who owned Bodytech, my gym, after the hurricane. It had gone well for a few months, but he’d eventually gotten back together with his ex. Things had been awkward at the gym for a while,  but we’d somehow managed to get past it. My therapist thought that was a positive thing. I just figured it was easier to do than find a new gym.

As I locked my car, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, willing the sadness away by focusing on the job at hand. 
Maybe someday I’ll be able to remember without getting sad,
I thought, as I firmly closed and locked that door in my mind.

Ah, progress.

I started walking towards the corner at Ursulines. The house Glynis was renting  was between Burgundy and Dauphine, in the lower Quarter. This part of the Quarter was mostly residential and quiet. You’d never know that the madness of Bourbon Street was just a short walk away. I didn’t expect Glynis to confess to sending the e-mails—that would be too much to hope for—and I decided to approach the entire subject in a non-threatening way. Frillian had claimed there was no animosity there, but I wanted to see how Glynis reacted to my questions. I wasn’t even sure how my clients wanted this whole thing handled, but I needed to find out who else had access to Glynis’s computer. As I rounded the corner, I decided the best way to play this was to be on
her
side, to act as if I believed she hadn’t sent them.

The house she was renting was nice, but looked like nothing spectacular from the street. It was a one-story Creole cottage, painted a deep purple, with yellow shutters. There was no front yard; the house, like most in the French Quarter, was right on the sidewalk. It was a four-bay, with two sets of french doors and two sets of double-hung windows between them, their yellow shutters closed. Two large pots of  trailing flowers hung  on chains from the roof overhang.

I climbed up the short flight of stairs to the set of  doors on the right—where the doorbell was-- and stood a moment before ringing. Glynis had answered my call, and when I’d identified myself, she’d interrupted me, “Yes, yes, Freddy told me you might call. You might as well come over and let’s get this over with.” She hadn’t sounded pleased, but I could hardly blame her.

I took a deep breath and knocked. I  heard footsteps moving toward the front door.

It swung open and I found myself looking down at a small, rotund woman with reddish-blonde hair. She was wearing a gray T-shirt with the
Make levees not war
slogan on the front, and a pair of black jeans. Her pale round face was covered with freckles, and she smiled, revealing slightly crooked teeth. Her greenish-gray eyes lit up, taking her from slightly plain to pretty. “Yes?”

“I’m Chanse MacLeod,” I replied. “Here to see Ms. Parrish?”

“Yes, yes, we’re expecting you.” She held out a small hand for me to shake. Her hand was soft, warm, and a little damp.  “I’m Rosemary Shannon, Glynis’s personal assistant. Won’t you come in?” She stood aside to let me pass, and I walked into the sparsely furnished front room. A couple of wingback chairs faced a fireplace on the far wall, with a table in between them. There was a faded Oriental rug on the floor, and the walls were bare except for some Audubon reproductions.  She closed the french doors and turned the key in the lock. “I’ve never met a private investigator before,” she said, looking me up and down, still smiling. “Your work must be terribly exciting.” She giggled— a surprisingly girlish sound for a woman I judged to be in her early to mid-thirties. Her voice also sounded younger than I would have expected, almost like that of a thirteen-year-old. She stared at me expectantly.

“Not really,” I replied, giving her a little smile in return. “It’s not like it is on television.Usually, it’s quite boring.”

“I don’t believe you,” she replied, the smile never wavering for a moment. “I used to want to be a private eye when I was young.” She laughed. “If you can imagine that. I wanted to be one of
Charlie’s Angels.”
She shrugged, a tiny movement.  “Glynis is in her study. Come this way.”

I followed her down a hallway that ran the length of the house, and she knocked lightly on the second door before opening it. “Glynis? Mr. MacLeod is here.”

I walked into a beautiful room painted a dark emerald green. The fixtures were all brass, and the hardwood floors gleamed. A brass chandelier cast light into every corner of the room. The furniture looked expensive, but comfortable and lived in. Glynis Parrish was seated on a green and gold brocade sofa, the day’s newspaper spread out all around her on the cushions and the floor in front of her. She folded the section she’d been reading and let it drop to the floor. On the coffee table in front of the sofa stood a golden statue of a winged woman holding a globe—an Emmy award. Right next to it was a closed MacBook Pro laptop computer. She rose, and held out her right hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. MacLeod,” she said, giving me a warm smile.

“Call me Chanse.” I said, shaking her small hand.

She, like Freddy and Jillian, was diminutive. She couldn’t have been taller than five feet, and her figure was equally small, and almost girlish. She was wearing a very tight, low-cut tank top that emphasized her large breasts and deep cleavage. Her waist was small, her hips flaring slightly in her tight low-rise jeans. She was barefoot, her toenails painted red.  Her dark brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was wearing just a hint of blush. Her eyes were slanted, almost cat-like, and they glittered green in the light from the chandelier.

She applied no pressure to the handshake, her hand limp and dry in my much bigger paw. There were dark circles under her eyes, and she looked tired. Her chin was dotted with small red pimples, and after I released her hand, she self-consciously ran her hand over her chin. Her nails looked ragged and chewed.  “Please, have a seat. And call me Glynis.” Her green eyes flashed at me. She plopped back down on the couch. She folded her legs underneath her. She saw me looking at her Emmy and smiled. “You can pick it up, if you’d like. Everyone always wants to.” She shrugged. “Go ahead.”