Murder in the Rue Ursulines (9 page)

 I started laughing at myself. Listen to me, planning an evening with the happy couple! I started whistling. It was a beautiful night, the air just warm enough to be pleasant. The sky was full of clouds, glowing pink from the reflection of all the neon on Bourbon Street. I saw a tabby cat run across the street, and that made me smile a little bit too. I’d go home and smoke some pot, get nice and stoned, set the coffeemaker before I went to bed, and get a good night’s sleep. Surely there’d be some bad reality television show that I could watch and laugh at. I’d just chill out for the evening, maybe even open a bottle of wine and have a glass or two. The bells of St. Louis Cathedral began chiming the call to evening Mass, and it felt good to be alive. I stopped walking for a moment, and listened to the bells. It was quiet in the lower Quarter, except for the occasional car driving past on Esplanade.
This would be the perfect time for a cigarette,
I thought, before banishing the thought from my mind. It had been too hard to quit.  I wasn’t about to start again.

I started sweating as I walked hurriedly up Esplanade Avenue. A cool breeze was blowing from the direction of the river, but with the air so damp and warm and heavy, a thick blanket of gauze was dropping down over the entire Quarter, making it feel haunted. The street lamps acquired a halo effect, surrounding their white light with a rainbow circle of color. The streets were silent other than the clip-clopping of a mule’s hooves in the distance and every once in awhile, a wisp of voice would break through the silent fog, a broken fragment of a sentence swallowed again into the quiet. As I crossed Bourbon Street, the headlights of a yellow Toyota caught me by surprise and I jumped onto the opposite corner, my heart pounding from the close call.
That would have been five hundred points in Jephtha’s game,
I thought to myself, shaking my head. I took some deep breaths to calm myself, and started walking again.

Loren hadn’t had to tell me Frillian’s address. The location of their house wasn’t a closely guarded secret. Everyone in New Orleans had known within moments of their decision to buy a house here which properties they were looking at—and the smoke signals were already floating before the ink was dry on the bill of sale. To outsiders, the idea of any sort of privacy in the French Quarter may have seemed insane—but ironically, if privacy was your main concern in choosing a home, the Quarter was actually the place to go. Many of the homes were hidden from the street by massive brick fences with broken glass embedded in the top, or coils of razor wire to deter those with criminal intent. Even those houses whose front wall brushed the sidewalks were closed off once the shutters were shut and latched.

And Frillian’s home was one of the most secluded houses in the lower Quarter. It was L-shaped. One narrow side of the L touched the sidewalk. The shutters were always closed on that side. It was brick, and a seven-foot brick wall that leaned towards the street extended from that edge of the house all the way to the wall of the next house. The previous owner had opted for razor wire rather than broken bottles for the top of the fence. Almost in the very middle of the fence was a solid black iron door, with a mail drop slot at about waist level.

A few yards further down was a black iron garage door. On the other side of the brick fence, tall bamboo lined the inner side, so that a passerby could just catch a glimpse of the upper floor of the house, where it sat on the very back of the lot. Nothing inside the fence was visible from the sidewalk. A riot of bougainvillea spilled purple flowers and green leaves over the top between the gate and the garage door. Black hitching posts with horse’s heads lined the gutter. Next to the gate, a gas lamp flickered through the fog.

As I approached the door, I glanced up and, inside the bougainvillea, saw a tiny security camera pointing a small, glowing red light at me. I resisted the urge to wave at the camera.  There was a bell to the right of the door, and I was reaching to press it when the door swung open silently.

“Come on. Get inside before someone sees you.” A man about my height, dressed completely in black, grabbed my left arm and pulled me inside. I weigh 240 pounds and stand six-feet-four in bare feet, so this was no mean feat. He slammed the door behind him and I got a good look at him when he turned back to me. He was actually a few inches taller than me, and he had the solid, thick body of a power lifter. He had to weigh at least three hundred solid pounds. His biceps strained at the sleeves of his tight, short-sleeved black cotton shirt. He was also wearing pleated black pants. He looked to be in his forties; his head was completely shaved. His eyes were dark brown, and his face was creased with lines radiating out from his eyes and the corners of his mouth.  “Sorry to be so rough.” He gave me a sheepish grin. “But you wouldn’t believe what the paparazzi will pull to try to get in here.” He stuck out a huge hand. “Jay Robinette, head of security.”

His grip was strong, and I got the sense he wasn’t even using a tenth of his strength to squeeze my hand. I was grateful for that, but when you’re built like that, you don’t need to show off how strong you are. “Chanse MacLeod. Nice to meet you, Jay.”

“Nice to meet you, too, Chanse. Everyone’s waiting for you in the carriage house. That’s where their offices are.”

Inside the brick wall, it was like stepping into a park. The garage door opened onto a cobblestone carport. There was a black town car parked next to a bright red Mustang convertible. The rest of the courtyard was green grass with a fountain in the center. The house, a long two-story building with a gallery on the second floor, actually ran along the left side of the lot, beginning at the sidewalk.  Across the courtyard was a two-story carriage house. Thick rosebushes lined the brick walk that led to the front door of the carriage house. I followed Robinette along the brick path, glancing over at the main house. Two children, one dark, the other Asian, were watching me from one of the upstairs windows. I waved at them. They stepped back, allowing the curtains to close. One of Frillian’s causes was adopting third world orphans, I recalled. Robinette knocked once on the carriage house door, opened it, and stood aside to let me pass.

“Chanse!” Loren crossed to me and shook my hand. There were beads of sweat on his forehead. He’d taken off his suit jacket, showing patches of sweat on his wrinkled shirt. He’d loosened his tie at the neck, and he reeked of stale cigarette smoke. “Thanks for getting here so quickly.”

I looked around. “No problem. I was already in the Quarter.” The entire bottom floor of the carriage house was just one big open room, with a small kitchenette at one end. The walls were covered with work by James Michalopoulos, a local artist who specialized in paintings of New Orleans architecture in bright colors, but with the perspective slightly off. I’d always wanted one of his paintings, but they were way out of my price range.

A DVD player mounted on the wall was playing classical music; Mozart, I thought. Just above it was a large flat-screen plasma television. A ceiling fan turned lazily overhead. Bookcases lined one wall, and at the far end of the room, two desks were pushed against the wall. One was neat, the other had papers and folders scattered all over the top of it. Freddy and Jillian were seated beside each other on a long wine-red sofa. Jillian was smoking a cigarette, the smoke curling gently around her head, but her hand was shaking. Those glacial eyes were unreadable, but she gave me a slight smile and nodded her head at me.

Freddy’s eyes were red, and he kept swallowing over and over again, licking his lips. His hair was disheveled, sticking up in every direction, and he still hadn’t shaved. He looked like hell.

I turned back to Loren. “What’s going on?”

“Glynis Parrish is dead.” Jillian crushed her cigarette out. “Murdered. Clubbed to death in her house.”

I couldn’t have heard that right. “What?” I turned to Loren, the numbness of shock spreading from my brain down my spine. “How—“

Loren wiped at his forehead with a handkerchief and shoved it back into his pants pocket, only to start sweating again.  “Her assistant came back to the house and found her about an hour ago.”

“And we called Loren.” Jillian said, sucking on the end of her cigarette.

“She called here? Why would she do that?” I looked over at Freddy. His eyes were watery, and he was biting his lower lip. “You did tell her to call the police, right?”

“Of course I did.” Jillian snapped. “She was hysterical, not thinking clearly. Of course, I asked if she was certain Glynis was dead, but she said she checked for a pulse, and there wasn’t one. I told her to hang up and call 9-1-1.” She shook her head.

I can certainly attest to the horrible shock of discovering a dead body. It’s happened to me more times than I would prefer. “Did she say anything else?”

“Apparently, Glynis was hit over the head with her Emmy.” Jillian’s voice shook a little bit. She glanced at Freddy.

“That Emmy meant everything to her.” Freddy said in a monotone.

My God, I picked up that stupid thing,
I thought, a ball of acid starting to form in my stomach.

Loren patted at his forehead again. “Of course, the police are going to check the phone records—and how is it going to look when they see Rosemary called here before she called them?”

“It’s going to look bad, is how it’s going to look.” Jillian stubbed her cigarette out. “Can’t you just hear the news jockeys?
Why did Glynis Parrish’s assistant call Frillian before she called the police? What are they trying to hide?”

I couldn’t believe my ears. A woman was dead and she was worrying about what the papers would say? “Um, I’m sorry, but—“

“You think I’m a cold bitch, don’t you?” Jillian lit another cigarette, her shaking hand barely able to click the lighter on. “This is a terrible tragedy, make no mistake about it, Chanse. I didn’t want her dead, and I certainly didn’t want this to happen. But going to pieces about it right now is the worst thing Freddy and I can do.”

Freddy opened his mouth and then shut it again.

Jillian blew smoke towards the ceiling fan. “This is going to sound incredibly callous, Chanse, and I want to make it clear that on a personal level, I’m horrified. I just frankly feel kind of numb right now. Poor, sweet Glynis.” She swallowed. “This is a horrible, horrible thing to have happened. I feel terrible because I knew and liked her. Her family and friends and fans are going to be devastated. But this is going to be a nightmare—not just because we lost someone we were close to—but because this is going to be prime scandal material.” She patted Freddy’s leg with her free hand, which was still trembling.  She seemed like she was barely holding it together.

“This is going to be a feeding frenzy for the media. This could have a serious impact on our work with Project Rebuild—if people think we’re involved somehow...and the press is going to have a field day with this. It’s going to be news all over the world.” She stubbed the cigarette out angrily. “And that stupid assistant calling here—what was she
thinking?
One would almost be tempted to think that she was deliberately trying to cause trouble for us…” she waved her hand. “But I suppose there’s no sense being angry with her, the poor thing. It must have been quite a shock to come home to find Glynis murdered like that…” She shuddered and her eyes filled with tears. She wiped at them angrily with her free hand. “DAMN it.”

“It is going to look bad—” I started to say, but she interrupted me.

“
Assistant calls Frillian before police,”
She made air quote marks, letting tears slip from her huge eyes. “
That’s
going to be the headline, you know. They’re going to drag out all the nonsense about the divorce again. People will speculate that we did it—it doesn’t matter that neither one of us could have done it.” She sighed. “And those damned e-mails she was sending us…well,
you
read them. It’s going to look like we killed her to shut her up, keep her from spilling some big secret about us.” Again she grabbed Freddy’s hand, squeezing it tightly, “There isn’t anything, of course. I want to keep those e-mails out of the newspapers.”

“But—“ I was confused. I remembered her saying at Loren’s office,
there are things about us we don’t want anyone to know.
 “I don’t think that’s going to be possible, Jillian. The police will check out her computer,  And they’ll find them—so it would be better to be up-front about it—otherwise, the police will think you’re trying to hide something.” I shrugged. “It seems to me that unless the e-mails are evidence, there’s no reason for anyone outside of the investigation to ever know about them.”   She seemed a bit paranoid.

She glanced at Freddy, and turned back to me again. She bit her lower lip. “There has to be a way.”  She let go of Freddy’s hand. “Okay, we weren’t completely honest with you this morning. We suspected Glynis was sending the e-mails, but we didn’t want to tell you that, because we wanted you to have an open mind, not focus on her in case we were wrong. My mother? She isn’t smart enough to send e-mails, frankly.” She gave a bitter laugh. “My mother isn’t sober long enough to learn how to work a computer. And now we know Glynis sent them, anyway.. What we want you to do now is find out who killed Glynis.”

I shook my head. “That’s best left to the police, Jillian. They’re better equipped to handle this kind of thing, and I’m not going to have access to the evidence.”

“The police are going to be under pressure from the media—and every blogger in the world. Everyone is going to be focused on us.” She made a face. “We want to release a statement through our publicist saying that we’ve hired you to help the police look for Glynis’s  killer.”