Now Let's Talk of Graves (15 page)

And then Church.

Calvin was the one who said that. Something like—throw Church Lee into it and you got yourself a deal.

Well, it was a joke. Everybody knew about the feud between him and Church, how they'd been jacking each other around for years. Actually, they'd grown kind of comfortable with it, kind of affectionate toward each other, in a grudging sort of way, the way you do with a toothache you just keep chewing on. Something almost
pleasurable
about it.

The next thing he knew, Church was dead, squashed like a bug on St. Charles Avenue, a couple of blocks from his house.

How did that look?

Well, it didn't look good, he could tell you that, even if he could prove that he'd been sitting with a couple of boys in a suite upstairs in the Roosevelt after the Queen's Breakfast, having a nightcap. At least that's where he
thought
he was.

It was true that lately his drinking had been scaring him a little. He needed to cut back. Boy, he and Church had had that in common, all right. Blood boozers. Ha! But recently, every once in a while, it had gotten to where he just couldn't remember things. He'd have these little bitty blips of blackout, and then, a big one. The truth was, he wasn't really sure how he'd gotten home that evening. He remembered going into that hotel suite. But he couldn't form a picture of himself coming out. However, he was
damned
sure he hadn't stolen an antique car, that's what the papers had said, an antique car, and run over Church. Nope. He'd been having a nightcap upstairs with—well, he couldn't exactly remember who. But if anyone asked him, that was his story and he was sticking to it. So far nobody'd asked him. Oh, people gave him some funny looks, knowing about him and Church and their history. But nobody'd come sniffing around. The cops had kept a pretty low profile and a pretty tight lid on this thing.

The cowboy boot jiggled again and Maynard jumped, sick of it. He hadn't lost all the speed he'd had at the University of Virginia. He landed on that sucker with all fours.

Came up empty.

Nothing in the boot.

And then the son of a bitch jumped
him.

Grabbed him around the neck.

Wrestled him back and forth on the ground.

Crook of an elbow holding him, choking him.

Jimbo saying, “You give? You give?”

Getting grass stains all over his good gray suit. Goddammit.

“I give!”

“Say it again.”

“Give!”

“Like you mean it.”

“I mean it, you son of a bitch!”

“Now, now.” Jimbo turned him loose. “There's the old Maynard.”

Maynard sat up, a fat boy hunkering up out of the grass, humiliated.

Jimbo was laughing fit to bust a gut. He leaned back on his heels in his stocking feet, a hole in one sock. He rested his hands on the thighs of his jeans.

“You bring me something?” he asked.

That's what he'd said at the end of that first conversation he and Maynard had had after Church had got himself squashed like a bug.

Now, Mr. Dupree, us knowing what we know, what you gonna bring me?

Eleven

HARRY WAS WAITING for Sam in the Esplanade Lounge of the Royal Orleans, a wide, sunny atrium with windows onto the old Wildlife and Fisheries Building. On the St. Louis side paraded four little tables and comfy wing chairs, where anybody who looked halfway presentable could rest awhile.

For the past decade this part of the Esplanade had been Harry's unofficial office when he was in town.

There were a couple of pay phones tucked back beside the checkroom which some people knew to call, ring twice, hang up, call back, and if Harry was there, he'd answer.

More than once when he was with a date he wanted to impress he'd taken her into the lounge, slipped out, called the bell captain from one of those phones, and had himself paged.

Harry liked to think he'd grown out of that.

But with a woman like Sam, who knew? He might try anything.

Look at her there, swinging up the steps from the Royal Street side. Her short curls bopping, she was wearing a red silk top that stopped right at her waist above a short black-and-white polka-dot pleated skirt that showed off her legs. She had great legs. If he could write a song about the way that woman made him feel, he'd have Nashville eating out of his hand.

How would it begin?

I thought I knew how angels flew till you stepped off the plane.

Not bad.

She was striding toward him, hipbones first, shoulders back, head last, like a model.

“Hey, sport.” Sam was snapping her fingers in his face.

“You look like you're off on a slow boat to Tsingtao.”

*

Harry ordered another cup of coffee. Sam was drinking iced tea.

“Shoot,” she said.

Harry gave his watch a long look, as if to say it had been only about eighteen hours since they'd last spoken, and he'd had a few other things to do, including sleeping.

Sam registered the look. It meant he didn't have jack. That was too bad. He was awfully cute, and it would have been fun, working with him.

Then he said, “I checked with the cops, Blackstone and Shea. Nothing new. Not a peep on the car. You know, Sam, this town, family like the Lees, they give the impression they'd just as soon let it lie, the cops aren't gonna do a lot with it.”

See? In her head she went over the list of people she wanted to talk with, wondered how long it would take her to get loose from Harry, get on with it.

He was still talking. “But I did find Madeline Lee. Zoe's mom, Church's ex, Madeline Lee Hebert.”

Well, now. She sat up.

Harry was giving her his slow smile, like he'd been reading her mind, holding his ace.

“So she's remarried to somebody named Hebert?”

“Seems that way.”

“How'd you do it?”

“Just checked with the DMV.” He shrugged. “I had 'em run her name Madeline Lee, nothing. Then I looked up their marriage license, hers and Church's. Her maiden name was Villère. I had the DMV try it that way, Madeline, middle name Villère, and it popped.”

“Aren't you the clever one?”

“
You
ought to know finding folks is mostly knowing how to use the public records.”

“I do, but you get a gold star anyway.”

He grinned, then flashed a notebook in front of her. The address on Madeline's driver's license, recently renewed, was in a town called St. Martinville.

“Where's that?”

“Couple of hours drive from here. It's a pretty little town in Cajun country.” He stirred his coffee for a minute. “So, you wanta take a ride over there?”

“I might.”

Clearing his throat a bit, he said, “I thought
we
might. It's a nice trip.”

She nodded, thinking it might be fun, but who had time for fun? “A couple of other matters might have a higher priority.”

“Like what, the malpractice case?”

“Cole Leander. That's the man's name.”

“I
know.
I was going to tell you that.”

She watched Harry's shoulders sag. Damn. One of these days she was going to learn that being faster and smarter than the next guy was not necessarily the way to go. If she were even remotely interested in the next guy.

“The ladies told me,” she said, as if getting it from the horse's mouth weren't as big an effort as his sniffing it out. She was trying to give him back his points.

It
sort
of worked. “His warehouse is on the river end of Julia, if you want to talk with him,” he went on gamely. “What else did they tell you?”

She filled him in on what she'd learned about the feud between Church and Maynard Dupree, their dueling over Madeline, Church winning her. Harry shook his head.

“So you never heard this story?” she asked.

“Like I said before, I just didn't hang out with that crowd once I started to shave. I wasn't interested in their internecine spats.”

“I keep wondering why, after Madeline and Church got married, the trouble between Church and Maynard didn't stop there.”

“Beats me.” And then, as if seized—which he was—with a compulsion to prove to her that he had some other cards in his hand, Harry was spinning out that afternoon he'd followed Chéri to the Pelican.

“Wait a minute,” she said when he finished. “So yesterday, when we talked about Maynard Dupree, and you said remember the conversation Tench and Church had about Maynard at the Sazerac, you had this in your back pocket. You knew that Maynard had been joking around about
killing
Church, for chrissakes.”

“Maynard wasn't doing the joking. Calvin was.”

“Who the hell's Calvin?”

‘The bartender.”

“So why was
he
joking about it? Did he just pull it out of thin air?”

“Look, all I'm doing is giving you further substantiation that there was bad blood between Maynard and Church.”

“I already knew that.” She could hear herself. Oh, God. “You've been holding out on me, Harry.”

He grinned. “But honest, that's all I've got.”

“Sure, sure. Like I can believe you now.” She pushed her advantage. “Who else was there?”

“I told you. Jimbo King, a dude I used to see out on the rigs—”

Oil rigs?
That
was sort of sexy. “You worked on a rig?”

Harry nodded. “A while ago.”

“You'll have to tell me about that sometime.”

Why, he'd be proud to. He'd heard that little dingdong note of curiosity in the voices of smart women before, real smart women who carried tan briefcases and wore navy blue suits and lusted in their hearts after guys riding Harleys .

“It's not likely Jimbo and Maynard would be friends, is it?” Sam asked.

“Hardly. But that doesn't mean they wouldn't stand around shooting the breeze.”

“Who else was there in the bar?”

“Some strangers, guys who were listening a little, but mostly minding their business. And Chéri, of course. She was there for part of the conversation. That's why
I
was there, following her.” Then he told her about Chéri's tobacco-brown Mercedes and her make-believe neck injury.

“What day was this?”

“The same day, that Monday, right after I saw you at the airport.”

“Is Chéri a redhead? Bright red hair, brighter than Kitty's?”

“That's
right.
You probably saw her at the gate. She came in on the flight from New York just after yours.”

“She's a pretty woman; I remember her.”

“Not bad.” A little flashy for me, he wanted to say. My taste in women runs more toward classy brunettes—like you, for example.

Sam was running the redhead around in her mind. “Actually, I saw her later, outside. In fact”—she was warming to it now—“she was the one who was getting into a long white limo with this slick-looking man, probably mob—”

“Joey the Horse.”

She gave him a look. “Joey the Horse, when that crazy little blond guy who was in the crosswalk got cut off and he started banging on the limo. The driver opened the door and knocked him down. Then the little guy reached into his jacket and—” She paused, realizing she'd gone too far.

“And what?”

The best defense was an offense. “Where were
you
?”

“Hiding behind a luggage cart. I told you I was tailing Chéri, snapping pictures of her without the neck brace. But have I missed something here? What does any of this have to do with Church or Maynard?”

“I don't know. Now I found out you're holding out this whole thing on me, where Maynard's joking about killing people—”

“I told you it wasn't really May—”

“I figure we might as well go back over the whole thing. You might have missed something.”

“Thanks.”

“Another viewpoint couldn't hurt. You know what I mean.”

“Your call, lady.” His hands were out flat, fanning sideways. “Whatever you say. Okay, so we're at the airport. The guy reaches in his jacket—”

She hadn't meant for him to go back
that far.

“I'm waiting,” he said. “What happened next?”

She might as well go for it. He said he hadn't seen what went down anyway. “The little guy got shot.”

“Good God! Really?”

“Yeah, we just barely got out of there in time, would have been held up by the cops as witnesses the rest of the day. We decided to let some other citizens do their civic duty.”