A doctoral degree? Claire couldn't wait to follow up on that one. “Jack Holliday has a doctoral degree?”
“Yes, ma'am, and isn't that just a hoot? He went to school for most of it, right here at Tulane. I think he said his degree's in aviation engineering, or something real brainy like that. Everybody gives him grief about it when he comes around. Call him Einstein and all those geeky names.”
It seemed to Claire that Miss Wendy knew a heck of a lot about Jack Holliday's personal business, which made her wonder if Wendy might just be some of Jack Holliday's personal business.
Wendy elaborated further. “Oh, yeah, that airplane thing's got something to do with his family's business.”
Then the connection dawned on Claire like the proverbial cartoon light bulb. “Do you mean he's part of Holliday Aviation Enterprises?”
“Yeah, that's right. I never can remember the name of that place.”
Seemed pretty easy to remember to Claire, considering the spot-on Holliday name in the title, but then again, Wendy was a blonde and a cheerleader. Claire didn't know much about the company, but she'd seen the hangars when they flew in on Black's Lear out at Louis Armstrong. “I didn't realize he was connected to that Holliday family.”
“He's really something,” said Wendy.
“That he is,” Claire agreed, and meant it, sort of. “Now, Ms. Rodriguez, we've established that you are acquainted with Madonna Christien, is that correct?”
“I know her from high school. We were best friends back then. She lives here in the city now. Somewhere down on Carondelet. Off Gravier, I think.”
“And you introduced her to Mr. Holliday?”
“I sure did. She was a fan of Jack's when he played in college and wanted to meet him once she knew I was talkin' to him, and stuff. I guess she thought he was hot, too.”
Well, that checked out with Jack's version. “Madonna asked for the introduction, not Jack?”
“Yes, but he was fine with it until she started driving him nuts and chasing him around all over the place. He didn't get pissed at me about it, but he finally had to get a judge to get her off his back. You know, one of those restraining things. I mean, we're talking stalker city, you know, the old
Fatal Attraction
rabbit-cooking-on-the-stove-and-drowning-in-the-bathtub kinda obsession.”
“I love that movie,” said Zee.
“Me, too,” said Wendy. “Especially the part in the elevator.”
Well, even Claire remembered that part, but who wouldn't recall that wild sex scene that probably bruised up Glenn Close pretty good in some intimate places. But it was a young and hunky Michael Douglas doing the business so she probably didn't mind too much at the time. By Zee's expression, Claire decided that he remembered it, also, and only too well.
“What can you tell us about Madonna's alleged stalking of Mr. Holliday?”
“Are ya'll gonna arrest her for stalking? Like I said, we're BFFs, and I hate to be snitching on her like she's some kind of stranger and getting her in trouble, and junk. Especially after what we went through when we were little. Did Doc tell you to come out here and look me up?'
“He mentioned that you introduced him to Madonna.” But Claire was curious about the other thing Wendy had just mentioned. “What did you and Madonna go through when you were little, if I might ask?”
Wendy went sober really fast. She sat up straight, avoided their eyes, and acted extremely uncomfortable. “Well, we were kidnapped by this crazy guy.”
“Kidnapped? When?”
“When we were little, both of us.” She shivered all over. She remembered it all right.
“Can you tell us what happened?”
“I can hardly talk about it now. Madonna can't at all. I was spending the night with Madonna, you know, at her house, and he came there in the middle of the night and killed her parents, and then he tied us up and threw us in the back of his van. See, he had on this really scary mask, like voodoo guys wear.”
“God, that must've scared the hell outta you,” Zee said.
“It sure did. Jack thought the same thing. Asked me all about it. But it made us both real careful about things. Like all those chains on my door. We were lucky he didn't kill us.”
But Claire knew this was important and somehow fit into the Christien murder. And she wanted to know how. “So you got away? Did they catch him?”
Claire waited for Wendy to answer, but the kidnapping had to be significant, considering the voodoo mask.
“We didn't get away right off. He put us in a boat and took us out in the swamp to this big voodoo altar kinda thing. He laid us in front of it and lit up a bunch of candles, but then a boat started comin', thank goodness, and he took off and left us there. The fisherman saw the candles burning and came and saved us. It was the scariest day of my life. We never got over it, either one of us.”
“How old were you then?” Claire asked.
“Around ten. Well, Maddie wasn't ten yet, but I was.”
“And Jack asked you all about this incident, you say?”
“Yeah, he thought it was a real terrible thing and wanted to know if I remembered anything about the guy.”
“Do you?”
“No. It happened so long ago. Truthfully, we were both so scared that we couldn't remember much. Except for the altar and the mask. That mask was terrifying. It was red and had snake scales and feathers and bones all over it.”
And once again Papa Damballah slithers back into the picture. “And they never found your abductor?”
“No, ma'am, but he's still out there in the swamps. Everybody who lives out around there knows it, too. It's almost a legend now. The snake man. And poor Madonna. She got real, real superstitious after that. You know, started studying voodoo and all that stuff. She's even made a voodoo love altar for Jack. Isn't that just pathetic?”
Well, that explained the altar at the Carondelet Street crime scene, but there were lots of voodoo rituals going on here, too many to be coincidental. Not that Claire ever believed in coincidences. Yep, Wendy's kidnapper could be the guy they were looking for. But why wait until now? Why murder Madonna now, after so long? Or, was this another member of some cult? Maybe an initiation ritual? Wow, everything was getting unreal. She looked at Zee. He was frowning, too. Jack's interest in the kidnapping was something they couldn't overlook. “Okay, let's go back to Jack Holliday. You said he showed a big interest in your abduction?”
“Yeah. He was real sympathetic to both of us. Thought it was a bad thing for little kids to have to go through.”
“And you introduced him to Madonna, is that correct?”
“Yeah. Maddie told me she thought he was real good-looking.” Wendy shook her head. “Lots of girls like Jack. You've seen that poster of him coming out of the water. It's sort of old now, but he really looks good now, too.”
“A friend of mine has it.”
“He's like some kind of glorious Greek god, don't you think? Just like Apollo, or Adonis, or Superman.”
Claire was impressed with Wendy's classical analogies until her last hero shattered the illusion. “And he didn't like Madonna's attention?”
“He was okay with it at first when he felt sorry for her because of us getting kidnapped, but then she just kept on pushing him, giving him stuff. Gifts and love letters, even roses. She's got it really bad for him; I've never seen anything like it.”
“Did she give him anything else?”
“Oh, yeah. Once it was this key ring, sterling silver with his initials on it.” She thought about it some more, while taking an extra second to exchange sappy smiles with the very attentive Zee. “Once she got him a black cashmere sweater with a little fleur-de-lis on it. Right here.” She tapped on her left breast. “But he gave it to me to give back to her. He gave most all that stuff back to her.”
Wendy stretched her neck from side to side, then lifted the back of her long hair up into the air as she stretched out her arms in a most languorous pose. “He didn't want anything from her. He was pretty cool about me being the one who introduced them. I'm still real embarrassed that she's acting this way.”
“I see.”
“Is she in trouble? I was pretty sure Jack was going to end up havin' her arrested, or something. I guess that restraining order didn't do much good, huh?”
Zee gave Claire a significant glance. Unfortunately, it was her cue to ruin Wendy's day. “I'm very sorry, Wendy, but I've got some bad news concerning Madonna.”
“Oh, God, what?” Now Wendy looked scared. Terrified, actually.
“She was found dead on Sunday. Murdered.”
Wendy's face actually went white under her spray-on tan, and her hands went up to cover her mouth. Yeah, she was flabbergasted, all right. She was awfully open with her feelings. “Murdered? No way, no way. Who did it?”
“That's why we're here. We're trying to figure that out.”
Wendy's big mocha-colored eyes burned a hole in Claire's face, so wide and shocked that it wasn't hard to read the exact instant when the truth dawned inside those heavily lined and mascara-drenched depths. “Oh, my God, ya'll think Jack did it, don't ya? Oh, no, uh-uh, he's not like that, I swear to God. He'd never hurt her. She's dead? Really? Dead? Are you sure she's dead?”
Claire envisioned that poor girl, dressed all in white, posed on that altar, eyelids and mouth stitched together, and the way she'd looked stretched out naked on the cold steel table, dozens of ugly bruises and contusions all over her flesh. “Yes, Wendy, we're one hundred percent sure.”
Wendy's straight white teeth nibbled at her full, coral-tinted bottom lip, liquid spilling over her eyelashes. Some suspects could weep on cue, veritable Meryl Streeps, in fact. But Wendy's tears were the real thing, no doubt about it.
Wendy said, “That poor little thing. She was tiny, you know, barely five feet, and she was okay, a pretty good girl, except for that sick thing she had for Doc.” She kept running splayed fingers through her silky hair. “Does her brother know yet?”
Claire perked up. Zee perked up. Claire said, “Madonna Christien has a brother?”
“Yes. He's a few years older than her.”
“What's his name?”
“Rafe. That's short for Raphael. Christien.”
“Do you know where we can find him?”
Wendy hesitated. Did that hair-stroking thing some more. “Well, okay, he's a junkie, if you must know. Crystal meth, usually. Maddie worries about him all the time. He's got friends down in the Quarter. Some really bad guys.”
“Was Madonna into drugs?”
Wendy looked down a little too long, maybe thinking through whether she wanted to vilify her recently deceased friend. “Yeah, she was. Just weed, mostly, but other stuff, too. I'm telling you she was constantly upset about Rafe and those guys he smoked dope with. They're real dirtbags. His friends, I mean. You know, those Skulls in that biker gang. They're dealers and lowlifes, all of them. But she still hung around with them a lot.”
“Did Madonna ever mention to you that somebody was threatening her or that she was afraid of anybody in particular?”
She shook her head. “No, never. She dated lots of men, though. You know what I mean? Lots.”
Dated was one way to put it. Not exactly the way Claire would describe Madonna's relationships, but it did sound better than whoring, especially when referring to an old high school BFF.
“Were any of these men into voodoo?”
“Not that I know of. But, hey, I don't mean she's some kind of voodoo priestess, or nothin' like that. She just got all involved with that junk after that guy took us. Said it protected her from that snake monster. She called him Papa something or other. I handled getting abducted a lot better than she did. I'm not sure why, but I just put it behind me, as much as I could and tried to concentrate on other things. You know?”
Claire did know, but she was having trouble burying some of the demons she'd met up with, just like Madonna had.
Zee decided to join the party. “You know anybody who's got a reason to want her dead?”
“No, except for Jack, who has a pretty good one, if you want to know the truth, but like I said, that's downright ridiculous. All he wanted from the beginning was for her to leave him alone, once and for all, and she pretty much did that, I reckon, after he got that restraining order. She sure didn't want to end up in jail. She told me that. Said she'd been there before and wasn't ever going backâno matter what she had to do, she wasn't gonna end up in jail again.”
“Where did she go to jail?”
“Downtown. It was just thirty days for possessing weed and prostitution; they went easy on her on the first offense. She toed the line after that. Said she nearly went nuts in that jail cell. She said she was scared of some of the girls locked up in there with her, and some of the cops, too.”
All that she just said fit in with the info Rene had sent to them. “Did she ever tell you that she took out a restraining order on Jack?”
Wendy actually laughed at that one, but then she stopped herself when she remembered that this was serious business. “Why in the world would she do that?”
Yeah, why, indeed? It didn't make a lick of sense to Claire, either, especially since Jack didn't seem to know about it. Unless he was lying to them, which could very well be the case. On the other hand, Rene had faxed a copy of that restraining order to Claire, which pretty much made it official. “Does Madonna have any other relatives that you know of?”