Murder in the Garden District (Chanse MacLeod Mysteries) (18 page)

“We used to be close. When I heard about Grace, I went over there. Alais was… Neither Wendell nor Cordelia seemed much concerned about her. She wouldn’t talk to anyone. It took me a while, but I was able to get the story out of her. She was only eight years old, poor kid.”

“And rather than going to the police you decided to blackmail Wendell. Might I ask why you sold yourself so cheaply?”

He couldn’t look me in the eyes.

“That wasn’t what the money was for. Wendell collected art. He paid me to find pieces for him.”

That was a lie. I’d gotten a look at some of the work still on display in the gallery. There was no way Cordelia Sheehan would allow abstract art on her precious walls.

“Then where did you get the money for this place?”

He was unable to keep from smiling. “Wendell released the trust.”

“And you promised not to tell anyone what Alais witnessed the night her mother died.”

I didn’t try to veil my contempt.

“It was my money,” he said. “Grace had left it to me. I always wanted to run a gallery. It was my dream. But I could never come up with the money. When I was younger, I did a lot of stupid things—drugs, alcohol—things I now regret. That’s why Grace wouldn’t back the gallery. It made me angry, but I understood. She was afraid I’d blow it.”

“And when Alais told you how her mother died, you saw that as an opportunity to get what you wanted.”

“Like I said, it was my money. If she’d lived, eventually Grace would have backed the gallery. I really believe that.”

It was getting hard to control my disgust. All I could think of was Alais, an eight-year-old child who’d witnessed her father kill her mother, and her uncle using the information to extort money from him. What a house of horrors to grow up in. No wonder she’d finally run away.

“It must have been difficult for you, being an outcast while your wealthy older sister was welcomed into society.”

“It wasn’t fair. My mother was a
Caldwell
and her parents—my grandparents—never acknowledged me. Not one birthday, no Christmas presents, nothing. My father felt terrible about how they treated me and my mother. But they couldn’t do enough for Grace. When they died, they left everything to her.”

“You said you were no longer close to Alais. Why was that?”

“After—”

He picked up the wine glass, and carefully put it back down. He had the decency to sound ashamed.

“One of the conditions of Wendell releasing the trust was that I no longer be a part of Alais’s life.”

“You sold out your eight-year-old niece—the daughter of the sister you say you loved—for this gallery.”

“For my dream.”

I stood up.

“One last question. Where were you on Monday night?”

“I was here all night. Now get out of my office. I have work to do.”

With pleasure
, I thought angrily.

*

I slammed the door behind me. The reedy woman looked at me curiously as I strode through the gallery, but I ignored her. I was heading for my car when she caught up to me.

“Mr. MacLeod, was it?”

“That’s right. And you are?”

“Meredith Cole.” She smiled, and her entire face changed.

Meredith Cole was tall and almost excessively thin. Her tight black wool dress left little to the imagination, but flattered her slender, long-legged figure. She had no curves to speak of. Her blond hair was pulled back in a tight chignon, and she wore minimal makeup above the simple gold chain around her neck. She glanced back at the gallery door, and her smile faded.

“Ken wasn’t here Monday night, if that’s what he told you.” She flushed. “I don’t want to cause any trouble. I know this is none of my business. But Tuesday morning, Ken ordered me to tell anyone who asked about it that he was here all night on Monday.”

“And he wasn’t?”

She shook her head. “I was here until almost midnight, catching up on the books—by myself. And when I saw the news—

“Wendell Sheehan came to the gallery on Monday morning and they argued, I don’t know what about. Ken was in a really bad mood after he left. Nothing anyone did was right. I almost quit.”

“Had Wendell ever come by before?”

“Not that I recall, other than openings. I got the impression Ken didn’t like him much. Wendell was always almost rude to him, if you know what I mean. Ken doesn’t take that from anyone, but he always took it from Wendell. I assumed Wendell was one of his backers.”

“Ken said that he procured art for Wendell.”

“I keep the books and do the billing. Wendell Sheehan never bought a thing from us.”

My cell phone rang.

“I need to get back,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. She slipped her business card into my hand. “My cell number is on there—if you have any more questions.”

I thanked her, and answered my phone.

“This is Monica Davis. I’m returning your call?”

I waited for the gallery door to close before I responded.

“I’m a private investigator. I was wondering if I could come by and ask you some questions?”

“That’s what you said in your message. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out why you want to talk to me. My dinner plans just canceled, so if you want to come by now, I shouldn’t be too drunk. Here’s my address.”

I promised to be right there, and headed uptown.                                                                        

There was no traffic on St. Charles. At Calliope, cars were backed up as far as I could see, all the way from the highway on-ramp. I dialed WWL for news.

The latest report from the National Hurricane Center showed Ginevra at Category 4, predicted to strengthen to Category 5 in a few hours, with a high probability of New Orleans taking a direct hit. A lot of people weren’t waiting for the mandatory evacuation order. Traffic was at a standstill on I-10, and highway patrol projected a five- to six-hour drive to Baton Rouge. Hotels along the route were booked as far as Houston. An hour ago, the mayor had called a press conference to announce that the city and state had arranged bus transportation for those without the means to evacuate on their own, and urged everyone to leave as soon as possible. The National Guard were airlifting hospital patients out of the city, and the governor had stated that anyone planning to ignore the mandatory evacuation order when it came should expect no assistance or rescue.

I turned off the radio. The other side of St. Charles was clogged with cars, but in the uptown direction I was pretty much the only driver. Businesses were closed, windows boarded up. It was so strange—there were no clouds, the sun was shining, and the sky itself was an amazing shade of blue. It was a beautiful day, yet deadly winds, flooding rains, death and destruction moved inexorably towards the city. I tried to remember the days before the last evacuation, but like everything pre-Katrina, the memories were foggy and unclear. I gave up. The situation was depressing enough without dwelling on it.

*

Monica Davis lived on Dante Street in Riverbend, a nice, quiet neighborhood with streets lined with massive live oak trees arching like canopies over the pavement. The area was named for a near-ninety-degree turn in the Mississippi River, past the universities and Audubon Park where St. Charles Avenue ends and the streetcar line makes a ninety-degree turn onto Carrollton. I rarely made it that far uptown. Her house was on a corner lot, a small bungalow-style building with a covered carport, beneath which a white Lexus was parked. I pulled in front of the house. There were very few cars anywhere. Everything was eerily silent.

A short woman answered the door, holding a drink in her left hand.

“Chanse MacLeod, I presume?”

Monica Davis was maybe five feet tall, and couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds. Apparently Wendell Sheehan liked his women short. She was wearing a green and white nylon jogging suit with the Tulane emblem across the chest. Her dirty blond hair was cut short in a bob, with an occasional strand of gray here and there. Her only makeup was a touch of lipstick and maybe something around her eyes. She looked to be in her forties and was aging gracefully. As she unlatched the screen to let me in, I saw that she was in her stocking feet.

Her small, square living room was painted pale blue. The low ceiling made me a bit claustrophobic. The furniture looked lived-in and chosen for comfort rather than fashion. There was no television, but the stereo was softly playing a recording of Pachelbel’s Canon.

“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

“What else do I have to do, listen to doom and gloom on the radio? Please, have a seat.”

She sat down in a rocking chair and rattled the ice in her drink at me.

“Can I offer you something? I’m having Kahlua and cream. If you prefer it, I have vodka and some Abita Light. Or a soft drink.”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

I sat down on the couch. There wasn’t enough room for my legs between the couch and the coffee table, so I turned slightly sideways and crossed them.

“Are you going to join the mass exodus?” she asked.

“Right now, I plan on waiting,” I said. “There’s still a chance it could turn, right?”

The truth was, I was hoping that if I waited long enough Ginevra would turn and I wouldn’t have to leave town.

“I’m not going,” she said. “I know it’s crazy, but after the last time I swore I wouldn’t ever leave again. I’m afraid if I do I won’t come back, or I won’t be able to come back. I don’t want to be anywhere else.”

That was exactly how I felt.

“We were able to come back last time.”

“If the levees fail again? I don’t think so. Plenty of people the last time thought we shouldn’t have been helped, that the city should just be allowed to die. If it happens again, this soon, there will be even more who feel that way. And what if it comes up the river this time? Do you think the river levees will hold?”

She rocked slowly in the chair.

After Katrina, the whole focus had been on the levees around the lake and the canals that fed the lake. No one really talked about the whether the river levees would hold. The truth was, if the Katrina surge had come up the river instead of through the lake, the Mississippi would have overtopped its levees and destroyed the city in a completely different way—down in the lower ninth ward. That’s what had happened in 1965, during Hurricane Betsy.

“A storm surge up the river wouldn’t make it this far,” I said.

“So, there’s no reason for me to leave, other than creature comforts like air-conditioning. Now then, Mr. Chanse MacLeod, what did you want to talk to me about? I’ve never had a private eye want to grill me before. Please, tell me before I die of suspense.”

“I’ve been hired by Cordelia Sheehan to look into her son’s death.”

She held the glass to the side of her face and closed her eyes.

“Ironically, that was the one possibility that never crossed my mind. I suppose it was inevitable, since I was one of the last people to see him alive that night. I’m surprised the police haven’t come sniffing around.”

“You had dinner with Wendell at the Delacroix.”

She opened her eyes.

“You’re quite good. Yes, I had dinner with him that night. It was a mistake. I pride myself on my intelligence, and that was a stupid thing to do. But sometimes you can’t help picking at scabs.”

“Whose idea was it?”

“Wendell’s. He called me Monday afternoon. I was so shocked, I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t talked to him in almost five—no, seven years now. We didn’t part on the best of terms. He wanted to talk to me about something, but he wouldn’t say what on the phone. I figured he wanted help on his Senate campaign. I’d worked on both of his City Council campaigns, and his run for attorney general. The only one I didn’t work on was the campaign for mayor—and look how that turned out. I was curious, so I went. If I didn’t like his pitch, I’d say no and walk out.”

“But it wasn’t about the campaign?”

“Yes and no. That’s one thing about Wendell—he was unpredictable. Maybe that’s what attracted me to him in the first place. Don’t look surprised. You knew we had dinner together. Obviously you’ve done your homework. But that was ancient history. He wanted to talk about Alais.”

This genuinely surprised me.

“Alais? Were you close to her?”

“Not really. She was always around during the campaigns. I thought she was a sweet little girl. I liked Grace too. We got along well.”

“Did she know about you and Wendell?”

“She knew Wendell was unfaithful, but did she know I was one of his women? We never talked about it. She didn’t strike me as a woman who would be friendly to a woman sleeping with her husband, but who knows?”

“Why did Wendell want to talk to you about Alais?”

“You know, I asked him that very question. Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Do you mind if I grub one?”

She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, handed me one, lit her own, then passed the lighter to me.

“It’s shocking how many people are outraged when I smoke in my own home and pollute their air.”