Vieux Carré Voodoo (8 page)

“He couldn’t have jumped.” I kept my voice steady. “There
was no way he could have climbed over the railing. He wasn’t that agile.”

She nodded, her face impassive. “His apartment was
ransacked,” Venus went on. “Would you know if anything was missing? Can you come
up and take a look?”

“I could try.” I thought for a moment. “Although my
mother”—I swallowed. Mom. Someone was going to have to tell my parents—“would
probably be better, or his maid. He was kind of a pack rat.” I shrugged. “He
kept everything, and the place was really cluttered. You think it was a
robbery?”

“You mind taking a look around?” she asked, ignoring my own
question. “We’re going to need to take your prints, too—if you were there this
afternoon, we need to rule your prints out.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s go.”

I followed her down the passage to the back stairs. The
numbness and shock were starting to wear off. I still was having some trouble
wrapping my mind around the idea that Doc was dead. I was also dreading having
to call my parents and tell them. When we reached the staircase, Venus turned
and asked, “Did he have any relatives?”

“He has a sister up in Vicksburg, I think.” I shook my head.
“He never really talked about her much. But my parents—they’d know.”

Venus nodded and started up the stairs with me right behind
her.

I don’t know what I was expecting to see when we got up to
the apartment, but it was a shock.

Ransacked
wasn’t a strong enough word for what had happened to Doc’s apartment. It
looked like a bomb had gone off inside. The back parlor, where I’d toweled dry
earlier, was completely destroyed. The couch and the chairs had been slashed.
Their stuffing spilled out of the rips and was scattered all over the floor.
Tables were overturned. Books had been pulled down from the shelves and
scattered all over the carpet. Some of them had been torn apart, their pages
scattered here and there. The big mirror on one wall in its gilt frame had been
smashed. His bric-a-brac, once carefully arranged on tabletops and on the
shelves, lay everywhere. Some of it was in pieces. Art had been removed from the
walls. Some of it had been ripped from the frames and tossed aside like so much
junk. Other frames still held the art, but the glass had been smashed, the
prints scarred and slashed. The floor was covered with shards of glass that
glittered in the light. My jaw dropped. “Oh, wow,” I whispered. “This is
awful
.”

Venus just nodded. “You said Garrett was an old family
friend?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did he have any enemies?”

“Doc?” I turned back to her in disbelief. “No. Well, yeah.
He used to feud with other historians, but it was all academic stuff. He used to
talk about it some, but I really didn’t pay a whole lot of attention. But to
kill him? And do all this?” I shook my head. “I can’t believe someone would be
angry enough over an academic dispute to do this.”

“You’d be surprised what people will do,” she deadpanned.

“I guess,” I replied dubiously, trying to remember what the
last feud had been about. We’d been at Mom and Dad’s for dinner in January. Doc
was telling us about some scathing critique he’d done for some historical
magazine about some book about—what had it been? I hadn’t paid much attention;
it all seemed kind of silly to me. “Someone had written a book about the
occupation of New Orleans during the Civil War—I don’t remember who or what the
name of the book was, but—” I closed my eyes. I could see us all sitting around
Mom and Dad’s table. Frank was next to me, and had been rubbing my calf with his
foot under the table. Mom, Dad, and Doc had been at the other end of the table.
“The book was a defense of Spoons Butler, and Doc was furious about it.” He had
been. His face had reddened and he had pounded his fist down on the table a few
times to accentuate his points. Benjamin “Spoons” Butler, or Butler the Butcher,
had been the military dictator of New Orleans after the city fell to the
Yankees. He’d been called “Spoons” because he used his authority to steal
everything he could get his hands on—even the silverware. A hundred and fifty
years later, Butler was still reviled in a city that never forgot. “Apparently,
he’d shredded the book and its conclusions. He really enjoyed that kind of
thing, frankly.”

She made a note on her pad, and asked, “I know it’s a mess
in here, but can you tell if anything is missing?” When I shook my head, she
walked into the hallway.

I followed her. The mess was just as bad in the hallway. I
didn’t see how anyone could tell if anything was missing—not even his maid would
be able to tell. Room after room was more of the same. Not a single book was
left standing on a bookshelf. The art had all been yanked down from the walls.
Not a single chair or couch had escaped being slashed to pieces. Drawers were
open, their contents dumped on the floor. I tried not to step on anything, but
glass crunched under my feet with every step.

“Some of this art is really valuable,” I said, pointing at a
ruined canvas tossed into a corner, scarred from the broken glass. “That’s an
original Dureau, it’s worth a lot of money. He lent it for a show at the Museum
of Modern Art last summer.” I shook my head. “This couldn’t have been a simple
robbery. The art is worth a lot of money, Venus. Why would they damage it rather
than steal it? It doesn’t make sense. Whoever did this was looking for
something.” A thought tried to form in my mind, but slipped away.

“You have no idea what they could have been looking for? Was
there something really valuable he had hidden somewhere in the apartment?”

I shook my head. “No, Venus, I’m sorry. I just don’t know.”

I heard a voice in my head.
The entire place was torn
apart.

Levi’s grandfather’s place had been trashed, too.

I put that thought aside. It didn’t make sense.

I walked into his bedroom. The mattress and box springs had
also been slashed and tossed off the bed. The bed covers were piled in a corner.
It was more of the same. The floor was covered in debris from shattered
bric-a-brac, destroyed books, and framed art. The carpeting had even been
slashed methodically.

“They had to have done this before they killed him,” I said
aloud.

Venus nodded. “That’s what we think. This kind of
destruction took time. Once he went off the balcony, they only had a few moments
to get away before someone called the police—they certainly didn’t have the time
to trash the place and get away.”

I winced at the thought of Doc having to witness all of his
belongings being destroyed. “Unless he was already dead when they tossed him.”
But that didn’t make sense, either. In fact, tossing him off the balcony seemed
kind of dumb. While the balcony was certainly high enough for the fall to be
deadly, there was also no guarantee the fall would kill him. He could have
landed in any number of ways that would have caused serious injuries that might
not have been fatal. And if he was already dead, why throw him off the balcony
in the first place? They could have just left the body in his apartment, and
there was no telling how long it would take before he was found. It could have
been days before anyone noticed he was missing. He wouldn’t have been found
until his maid showed up.

“Was Garrett in the habit of hiring hustlers?”

“What?” I spun around and stared at her. “I can’t imagine…”
My voice trailed off. As long as I’d known Doc, he’d never had any romantic
entanglements of any kind. I’d never even been sure he was gay. And while I
could hardly picture Doc sitting in a bar hitting on someone, it was equally
impossible to imagine him hiring a hustler. He was so fastidious I couldn’t
picture him letting a hustler into his home. “I’m not even sure he was gay,
Venus. But on the other hand, I can’t imagine him at the Catbox Club tipping the
women there.” But surely, he had to have some kind of sexual outlet. Everyone
did—whether they liked to admit or not. But I couldn’t picture Doc hiring
hustlers, or even letting one into his apartment. He was so fastidious…but maybe
he associated sex with being dirty… I put that thought out of my head with a
shudder. I didn’t want to go there. “Maybe my mother would know, but I don’t.”

She shrugged and gave me a little half-smile. “Just making
sure. All the nudes here in the bedroom are male.” She leaned down and picked up
one. “But these are more artistic than pornographic.”

I leaned against the wall.
If Doc weren’t already dead,
hearing this conversation would give him a stroke.
I started to laugh,
knowing it was completely inappropriate, but I couldn’t stop myself. The laugh
sounded strange to me, and before I knew it I was crying.

Venus just stood there watching me until I got hold of
myself.

“Sorry.” I wiped at my face.

“Are you okay?” she asked, not unkindly.

“It’s just a bit much.” I sighed. “I mean, not five hours
ago, I was sitting with him in the back parlor, just talking, you know? And now
he’s dead. Maybe if I hadn’t left—”

She shook her head. “Then you’d most likely be lying next to
him in the street.” She shrugged. “This wasn’t the work of just one person. And
there were no signs of forced entry—Garrett let his killers in.”

“Oh God.” I started to retch, but took some deep breaths
until it passed.

“And whatever it was they were looking for, they didn’t find
it.” She went on, kicking a picture frame out of her way as she headed back to
the bedroom door.

The frame skittered across the floor, smacked a book, and
flipped over face-up just a few feet away from me.

A young male face in military dress blues stared up at me.

I caught my breath as I recognized the face.

I’d just looked at it earlier that afternoon in a different
picture.

Three young GIs in a jungle base camp, mugging for the
camera.

I knew he’d looked familiar.

Doc was Moonie.

“Venus!” I called, kneeling down next to the picture. I
picked it up, staring at it.

There was no question about it. Doc was Moonie, the friend
Levi’s grandfather had sent him to New Orleans to find.

Marty Gretsch had been tortured to death, his house
ransacked in much the same manner as Doc’s apartment.

My instinct had been right.

“Yes, Scotty?” Venus said from the doorway.

I stood back up and took a deep breath. “You’re going to
need to talk to my upstairs neighbor, Venus. His name is Levi Gretsch, and his
grandfather was murdered a few months ago…and his house was trashed the same
way.”

Venus raised an eyebrow. “And the connection is?”

“His grandfather wrote him a letter before he was killed,
telling him to come to New Orleans and find an old army buddy of his.” I
swallowed, pointing down at the picture. “He hired me this afternoon to help him
find his grandfather’s friend. All he had was a nickname and an old picture of
three Army buddies. Doc was one of the three soldiers—the only one who was still
alive.” I sighed. “I thought the guy in the picture looked familiar, but I
couldn’t place him. The picture was forty years old. And I never saw this one
before.”

“All right, let’s get moving.” She gave Blaine some
directions I didn’t hear, and we walked down the back stairs.

We walked the two blocks to my apartment in silence. My mind
was racing. Surely it couldn’t have been a coincidence that Levi had rented the
apartment upstairs from me, and was looking for a man who just turned out to be
an old friend of my family? But it had to be coincidence. If he’d known Doc was
Moonie, he didn’t need to hire me to find him.

I hate coincidences, but they do happen. In a city like New
Orleans, they happen a lot. Levi had said his grandmother was from New Orleans,
had gone to school with Millie. Doc was from Vicksburg, had lived in New Orleans
for forty years. Maybe that was the connection. Maybe Doc had introduced Marty
to his bride. But why didn’t Marty just tell Levi in the letter who Doc was?
Maybe he was afraid whoever was after them would find the letter…which meant
Levi might be in danger. If the same people had killed his grandfather and now
Doc…

I tried to remember every little bit of our conversation,
tried to get a sense of whether Levi had been lying to me. I tried to remember
his tone of voice, his body language, everything he’d said and how he said it.
He’d seemed a confused young man, torn with grief and confusion. Unless he was
an incredibly gifted actor, I was pretty sure my impressions were correct.

What the hell was going on? What had the three GIs done over
there?

I got my keys out to unlock the iron door at my house, but
it wasn’t latched.

I turned to Venus as I reached out and pushed the gate. It
swung open, hit the wall, and swung back. I put my hand out to stop it from
shutting.

Millie and Velma were sticklers about making sure the gate
was locked. If the gate was left open, anyone could just walk down the passage
and would have easy access to the back stairs—and everyone’s apartments. Millie
had even put a spring lock on it so it would slam shut. The only way the gate
could be left ajar was if someone had deliberately tried to keep it from
shutting.

Millie and Velma would kill for far less than that. Velma
had lectured me more than once about the importance of keeping the door closed.
“Leaving it open, for any reason, at any time, is grounds for immediate
eviction.” Her tone made it clear she was not joking. “Anyone could walk in
here. Anyone. And I don’t really want to be robbed, raped, or killed simply
because you got careless.” I’d gotten the message, and had passed it along to
Frank when he’d moved in. I was certain Levi had gotten the same lecture.

No one who lived in the building would leave that door open.

I looked at Venus. “This isn’t good. I know I shut the door
when I left. I heard it slam.” I explained how security conscious my landladies
were.