G.T. Herren - Paige Tourneur 01 - Fashion Victim (10 page)

I wondered if people
had
paid her to be left out.

But Athalie hadn’t.

There also wasn’t anything about her purported time in Paris. She closed out her chapter about college by simply saying she decided to spend some time in Paris to learn the fashion industry, and began the next chapter “When I returned from Paris…”

Of course, she’d been dining out in New Orleans for years about her time with Chanel; and if Athalie was right, she could hardly have put a lie in print— especially one so easily exposed.

I suspected Athalie was right. As a fashion designer, she wouldn’t have left it out were it true.

She’d also glossed over her first four marriages entirely, like they hadn’t mattered to her. She barely mentioned her sons other than in passing, which was either a sign she hadn’t cared much about them or she was protecting their privacy.

The middle part of the book primarily focused on her building up her design business, and had been boring as all hell. As my eyes crossed and my mind wandered, I found myself wanting to skip ahead but didn’t out of fear I might miss something important. I’ve always taken pride in being thorough, so I read every word. Even when I reached the point where taking razor blades to my wrists seemed preferable. But finally, I got to the good part— the part where she met her last husband.

She wrote this section in a breathless, confessional style— like she was talking in a whisper to her best friend over drinks. The end result was TMI, and rather than making her seem like the innocent victim of a scheming fortune hunter, she wound up seeming like a silly old woman who’d been ripe for the plucking.

She’d met Tony Castiglione shortly after Aramis had married and moved to Memphis. Jackson hadn’t yet given up his job with Saks to come to work with her. In other words, she was lonely. Tony was as a personal trainer at a gym on the West Bank. He came into her shop one day with one of his clients, who was looking for a dress to wear to her daughter’s wedding. She described the fateful meeting in great detail:

I was in my office, going over the accounts, when I overheard two of my girls giggling outside my office door about the gorgeous man in the show room
. (She always referred to women as “girls,” which I found incredibly offensive… but to be fair, she referred to herself as “a girl” as well— as in “a girl has to have her nails done, doesn’t she?”)

That phrase got my attention— “gorgeous man,” I mean. My eyes were about ready to cross from looking at the numbers and I thought to myself, “a girl deserves a break once in a while.” So I walked out to the showroom and saw him. He was standing, watching his friend posing in one of my best gowns in front of a three-way mirror. I almost swooned at the sight of him. His thick curly black hair looked wet, and the sleeveless T-shirt he was wearing also had damp spots on his big chest muscles. And his arms! He looked like he should have been playing Superman, or Samson, or Hercules. He just oozed sex. He was tan, and he was wearing a pair of running shorts. He looked bored but was being polite. His friend was obviously so selfish she couldn’t be bothered even to notice how bored he was. (Girls, you should NEVER bore your man. And you should always check to make sure he isn’t bored. Men do NOT like being treated that way. They need to be made much of. Otherwise you’re going to lose that man.)

Like any woman would take relationship advice from a woman who’d been married five times. But to give her credit, she
had
landed five husbands— she just hadn’t mastered how to keep one.

He’d flirted with her, and she’d given him her business card.

Flash forward six months, and they were married in Las Vegas.

Her sons were appalled.

I couldn’t believe how ungrateful they were! After everything I’d done for them, they didn’t want me to be happy! All the sacrifices, all the money, all the scrapes and mistakes I’d had to bail them out of, this was the thanks I got from them? How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is an ungrateful child! Well, I’d show them!

The honeymoon lasted about a year— when she realized Tony had maxed out the credit cards she’d given him. She’d already paid his debts and bought him a new car when they’d first been married. She was even willing to co-sign a bank loan so he could open his own gym— but had held off on signing the paperwork.

You can imagine my surprise that he’d already maxed out those cards— what had he spent almost fifty thousand dollars on, if he was still training clients at the gym? I was really glad I hadn’t signed those loan papers. But I was getting ready to go to Fashion Week, and figured I’d have fun in New York— a girl’s entitled to have some fun, isn’t she? I’d deal with Tony’s spending habits when I got back
.

Tony didn’t go with her— claiming he’d be bored and he didn’t want to get in her way. When she returned, before she could even address the issue with the credit cards, she noticed something else that provoked her suspicious.

Now, to most people it might seem silly. But I am VERY proud of my reign as Queen of Patroclus, and I keep my mementoes of that time in a glass case in my bedroom. Whenever I get down, or am depressed, or something goes wrong— all I have to do is look at that case and remember I am a Queen, and that’s something that no one can ever take away from me. That gets me through— and I get strength from it. So, as I was unpacking from my trip, I noticed that my tiara wasn’t exactly the way it always was. It’s always centered on its red velvet pillow… and it was off to the side. I went over to look, to make sure, and sure enough, it HAD been moved. And the door to the case wasn’t completely shut… and the closer I looked, I could see that my scepter was turned with the front to the back, and that the sash wasn’t right, either. Someone had moved them around, which didn’t make any sense to me. My cleaning lady has always had explicit instructions not to do anything besides dust the case itself, and besides her, the only other person who should be in my bedroom was Tony. I put everything back the way it was supposed to be… but from that moment on, I wasn’t sure I could trust Tony. So I hired a private detective to prove to myself he was trustworthy. I’d put off the talk about the credit cards until later
.

Things went from bad to worse in no time flat.

While the private eye was following him around, she started going through his things. She found a claim check from a film-processing store.

I didn’t even know Tony HAD a camera, so I knew something was up. Well, you can just bet I got in my car and went to that store, marched myself in and paid for the packet of pictures. I could hardly wait to get back in the car to look at them— I knew they weren’t pictures of ME. And I sat there in my car and went through them, one by one… not able to believe my eyes. Here it was— concrete proof that Tony was cheating on me! It wasn’t bad enough that he was cheating, treating our marriage vows like they were worthless. He had to take pictures of his slut. And the pictures were taken in my bed! Naked, on sheets I had PAID for with my work, the sweat of my labors! And to add insult to injury, in some of them she was wearing MY tiara and sash, holding MY scepter! Pissing all over my memories, pissing all over something Tony KNEW meant the world to me! And in every one of the pictures, she was wearing a Mardi Gras mask so I couldn’t even get an idea of what she looked like! The brazen hussy! You can bet your bottom dollar that I went straight home and ordered him out of my house! I called a locksmith and had all the locks changed. Good riddance! A girl is always better off alone than with some cheating bastard
.

That was all she had to say about Tony and Amber. The final two chapters were about Katrina, and Marigny’s trip to Russia to try to prove her descent from the Romanovs— which was anticlimactic to say the least, since she couldn’t find anything to back up the story.

As awful as it sounded, she was lucky she’d been killed before she’d gone through with her plan to publish the book; it would have made her a laughingstock in the city.

I couldn’t really use any of the material in the book for the piece. It might have been her truth, as she saw it, but there was no need for
Crescent City’s
readers to laugh at Marigny.

My landline started ringing, which was odd. Almost everyone calls my cell phone; the landline is always telemarketers or wrong numbers. I glanced at the caller ID and was startled to see the name ARAMIS MERCEREAU.

“Hello?”

“Paige, this is Aramis Mercereau.”

I started to say hello, but he cut me off quickly. “Do you know a good criminal attorney? They’ve arrested Jackson.”

Stunned, all I could say, stupidly, was, “Why?”

“For Mother’s murder, of course.” His voice was impatient. “Can you help me or not?”

Chapter Eleven

It was one o’clock in the morning when I unlocked my door.

I was exhausted, and all I wanted to do was go to bed— but it just wasn’t meant to be.

Ryan was asleep on my couch, with Skittle curled up beside him. Skittle opened his eyes and glared at me. When I shut the door and turned the deadbolt, Ryan’s eyes opened and he sat up. Skittle howled and bolted upstairs as I kicked off my shoes.

“Are you okay?” Ryan asked, yawning.

I nodded, plopping down next to him on the couch. “I’m so tired.” I rubbed my eyes. “What a night.” I smiled at him. “I’m sorry, baby, I know you wanted to talk about—” I hesitated, almost unable to bring myself to say the words but finally forced it out, “the whole marriage thing, but once Aramis called me…”

“It’s okay— I know you were helping a friend.” He grinned at me. “And working on a story.”

“Yeah, it really helps when they’re one and the same.” I looked at him hopefully. “I could really use a glass of wine.”

“You just lie there and relax, I’ll get it for you.”

“There’s an open bottle of red by the microwave,” I called after him helpfully.

Every muscle in my body was tired, and my brain was fatigued as well.

Ryan brought me a glass of wine and sat down next to me. “So, were you able to get Jackson out of jail?”

“Aramis was confused,” I replied. “They didn’t arrest him, they just brought him in for questioning.” If Jackson
had
been arrested, he would have spent the night in jail— one of the sad truths about Orleans Parish was if you got arrested over the weekend, the earliest you could get out was on Monday morning when the courts re-opened. If you knew a judge, of course, you could possibly get someone out sooner— but the prison moved like molasses at the best of times. “They don’t have enough evidence to arrest him— yet.”

“You think they will?” Ryan was also a lawyer, but his specialty was contract law, not criminal. He was good at what he did, which was why he could afford an apartment in the CBD as well as a house on the north shore and another over there for his ex and their kids.

“It looks bad,” I admitted, taking a sip of the wine. Venus and Blaine had both flatly refused to give me any information down at the station, and the criminal lawyer I’d gotten for Jackson had told Jackson not to say a word to me. Loren McKeithen was one of the best criminal lawyers in Louisiana. All he would tell me was that the police claimed to have found evidence Jackson was embezzling from the House of Mercereau, and a witness claimed Marigny had confronted him about it the night of the party, even going so far as threatening to have him arrested if he didn’t pay the money back.

Ryan shook his head when I finished bringing him up to date. “Do you think Jackson did it?”

“No.” I didn’t believe Jackson could kill anyone, and especially not his mother. He got frustrated with her from time to time— I couldn’t forget him warning me at the party on Friday that everything she told me would be a lie— but that didn’t make him a killer. I also couldn’t believe for a second that he would embezzle money from his own mother.

Of course, he could be a drug addict, or have a gambling problem I didn’t know about.

I couldn’t rule out either as a possibility even though both seemed preposterous. Stranger things have happened.

“Poor guy,” Ryan said. “Bad enough for your mother to be killed, but to be a suspect? That would have to be the worst. Who is this person telling the police all of this?”

“Apparently they wouldn’t say,” I replied. The wine was good, and I could feel the tension from the long hours sitting in the police station start to slip away. “They don’t have to, at least until there’s an arrest.”

“And he has no idea who it could be?”

I took another sip. “He said he didn’t. He also says the argument never happened. But if you want my opinion, it has to be Marigny’s assistant, Isabelle DePew.”

“DePew?” He grinned at me. “Like the amorous skunk in the cartoons?”

I smacked his leg lightly. “That’s
le
Pew, not DePew, dumbass.” I couldn’t help it— I started laughing. “She was Marigny’s assistant. But why would she make something like that up?” I sat up, alert. “If someone was embezzling money from Marigny, it makes more sense that it would be the assistant, right? And now that Marigny’s dead, of course it would all come out. There would have to be an audit, right, to settle the estate? And if money was missing—”

“—someone would have to take the blame for it,” Ryan finished, and yawned. “You think she killed Marigny, too?” He barely got the words out before he yawned a second time.

“Baby, why don’t you go up to bed?” I said gently. “You have to get up early in the morning, don’t you? I’ll be up in a minute or two— I just want to check my emails and a few other things.” I kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk about—” I swallowed, unable to bring myself to say the words, “—about what Brady said.”

He stood up and stretched. He grinned down at me. “You know, I’m sorry I sprang it on you that way, babe. Really.” He kissed the top of my head. “I just couldn’t stop thinking about it after Brady said it, you know? We have plenty of time to talk about it. There’s no rush, right?”

I hoped the enormous sense of relief I felt didn’t show on my face. “But we will talk about it, Ryan. We will.”