Murder in the Garden District (Chanse MacLeod Mysteries) (21 page)

Paige joined me on the couch as the download completed and I clicked the document open.

11 August

I don’t know how much longer I can stay in this house. Nobody seems to understand how I feel, and I have nobody to talk to. With every day that passes, my suspicions make more sense to me, I am being smothered in this place. They don’t allow me to see anyone, they don’t allow me to talk to anyone.

I don’t want to believe it. If it’s true I might really lose my mind once and for all. I’m sure Mother thinks I’m overreacting, that I’m just a drama queen and want attention. She wouldn’t believe me if I told her, and I know Gram wouldn’t.

I’m so sorry, Jerry. I loved you, I always did. If I’d known it would turn out this way I would never have let you near me. I will always love you, my sweet Jerry.

I can’t go on this way. I’ve been avoiding the confrontation ever since I came home. But I have to be strong. Once and for all I have to know the truth. I owe that to Jerry.

12 August

Mother is acting strange. She had an appointment this morning, and when she came back she went straight to her room. I know she hasn’t been feeling well, but when I asked her this afternoon if everything was okay, she brushed me off and went back to her room and shut the door.

Gram is acting weird, too. Everyone in this house is acting weird. Or maybe it’s just me.

Last night I had the nightmare again. I woke up crying and had to take one of the damned pills. Mother and Gram are so determined that I take them. They don’t know I stopped a week ago and am starting to feel like myself again, that I’m starting to feel. Maybe I needed them when I came home from school, maybe I would have lost my mind without them, but I don’t need them anymore.

If I could just get into the safe, I know I’d find the proof I need. All the dirty secrets are locked up in the safe.

“The poor girl,” Paige said.

“The safe was open the night of the murder,” I told her.

14 August

It’s going to be tonight.

Vernita came to tell me Jerry’s mother was on the phone. She called to see how I was doing. We talked for a while, we cried together, and she told me I needed to get on with my life, that he would have wanted me to. She’s right, I know that, and maybe I’d be better now if I’d stopped taking the pills sooner. After I talked to her, Vernita came back to my room to check on me. Mother and Gram were out. They’d fire Vernita if they knew she let me talk to Mrs. Perrilloux.

Vernita is the only ally I have in this house. She loved Jerry as much as I did, maybe more. She is the only one who really understands.

I am going to talk to Dad tonight. I’m going to find out the truth.

And the truth shall set me free.

“That was the day Wendell was shot,” Paige said. “Alais was going to confront her father about Jerrell.”

My heart ached for Alais, but something niggled at the back of my mind.

My cell phone rang.

“Yes, Abby?”

“Chanse, I found her. You’ll never believe what she told me.”

I arrived at Jeph and Abby’s a little after eight on Saturday morning. The trip to the Irish Channel was uneventful, and I was wondering if maybe the Feds were right about Vinnie flying the coop. But I remained wary. I’d wanted to jump in my car the moment Abby called me, but Abby had begged off. She’d traced Alais to the Monteleone Hotel in the French Quarter and was taking her back to the shotgun house on Constantinople Street she shared with Jeph. Abby had not only found Alais, she’d managed to earn her trust. (I was definitely going to have to give her a raise.) Since then the mayor had ordered mandatory evacuation. Ginevra had strengthened to Category 5, and was predicted to make landfall late Sunday evening. There was still time for me to talk to Alais.

Abby introduced me to Alais and went to get coffee in the kitchen. Jephtha was undoubtedly asleep in their bedroom at the back of the house, not being an early riser.

Alais glared at me. ”I’m over eighteen and I have my own money,” she said defiantly. “You can’t make me go back.”

She was definitely Cordelia Sheehan’s grandchild.

Alais was much prettier in person than she’d seemed in her Myspace photo. Her thick, dark red ponytail with golden highlights reached halfway down her back. Her eyes were so dark they were almost black. Like her grandmother, her face was heart-shaped, with prominent cheekbones, a pert nose and the full red lips most women get from a dermatologist’s needle. Her skin was pale with a hint of gold, with a few freckles scattered across her nose and cheeks. A red Ole Miss T-shirt with blue script and low-rise jeans shorts complemented her short, petite frame, as did the pale pink toenail polish visible on her shoeless feet.

We were sitting in Abby and Jeph’s living room, Alais on the dilapidated sofa and I in an uncomfortable reclining chair with broken springs that should have gone to the garbage men years ago. Jeph’s aged golden retrievers, Greta and Rhett, had curled up on either side of Alais. Greta was sleeping, but Rhett kept shoving his head under Alais’s hand whenever she stopped stroking him. His thumping tail drummed a steady tattoo on the sofa cushions.

The room itself was dim and somber. The dingy beige walls were bare. Abby and Jeph had nailed the shutters closed against the coming storm. Some morning light broke through the slats, but it was a losing battle against the dark. Several of the light bulbs on the ceiling fan/chandelier had burned out, and the slowly rotating fan blades seemed just to stir up more dust. Magazines and newspapers were scattered on the coffee table and the bare hardwood floor. The DVD player underneath the television was blinking 12:00. Abby tried her best to keep the house neat, but dog hair and the relentless New Orleans dust were winning the fight.

“Actually, I was hoping you could clear up some things for me,” I told Alais, trying not to sound patronizing. “Are you willing to do that?”

Abby returned with three steaming mugs, each of which had a Disney villainess on it. I got Ursula the Sea Witch. The coffee was exactly the way I liked it—with a packet of sweetener and cream.

“Remember, Chanse is on
your
side,” Abby said softly as she handed Alais a mug. “We both are.”

She shooed Rhett off the couch and sat beside Alais, curling her legs underneath her. She was wearing a Catbox Club T-shirt and a pair of jeans shorts. Her feet were bare and her hair was tied back. She’d kept Cruella De Vil for herself.

Alais took a big drink from Maleficent. “Gram’s paying him, isn’t she?” she responded to Abby.

“And
he’s
paying me,” Abby pointed out. “If we intended to take you home, we would have called your family last night. We want what’s best for you, Alais.”

 “That’s what Gram and Mom always tell me. Don’t I have any say in it? I’m not a child, and I’m tired of being treated like one.”

“Tell Chanse everything, Alais, and we’ll help you however we can.”

She nodded in my direction. I picked up the cue.

“Why did you run away, Alais?” I asked as sympathetically as possible.

“I didn’t run away. I wanted to get out of that house, to get my head together. I’m tired of being treated like I’m crazy.”

With her jaw set, Alais’s resemblance to Cordelia was both eerie and unsettling.

“I don’t think you are, Alais. I know what it’s like to lose someone you love.”

Her eyes filled. “Do you ever get over it?”

I thought about lying, but decided she deserved honesty. She got enough lies at home.

No, you never do. You learn to live with it, and eventually you get to the point where you don’t think about it every day.”

It had taken me about two years, but there was no need to tell her that.

“I’m so sick of that
Time heals
bullshit. Is that supposed to make me feel better somehow? Being drugged out of your mind doesn’t help much either. And the worst of it is…”

“Start at the beginning, Alais,” Abby encouraged. “It’s okay, you can trust Chanse.”

She wiped her eyes. “I’ve loved Jerrell ever since I was a little girl,” she said. “He was always a sweet boy, and fun—he always made me laugh.”

“How did you meet him? Did you go to school with him?” I asked. I knew she hadn’t, but it was a good way to get her talking.

“He was always around. Our housekeeper is his great-aunt. She never had any kids of her own, and she raised his mother. Jerrell’s real grandparents died when his mom was a little girl. He called Vernita Grandma. She’d bring him to the house with her whenever she couldn’t get a sitter. He was supposed to stay in the kitchen, but my real mom let him play with me, go swimming in the pool. And when she died… After that, Vernita never brought him around anymore. I missed him.”

“Why did Vernita stop bringing Jerrell around?” I asked.

“I don’t know. But he was my
friend
. That changed when we were in high school. He was at Ben Franklin. Gram wouldn’t hear of me going to a public school, even if it was a magnet. I was trapped at Newman. I’m not sure exactly when our feelings changed from just being friends, but we kept it a secret.”

“Because Jerrell was black?”

She looked at me like I was an idiot.

“Because his great-aunt was our
housekeeper
. The kids at Newman would have
loved
that. And Gram would never have allowed it. I was afraid they’d fire Vernita. And they would have, too. He got a full scholarship to Ole Miss—that was why I decided to go there. Gram wanted me at Vanderbilt, but I never mailed the application. She was pissed. I stood up to her, and Dad and Mom both took my side.”

“Was that unusual?”

“It wasn’t like Dad was really on my side. He never cared about me or noticed anything I did.” She stated this as a matter of fact, absent of bitterness or sadness. “He just liked to piss off Gram. Janna said she thought I should go to school wherever I wanted to, it was my life, and Gram needed to get used to the idea I could make my own decisions. Gram was so mad, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it.”

“Did you like your stepmother? Did the two of you get along?”

“I was scared of her at first—you know, that whole ‘wicked stepmother’ thing— but she was great. She said I didn’t have to call her Mom if I didn’t want to, it was my decision. I called her Janna at first, and then I started calling her Mom. Whenever I needed anything, she was there for me. She never missed anything at school, you know, when I was in plays or stuff. Dad never came, Gram did sometimes, but Janna was always there. She was my friend. I could count on her. This summer, though, she’s been different. Distant, like she had something on her mind.”

Maybe like being raped and abused by your father
. According to Janna, the rape happened four months ago, in May. That put it just before Jerrell’s murder.

“Tell me about Jerrell, Alais,” I said gently. “What happened to him?”

“Jerrell was—” Her voice broke. “He was the nicest guy, not like the other ones. He respected me, didn’t push me. And he was smart, too. Pre-med. He wanted to work for Doctors Without Borders, go to Africa and help out. It was all Carey’s fault. He didn’t mean to, I know that, but not meaning to do something isn’t much different from meaning to, if the result is the same. He came up to visit me at school. He always knew about Jerrell and me; I never kept it a secret from him. He used to help me sometimes—you know, when I needed to sneak out of the house to see Jerrell. He’d cover for me. It was our little secret. We had so much fun when he came up that weekend. But he took pictures of us and Janna found them, and the next weekend
she
came to see me, to talk to me about Jerrell. She told me to break it off, that Dad and Gram would never let me marry him. I told her I loved him, and they could just deal with it. I made up my mind that when I came home I would tell them, and if they didn’t like it, well, too damned bad. Somehow Dad found out. I didn’t want to think Janna told him, because she’d said she wouldn’t, but how else would he know?”

“What happened when he found out?”

“It was horrible. He called me at school and screamed at me that I was a whore, that it was about time I started acting like a Sheehan.”

“Did he threaten Jerrell?”

“He told me if I didn’t break it off,
he
would take care of it and I wouldn’t like his solution. I told him to go to hell. A weekend later, Jerrell was killed.”

She broke down. Abby put her arm around her, and Alais buried her face in Abby’s shoulder. Her body shook. The two of us sat quietly until she subsided.

“I’m sorry,” she sniffled, sitting up again. “We’d gone out to dinner with some of our friends. Jerrell had a paper he had to finish, so he dropped me off at the Kappa house and went back to his apartment.” Her lower lip trembled. “He had his own little studio. He worked at a coffee shop to pay the rent. He was supposed to meet me for coffee the next day, but he didn’t show up and didn’t answer his phone. I found him.”

“You poor thing.” I also knew what it was like to find the person you loved brutally killed. I couldn’t imagine having to deal with it at nineteen. “But the news reports said his manager from the coffee shop found him.”