Murder in the Irish Channel (Chanse MacLeod Mysteries) (5 page)

There were a lot of rumors about Barras bribing people at City Hall, and it was also rumored the former mayor who’d welcomed him and his money with open arms was in his hip pocket.

The nicest thing anyone had to say about him was to call him a “carpetbagger.”

Jonny stared at the check, and shrugged. “Mr. Barras owns the casino where I fight, and I know he’s a partner in the promotion I fight for,” he replied. “Like I said, they think I have a big future in MMA, and I know Mr. Barras wants me to sign a contract with him—you know, pay for my training and my living expenses for a piece of my take from my fights, you know? I don’t have a manager, so I just had Ma deal with Mr. Barras. Maybe she made a deal with him she didn’t have time to tell me about yet—before, you know.” His eyebrows came together. “You think maybe this has something to do with what happened to her?”

“It might. It might not.” I took the check back from him. “You mind if I make a copy of this?”

“Yeah, sure, okay.” He frowned. “Maybe you should take it with you, you know, for safekeeping?”

“You think that’s a good idea?” I checked the printer attached to the computer. It was also a copier, so I placed the check face-down on the glass and put the lid back down, pressing the Copy button.

“I don’t have no place to keep it safe at my place, and I don’t like the idea of it just sitting here waiting for someone to steal it.”

The printer spat out a copy of the check. I folded the copy and slipped it into my wallet. I put the check in with it and wrote out a quick receipt for him. “I have a safe in my apartment, I’ll keep it there until your mom turns up.” I stood up. “Show me the rest of the house.”

The rest of the house was no different from the front rooms—neat and tidy, everything covered in a thin layer of dust. There were three bedrooms downstairs, and a huge kitchen. Mona O’Neill’s design ethic wasn’t exactly what I would have chosen, but it was simple and neat. There were plaster saints placed here and there, and the occasional religious painting, but it wasn’t overdone and in-your-face the way some working-class Catholic homes were. There was a slightly stale feel to the air, like no one had been in the house in a while.

It didn’t feel lived in anymore.

A staircase led up to the camelback, which had been converted into one massive bedroom suite. Nothing seemed to be missing from the walk-in closet, or from the chests, but Jonny couldn’t swear to it. Her luggage set, though, was still resting on the closet floor. The bed was made, and everything in the big bathroom seemed to be in place. A large pink towel was draped over the shower rod. I felt it—it was stiff. The bathroom smelled slightly of bleach.

I went back down the stairs into the kitchen, Jonny at my heels. I walked out the back door into the backyard in time to see a black-and-white cat vanish over the fence into the neighbor’s yard. The backyard was just like the front—neat and tidy. A massive live oak in the back corner cast shade over most of it. There was a brick barbecue pit close to the house and a wooden picnic table in the shade. A wooden slat fence about six feet high closed it in on three sides. I walked down the back steps and could imagine Mona’s family gathered, grandchildren laughing and playing while white smoke rose from the barbecue pit, hamburgers and hot dogs sizzling over the coals.

“Hey, Jonny!”

The voice was female and came from the house on the right. I looked up and saw a rather pretty young woman in a white bikini and sunglasses, her skin glistening with suntan lotion, waving from the sagging back balcony of the huge house. An enormous floppy hat shaded her face.

“Oh, hey, Lois, how are you?” Jonny shaded his eyes.

“You mind if I come over? I want to ask you about something.”

“Sure.”

“Give me a second.” She pulled on a robe and slipped her feet into some flip-flops before disappearing inside her house through a pair of French doors. A few minutes later, I heard a door open and slam on the other side of the fence.

“Lois Armstrong,” Jonny said to me in a low voice before crossing the yard and unlocking the back gate. “She’s been living next door to Ma for about three years now. She’s really nice.”

I sat down at the picnic table as Lois Armstrong came through the back gate. She pulled the big floppy hat off and shook her thick curly hair loose. The blue terry-cloth robe she had on wouldn’t stay closed, and she kept trying to retie it as she made her way over to the picnic table. Jonny shut the gate behind her and joined us at the table.

“Lois Armstrong,” she said to me, sticking out her small hand. Her nails were neat and trimmed, with just clear polish. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, but she didn’t need any. She had long eyelashes fluttering over enormous green eyes. Her lips were full and red, her skin olive, and her teeth were even and white. She was older than I’d originally thought, maybe in her mid-thirties rather than mid-twenties.

“Chanse MacLeod.” I took her warm hand and shook it. Hers was so small it seemed to be swallowed up in mine.

“Pleased to meet you, I’m sure.” She fussed with the robe some more before sitting down. “Jonny, I’m worried about your mom. I haven’t seen her for a few days, and that’s just not normal. Have you talked to her? Is she mad at me about something?”

“I haven’t talked to Ma since Thursday.” Jonny gave me a significant look.
See?
“That’s why Mr. MacLeod’s here, Lois. I’ve hired him to look for Ma, find out where she is.”

“Oh.” She flashed a smile at me before turning back to Jonny. She swallowed. “So, it’s serious.” She folded her hands together on the picnic table. “I thought I might have done something—you know, made her mad and she was avoiding me or something.”

“So it’s not normal for you to not see Mrs. O’Neill for a few days, Ms. Armstrong?” I asked. “Is there another reason you might be concerned about her?”

She looked at me, tilting her head to one side and narrowing her eyes a little. “Like I said, I haven’t seen her in three days, and she never goes away without telling me.” Her eyebrows went up and she turned to me. “We feed this stray black-and-white cat that hangs around in our yards. If she’s not going to be around, she makes sure I know, so I know to feed him. And every afternoon when I get home from work I always come by for a glass of wine—around four thirty. Mona is wonderful to talk to, you know—it’s a way I can unwind after dealing with the kids all day—it’s nice to have an adult that’s not another teacher to talk to, you know? And every Saturday morning when she gets home from her vigil at the church, she comes over and we have coffee.” She gave a little shrug. “If she’s not going to be home, she calls me and lets me know. Friday she wasn’t here—and neither was her car, and she didn’t call me. She didn’t come by yesterday morning for coffee, and I haven’t seen her car at all.” She turned back to Jonny. “I was going to call you today, but I knew you had a fight last night…” Her voice trailed off as she focused her big eyes on me again. “So, you think something’s happened to her?” Her hand went to her throat gracefully, like she’d practiced the gesture.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out, ma’am,” I replied. “Do you know if Mrs. O’Neill was seeing anyone?”

“I already told you she wasn’t,” Jonny said, his tone low and angry. His hands clenched into fists, and veins bulged in his forearms. “Heather was talking out her ass, I told you.”

Lois placed a hand on his wrist. “Jonny, your mother is seeing someone. She just didn’t told you—well, because you don’t always take it well.” She gave him a faint smile. “She’s worried you wouldn’t like it.”

Your ma ain’t so pure
,
I heard Heather’s nasal voice echo in my head. “Who was he, Ms. Armstrong?”

“Call me Lois, please.” She ran her hands through her thick curls. Her ringlets sprang back as soon as her hands passed through. She shook her head. “I only met him once, but she talks about him all the time.” Jonny made a noise, and she put her hand back on his arm. “Jonny, your mother has been a widow for a long time. Don’t you think she has a right to be happy?” When he didn’t answer, she turned back to me with a gentle smile, as though saying
boys don’t like to think their mothers have needs, do they?
“His name is Barney Hogan…”

“Mr. Hogan?”
The words burst out of Jonny in an explosion, and his face darkened.

“You know him?” I asked.

Jonny scowled. “Yeah, he’s been around as long as I remember. He was a friend of my dad’s.” He rubbed his eyes. “He’s been married a few times, but his last wife died a few years back, and he owns a bar down on Tchoupitoulas Street. He goes to St. Anselm’s, too, and I know he was involved in the Save Our Churches thing.”

“They often keep vigil together. I thought it was, you know, sweet.” She sighed. “They mostly just hold hands and talk, is what Mona told me. I think they’re both more lonely than anything else, you know?”

“So, you don’t think she could be staying with him?”

“No, that’s not like Mona, not at all. Mona would never just go off and stay over somewhere and not let any of us know. She isn’t like that at all. Besides, I stopped by the bar last night, just to see if Barney’d heard from her—he said he hadn’t.”

“And you think he was telling the truth? She’s not staying with him?”

“I can’t imagine why he’d lie. Besides, like I said, Mona’d never do that without telling someone—if not me, than she certainly would have told Jonny. She isn’t impulsive—she’s very responsible.” She shook her head, the ringlets flying. “I’ve called her cell a few times and it goes straight to voicemail. And she’d definitely not want Jonny to worry—especially with Heather so close to her time, you know.” Her lips tightened into a narrow line. “She’s really excited about the baby.”

“Can you tell me the name of Barney’s bar?”

Her eyes rolled up as she thought about it for a moment. “The Wharf, I think. I don’t know—it’s something like that. It’s down there on Tchoupitoulas, near the Rouse’s and Tipitina’s at Napoleon. You can’t really miss it, you know.” She raised her shoulders again in a little shrug. “I’m not really a bar person, that’s the only time I’ve been down there…bars aren’t really my scene. But they aren’t Mona’s, either. She only goes in there to see Barney.”

I made a note of the bar’s name and location. “I’ll check it out.”

Lois gave me a sad smile. “There was something bothering her last week—she seemed really worried about something, but I don’t know what it was…I figured she’d tell me when she was ready.” She sighed. “I suppose I should have pushed her to confide in me, but I figured it wasn’t really my place…I didn’t know, you know—” She shook her head. “You just never know when something’s going to turn out to be important later, you know? You just never know…”

“I wish,” Police Detective Venus Casanova said, sitting down across the table from me, “that I could arrest people for being assholes.”

I smothered a grin as she scowled at a young woman in her early twenties who was still messing around at the condiment bar. Completely oblivious to the dirty looks she was getting from one of New Orleans’ finest, she kept yakking loudly on her cell phone while adding more things to her coffee. She’d already added both vanilla and cinnamon flavoring powder. Still talking loudly and gesticulating with one hand, she added cream and a packet of sweetener and started stirring it all with a spoon, completely disregarding the sign requesting patrons use the wooden stir sticks provided rather than the silverware. Finally finished turning her coffee into some bizarre hybrid of clashing flavors, she carried the cup past us to a table at the opposite side of the coffee shop, the phone still apparently surgically attached to the side of her face.

“If we could do that, we’d never have time to investigate serious crime,” said her partner, Blaine Tujague, with a slight laugh. He winked at me. “There’re just too many assholes around these days.”

I’d asked them to meet me at Mojo’s, my favorite coffee shop. It sat on the corner of Magazine and Race streets, a mere couple of blocks from my apartment. The place was empty, other than the young woman who’d annoyed Venus, and a group of gutter-punk-looking kids in their early twenties. Wearing filthy clothes, their faces covered with tattoos and piercings, they were clustered around a table a few yards away from us. Every so often they would burst into raucous laughter. The young woman with multicolored hair working behind the counter was now reading
Gambit Weekly
,
the city’s local alternative newspaper.

Blaine and I had been rookie cops together on the NOPD before I got tired of the politics and the rest of the bullshit that went along with being a cop and quit to start my own investigation agency. Venus and I had butted heads a few times over the years—she didn’t appreciate a private eye sticking his nose into her investigations. She’d even threatened to arrest me once. Once Blaine became her partner, we started getting along better, moving from dislike to grudging respect and finally, after the levee failure, to friends.

Venus was a tall woman, an inch or so over six feet without shoes—and she always wore heels to add a few more inches to her impressive height. She was lean and muscular, with long legs—she’d put herself through college on a basketball scholarship and had kept herself in shape with regular workouts at the gym in the years since she’d gotten her degree. Her skin was smooth and she kept her hair cropped close to her scalp. I had no idea how old she was—I knew she had two married daughters in their twenties, so she had to be at the very least in her mid-forties, but she was one of those women who simply seemed ageless. She’d been divorced for years—her husband was long gone by the time I joined the force. A lot of the men on the force thought she was a lesbian—I’d wondered myself—but that was just typical straight male misogynist bullshit.