Murder in the Rue Chartres (10 page)

Now it was just—well, dead.

Iris Verlaine’s house was on what used to be a quiet side street, and as I pulled up to the curb in front of it, I shook my head. Her house, pre-storm, had probably been worth a minimum of half a million dollars; now it wasn’t worth a dime. It was a big house, probably three or four bedrooms from the size of it, with a driveway leading to a garage behind. There was a dirty fountain in the front yard, with a statue of what looked to be Aquarius in the center of it. It was filled with disgusting brown water with a film on the top of it. I got out the safety kit and made my way to the front walk.

The front door was off its hinges and lying down in the dirty foyer. I wasn’t sure if the house had been looted or not, but the spray-paint symbol showed no pets found, nor corpses. I called out a greeting before stepping over the front door and entering the house. There was no answer, and immediately I was greeted by the smell, a smorgasbord of scent that made my stomach clench. Every drop of coffee I’d consumed that morning came right up in a spray into a dead flowerbed.

I went back out into the yard and took deep breaths, hoping for the nausea to clear. I rinsed my mouth out with a bottle of water and smeared Vicks VapoRub over my nostrils—it made my eyes water, but I couldn’t smell anything else. I then placed one of the surgical masks over my nose and mouth and slipped rubber gloves onto my hands. I went back to the front of the house, but paused. Instead, I decided to go look in the garage windows—and sure enough, there was her car, covered in grime.

Hell, no, it hadn’t been a burglary. Surely, someone inside the house would have heard her pull into the driveway.

I headed back to the front door, and stepped into the wreckage of Iris Verlaine’s home. As I walked across the mucky foyer tiles, my shoes stuck to them and some of them even pulled free from the floor. I looked down at the muck on my shoes and realized I was going to have to throw them away—I didn’t even want to get back into the car with them on. The carpet was black and squished under my feet. The floodwaters had tossed her furniture around like toys. The sofa was on its side, coated in grime. A recliner rested on top of it somehow. Tables and other chairs and bric-a-brac were thrown about as if there had been an earthquake. The walls themselves were coated with grime. I could see the mold and mildew streaking on the ceiling and through some of the grime on the walls. Beyond the living room, in the kitchen, I could see the refrigerator lying on its side, the door open, flies and coffin fleas buzzing around. Paintings and photographs were scattered all over the floor, their glass coverings cracked; the images beneath the broken glass no longer recognizable through the mildew and the filth. The sideboard, which she must have used as her bar, was tilted on its side, its doors hanging open, and I could see the grimy liquor bottles the killer hadn’t touched. Some of them were broken; undoubtedly that was a part of the overpowering smell.

I found the curved staircase and squished my way up. About halfway to the second floor, the carpet was dry; the water hadn’t gotten that high, and although the wall along the staircase was covered with black mold all the way to the ceiling, I could see that the hallway walls of the second floor were completely clear. As I kept walking up, the contrast was startling. By the time I reached the second floor, it was as though I had entered a completely different world. On the second floor, everything was fine, the way it had been before August 29th. The walls were painted in soothing pastels; the carpet was the expensive-looking beige shag style that I’d noted in the crime scene photos, and black-and-white photographs lined the hallways. There was a room with a washer and dryer just across from the staircase, and when I looked in, everything was in its place: cleaning materials lined up neatly on their shelf, a box of Tide powder next to a bottle of Downy and one of bleach, next to them an open box of dryer sheets. I opened the dryer door, and there was a pair of women’s jeans and a couple of T-shirts sitting in there, a crumpled dryer sheet on top of them. She’d probably thrown them in the dryer that morning before she left for work, and they’d been sitting there ever since.

The upstairs was frozen in time, like Miss Havisham’s wedding banquet. The wall clock was stopped at 3:37, which was probably when the power had gone out in Lakeview that morning as the storm started moving in. I took a deep breath and headed for one of the bedroom doorways.

Iris Verlaine’s house had only two bedroom suites, one at each end of the hallway. One was obviously a guest room; it was devoid of any signs that anyone had ever lived there. The bed was made and the closet was empty, other than some plastic hangers. I opened some of the drawers in the chest opposite the bed, but there was nothing inside any of them. I moved down the hall to the other bedroom suite, and sure enough, it was where she’d spent the last few moments of her life. There was a dark brownish stain on the rug and the chalk outline of where her body had fallen with the bullet. On her dresser were framed photographs—I recognized Joshua and assumed the man on her other side was Darrin, the other brother. There was a photograph of a severe-looking older woman who must have been her mother, and a studio photograph of a really old man who could only be her grandfather. I opened the closet doors and was struck in the face with the smell of mildew. All the ruined clothes looked expensive, though. I closed it back and walked over to her desk. There was still fingerprint dust all over. I started opening drawers and going through everything but found nothing—it looked to be primarily her bills and her bank statements. Iris was organized; every credit card had its own file folder, where she stored the bills by date; on each one was written in red ink the date she paid the bill, the amount she’d paid, and the check number. In every instance, she paid her credit cards on a monthly basis in full. She’d had American Express, several different versions of Visa and MasterCard, Discover, Shell, Amoco and Exxon, and every department store credit card you could think of. There were file folders for her bank statements, investment accounts, you name it—I leafed through them, not sure what I was looking for.

There was nothing that would be of interest to me, as far as I could tell. I got a plastic garbage bag out of her bathroom and began filling it with her records so I could go through them more thoroughly later. You never know what you might find in someone’s financial records. It’s boring work, but it has to be done.

But in the center drawer of the desk, the one that held her stationary and her pens, there was an unlabeled file folder. Venus and Blaine had left it behind, no doubt, because there was no reason for them to take it—her briefcase and purse had gone with them—but I opened it. The only thing inside it was an 8-by-10 black-and-white photograph of a handsome man and an incredibly beautiful woman. It looked as though it had been taken at a party; the hairstyles were years out of date. It had to be from the 1970s, given his feathered and layered hair and the size of the lapels on his tuxedo. She, too, had what we in New Orleans tend to now call “big Texas hair”—lacquered to within an inch of its life and teased and gigantic, and her makeup was thickly applied. Her cleavage was also prominently on display in her low-cut dress—and it was rather impressive. Her skin looked creamy and smooth, and her eyes were almond-shaped and cat-like underneath the thick mascara caked on her eyelashes.

“The higher the hair, the closer to God,” I thought with a laugh as I took a closer look.

They were both laughing with an amazingly carefree look on their faces, each holding a drink in their free hands. I could barely make out a place card on the table behind them…I looked closer. REX 1972.

I turned it over.

Written on the back, in Iris’s carefully measured handwriting, were the words,
Dad and Aunt Cathy?

And just below that, underlined twice:
Chartres Street?

My cell phone rang just as I was getting ready to walk out my front door to meet everyone at the Avenue Pub.

I’d smoked a little pot when I’d gotten back from Lakeview. Paige had mentioned that everyone in New Orleans was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, but I’d thought she was exaggerating, as she is prone to do from time to time. Now that I’d somehow managed to shake off the numbness and depression, I thought I was on top of the world. But on the way home, it had come over me without warning. Maybe it was the enormity of the wreckage I’d seen out there—I vaguely remembered starting to feel a little overwhelmed on my way out there—but I thought I’d successfully fought that off. I’d also been relatively fine while going through Iris’s house—but on the way back to my neighborhood it hit me with the full force of an almost complete emotional breakdown. It started as I passed under I-10 on Elysian Fields—my hands started to shake on the steering wheel. The harder I gripped it, the worse they shook. Before long, my entire body was trembling and I was having difficulty catching my breath. My eyes began watering, and all I could think was oh my God oh my God oh my God over and over again. My mind began racing, heading down into a deep dark space. It was horrible. I was aware of it and unable to stop it. The car started swerving a bit, and I slowed down to a crawl, and I finally managed to pull over into the deserted parking lot of an abandoned Exxon station. I sat there for a few moments, listening to my heart pound while I tried to focus on breathing normally. I cleared my head and focused on the breathing, closing my eyes. In and out, nice and slow, nice and steady, that’s it, just breathe, in and out, in and out. I don’t know how long I sat there, trying to get a grip on myself, but it eventually started to pass, leaving me breathing hard and still shaking a little, completely drenched in sweat. I managed to get the car back home and once I was safely inside my house I loaded my pipe and took a couple of hits. That seemed to help take the edge off, and I decided it might not be a bad idea to meet Paige and everyone over at the Avenue Pub for a drink or two—or three, or however many felt right.

It was fucking scary as hell.

*

I glanced at the phone and didn’t recognize the number. The caller ID just said NEW ORLEANS. I generally don’t answer numbers that aren’t familiar to me, but I was in a good mood and chances are it was a wrong number, so I answered, “Chanse MacLeod.”

“Please hold,” a woman’s voice said, and for a few seconds I listened to hold music—a horrendous Muzak version of something that sounded vaguely Andrew Lloyd Webberish—and was just about to hang up when a raspy, whispery voice said, “Mr. MacLeod?”

“This is Chanse MacLeod.” Now I was getting annoyed. I’d reached the Prytania corner, and if this call wasn’t over pretty soon, I was going to hang up before entering the Avenue Pub. “Who is this?”

“Percy Verlaine,” the voice replied, sounding like he was having trouble breathing.

I stopped dead in my tracks. Percy Verlaine? Iris’s grandfather? Why the hell was he calling me? “Yes? What can I do for you, Mr. Verlaine?”

“Are you free tomorrow at noon?” he asked, pausing between each word as though forming the words caused him pain.

“Perhaps.”

“Please come to my home for lunch. There are some matters we need to discuss.” And the phone went dead.

Now I was annoyed. First of all, I hadn’t said I was free. Second of all, what on earth did we have to discuss? Unless he had some information about his missing son-in-law. Joshua Verlaine must have told him I was continuing the investigation Iris had started. That kind of worried me a little—if Iris had indeed been killed because she was looking for her father, that didn’t bode well for Joshua. After viewing the remains of the crime scene, I was relatively certain Iris’s death hadn’t been a random burglary. I couldn’t make any sense of why, though—unless, of course, her father hadn’t disappeared but been murdered himself—and what did that note on the back of the picture mean? Chartres Street?

Maybe Percy Verlaine had some answers for me.

I made a mental note to myself to find out if Iris’s fiancé was back in town yet, and I needed to talk to Darrin Verlaine as well.

But as I crossed the street, I saw Blaine and Venus enter the Pub, and I remembered that Percy Verlaine was very rich. I’ve dealt with a lot of rich people in my line of work, and one thing they all have in common is an incredible self-absorption. Of
course
you’re free when they need to see you. They don’t mean anything by it; it’s just what they are used to. Rich people are terribly spoiled, and the privilege that comes with their wealth doesn’t help in that regard. My landlady, Barbara Castlemaine, was like that too—she inherited Crown Oil from her husband. Of course, she was also my biggest client, and I was her security consultant, and Crown Oil not only paid the bills but was going to be my retirement as well, so I was always available when Barbara needed me for anything. And Percy Verlaine owned Verlaine Shipping outright—no stockholders, no board of directors to answer to—so he’d been making people jump when he snapped his fingers his entire life. And curiosity would eventually win out over my irritation. What did he want, and what information would he have to share with me?

*

“Percy Verlaine is a world-class grade-A bastard,” Paige said when I mentioned the phone call. Our burgers had already come—they were out of French fries so we had to make do with small bags of Zapp’s Cajun Crawtator potato chips—when I brought his name up, after listening to their recaps of their days. “He’d sell his mother to make a buck.”

“Maybe, but he donates a lot of money to charity,” Blaine replied. The Tujagues were an old-line New Orleans society family. They weren’t in the same financial league as the Verlaines, but Blaine’s father belonged to both Comus and Rex, and his mother was one of those women who are always raising money for this charity or that charity. “All Mom has to do is call him up and he writes a big check for whatever she wants.”