Crescent City Murder

by Alec Peche

  “That's an interesting story,” Detective Heyer commented. “We have some of that in Louisiana. We have arrests for growing marijuana, but I can't recall any arrest for opium poppies or coca,,,,., leaves. I assumed you were able to note the geographic coordinates of the two samples he took on October second. We could go there first thing in the morning and check the fields out.”

  “Also let's check in with Ms. Fontaine to find out what happened to the sample. Maybe that will tell us something about the case,” suggested Jill.

  Chapter 12

  The detectives let her off at Alicia's house and when she entered she found her home from work.

  “Hey how did your day of sightseeing go?”

  “It was different. I started in the French Quarter at Café Du Monde. Later because I was close by I checked the location where your dead body came from. I spoke with detectives Briggs and Heyer and offered my services for free as long as I'm staying with you. I was just finishing up at the WWII museum when I got the call that they were interested in including me on the case. So then I spent the afternoon in Baton Rouge and then back in an area called Bywater and then the detectives dropped me off at your house. Tonight we're having dinner with my good friend Jo since she's in town for a convention. I think I mentioned she's my financial expert on some of these cases.”

  “Wow, I had a boring day compared to you! I didn't actually have any autopsies today so I finished up with paperwork for prior cases including some test results.”

  “Look at the bright side, it's good news that no one died in a manner in this region that required your services as a forensic pathologist!”

  “There is that! Have you found a motive yet for the murder of Mr. Cheval?”

  “No we have some clues to follow up on and the police have yet to interview the mother of Julian's son, but my bet early on is it has something to do with his work.”

  “His work? What's so dangerous about being an agricultural inspector or whatever his title was I know it was something in agriculture.”

  “Normally that wouldn't be dangerous, but this is a very unique mode of death and someone with an agriculture background would most likely have the knowledge of how to make nutmeg poisonous. I made a call to my old Alma Mater to speak with a professor whose expertise is evergreens and she has a group of students exploring taking the smell and taste out of nutmeg and then testing the resulting chemical composition to see if it's poison. She said it was the most interesting question she had this month if not for a longer period of time.”

  “Wow what an exciting day. I can see why you like your current occupation. You get to follow your curiosity all day long and you come across some interesting stuff doing so.”

  “I do enjoy the investigative side and that was something that we as coroners never get to do, but it feels like a more complete way of serving the dead. Last year I got my private investigators license just to add legitimacy to my work.”

  “You know if someday you need a second forensic pathologist to join your team full time or even on a casual basis as you seem to do with your teammates, please give me a call and I'll see if I can get away from whatever I'm doing here. I think I would be a better coroner for a variety of reasons if I spent more time with you and your cases.”

  “I do the occasional open and shut autopsy. In fact, it's more than occasional. I actually agree with the medical examiner about seventy percent of the time so figure that into your desire to work with me - likely about seventy percent of the cases are exactly what you're doing every day on the job here in New Orleans.”

  “I guess that's a good news, bad news statement. The bad news is not all of your work is exciting, but the good news is there are a lot of good medical examiners out there.”

  "Exactly. The other issue is you have to be very flexible as I've had cases across the United States as well as in Belgium and the United Kingdom. So that's forced me to learn to work with a variety of law enforcement agencies and understand international laws and customs in regards to autopsies.”

  "You mean you got to solve cases internationally? Okay! Now I don't care if some of them are boring autopsies, I'd love to try doing one in a foreign country.”

  Jill just laughed at her statement and said, “Really the job isn't as exotic as it sounds. Now we better go change and get ready to meet one of my teammates for dinner. You'll like her.”

  “Thanks for the offer, and after a boring paperwork day, I'm looking forward to some girl time and adult conversation.”

  Jill's eyes crinkled at the thought of sitting for long periods and offered encouragement, “I remember those horrible days.”

  Jill entered Alicia's spare bedroom and freshened her clothes and makeup and they were back out the door heading for the streetcar stop. She was better at public transportation than Jo, so it made sense for her to head to Jo's hotel then the three of them would walk from there into the French Quarter for dinner. Thirty minutes later, they were seated in a restaurant famous for its courtyard and often live jazz music. Jo was always much more adventurous than Jill in her menu selections, and so they started with grilled alligator as an appetizer while Jo moved on to catfish cooked Creole style, Alicia ordered a Cajun chicken dish, and Jill ordered trout.

  After catching up on each other's lives and families the three women moved on to the case at hand. After dinner they planned to move on to a few different bars to try unique New Orleans alcoholic concoctions. Jill and Jo brought tablet computers so they could research and drink at the same time. Alicia was wide-eyed watching them conduct their investigation.

  The first bar they tried was close to the restaurant and Jill went through the classic hurricane drink. It was green and sweet with the alcohol well hidden.

  “This sort of reminds me of our case in Scotland where much of our research occurred while we were all trying to like scotch whiskey,” Jo said. “We solved the case, but only Angela learned to like that spirit. But as spirits go, I must say I like rum-based drinks more, though to be fair to Scotland, here we're not drinking the spirit straight up.”

  “I think I still would've disliked the scotch if we mixed it with whatever fruit punch is in this hurricane. Still we did try pretty hard to like scotch. Between the visits to the distilleries and the varieties we tasted in that country, I guess we tried ten different scotch whiskeys before we gave it up.”

  Alicia added, “Bourbon is popular in the South and so I did like you ladies and seriously chased it for a few months trying to find a distillery I liked, but it was a lost cause.”

  Finished with reminiscing about their time in distilleries they moved on to Jill's case in New Orleans. She brought Jo up to speed on the findings from today's interview.

  “The only place I've ever seen monster trucks is at a rally in Green Bay. They made a lot of noise as they crawled over smashed up vehicles like they were toy cars. I have to say that the first three or four passes by the trucks were interesting and then it was boring.”

  Jill described her encounter with the monster truck while on vacation in Hawaii.

  “Trust you to find evil lurking even in paradise. So you think this might be related to illicit marijuana growing? Doesn't that seem a little extreme; to murder someone who didn't even discover your illegal crop?”

  “Of course, but then I always think murder is an extreme reaction yet it happens all the time.”

  “True so what do you want me to research?” Jo asked.

  “Well the victim, his mother, and the mother of his son, but I think that will be quick and you'll find nothing unusual there,” Jill said passing a piece of paper to Jo with the names and birth dates of the individuals.

  “Okay, what else?” Jo asked as she got to work on her three names.

  “I don't have names yet, just geographical coordinates, so I need to spend some time doing research on properties to give you additional names.”

  Soon there was the sound of ambient noise of the bar and Jo's clicks of the keyboard's keys. She
'd always been a hard hitting typist and you could hear her typing from another room. Alicia couldn't contribute and so instead watched what they did to investigate someone.

  Fifteen minutes later, Jo sat back and said, “You're right there's nothing there other than the evidence of the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. I can see the transfer of assets as people died during that storm, the gap in employment, the housing repairs, and the ongoing recovery. There's nothing unusual or unexpected financially in their backgrounds. Should we move on to a new bar before our next round of research?”

  “Yeah, I'm ready for a new drink and I need your help sorting through corporations. Let's head for the carousel bar which is supposed to make us feel like we are on a carousel.”

  “Ladies, I'm going to have to leave you here as I have to get up early for a meeting tomorrow. It was a pleasure meeting you Jo,” Alicia said and she parted for the streetcar stop.

  Two blocks later Jill and Jo turned into the hotel containing the unusual bar and took a seat at the bar. The bar and bar stools rotated around a core area where the bartenders worked. They made a complete revolution every twelve minutes.

  “This is unique and I'm glad it's not revolving faster or I might be tossing my drinks,” Jill said.

  “Yeah you do get sick to your stomach easily, but this is so slow that you'll be okay. Okay, what help do you need with corporations?”

  Jill had explained about the victim's encounter with the monster truck and the plant samples.

  “So I have the geographic coordinates of the farm, but really, it could be any of nearly a dozen farms close by. Some are easy to figure out the owners and others seem to be corporations. Here are three corporations; can you figure out who the real owner is behind the name?”

  “I'll try. Some of these corporations are set up offshore and they're not required to have the same reporting that corporations have in the United States so I may not actually figure out who owns these properties.”

  “I can imagine that your average soybean farmer couldn't afford an attorney to set up a sophisticated corporation to hide their assets offshore. If that's the conclusion you arrive at then I'll have to figure out some other way to get information on the property. I've been experimenting at home with the drone to get an aerial view of my vineyard. I might be able to get that same look at these properties.”

  “Did you bring your drone with you?”

  “No, but I bet Nathan could overnight it to me. Let me call him right now.”

  Jill debated calling him from the bar as it was noisy inside, but she put her earbuds on and dialed his number.

  “Hey love, how is New Orleans?”

  “Fabulous, the food and drinks are awesome and take a look at this bar,” she said moving her phone around the bar so Nathan could see its details. “I'm enjoying this fun bar with Jo and were looking up some information on a farmer, actually a group of farmers between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. If I could get an aerial view of the area it might help me figure out the right piece of property. Would you mind getting my drone from my house and overnighting it to me?”

  “How about if I do you one better. I signed a contract with a distillery in Louisiana. I'm leaving in a few hours from San Francisco and I land in your neck of the woods around nine tomorrow morning.”

  “Yeah! I'm excited you're coming and I'll extend my stay here. I didn't know that you were under consideration for a client here. Congratulations on getting the new client! Maybe Jo will have a chance to have dinner with us one of the nights we're all here.”

  They spoke for a while longer and Nathan gave Jill his hotel name and address so she could move from Alicia's house to the hotel tomorrow. She hoped the New Orleans police would be glad to have her assistance for a while longer.

  Jill said to Jo, “Nathan will be here early tomorrow morning and he's bringing my drone with him so that will allow me to look at the various plots of land from the sky. The silly man never tells me about potential new clients because some of them turn him down. I wouldn't care if he failed to get a contract with a new customer. I know he does great work, and that's all that matters. Did you make any progress on identifying who the owners are on these various land titles?”

  “Gee whiz Jill! I've had the names for all of five minutes that's too little time to make progress on your question,” Jo said and paused as Jill looked at her expectantly, “but I'm good at this and I did get you two of the three names.”

  Jill leaned in to give her a fist bump, “Yeah, I knew you would be fast at this! Do the names tell you anything?”

  “Yes and no. In the brief look at the ownership structure the corporations were created because these are family farmers. I haven't gotten far looking up these families, but two of them date back nearly one-hundred years. I think there are two ways to look at that information - these corporations are too old to have anything hinky going on, or these are old family operated businesses and they have a lot to lose if anything is discovered about them.”

  “Those are good observations,” Jill said looking over at Jo's drink. “Should we head over to a new bar as it appears we finished our drinks here?”

  “The next bar will be my last. I won't function well at the conference tomorrow if I keep imbibing these delightful southern concoctions.”

  “I know what you mean, if I have one drink more I might be drunk flying my drone tomorrow morning and that's a sure way to get into trouble,” Jill said with a laugh. “You have any requests for what our final bar should be?”

  “You know me I'm easy. You've done a good job picking our bars so far this evening, so you pick the final one.”

  “Okay, how about if we go by the Café Du Monde and get some beignets to go and then we'll settle in at an outdoor bar across from the French Market? From there we can walk the riverfront back to your hotel.”

  “Sounds like a plan, but how will you get home?”

  “I took the streetcar to your hotel, but I think I'll take Uber home. When I looked for information on New Orleans, people said they run erratically at night.”

  Jo couldn't recall visiting the Café on a previous visit to New Orleans and the beignets were the perfect dessert that also gave them a boost of energy as they sat at their final bar.

  “What drink should we try here?” Jo asked.

  “How about a Brandy Milk punch. It's supposed to be an iconic drink for this city, and I think it would complement the beignets.”

  They had their first taste of the drink and both thought it was delicious.

  “I think if I lived here I would be thirty pounds heavier from drinking and eating. I think it must take some acclimating to run in this high humidity. I know that I start sweating profusely every time I step out in the heat of the day and it isn't even summer here.”

  “Yeah, when I stepped out of the airport this afternoon, it was a stark contrast to the fall weather back home in Green Bay. It was a crisp forty-five degrees there and that was after it warmed up from a temperature in the thirties overnight.”

  “I can just feel my grapevines dying with those cold temperatures, but it's a nice offset to the nighttime mugginess here. Let's get to work.”

  Soon there was the background noise of the bar and the French Quarter and the sound of the keys clacking under Jo's fingers. Jill was able to eliminate several of the farmers and by the time they were sipping their last swallow of the brandy milk punch, the two women had eliminated all but two farmers as having anything suspicious happening on their land. It was a variety of financial reports, data gathered from the local farmers' association, and other similar sources. Of course any of these farmers could have a personal reason to dispose of Mr. Cheval, but in this first round of investigation, nothing was screaming at her.

  Chapter 13

  Jill was pleased to have no lingering effects from their bar tour the previous morning. She'd packed her bags and Alicia was going to drop her off at Nathan's hotel on her way to work. Jill promised to keep her updated on the investi
gation and to keep her in mind if she ever needed a second pathologist on one of her cases.

  Jill made arrangements to meet with Briggs and Heyer as soon as she dropped her baggage off at the hotel bag check. She wondered what they would think of her drone idea. She would ask them questions to make sure she wasn't violating any airspace rules for the New Orleans airport.

  She arrived at their station about an hour after she left Alicia's. Noting the time and an app on her phone, Nathan's plane was due to land in about ten minutes. The poor man would be tired from the red-eye flight.

  “Do you have the address of the sample where our victim encountered the monster truck,” Briggs asked. “I feel silly calling it the monster truck, but I can't think of anything else to call it as just a truck doesn't fit the what was described by Mr. Cheval.”

  “I do and I don't, and I have a solution,” Jill said leaving the detectives frowning. “I researched the farm he sampled, and the owner of that field led me nowhere – nothing unusual about this farmer. So then I looked at the farms around this field to try and guess where the monster truck might have originated from and I ended up with twelve farms. Again my team member and I researched these twelve and eliminated all but two as having anything suspicious in their background. This doesn't preclude a motive for murder from another source like some kind of domestic dispute. Today, I'd like to hear about the results of the particular sample he took and my partner is arriving at the airport about now from California for business reasons and he's bringing my drone with him. I'd like to put the drone up in the air in the area of the field to see if I can spot the truck from the air. I wanted to check in with you guys as to whether you're aware of any drone regulations in New Orleans?”