G.T. Herren - Paige Tourneur 01 - Fashion Victim

by G. T. Herren

  I found my voice. “The Judge?”

  “I loved him, and he was a wonderful man, my dear, but above all else he was a man.” Her voice twisted into scorn on the last word. She shrugged. “When I was pregnant with Ryan, he strayed. It wasn’t the end of the world. And Marigny was pretty, then— if you like that common streetwalker look, and men always seem to.” She smiled. “She didn’t age well, poor dear. Then, the slutty ones never do. The hard living always shows on their faces in the end— just like their character.” She paused as her maid brought in a coffee service, setting it down on the coffee table. “We’ll pour for ourselves, Manuela. Would you mind closing the door behind you? Thank you, dear.” She poured herself a cup, and as soon as the door was closed, she went on, “I guess she thought I wouldn’t want the Judge’s name sullied in her nasty little book.” She barked out a laugh. “He’s dead. If anything, people would feel sorry for me.” She rolled her eyes theatrically. “Which is what I told her. Why would I give her money so she wouldn’t look like the whore she is? Was, I suppose I should say.”

  My mind was racing in about fifty different directions.

  She took a sip from her coffee. “Take some deep breaths, Paige dear. You look like you’re about to explode.”

  “I, uh, do you think she was using her book to blackmail people?” I finally managed to get the words out. I realized I was avoiding looking at the painting of the Judge— now that I knew about his affair, I couldn’t look at him.

  Which was stupid.

  So I did, and immediately looked back at Athalie.

  “It wouldn’t surprise me in the least,” Athalie replied with a little shrug of her shoulders. “She was like a cat in heat back in the day. We went to McGehee together, you know— she was a few years after me— but even then she had a reputation. She went to Tulane for a year before she took off for Paris, you know— there wasn’t a pair of pants in the French Quarter she didn’t have that last year before she took off. It was really disgraceful. But her father never could control her— he drank, you know, and gambled away most of their money. She came back for his funeral. Her mother died when she was a little girl. I always felt a little sorry for Marigny. It couldn’t have been easy growing up the way she did.” She smiled slightly. “Then she slept with my husband, actually thought he would leave me for her.” She emitted a nasty little laugh. “Like that was going to happen while I was still breathing.”

  The way she said it made me shift uncomfortably in my seat.

  “But I’m sure there are any number of men who had liaisons with her that probably wouldn’t want them coming to light,” she went on with a smile on her face.

  “I don’t think someone would kill her to keep a past indiscretion a secret,” I replied. Maybe twenty years ago, but now? Now, we had a sitting senator who’d paid prostitutes to diaper him and God knows what else, who hadn’t resigned when his indiscretion became public knowledge— and the good people of Louisiana had even reelected him after his prostitution scandal. Bearing that in mind, I couldn’t imagine why ANYONE would pay Marigny Mercereau to be left out of her book— let alone kill her to stop her.

  I suppose she couldn’t be blamed for thinking she might be able to get money out of Athalie Tujague— but she’d miscalculated.

  “You never know what people will do,” Athalie replied, setting her coffee cup down with a smile.

  “You said she was having money problems?”

  “That was no secret. The storm bailed her out. What I heard was she filed some fraudulent insurance claims, and got some money out of FEMA that she shouldn’t have— that kept her going for a while. But the money always runs out for people like Marigny Mercereau— there’s never enough money for them.” She waved her hand again. “She always lied about things, you know. I can remember back at McGehee she used to claim her mother’s family was Eastern European nobility, displaced after the first World War.” Women like Athalie don’t snort, but the sound she made was pretty damned close. “Her mother was from Houma. And after she started that design business? All those airs she put on? About working for Chanel in Paris all those years?” She made that not-snorting sound again. “I checked with Chanel. They’d never heard of her. I don’t know where she was those ten years, but she certainly wasn’t working in Paris.”

  Chapter Five

  My stomach was growling as I left Athalie’s— she had a luncheon, otherwise I was sure she would have invited me to stay for lunch— and so I swung by Frankie and Johnny’s off Tchoupitoulas. I needed some grease, the diet be damned. As I sat there, I looked up Audrey Vidrine, Marigny’s purported best friend, on a search engine— taking a moment to thank the heavens for smart phones. The signal wasn’t very strong, so I had time to order a diet Coke and a shrimp po’boy without mayonnaise before I finally got a page of links with information about Audrey Vidrine— and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t been able to connect a person to the name.

  How many brain cells did that goddamned cheap wine kill, anyway?

  Audrey Vidrine was rather well known as a “character” in the French Quarter. She’d been a reporter for a now-defunct city newspaper, but after the paper closed down she married a much older musician who died within a few years of their wedding. After a long and ugly court battle with his children, the will naming her his sole heir was upheld in court, and she embarked on a long career as a “patroness of the arts”— which I’d heard was really just a cover for other shenanigans. The artists she sponsored were always handsome young men in their twenties. The sexism never ceased to infuriate me. If she were a man and had a lot of beautiful young women protégés, no one would blink an eye other than to cheer him on. She lived on Dumaine Street, between Royal and Chartres. Parking would be horrible— Saturday afternoon in the Quarter? Perish the thought! It would probably be less aggravating to leave my car at home and take a cab. But at least Jackson’s house was on my way to the Quarter. I paid my check and got into my car.

  Jackson lived on Prytania Street, between Dufossat and Soniat, a few blocks past the Prytania Theater heading downtown. The house was rather nondescript, on a slight rise from the street, in the Moroccan stucco style that was briefly popular with contractors in the city between the world wars. His beige Lexus was in the driveway, so I parked in front of the house and walked up the concrete stairs to the small porch. It had been years since I’d been to a party at Jackson’s— the last time had been a horrible dinner party that frankly should have been cancelled. Jackson and his live-in boyfriend had a horrible blow-up sometime that day; by the time the guests started arriving, Jackson was rather nastily drunk and the boyfriend was snorting coke in the kitchen.

  I’d escaped as quickly as I could.

  Was that really the last time I was here? I wondered as I heard footsteps approaching from the other side of the door. The door swung open and I didn’t have time to say anything as Jackson sobbed out my name and swept me into a bearhug, putting his head down on my shoulder and shaking with sobs.

  “Oh, Paige, I can’t believe she’s gone!” he blubbered into my shoulder.

  For want of anything better to do, I started petting his head.

  I’m not proud to admit that I’m terrible in these kinds of situations. Maybe it’s because my mother’s response to anything and everything was “Life’s hard, kid” while pouring herself another glass of whatever liquor was on sale at the Piggly Wiggly that week. It’s not that I don’t have the empathy gene— for God’s sake, Disney movies make me bawl like a baby— but when someone needs comforting I freeze up. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to make someone feel better. I always try to look on the bright side, but when someone’s distraught the last thing in the world they want to hear is “Cheer up! It could be worse!” So I tend to let other people do the comforting and show my support silently. “I’m so sorry,” I finally managed to say, feeling like a complete jackass.

  He gave me another squeeze and let me go, wiping at his swollen and reddened eyes. He
looked a wreck— seriously, Paige, his mother was murdered and he found the fucking body, how do you expect him to look— and his highlighted brown hair was sticking up in every direction. Jackson had always had a stocky build, but his broad shoulders and height helped him pull it off. He was over six feet tall, and his eyes were hazel. Even when he frowned, he looked cheerful— his round face always seemed to give the impression he’d get over whatever was annoying him in short order. He usually was in a good mood— unlike his moody dick of an older brother— and he had a wicked sense of humor. He tended to drink a lot, and he always dressed well— despite the dirty-looking Tulane T-shirt he was currently wearing over a pair of paint-spattered shorts. He blinked at me, his lower lip shaking a bit. “I know, I look a total wreck, don’t I?” He waved me inside. “Come on, come in.” He shut the door behind me and switched on the overhead light. “You want a drink?” He barked out a harsh laugh. “I know I shouldn’t be drinking, but Christ.” He walked over to the wet bar in a corner of the living room and refilled a tall glass with ice, gin, and tonic. He took a long pull and smiled at me.

  “Nothing for me,” I said, moving some magazines out of the wingback chair and sitting down. Jackson clearly hadn’t inherited his taste for décor from his mother. If the big house at Magazine and Nashville looked like “French Quarter whorehouse” on the inside, Jackson’s could have been straight out of a design magazine. Jackson had gotten a degree in Interior Design from Auburn— one of the top design schools in the country— and had actually worked in a top firm in Atlanta after college before coming back to New Orleans and going to work for his mother. I’d always thought I’d have Jackson do my house should I ever break down and buy one.

  He’d once told me that going into his mother’s house caused him physical pain.

  He sat down on the couch and took another slug from his glass. “God, what a fucking day.” His hand was shaking.

  “I heard you found her,” I said carefully, hoping I wasn’t going to send him over the edge again. I really do suck in these situations, but going into professional journalist mode always seemed to help. “I’m so sorry— that must have been awful. I can’t imagine.” It was true; I couldn’t imagine how I would feel to find my mother’s dead body.

  I doubted that I would be as broken up as Jackson.

  “Whatever her faults, she was my mother,” Jackson’s voice broke, and he visibly struggled to pull it back together. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget finding her.” He covered his face in his hands again.

  Get his mind off it, I ordered myself, let him get himself together before you ask about the murder. “I have to say, I was really surprised to see Fidelis Vandiver here last night,” I said, hating myself for grasping at such a short straw.

  Surprisingly enough, it had the desired effect. Jackson looked at me and grinned. “She’s a piece of work, isn’t she?” He laughed. “Smooth operator. She managed to get Mom to give her dresses to wear on the show— convinced Mom that it was great free publicity for her. It was such an obvious con— no one who would watch a show like Grande Dames could afford to buy clothes from the House of Mercereau, but Mom fell for it.” He shook his head. “You’d think an old con artist like Mom would be able to spot another one right off, but Fidelis was good at working her.”

  “You’d mentioned—” I hesitated. “About the interview I was doing…”

  He exhaled. “You mean when I warned you everything she would tell you would be a lie?”

  I nodded. “What did you mean by that, exactly?”

  “Mom was a liar, Paige.” He exhaled. “Always. She told so many lies so often she started believing them herself. She never worked for Chanel in Paris, you know— but she told that lie so many times she really believed it, I think, at the end. That’s why the whole thing about the book— why would she write a memoir?” He bit his lower lip. “She wasn’t very good at picking men— that was her whole story. Well, that and her delusions of grandeur.”

  I licked my upper lip. “Was there anything in the manuscript…” I let my voice trail off; I wasn’t even sure myself how to put it.

  “That would make someone want to kill her?” He raised one of his eyebrows. “Not kill. I didn’t read it— she wouldn’t let anyone else read it— she was saving that for her big launch party.” He made air quotes with his fingers as he said the last three words. “So, who knows what was in there? I thought she should at least have a libel lawyer look it over before she published it.”

  “She had a publisher?”

  “She was going to publish it herself— she told me the details but I didn’t really pay any attention to it.” He waved one of his hands tiredly. “The print book was going to be print on demand, and she was going to sell the ebook through Amazon, I guess. Like anyone would want to read it.” He ran his hand through his hair, smoothing it down finally. “She really thought she was telling a great American success story— you know she also had convinced herself that her grandfather was a Romanov?”

  “A Romanov?” I couldn’t have heard that right. “As in Nicholas and Alexandra Romanovs? Russian royalty?”

  “She even went to St. Petersburg to prove we were royalty. That’s where she was after Katrina— in Russia. Most people went to Houston and Atlanta— my mother went to Russia.”

  “Wow.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “I see by the look on your face that you think she was crazy,” he rolled his eyes and finished his drink. “She was. My great-grandfather was a butcher in St. Petersburg, not the illegitimate son of the Czar who came here to make his fortune in the new world.”

  I was fascinated, in spite of myself. Marigny was quite a character. “Did she find anything?”

  He shook his head. “She doesn’t speak Russian, let alone read it. She paid a translator a small fortune trying to prove her delusions of grandeur, and it was all for nothing.”

  “I’d heard that the business was in some trouble,” I said cautiously.

  “She was never very good with money,” he went on, getting up and walking back over to the wet bar. “You sure you don’t want a drink? No? Okay.” He refilled his glass and sat back down again. “The only time she was ever careful with money is when there wasn’t any— and she always had the craziest financial priorities. She was very much about keeping up appearances— I remember when I was a kid having to eat peanut butter sandwiches for about a month because she’d had to pay her dues for Iris.” Iris was a ladies’ Mardi Gras krewe. “She’d set the house on fire before she’d let anyone know she was broke. But she always managed to somehow land on her feet.” He gave me a sly look. “I mean, you’ve seen the clothes she designed. Yet somehow she always managed to sell enough dresses, or get commissioned to design some, to keep the business and the house going.”

  I diplomatically avoided giving my opinion on his mother’s hideous designs. “You can’t think of anyone who’d want to kill your mother?”

  “Look, I know she was abrasive and people didn’t like her— but like I told the police, you don’t kill someone because you don’t like her. She was infuriating, yes, and she got on people’s nerves— but to kill her? Hardly.” He was starting to slur his words, but took another big drink from the glass.

  “Sweetie, I think you should go lie down,” I said, feeling guilty. Had I been taking advantage of him when he was drinking? “Are your brothers coming in?”

  “Bonaparte’s flying in tomorrow, and Aramis and family are driving over.” He looked at his watch before closing his eyes. They were closed so long I was starting to wonder if he’d passed out when they snapped open. “Yes, I think I’m going to go lie down. Can you let yourself out?”

  “Of course.” I stood up and patted him on the arm. “And of course, you’ll call me if there’s anything I can do?”

  He nodded. I was almost to the door when he called after me. “Paige!”

  My hand on the knob, I turned and looked back into the living room.

  He smiled. �
�If you really want to do a good piece on— on Mother—” his voice broke, but he pulled himself back together, “—the person you should talk to is Isabelle DePew, her assistant.” He picked up his cell phone and played with the screen for a moment. A moment later, my own phone vibrated in my purse. “I just texted you her number.”

  “Thanks.” I opened the door. “You get some rest— and remember, if there’s anything I can do—”

  I closed the door behind me.

  When I got into the car, I checked my phone and touched the screen to add Isabelle DePew’s contact information to my address book. When I did, her smiling face filled the screen— Jackson must have included her photograph.

  Isabelle DePew was the cadaverous woman checking the guest list for the party.

  I started the car and headed for the Quarter.

  Chapter Six

  It took me about twenty minutes of circling a few blocks before I finally found a parking place behind Cabrini Park on Burgundy Street. I sighed as I maneuvered my battered little Toyota into the spot. It was a good seven blocks or so from Audrey Vidrine’s place on Dumaine Street, but at least it was a beautiful spring day rather than one of those smothering hot, humid August days. My cell phone started ringing, but I ignored it. An unusually patient United Cab was waiting for me to finish parking since there wasn’t enough room for him to go around me. Once I was out of his way, I waved to thank him for his patience and glanced at the phone screen. I tossed my keys and the phone into my purse. I can call Ryan back later, I thought and began the long hike down to Dumaine.