Lorraine stayed for another half-hour, carefully taking Tilda back over her entire statement to the police and the reasons why she had never before admitted the truth about her argument with Anna Louise that morning. It boiled down simply to her being afraid it would get out that she, like Anna Louise, used to go clubbing, stoned and drunk. Tilda did not seem to realize the importance of the question of whether Robert Caley’s relationship with his daughter had sexual overtones or not. When pressed by Lorraine for proof, she became agitated and tearful.
‘Was Anna Louise just infatuated or do you believe there was more than a father-daughter relationship, Tilda? Did you ever see them together?’
Tilda refused to look at Lorraine, chewing at her lip. Lorraine patiently told her that if what she had said was true it could be the reason behind Anna Louise’s disappearance, the reason she might have just run away and might still be alive but afraid to return. What Tilda finally came out with made Lorraine feel wretched.
‘She told me they slept together, that he had put her on birth-control pills because he was afraid she would get pregnant.’
By the time Lorraine got back to her driver, she had left Tilda Brown looking like a rag doll: her face was puffy from weeping, her nose red from wiping it, and even her little rosebud lips looked chapped and ugly. Lorraine instinctively believed Tilda’s reasons for not admitting what she and Anna Louise had argued about. She had also been given yet another reason why Robert Caley, even more than before, was their main suspect. Lorraine needed a drink, a real one, and she was scared she’d stop and get one so she ordered the driver to take her on to Lloyd Dulay’s mansion. Her initial shock on being told about Robert Caley and Anna Louise made her whirl through a spiral of emotions. Having slept with Caley the night before made her want not to believe it, but why would Tilda Brown lie? And gradually her feeling of betrayal and foolishness turned to burning anger. Robert Caley most certainly had a motive to get rid of his daughter and she was going to prove it.
Nick swore. He knew he’d got off the streetcar a couple of stops too early, and he studied his own route map, ignoring the neat bundle of street maps and locations Rosie had given him with telephone numbers of restaurants, taxi ranks, etc. He didn’t like carrying around anything more than he needed, or anything that he couldn’t stuff into his back pocket. He was near the new Convention Centre, on Lafayette, looking out for Francis X. Roper’s Investigation Agency. He had an old buddy who used to work for them; it was a long shot and he’d not seen or spoken to Leroy Able for over ten years, but worth a try.
Nick got the brush-off from Roper’s agency, a surprisingly smooth-looking place, when he eventually located it. The receptionist, a red-haired spitfire with green-rimmed glasses, gave him an appraising look that’d have stopped a streetcar dead in its tracks, never mind Nick, and she snapped that she did not know of any Leroy Able – she made even the name sound distasteful. This was a high-class agency dealing with fraud cases and working closely with the police. She seemed to give a lot of weight to the word police.
‘You maybe got a forwarding address?’
‘Check the telephone directory.’
‘You got one?’
She pursed her lips and pushed a big yellow directory across her pristine desk. Nick thumbed through it, taking covert glances around him at all the posters and advertisements the company displayed – missing persons, domestic undercover security work, installation of video cameras, surveillance work. Every case, a poster proclaimed, was the firm’s top priority.
‘You busy?’ he enquired, as he checked down the As.
She was about to reply when the telephone rang, and she snapped the name of the agency into the phone, listening with one eye on Nick and suddenly assuming a sweet voice for the potential client on the other end of the line.
‘Yes, sir, we have a full-time staff of six investigators, all licensed and highly trained, and we have our own camera equipment, which includes a variety of long-range lenses and high-powered binoculars. Our teams also carry hand-held radio communications and mobile telephones. I can make an appointment for you, just one moment please.’ She reached for a large desk diary as Nick jotted down Leroy Abie’s address. Whether he was still in business was something he’d find out.
He thanked the woman in green glasses who appeared not to even notice his departure, and headed for Magazine Street in the warehouse district. When he found Abie’s address, he double checked he was at the right place as the ground floor seemed to be a boxing gymnasium.
Nick went up the stairs into the gym, peering through the double door. ‘Anyone know a Leroy Able?’
‘Top floor,’ came a bellow from a stout boxer well into his fifties, slamming the hell out of a punch-bag.
Leroy was thumbing in leisurely fashion through the Times-Picayune, a cup of coffee from which rose the unmistakable smell of New Orleans chicory in front of him, his feet up on his desk.
‘Hi, Leroy Able around?’ Nick asked.
The paper was slowly lowered. ‘Who wants him?’
‘Old buddy, shit, it’s you, isn’t it? Leroy?’ Leroy slowly took his cowboy boots off the desk and stared hard at Nick. ‘Nick Bartello, LA Drug Squad, last saw you ’bout ten years ago, maybe more.’
‘Oh, yeah? Well, I’ve not got a good memory for faces, what you say your name was?’
‘Shit, man, Nick, Nick Bartello.’
‘Oh, yeah, yeah, recall the name now. Siddown, want a coffee?’
Nick was a little fazed by Leroy, he didn’t show any recognition at all. ‘I went to Francis X. Roper’s place, I reecalled you mentioned working for his agency.’
Leroy handed Nick a paper cup of black coffee and perched on the end of his desk. ‘You know what I hate? People who start talking with a Southern accent ten minutes after they get to New Orleans. What’s this reecall crap, Bartello, you wop?’ Leroy cuffed Nick’s head and gave him a wide grin. ‘You had me wondering there for a second, man, it’s the gris-gris round your fucking neck.’
Nick fingered the leather thong and the bones. ‘I dunno what the shit it is, was given to me last night down some cruddy bar.’
Leroy fingered the bones, raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, you must have got well and truly loaded, this isn’t tourist shit, this is the real McCoy.’
Nick shrugged. ‘So, how’s life?’
Leroy eased back into his swivel-chair. ‘Ah, not bad, making some dough, of late mostly for the dental board, you know, carrying out medicative investigations.’
Nick laughed as Leroy leaned back and let out a big loud bellow, showing his splendid white and gold-capped teeth.
‘Yeah, man, long way from the LA Drug Squad, but at least I don’t have a leg full of lead. And I’m my own boss.’
‘So you do know who I am,’ Nick said, reaching for his coffee.
‘Yep, just was worried for a second I owed you dough. I don’t, do I?’
Nick shook his head, and looked round the office. Leroy’s joke about the dentist wasn’t right on the level. His office was in good repair and looked like the business was coming in.
‘You want a job?’ Leroy asked, seeing Nick’s curious looks.
‘Nope, I’m on one, that’s why I’m in New Orleans.’
‘Oh yeah, and what’s that?’
‘The Anna Louise Caley girl, she disappeared eleven months ago.’
Leroy nodded. ‘Yeah, I know the one, lot of private Is brought in on it, but me? I stayed clear: I stick mainly to salvage myself.’
‘But you must have heard about it?’
‘Sure, like I said, it was pistol-hot at one time, but as far as I know they all came up with zilch. Word was the girl must just have flown the coop – they do down here, you know, especially around Mardi Gras. Kids flock here, get laid, get stoned and move on with some drifter. City draws them like a magnet.’
‘This one’s different, she’s rich as hell.’
Leroy leaned on his elbows. ‘Rich kids, Nick, are just like everybo
dy else. They like to get stoned and laid, preferably with a little dash of danger thrown in, and then it’s back to Mama and Papa who welcome them home with open arms.’
‘But she’s been gone eleven months.’
‘Then I’d say she’s dead.’
Nick got up and paced around the office. ‘Yeah, I think so too. Question is who killed her, and if I find out I get a nice bonus.’
‘Well, I’d like to help, man, but like I said I got this dental case.’
Nick smiled. ‘So what’s putting you off, huh?’
Leroy hesitated, and suddenly became serious. ‘You want it on the level?’
‘Sure I do, I want whatever you’ve got that’d help.’
Leroy ran his hands through his iron-grey curls.
‘Okay, the Caleys and the types you’re dealing with are high-powered money people. Elizabeth Caley is a big star round these parts, so you’d get a lot of people coming forward with bullshit just for the rewards they offered. I think it was twenty-five thousand bucks. I know that to date something like twenty people have said they seen her, and you chase it up and find it’s nothin’ and then . . .’ Leroy rocked in his chair. ‘Money runs out and you find you spent half your fee gettin’ fuck-all results. So for the time being I’m sticking to salvage and dental.’
Nick drained his coffee. ‘What d’you know about an old black jazz player goes by the name of Fryer Jones?’ Leroy stared as Nick flicked the bones at his neck. ‘He gave me these.’
‘Fryer Jones did?’
‘Yep, last night.’
‘He’s famous where he hangs out, round the French Quarter and Ward 9. All the young kids wanna hang out at his bar, play a few sets with him and the old guys – he used to be one mean trombone player. They drift there, score some dope, maybe play a few numbers. He uses kids like most use toilet paper but the cops leave him well alone. If he’s not openly dealing on the main drag, he’s out of their hair, out of the main tourist routes, an’ that’s all this city cares about.’ Leroy rubbed his thumb and finger together to indicate money, then he leaned back. ‘I’d say Fryer must be worth quite an amount by now. No kiddin’, he’s been running that bar for decades, got a string of little girls whoring for him, all in the name of jazz, brother! But if you want my honest opinion, he’s a piece of shit, because it’s not all singing the blues that holds them to that stinking bar . . . it’s what you got round your neck too.’
Nick touched his bones. ‘What?’
Leroy shook his head. ‘You don’t know, do you? Gris-gris is supposed to ward off evil voodoo spells, and old Fryer used to have a few connections in that field. In fact, I think he may even be related to one of the Salina sisters.’
Nick tensed up. ‘Hold it, Salina?’
Leroy nodded. ‘Yeah. One was called Juda, the other . . . er, shit, can’t recall right now, but she married. They were real high priestesses. Word is that . . . shit, I wish I could remember her name, but Juda’s sister has a daughter, Ruby, Ruby Corbello, ’bout eighteen, she works in a hair salon. She does some modelling on the side and some new black krewe that’s getting together for the Carnival has put her up as their queen.’
Nick hitched up his jeans. ‘Wait, wait, you’re going too fast for me, man. There’s a Juda Salina in LA, reads tarot cards, that kind of stuff?’
‘They do a lot more than tarot readin’, Nick. If it’s the Juda that’s related to the Corbello family, she’s almost like royalty in some areas . . . and I don’t mean for the tourists. These are supposed to be the real thing, related to the big voodoo queens they had last century, and they can put the fear of God into people. Like I said, it’s more than booze and drugs gets the kids hanging round those people, and if you got your head screwed on right, you’ll stay well clear of Jones an’ anyone who has anything to do with the Salina sisters. I tell you, you wouldn’t even get me through the door of their place and I wouldn’t go to Fryer’s unless I had a good reason.’
Nick felt uneasy, and his leg was beginning to hurt from all the walking. He rubbed it hard with the flat of his hand. ‘I saved the fucker’s life so maybe he owes me.’
Leroy lit a cigarette, the smoke drifting from his aquiline nose as he looked hard at Nick.
‘Pack up and go home, Bartello, don’t you go getting involved in all this shit. Like I said, you’ll come out with no thin’.’
Nick moved painfully down the stairs, past the gymnasium now full of heavy grunts from kids sparring and thwacking the punch-bag. It was strange, and it always had worked that way, but the more he was warned off something the more it fed his adrenalin. And he didn’t believe in all that voodoo shit anyway.
CHAPTER 12
LORRAINE SAT on a wide and slippery banquette sofa, richly upholstered in vermilion silk damask printed with gold fleurs de lys, while Lloyd Dulay lowered himself into a matching chair opposite. Lloyd had decided to receive Lorraine in the drawing room to impress her with the full splendour of his house: his improvements to this room were limited to covering one wall with floor-to-ceiling mirrors, in which two Hepple-white chairs were reflected as though standing in an airport lounge. Golden scrolls and swags were everywhere visible – the drapes, of course, were a mass of corn-coloured fabric tied back with chocolate-box bows, and ornate gilded plasterwork adorned the fireplace, the huge overmantel mirror and the firescreen which stood in front of two artificial logs on a stand. The central ceiling medallion extended for six feet of plaster wheat-ears, garlands and rosettes, and another splendid chandelier hung like a huge gilded lily beneath. A number of modern abstract paintings were suspended by taffeta ribbon bows from the picture rail and every surface in the room was cluttered with lamps, knick-knacks, bibelots, and bulky arrangements of both dried and fresh flowers. Lorraine hated the place and she was uncomfortable, her mouth dry and the thought of a drink coming persistently to her mind, but she forced it out of her thoughts.
‘You wanted to see me, Mrs Page, on a personal matter?’
‘Yes, Mr Dulay, I did.’
He nodded his mane of white hair and pointedly looked at his watch. ‘Then get to the point, I have people for lunch.’
‘I am investigating the disappearance of Anna Louise Caley.’
‘Are you now? Well, I wish I had a million dollars for every one of the so-called agents I have spoken to. Quite truthfully, I don’t think there is anything I can add that would be of any use at all. I have business dealings with Robert Caley and I have known his lovely wife for more than thirty years, so I have known little Anna since she was knee-high to a grass-hopper.’
She loathed him, his loud voice, his condescending, imperious manner. His vast house made her cringe because it was the very reflection of the man – big, loud and heavy. She felt there should be a family crest over the doorway that read: ‘I have billions of dollars, so fuck you.’
She pushed on. ‘Everyone I have spoken to about Anna Louise says the same thing, that she was naive, shy, beautiful. Tell me what you thought of her.’
He closed his eyes. ‘She was all those things, and affectionate, sweet, with a smile that would break any man’s heart. I loved that little girl, Mrs Page, I loved her.’
‘Did Robert Caley love his daughter?’
For a fraction of a second he was thrown. ‘Why, yes, he was her father.’
Lorraine met the tiny, cold blue eyes. ‘What do you think of Robert Caley?’
Dulay laughed, but she knew he was confused. ‘Why do you ask?’
She held his nasty stare and he was the one to look away. ‘Maybe if he was fucking his own daughter she had reason to disappear!’
The huge man rose out of his seat. ‘If you were a man I’d knock you right through that wall.’
‘But I am not, I am just investigating the disappearance of a young girl, sir.’
He towered above her. ‘Lemme tell you this, Mrs Page. If I thought for one moment that what you have just said could be true, I’d get a gun and shoot the bastard myself.’
‘If you also discovered that Anna Louise was not as sweet or naive as everyone makes out, how would that make you feel?’
‘I don’t follow you, Mrs Page.’
She took out the photograph, slowly, and his eyes narrowed with suspicion.
He scooped it up in one massive hand and held it up to the light, his eyesight, unlike his presence, not so strong. ‘What the hell is this disgusting thing?’
‘A photograph,’ she said sweetly.
‘I know that, woman, but where in God’s name did you get it? Because this isn’t the little girl I knew, this is . . . Dear God, it breaks my heart.’
‘Maybe Robert Caley isn’t the man you know either, so what can you tell me about him?’
He was really shaken. ‘Does Elizabeth know this exists?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Robert?’
‘No.’
He shook his big head, slumping back into his chair. ‘She was as precious to me as my own beloved daughter. Dear God, why did she subject herself to this disgusting show?’
‘Maybe because she was abused, angry, I don’t know. All I am hired to do is find her, dead or alive.’
‘Is she dead?’
Lorraine looked away. ‘I hope not.’
She could hear the clock ticking on the mantel as he continued to stare at the photograph. At one point he withdrew a printed silk handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
‘I know that Anna Louise has a large trust fund.’
His head jerked up, the photograph forgotten.
‘Mr Dulay, I am looking for motives for Anna Louise’s disappearance. And that is why I am asking you about Robert Caley. The trust’s assets amount to one hundred million dollars.’
‘Do they?’ he said softly.
‘I am also aware that right now, with this casino development, Mr Caley is stretched to his financial limits and—’
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