Cold Blood

by Lynda La Plante

  Edith hit out again. ‘You saw nobody come in here, girl, you hear me?. You say one word about that business to anyone and I am warning you—’

  Ruby stood her ground. ‘No, Mama, I am warning you because my day is gonna be the best day in my life and nobody will mess it up for me.’

  Ruby ran out of the room and Edith covered her face. She heard the front door slam hard and crossed to the window. There was Ruby striding down the street, arms swinging, still with treatment cream all over her face. It was a terrible morning, like some kind of train running out of control. And there was more to come.

  As she made her way heavily down the narrow staircase, Sugar May passed her with a rolled-up newspaper. She swatted a fly with it.

  ‘If that is today’s paper, Sugar May, don’t you go screwing it up like that before I’ve even cast my eye over it.’

  The young girl chucked the paper at her mother. ‘I’m gonna run away, I’m gonna find Raoul and share in all his millions.’ She stuck out her tongue and her mother used the same paper to hit her across the side of the head. Sugar May just laughed and ran out.

  Halfway down the front page was an article headed ‘Former Debutante Commits Suicide’. Edith sank on to the stairs, her eyes popping out on stalks as she read the detailed article about the suicide of Tilda Brown. She felt as if there was a noose round her throat, getting tighter and tighter, taking the breath out of her body.

  Ruby knelt in front of the high white tomb in the First St Louis Cemetery. On the ground, in front of it she had drawn the ve-ve of Marie Laveau, the swirling hieroglyph that would invoke the spirit of the voodoo queen, and now she drew another cross to add to the hundreds already on the monument, pressed her hand flat against it, and knocked on the tomb. She was so intent in prayer to the dead priestess’s spirit, straining every fibre of her being, that she did not hear Leroy Abie’s soft-footed approach. Her face was still streaked with white cream and for a moment Able thought he was seeing a woman risen from the tomb, and he froze.

  ‘Ruby?’

  She turned round.

  ‘I thought you didn’t believe in all that.’ It had been one of Edith’s great griefs that her elder daughter seemed to have no time for her heritage, sneering at it as a lot of superstitious African rubbish that would keep her in the ghetto when she was going to go to New York and be the new Veronica Webb.

  ‘Well,’ said Ruby gruffly, embarrassed to have been seen. ‘Can’t do no harm, I don’t reckon. Something terrible has happened. Raoul run off with the money for my gown and it’s half-stitched, I only got two more fittings.’

  ‘Come out of sight here, quickly now, the place is full of tourists coming round looking at the graves. Hurry up, get out of sight.’

  Ruby let Leroy draw her away from Marie Laveau’s tomb to a less frequented part of the cemetery where the brick-oven tombs of people too poor to afford a private sepulchre lined the perimeter walls. She took the handkerchief he offered her and sank down to sit on the ground, cleaning her face and stretching her long slender legs out in front of her. She had changed since last time he saw her, and her beautiful, oval face, deep, slanting black eyes and waist-length, wavy hair had begun to look more and more like those of the great queen; she could have been her daughter, or Marie Laveau herself come back to life and youth a second time.

  ‘We’ll find the money, Ruby, everyone will give towards the gown, you don’t have to worry about that. The krewe won’t let you go without. You’re just being a silly girl.’

  She sighed. ‘Maybe, but things are bad at home, Leroy, really bad, and my brothers are all messed up. Even my sister is going to get herself in trouble, she hangs out at that shit bar, they all do.’

  He bent down and stroked her soft hair. ‘But you don’t?’

  ‘No,’ she said softly.

  ‘Because you’re different?’

  ‘You know I’m different. I have more in front of me than that neighbourhood or this whole damn city, least I had till Raoul fucked things up, but there’s nothing I won’t do to get that money and have my day, I even told Mama to call up . . .’

  She bit her lip and turned away. He frowned. ‘Call who?’

  Ruby shook her head. ‘I said too much.’

  ‘No, Ruby, you haven’t said anything at all. Who did you tell your mama to contact?’

  Ruby kept her head down. ‘Mrs Caley.’

  Leroy stood up, towering above her. ‘No, you don’t do that, you hear me? Since her daughter disappeared there’ve been police enquiries, private investigator enquiries, and they’re still going on, you hear me? You stay away from all that. I mean it, Ruby, you don’t ever get involved.’

  She looked up rebelliously. ‘But what about my gown, Leroy? If we don’t pay Alma Dicks she won’t finish it.’

  He drew her to her feet. She seemed so light, so fragile. ‘Your gown will be ready, Ruby, and you will be the most beautiful queen Mardi Gras has ever seen.’

  She smiled. ‘Wanna see something Leroy?’ She began to move her body sinuously. ‘I can do the snake dance, Leroy, like Mama used to do.’ She twisted her hips and rolled her head. She was as lithe, as hypnotic as a serpent, and he wanted to reach out and draw her into his arms, but she danced towards the high tombs and suddenly she had passed between two of them and was gone. It was as if she had never been there. Leroy sighed. He had changed in so many ways since he had come back from LA. It was not just the responsibility of having a wife and two children; he had come back and found his roots, rediscovered himself and his beliefs, but sometimes it was hard to lose that other Leroy that would fuck anything that swayed in front of him in a skirt. And being confronted by beauty such as Ruby Corbello’s was a real test of his faith.

  Nick Bartello’s naked body was in the morgue, his clothes folded into paper bags. They found no identification on him, and as his pockets had been stripped, it was surmised that it had been a mugging, even though he didn’t look like a tourist from the main routes, more like a drifter coming in for the Carnival. There were a lot of Nick Bartellos found and never identified, and they would have left it that way but for a tattoo on his left forearm: a shield, the LAPD badge.

  Leroy Able was back in his office and back in his public persona when he got the call. When the sergeant asked if he’d been contacted by any old buddies, he frowned and leaned his elbows on his desk. ‘Nope, why do you ask?’

  ‘We got a stiff found early this morning, an’ you was in the LAPD, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, why?’

  ‘Well, this guy’s got a tattoo of a shield, no other ID found on him. He’s also got a couple of bullet scars in his right leg.’

  Leroy hesitated. ‘You want me to take a look?’

  ‘Found him up in an alley two blocks from Fryer’s bar, wouldn’t you know!’ The fat officer waddled ahead of Leroy, who came up to his elbow. ‘Throat slit and he’d taken a beating, no witness, no nothing.’

  The sheet was drawn away from Nick’s face and Leroy stared down. He breathed in. ‘Nope, sorry, never set eyes on him. You know these old hippies get tatted up, don’t mean anything too much.’

  Lorraine had time to study every bonbonnière, trinket tray, hand-painted lampshade and china parakeet in Lloyd Dulay’s cavernous drawing room: he had kept her waiting for over an hour, and she was furious when he eventually strode towards her, hand outstretched.

  ‘My apologies, but I was kept waiting at the airport, I was there to meet Elizabeth Caley. Then I had to drive with her to the house and it was hard to get away.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ she said coldly.

  He sat on the scarlet and gold sofa, stretching out his long legs. ‘Even harder when we talked about Anna Louise’s trust fund . . .’

  She stared.’Really?’

  ‘Yes, down by near forty-two million.’

  She coughed. ‘Robert Caley?’

  He made an expansive gesture with his huge hands. ‘Couldn’t be anyone else. He knows I know, and I also pulled out of th
e casino deal, man is nothing but a thief. He didn’t deny it and I wanted to beat the hell out of him. He wanted to do the same to me when I told him I knew about him and Anna. He denied it, swore to me he had never touched her. I don’t know if he was telling me the truth or not.’

  She licked her lips. ‘You think he might also have killed her?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If what you say is true, and Robert Caley has used Anna Louise’s trust fund, do you think he might have anything to do with her disappearance?’

  ‘You didn’t say that at all, Mrs Page.’

  ‘No, well, I’m asking it now.’

  He got up and rubbed at his shock of white hair. ‘He wouldn’t need to kill his daughter to cover it up, she probably wouldn’t find out.’

  ‘If the casino deal went through.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But if it didn’t?’

  He shrugged. ‘I can’t give you an answer because I truthfully don’t know.’

  ‘Could you tell me just how much money Elizabeth Caley is probably worth?’

  He crossed the priceless Bessarabian rug to stand by the windows. ‘She’s always used the best financial advisers to invest her money, I know because I am one of them . . .’ He remained with his back to her. ‘Elizabeth had a very substantial inheritance, so I would estimate her fortune to be somewhere in the region of two hundred million, perhaps more.’

  Lorraine blinked: she had not been in any way prepared to hear a figure like that.

  Dulay turned towards her. ‘You know, Robert also had access to a lot of that, from what I can gather, but he’s a stiff-necked bastard. Wanted to make it on his own. ‘Course, she was always bailing him out.’ He gestured dismissively. ‘I guess Elizabeth will bail him out of this fuck-up he’s got himself into right now.’

  ‘Is that possible?’

  ‘Is what possible?’

  ‘For him to be bailed out, as you say?’

  He looked at her as if she was a stupid child. ‘Well, yes and no. The way the wind’s blowing, he’s not going to get any casino licence, but I guess whoever does will have to negotiate with him for the land. If Elizabeth gives him something just to tide him over, maybe he won’t have to sell at an undervalue because he needs the cash.’

  She was taken aback again and looked away, not wanting him to see her confusion, but he was not looking at her. He was fiddling with a gold chain tucked into his waistcoat. ‘I’m going to tell you something that is highly confidential, Mrs Page, and as such I want you to swear it will not go further than this room.’

  She folded her arms. ‘Well, I can’t really do that, if it has any criminal connection . . .’

  ‘It doesn’t.’

  ‘Then you have my word, Mr Dulay.’

  He sat down heavily again.

  ‘If there was anything going on, it would not exactly be incest.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I said, Mrs Page, it would not be incest. I am referring to what you suggested yesterday, that Caley was having a sexual relationship with Anna Louise.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Anna Louise is not Robert Caley’s daughter. She’s mine, Mrs Page, which is why I was able to find out about the trust fund, because the funds in it were mine too. Anna Louise is my daughter, not Robert Caley’s.’

  ‘Does he know?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Did Anna Louise know?’

  ‘No.’

  She took a deep intake of breath. ‘You confronted Robert about the trust fund, and he admitted it, but you said you were not sure if he was having a sexual relationship with Anna Louise?’

  ‘If you want it word for word, I said that if he was abusing my daughter, I would shoot his head off his shoulders, and he said, and I quote, Mrs Page, that if I was ever to make such a disgusting accusation again, then the head would come off my shoulders!’

  ‘But did you or did you not believe him?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Yes, I suppose I did, because he was very shocked. In fact, he went through a range of emotions I didn’t honestly think he was capable of, but in the end he was just violently angry.’ He leaned forward in his chair, his small, hard eyes bored into her flushed face. ‘Maybe check out all the facts before you throw dirt, Mrs Page.’

  She stood up and snapped back at him. ‘If I had been given them maybe I would not have needed to. I am just trying to do my job, Mr Dulay.’

  He stuffed his hands into his pockets and as she was already walking to the door he followed. Suddenly she stopped.

  ‘Do you have a video of Mrs Caley’s film The Swamp I could see?’

  ‘Good God, whatever do you want that for?’

  ‘Just part of my job, to know everything I possibly can know about my clients.’

  He went to an antique fruitwood cabinet in the corner of the room and slid the doors apart: this was where he kept his video library.

  ‘She won’t be happy about this, it’s a terrible film, cheap, shoddy, but she is wonderful.’ He handed her the video.

  Lorraine put it in her briefcase. She was shaking and angry with herself. She had jumped so quickly to such disgusting conclusions she was ashamed of herself. If she had been unable even to return Robert Caley’s phone calls the previous evening, the thought of facing him now made her cheeks flush with shame, so she pushed it to one side, refusing to dwell on what she would have to do to repair the damage.

  She ordered her driver, the same one as the day before, to take her back to Tilda Brown’s house.

  ‘You know, Bill, I’m getting worried,’ Rosie said as they sat at a sidewalk café near the French market.

  ‘Me too, it stinks. They pick up this bastard, an anonymous tip off says they saw him talking to Anna Louise Caley and—’

  ‘I’m not talking about Fryer Jones,’ Rosie said.

  Rooney looked at his watch. ‘He always was a horny son of a bitch.’ But it sounded hollow even to him.

  ‘Why hasn’t he called in?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’ Rooney snapped and then patted her hand. ‘Sorry, sorry. Look, tell you what, say we give it to one o’clock when Lorraine’s due back at the hotel. If Nick’s not shown, then we’ll start looking for him.’

  ‘Like where? This is a big city.’

  Rooney downed his third café au lait. ‘Start with the cop shop, if they haven’t got him banged up or on a slab . . .’

  ‘What?’

  He wiped the froth from his mouth. ‘Morgue, Rosie, start at the lowest point and work upwards. I know one thing for sure, until that two-bit shit shows up I’m not going near that bar of Fryer Jones, and I hope to God Lorraine doesn’t take off without coming to us first. If you look at the list of so-called eye witnesses that give that trombone player one hell of a tight alibi, half are made up of Juda Salina’s relatives, including Raoul Corbello.’

  ‘I tried to get in touch with Juda, it was engaged for almost an hour then no reply.’

  ‘What about Edith Corbello?’

  Rosie’s cheeks went pink. ‘She’s not in the phone book, I was going to try other ways when you came back.’

  Rooney stood up. ‘Well, let’s go back to the hotel and have another try. Right now, until Lorraine gets back, we got nothing else to do.’

  Mrs Brown’s sister, Helen Dubois, came into the drawing room, a modern interior of metal and glass and bare boards polished to shine as though lacquered, the walls covered in severely tasteful beiges and oatmeals the better to display a collection of fashionable yarn paintings and Primitive art. In this stark setting, the plump, distressed woman looked all too human and out of place. ‘I am afraid neither Mr or Mrs Brown can see you, Mrs Page. They are still very shocked and my sister is under sedation.’

  ‘Yes, I’m so very sorry, please pass on my sincere condolences.’ Lorraine took her time gathering up her purse and her briefcase. ‘The police called me in to give a statement, I was here earlier in the day, I interviewed Tilda.’

&
nbsp; ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘I can’t help but think that maybe it was something I said that may have sparked off . . .’

  ‘We won’t ever know, will we?’ Mrs Dubois said sadly.

  ‘But the police said Tilda left a note.’

  ‘Yes, but it didn’t give any reasons.’

  ‘May I ask what it said?’

  Helen Dubois took out a handkerchief and pressed it to her eyes. ‘Just, “May God forgive . . . Tilda”.’

  They walked towards the front door, Lorraine really taking her time as they passed more Mexican-looking textiles and a jardinière of desert flora in the hallway. ‘Mrs Dubois, do you know why I was here, why I came to see Tilda?’

  ‘Yes, I believe you wanted to question her about Anna Louise Caley.’

  ‘Could I see Tilda’s bedroom?’

  ‘Why?’

  Lorraine hesitated, trying to think of the best way around it. ‘Well, for one, Anna Louise may still be alive, it is a possibility, and she and Tilda were very close friends. After yesterday’s tragedy, I would pray to God that I did not leave any stone unturned in my search for her. At the same time, even though I cannot think of anything, maybe I did inadvertently say something . . . I have a terrible feeling of guilt, Mrs Dubois, and I just think if I could perhaps sit a moment in Tilda’s room, rethink everything we discussed, perhaps I will have more of a clue as to why she did it, and it would give some comfort to her poor parents.’

  Mrs Dubois hesitated, looked up the open-tread wooden staircase. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Is the police cordon still in place?’

  ‘No, no, they took it down about two hours ago.’

  Tilda’s bedroom had a similar feel to Anna Louise Caley’s – large enough to accommodate a turquoise sofa on back-tilted metal legs, a dresser, cheval mirror surrounded by more Mexican-looking embossed metal, and a king-size bed. All but the sofa was white, and the room seemed strangely bare, characterless, but the exigencies of decorator taste had been relaxed to permit a fitted white carpet and a wall of built-in closets on each side of a door which led to a spacious bathroom. The room showed few signs that the occupant had only been in her teens.