Cold Blood

by Lynda La Plante

  ‘I’ve brought all your cases down, Mr Caley.’

  Lorraine frowned. He waited until Mssy had gone and then said quietly that he was moving back into the hotel. ‘Can I call you?’

  Lorraine went up to him and kissed him. He slipped his arms around her and they were embracing when Elizabeth Caley appeared in the doorway. Lorraine caught sight of her watching them and quickly broke away.

  ‘Shit!’

  He now saw Elizabeth hurrying back up the stairs. ‘It’s all right, I’m leaving her, it’s true. I’ve had enough, I am leaving for good. Come on, I’ll walk you to your car. You going back to your hotel?’

  ‘You’re leaving her?’

  ‘Yes, I should have done it years ago.’

  Robert kissed Lorraine again as she got into the car. ‘Maybe have dinner tonight?’

  ‘Yes, I’d like that.’

  She smiled up at him, wanting him to kiss her again, and he touched her cheek. ‘Elizabeth said something about a photograph, you showed her a photo of Anna Louise. Did you?’

  ‘Yes, it was taken at a night club.’

  ‘Do you have it with you? Is it something I should see?’

  She hesitated. She had it with her but decided against showing it to him now. ‘I’ll talk about it with you tonight.’

  He kissed her again and shut the car door, watching her smiling and waving to him as François drove off.

  François flicked a look at Lorraine from the driving mirror, and smiled. ‘Well, they certainly let you over the mat!’

  She laughed, a big, loud bellow. He was getting to like this lady a whole lot.

  ‘Back to the St Marie?’

  She leaned back on the seat and closed her eyes. ‘No. Tilda Brown’s.’

  She felt guilty about feeling so good and couldn’t help smiling. Robert Caley was no longer a suspect and he would also be free if he left Elizabeth. And she looked forward to spending another night with him. Lorraine drained the last of the vodka and Coke, reassuring herself constantly that she was in control: the craving had stopped – she didn’t crave the drink, she was just slaking a normal thirst. Everything was under control.

  Elizabeth Caley watched the car drive out from behind the old lace curtains of her bedroom. She didn’t know how she was going to deal with everything and she needed Juda badly. It was all falling apart, and the pills in the drawer drew her like a magnet.

  Lorraine sat forward, chewing her lip, flicking through her note-book to her early jottings. They had all said it, how odd it was that Anna Louise actually ordered that dress, the one she saw in Vogue and then had been so determined to get. She had called from the plane to ask Phyllis to get it for her. So maybe she had not repacked anything at all after her conversation with Elizabeth, but put the Polar bear inside her bag. Lorraine knew she was making erratic assumptions and wild guesses, but maybe all the fuss about getting the dress sent out had a reason, because everyone had been in a good mood when they got to the hotel the night Anna Louise went missing.

  Lorraine was so intent on working everything out to a rational conclusion that she did exactly what she had agreed not to do: she forgot to call in to check with Rosie and Rooney and inform them she had left the Caleys and was now on her way to Tilda Brown’s home. Something else she had no intention of telling them was that she asked François to stop at a liquor store, where she bought herself a six-pack of Coke and another bottle of vodka. It was all right, she told herself, nobody would know, and as long as she kept doing the top-ups in the can, no one could even suspect. It helped too, it helped a lot to forget Nick Bartello’s voice, his smile, made it all go away. Most of all, it made her feel certain she was in control.

  CHAPTER 15

  AT FIRST Mrs Dubois refused to let Lorraine into the house; preparations were being made for Tilda’s funeral, so it was hardly a suitable time for either of her parents to speak with Lorraine.

  ‘I just need to go into Tilda’s bedroom. Please, Mrs Dubois, it is important, or I would not intrude at this very sad time. I think when I was last here I left my key, it may have fallen from my purse. It’ll take no more than two minutes.’

  Mrs Dubois agreed and asked the maid to show Lorraine upstairs.

  The maid remained by the door as Lorraine started to search the room, itching to get to the bed and to the white Polar bear, still left on Tilda’s pillow. When Mrs Dubois called for the maid to help her with something below, leaving Lorraine alone, she picked up the bear immediately. It was too light, and she knew there was nothing inside, but she found the hidden zipper and checked just in case. She was disappointed, not even bothering to pretend she had been looking for a key when the maid returned, tapping on the open door.

  ‘Thank you, no luck!’ she said, walking towards the hovering maid; the girl seemed nervous. ‘How did you get along with Miss Tilda?’ she asked.

  ‘Fine, ma’am, just fine, but she kept to herself. I just used to clean her room, press her clothes. She didn’t act up or nothin’, not like she used to. I been asked to show you out as Mrs Dubois is busy.’

  ‘How do you mean, not like she used to?’ Lorraine asked, still very casual and friendly.

  ‘Well, the maid before me was fired, they didn’t get along, an’ I was told by Mrs Brown that I was not to interfere with Miss Tilda’s personal things. She didn’t like me even tidying up her room, but then she was real neat and tidy.’

  ‘When was she fired, the maid before you?’

  ‘Oh, last year, I only worked here since then.’

  Lorraine kept on smiling. ‘What date would that be?’

  The maid really was eager for Lorraine to leave, looking down the stairwell to the hall below. ‘Well, I was interviewed mid-February, ’cos Ruby had already left.’

  ‘Ruby?’ Lorraine followed her down the wide staircase.

  ‘Yes, miss, the previous maid here was a girl called Ruby Corbello, she got a job in a hair salon after.’

  ‘Thank you very much.’

  One minute depressed, the next Lorraine was buzzing again, and to the maid’s relief hurried out without even asking to speak to Mrs Dubois.

  Lorraine sat in her car thinking it was too much of a coincidence, then she sighed. Maybe it was the lead she needed. She checked her watch and told François to take her back to the hotel, realizing how late it had got and remembering her own instructions that they should all keep in touch.

  Rosie and Rooney sat at the garden table in the courtyard of the St Marie with their cups of frothing café au lait.

  ‘I dunno, she tells us to call in, and then she goes her own way. I mean, where is she now? Mrs Caley said she left over an hour and a half ago,’ Rosie said, irritated.

  Rooney looked at his watch and said nothing. He’d done what Lorraine had asked, checked at the cop shop, but there had been no gris-gris necklace on Nick’s body or listed along with the rest of his personal possessions.

  ‘Maybe he didn’t have it on,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The necklace.’

  ‘As far as I can remember, he was wearing it when we last saw him, he kind of liked it. I miss him, Bill.’

  ‘Yeah, me too, he was a good guy.’

  They sipped their coffee in silence, then Rosie took out her note-pad.

  ‘What we going to do about Edith Corbello? It’s a shame to waste time. I got her address but her phone number’s not listed, so we’ll just have to turn up.’

  Rooney pushed his coffee aside. ‘You’re right, I’ll leave my notes under Lorraine’s door and we’ll go see this Mrs Corbello. Might as well be doing something!’

  Lorraine found the torn pages from Rooney’s note-book under her door. She sat on the bed, reading the scrawled writing. No necklace was found on Nick Bartello’s body. There was also a brief outline reiterating what the cops had said about Fryer Jones and his alibis. In brackets he added that Fryer Jones was married to Juda Salina. Coincidences! Lorraine underlined Raoul’s name, remembering him from LA.
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  What Rooney had not mentioned was the fact that he and Rosie were going to see Edith Corbello. He had been going to, but Rosie suggested they just go ahead and see what they could come up with and tell Lorraine later. Lorraine waited around for a while, got a sandwich and Coke and sat outside in the garden. She checked over her notes, wondering what she should do next, deciding not to follow the Ruby Corbello lead until she had talked to Fryer Jones.

  François was a little apprehensive about taking Lorraine to Fryer Jones’s bar. He watched her in the driving mirror, drinking the Coke and topping it up with vodka, but she didn’t seem in any way intoxicated.

  ‘I’m not a tourist, François. But you wait right outside and if I’m not out in half an hour, you come in and get me! So just take me there!’

  ‘Okey dokey, we’re on our way.’

  The cab drew up outside the tiny dilapidated house in the old Irish Channel.

  ‘You sure you want this address?’ the cabbie asked.

  ‘Yep, but if you wait you got a return fare,’ Rooney said, passing over the money and an extra ten-dollar bill.

  ‘Sure, be right out here for you, sir.’

  Rooney and Rosie looked at the battered front door, its glass panel broken and blocked out with a piece of board. The top four panes of a French door had also been broken at some time and replaced with an almost opaque frosted glass, so that it was impossible to see into the house. Rooney took a few steps down the alleyway between the house and its neighbour and saw a broken fence enclosing a yard out back with old wrecked cars and a string hammock strung between two leafless trees. Bits and pieces of rusted car engines were scattered amongst ripped tyres, inner tubes and bags of bursting garbage.

  ‘If we got the right address, you leave the talkin’ to me,’ Rooney said, hitching up his pants.

  ‘You said that three times already,’ Rosie said petulantly.

  ‘Fine, then make sure you do, no interruptions.’

  The door-bell didn’t work: Rooney banged on the front door and it creaked open.

  They stood on the porch and waited before knocking again, peering into the dingy hallway.

  ‘Yeah, what you want?’ Sugar May called out from the kitchen.

  ‘Mrs Edith Corbello?’

  ‘She’s busy right now, you got an appointment?’

  Rooney looked at Rosie and said quietly, ‘Okay, now we do as I said, see what we can come up with.’ Rosie nodded as Rooney looked towards Sugar May, smiling broadly. ‘Hi, there. We came on spec, recommended by Fryer Jones,’ he said.

  Sugar May wrinkled her nose, strolling down the dark, dirty hallway. ‘She don’t like being interrupted, best wait see what she says.’

  Sugar May pointed to a room off the hall and disappeared back into the kitchen.

  Rooney and Rosie sat on a sagging sofa whose broken springs bulged beneath them. The carpet was threadbare, cigarette butts ground into the pile, and there were beer stains on every available surface. The doorway had an old beaded curtain tied up.

  ‘What a dump,’ Rosie said quietly, then turned as a high-pitched scream from the room down the hall made her sit bolt upright.

  In the room was a table covered with a cloth, a mirror propped up behind it reflecting a figurine of the Virgin and a picture of Marie Laveau on the wall behind. Incense and three blue candles smoked in front of the statue, surrounded by saucers of rain-water, a dish of bread and apples and others of special grasses and oil.

  Edith had made the young girl lie on a cot-bed while she bathed her head with an infusion of herbs: now she pressed down on the girl’s temples with both hands, her eyes shut tight, chanting to invoke the spirits’ healing powers.

  The girl’s head wobbled at the pressure of Edith’s strong hands pressing down hard on it. It felt like her neck was going to break, and it was worse pain than any of the blinding headaches she’d been having every month.

  ‘Oh my, we got tension in here. We got such tension. Sit up now, girl, and put your head forward so I can feel your neck.’

  The young girl moaned, and Edith closed her eyes, rubbing and kneading the vertebrae down the girl’s neck until she felt a click. She twisted the girl’s head quickly and there were two more loud clicks. Edith smiled.

  ‘Yes, that got it, you feelin’ easy now, honey?’

  Rosie looked at Rooney as the moans stopped and a soft laugh could be heard, but he was immersed in an old magazine.

  ‘Listen to this. Voodoo came with the slaves from West Africa in the sixteenth century and in New Orleans the name of Marie Laveau is legendary. She is said to have been the daughter of a wealthy planter and a quadroon girl. She was part Indian, and she married a Jacques Paris, who mysteriously disappeared after the marriage, when she began calling herself Widow Paris. Holy shit! Marie Laveau had fifteen children and she lived in St Anne’s Street between North Rampart and Burgundy Street. She is said to have eliminated all other queens by her powers of the gris-gris, literally voodooing them all to death. And today the doctors of respectable medical schools have consulted voodoo doctors for treatment of paranoid schizophrenics.’

  Rooney was about to continue reading from the magazine when the door farther down the hall opened, and although they couldn’t see who was coming out, they heard the deep throaty voice of Edith Corbello.

  ‘Don’t you worry yourself about payin’. Get well, and get employment, and then you come back and see me, Tulla.’

  Sugar May yelled from the kitchen. ‘Hey, Mama! You got clients in the front room, you hear me, Mama?’

  Edith Corbello walked in to see Rosie and Rooney, and whatever they were expecting didn’t quite add up to the large, stout woman in an apron and old slippers, frizzy greying hair surrounding a big, round, sweating face.

  ‘Yes?’

  Rooney stood up. ‘I am Bill Rooney and this is my friend Rosie.’

  Edith sighed. ‘Mmm, what you be wanting?’

  ‘Can we talk to you? You are Edith Corbello?’

  ‘Sure I am, but I don’t see strangers. Who sent you to me?’

  ‘Fryer Jones.’ Rooney said.

  Edith nodded, and walked back to her room. ‘Come on in, but I got an appointment in fifteen minutes.’

  The room was darkened by old drapes drawn across the window, and besides the bed and the altar table, it contained a large old trunk and a row of hard chairs. Even in the dim light, it was noticeably cleaner and more orderly than the rest of the house and there were a variety of masks and pictures on the walls.

  ‘Sit you down, get a chair for yourself,’ Edith said to Rooney. Moving behind the desk, she opened the trunk, took out cards and a stack of leaflets. ‘These my prices.’

  She passed two leaflets which were torn at the edges and the print faint. They listed rituals, consultations and readings that would reveal the future, as well as healing bathing with a long list of oils and herbal remedies for health and vitality. All the treatments offered cost between twenty to fifty dollars. Underlined in red pen were the items that would be extra to the cost of the session – herbs, teas, candles and incense, plus any necessary home visits.

  Rooney opened his wallet and laid out two fifty-dollar notes.

  ‘You want a reading?’ Edith said, indicating the deck of tarot cards.

  Rooney leaned over to Rosie and held her hand. ‘We need advice.’

  ‘You come to the right place.’ Edith stared at Rooney and did not touch the two fifty-dollar notes.

  ‘Well, Mrs Corbello, Rosie and I, this is Rosie . . . we want to get married.’

  Rosie almost fell off her chair, and turned to Rooney with her mouth open. He planted a kiss on her cheek.

  ‘We’re in love,’ he said.

  Rosie remained speechless: Bill needed to have no further worries about her interrupting, as his words had put her in a state of shock.

  ‘Mmm.’ Edith folded her hands over her big belly, looking from one to the other, and smiled, but her eyes remained suspicious and wary. ‘A lot of peo
ple want the same thing, marriage. If you want this lady, and she wants you, where’s your problem?’

  ‘I’m already married.’

  ‘You get a divorce.’

  ‘She won’t give me one.’

  ‘Ah, so you got a troublesome wife?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Mmm, mmm, I been one of them.’ She chuckled.

  Rooney released Rosie’s hand. ‘I have offered her a good settlement and she has refused, point-blank, and she won’t move out of the house, and we got no children. She is just refusing to release me out of spite.’

  ‘That’s sad, children make a house into a living thing, they also wreck it something bad.’ She chuckled again.

  This wasn’t what he had expected. There were no evil spirits or drum-beats, just a big woman who seemed, if anything, amused by him. He was unsure how he should approach what he was working his way round to asking, when Edith leaned towards him.

  ‘You are not impotent, are you?’ Edith said, and started to flick the tarot cards with her big, raw hands.

  ‘No, I am not, most definitely not. But I feel like I am with a wife that won’t give me a divorce. I got to wait, maybe two years or even longer, and then she—’

  ‘How long you married to this other woman?’

  ‘Er, twenty-five years.’

  ‘Long time. An’ she been a good wife?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, she no longer good, huh? Because she is no longer wanted?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. So, what we were thinking about, what we’ve been told is that you might help us?’

  Edith nodded her head, and stifled a yawn, her hand resting on the tarot cards that she only brought out for the types like these that came to her, white tourists.

  Rooney coughed; the room was stiflingly hot and claustrophobic. ‘If this voodoo works, like we’ve been told it does, then we’re here to ask you to do something for us. Voodoo is what we want.’

  ‘Mmm, mmm.’ Edith stared at Rosie and after a moment she asked, ‘Don’t you talk?’

  ‘I agree with Bill, he is speaking for both of us,’ Rosie said sweetly.