by G. T. Herren
Honestly.
To add tedious insult to boring injury, Abe started calling the ‘grande dames’ up to the stage, introducing them to polite applause from the audience. Each got a hug and a kiss on the cheek from Abe before waving to the audience and standing in a line in the center of the stage. Once they were all up there, he announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, the Grande Dames of New Orleans!” He frowned, clearly disappointed when the polite applause wasn’t as loud and enthusiastic as he expected. “Enjoy the show.”
He and the ladies exited the stage as the lights went down and the network logo appeared on the big screen. I settled back in my seat as some unrecognizable music began and the opening credits started to roll.
Like the other shows, the opening credits introduced each ‘grande dame’ to the viewer, showing her in several shots doing things that are meant, in theory, to give the casual watcher an idea of who they are as people, while she speaks over the film her catch-phrase.
Some of the ones on the other shows were unintentionally funny, like Oline’s from Grande Dames of Palm Beach. Over a shot of her cutting roses in front of the wide veranda of her plantation style home, her voice said simply, “Just because you have money doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the simple things.”
Of course, the fact that she said that while wearing a ten-thousand-dollar designer pantsuit from Chanel and diamonds big enough to choke a Great Dane was an irony completely lost on her.
The first ‘grande dame’ up in these credits was none other than Fidelis Vandiver. First, an image of her wearing a short black cocktail dress appeared, followed by a shot of her sweating in workout attire, and then finally raising a glass of champagne to the camera. Her first name was written across the bottom of the frame in script. Her voiceover said simply, “I like to stay fit so I’m ready to grab all the joy life has to offer me.”
I stifled a giggle, and glanced at Chanse out of the corner of my eyes. He was smirking.
The next up was Rebecca Barron. In the first shot that appeared on the big screen she was in a mid-length white silk dress with deep décolletage. The next shot showed her climbing out of a swimming pool in a barely-there white string bikini, showing off ridiculously large breast implants and a rich, dark tan that meant she would be having a lot of work done on her face in the future. Her voiceover informed us “I have a taste for the finer things, and I deserve them.”
I almost threw up a little bit in my mouth.
I’d met Rebecca when I’d come to her enormous house on the lakeshore to interview her late husband Steve a few years earlier. She was his fourth or fifth wife— I’d never been really sure how many times he’d been married. He was in his late sixties at the time, and I’d been taken rather aback when he walked into the den, where I was sitting. I’d heard about him and seen pictures of him in the paper for years— he owned numerous restaurants around town and had made his fortune by founding a fast food chain specializing in seafood. Steve Barron was one of those people you either loved or hated. I’d always kind of admired him. He spoke his mind and worked hard, although I knew the story about him dropping out of school and working on fishing boats as a teenager was a fairy tale invented by his corporate publicity department. But he did come from nothing, that was true, and by then he was worth millions.
Unfortunately for Steve, he also kept having work done to his face. By the time I met him it barely moved and was a shiny as a mannequin’s. His hair was jet black and slicked back into a ponytail. He worked out every day with weights and jogged, so he was in great shape— as evidenced by the tight black shirt he was wearing that had to be a size too small. He was wearing black pleated slacks, black patent-leather loafers, and a gold medallion hung around his neck on a thick gold chain. A diamond stud glittered in his right ear. Within five minutes my admiration had faded into dislike. By the end of an hour I couldn’t wait to get away from him. He kept hitting on me— even with his latest trophy wife in the room. He treated her like a servant, which is what I suppose he thought a wife was supposed to be. When he died of a massive heart attack, I imagined it was a merciful release for Rebecca— especially since he had cut all of his children out of his will and left his entire fortune to her.
Rumors were flying all around town about a looming court battle between the widow and her stepsons.
“She doesn’t even live in New Orleans,” Chanse said out of the side of his mouth. “She lives on the North Shore.”
I smothered a laugh as Chloe Valence appeared on the screen in a floor-length green velvet gown with cathedral sleeves, a tight waist, and a neckline that plunged much more deeply than it should have. Her long black hair was braided like a crown around her head. “She looks like Maid Marian,” Chanse muttered, and that time I did laugh out loud, getting nasty looks from people seated near us. I also missed her little tag-line.
I’d known and disliked Chloe Valence for years.
“Too bad we don’t have any rotten tomatoes to throw at the screen,” Chanse hissed at me.
I’ve tried to get over my visceral loathing of Chloe Valence— seriously, I have.
We used to work together at the Times-Picayune. We’d been hired around the same time, both of us straight out of college, the ink on our journalism degrees still damp. While my degree was from LSU, Chloe’s was from the University of Louisiana-Rouen, over on the north shore. When I met her on our first day at work, I immediately pegged her as a phony. Her name had been Chloe Legendre then. She was the kind of woman who didn’t like other women, even though she mouthed feminist platitudes. She was a master of passive-aggression, a behavior I have always despised. It wasn’t long before I noted that she undercut other women whenever the opportunity presented itself while sucking up to all the men. She knew how to play the game, all right. There was even a period of time when I wondered if I was being misogynist myself— did I dislike her so intensely because she was beautiful and got a lot of attention from men? I had a long, dark night of the soul over it, and decided to go to the office the next morning and give her another chance.
Of course, that was the day they announced her promotion to assistant city editor, which sort of meant I kind of had to report to her.
The next few years we clashed more and more, and I tried to ignore the gossip that Chloe was the mistress of a married man much higher up in the chain of command at the paper. Chloe also began to change into an even more annoying person than she had been before. It caught everyone by surprise when she landed a wealthy society husband— no one even knew she’d been dating Remy Valence until the wedding announcement landed in the paper. I took Chanse with me to the wedding, and the moment the groom’s party walked out to the altar, he leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I’ve slept with the groom.”
Remy Valence was the last of an old moneyed New Orleans family, and it was no surprise to me they had no children. I’d eventually learned that Chloe herself was from Monroe— there were rumors she’d paid her way through college by working in some of the less classy strip clubs over in Biloxi. The story I’d been told was that Remy’s mother had been an old battle-axe and had flatly told Remy he needed a wife or the Valence family fortune was going to be divided up amongst her favorite charities in her will… so he grudgingly married the first woman he could find. Apparently they got along so well they’d stayed married even after Remy got his inheritance.
Then again, that could have all been just vicious gossip. It was almost too good to be true.
After Katrina, she was promoted to city editor, and then it was only just a matter of time before I left the paper. When the job as editor of Crescent City was offered to me, I grabbed it with both hands and never looked back.
Ironically, Chloe left the paper shortly after I did to pursue her dream of being a novelist.
The world was still breathlessly awaiting her first novel.
Of course, once she learned I was now in charge of the magazine, her attitude changed towards me dramatically. Now, every time she saw me
she acted like I was her long lost best friend, giving me her big phony smile and a big hug and air kiss that made me want to shove the bitch down a flight of stairs. But I was always polite and friendly to both her and her husband, Remy— who definitely set off my Gaydar.
The story I’d heard was she’d joined the cast to try to jumpstart her writing career.
Yeah, good luck with that, I thought, as the next grande dame appeared on the screen, actually writing might work even better.
I didn’t really catch anything about the next two women, since I was so caught up in reliving my utter hatred of all things Chloe Valence. I knew Megan Dreher was a former Miss Louisiana and married to a real estate developer with a rather bad reputation in town, and Serena Castlemaine was a many-times married oil heiress from Texas who’d moved to New Orleans after Katrina and bought a penthouse at 1 River Place. The story was she was trying to buy her way into New Orleans society— which wasn’t as easy as one might think, and had broken many women before her. She was somehow related to Chanse’s landlady and biggest client, Barbara.
The final grande dame actually was a grande dame, and I still couldn’t believe Margery Lautenschlaeger had agreed to be on this show. She’d been the sole heir to the Schwartzberg liquor fortune. The Schwartzbergs had been selling liquor in southeastern Louisiana for well over a hundred years, and it was hard to imagine a business more lucrative than hawking booze in New Orleans. She’d also married into a liquor family— Lautenschlaeger Schnapps was one of the more popular brands of the German liquor in the world. Margery threw money around lavishly— she was a huge supporter of museums, the ballet association, the Tennessee Williams Festival, anything that could remotely be considered the arts. She lived in an enormous mansion on St. Charles Avenue, and her picture frequently appeared on the social pages of the Times-Picayune. In fact, she appeared in the paper so often that less kind people joked that she must have a press agent. She was also a bit of a local character— she said what she thought and didn’t give a damn what anyone thought of her. She always had a coterie of adoring gay men around her. She used a long marble cigarette holder, wore turbans with diamond brooches, loved large brimmed hats with veils, and was purported to single-handedly keep the Saks at Canal Place open. Her husband had died in a tragic yachting accident, and all three of her sons— who now ran the companies— were married with kids. There was a daughter, too, but I didn’t know anything about her.
In the opening montage, Margery was wearing a gorgeous gold turban with a diamond brooch on the front. She took a long drag on the cigarette holder and expelled an enormous plume of smoke skyward as she smiled at the camera.
“God, she’s fabulous,” Chanse said.
I rolled my eyes and the show began.
Chapter Two
I was about halfway across the Causeway the next morning when I heard the news on the radio.
I was listening to an absolutely lovely jazz program on WWNO when there was an interruption for some local news. I was a little tired and somewhat cranky; I’d meant to be on the road a lot earlier, but we’d stayed at that damned party too long last night. I’d wanted to get out of there once the closing credits rolled, but Chanse wanted to say hello to Serena Castlemaine, which I understood even if it was annoying. He got me another glass of pinot grigio and left me standing in what I hoped was a secluded corner while he went in search of his biggest client’s relative. He was gone so long I wound up standing at the bar being flirted with by the bartender, who was much too good-looking for his own good and couldn’t have been older than twenty-three. I also wound up drinking way too much pinot grigio by the time Chanse came and found me. It was starting to rain when we finally escaped the party (I was very pleased that I managed to successfully avoid Chloe the entire night). The traffic was snarled on Canal Street and too many other people were trying to flag cabs, so we walked a couple of blocks to the Roosevelt Hotel, where the doorman flagged one down for us. After the cab dropped us at my place, Chanse came in with me, and we smoked too much pot and drank too much wine while rehashing everything that happened both in the episode and at the party. I think he staggered out around two in the morning. It wouldn’t matter to Ryan that I was late— our Saturdays on the north shore were always calm and peaceful. The boys did their homework and Ryan cooked— there’s nothing more heaven-sent than a man who loves cooking— and all I had to do was just relax and read.
I have this reputation as a terrible driver— I don’t know where this horribly insulting and offensive rumor started (although my money would be on Chanse), but have long since given up trying to fight it. It used to offend me that people would rather take a cab than get in my car, but after awhile I began to see it as an advantage— no one ever asks me for a ride to the airport, for example. If there’s ever a carpool involved, we never take my car. All I will say in my own defense is this: I started driving when I was sixteen, and have yet to have an accident that was my fault or get any kind of ticket. Not that I’m going to be signing up for NASCAR any time soon, but still. I stand on my driving record proudly.
It was raining pretty steadily so I was white-knuckling my steering wheel. The rain was heavy enough that visibility was poor, so I was driving a cautious forty miles per hour. There was a strong wind blowing— I could occasionally see whitecaps on the lake surface— and I couldn’t help but wonder, over and over again, if I should have just taken the long way around the lake. But I reassured myself that if the bridge was too dangerous the state police would have closed it.
That was why I was listening to WWOZ— jazz is relaxing and soothing, and my nerves were pretty jangled as I crawled along in the downpour.
The newsbreak was a bit jarring, and I wasn’t paying attention to it when I heard the broadcaster say, “Local television personality Fidelis Vandiver was found dead this morning. Vandiver, probably best known for her show, Fitness with Fidelis, recently wrapped taping on the cable reality series Grande Dames of New Orleans. The cause of death is not known, but a police spokesperson said foul play is suspected.”
I was so startled I accidentally jerked the steering wheel to the left and my green Subaru Forrester swerved, the back end fishtailing a little bit on the slick pavement. It took me a moment or two to get the car back under control, my vivid imagination flashing images of it crashing through the rail and plunging into the lake as I remembered to take my foot off the brake and to shift into neutral. When the eternity passed and I had the car back under control, I was breathing hard and my heart was pounding. My hands were shaking as I shifted back into drive, grateful no other cars had been around, and drove the quarter mile or so to the next turnaround, pulling over and parking.
Okay, maybe there was some truth to my reputation as a bad driver.
Once I got myself back under control, I grabbed my cell phone and dialed my boss.
“Paige, aren’t you on the north shore this weekend?” Rachel Delesdernier Sheehan said by way of greeting. “Why are you calling me?”
“I’m actually pulled over on the causeway. I just heard on the radio that Fidelis Vandiver is dead, foul play suspected.” I chose not to mention what just happened— no need to further confirm my reputation as a lousy driver.
Rachel whistled. “Seriously?” She paused for a moment. “I was planning on talking to you Monday morning about doing a cover story on the show— I can’t help it, I just find the entire cultural phenomenon of these shows fascinating. Every tabloid and celebrity magazine at the grocery store this morning had a Grande Dame on the cover. It just astounds me that people can become stars these days without having any discernible talent.” She laughed. “I mean at least Britney Spears can entertain an audience.”
“I’ve actually been thinking about doing a story myself,” I replied, as an eighteen- wheeler rumbled past on its way to New Orleans. “But are you sure about the cover? All those awful gossip rags put them on their covers all the time. I don’t want anyone to think we’re going that route, do you?”
“I just talked to her last night.” I shivered a little. “I wonder… there was a weird exchange I saw at the theater last night.”
“What do you mean, weird?”
“She had a bit of a run-in with Billy Barron. He grabbed her by the arm and she yanked away from him… and it looked like they had a bit of spat.” I scratched my head. “I’ve never heard anything about them being involved, have you?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t.” Rachel replied. “I’ll call the grapes.”
‘The grapes’ was what she called her gossip sources. Hers were far superior to mine. Of course, her father had been mayor of New Orleans and her husband’s uncle had been governor of Louisiana. I wracked my brain. “Didn’t Billy get reamed in a divorce a couple of years ago? Wasn’t he married to a Saints cheerleader or something, and she caught him with his pants down?”
“Yeah, her name was Alex something. She took him to the cleaners. Daddy Steve was not happy about that. I think that was why he got cut out of the will?” I could hear keys clicking as she typed notes.
“He was with another woman last night, a brunette, but I didn’t see her face. I’ll give Venus a call, pick her brain a bit.” My mind was racing. Venus Casanova was a good friend and one of the most decorated police detectives in town. “Since it’s high profile I’m betting she and Blaine caught the case.” Blaine was her partner, and he also happened to be my guy Ryan’s younger brother.
