by Herren, Greg
“She told the police it was hers.”
“Did you wipe the gun when you picked it up?”
“Why would I do such a stupid thing?”
“I would think you’d be a little more concerned about having your fingerprints on the gun,” I said, resisting the urge to point out that picking it up in the first place had been incredibly stupid.
“They did a test of some sort on my hands.” She waved a hand. “To see if I’d fired the gun. Of course, I explained how that all happened.” Her smile chilled me. “The idiots didn’t test my daughter-in-law’s hands, even though I told them she’d killed him.”
“What does she say?”
“She told them I killed him,” she sneered, “which is utter nonsense. She’s the one with everything to gain.”
“I’ll need to speak with her.”
“You have an appointment tomorrow morning at ten to discuss all of that—and her ridiculous story—at our home.”
She handed me a gold embossed card with her name and address on it, then waved her gloved hand dismissively.
“I will pay you, of course, quite handsomely, through Mr. McKeithen’s office. Say, a thousand dollars a day plus expenses?”
That was almost three times my going rate. “That’s very generous.” I replied cautiously.
I’ve always been suspicious of overly generous clients. They tend to take it for granted that I’ll be willing to break the law on their behalf. I may bend the law on occasion, but I won’t do anything that might put me behind bars.
She went on as though I hadn’t said a word, her gloved fingers tapping a steady tattoo on the couch arm.
“I’m paying you to devote yourself entirely to this case, Mr. MacLeod, to the exclusion of all else, so I cannot expect you to not be compensated properly. I know you work for Barbara’s company, but she understands how important this is. And I expect results. There will also be a substantial bonus for those results.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “What kind of result are you looking for? Proving your daughter-in-law is guilty?”
She started laughing. It was a very unpleasant sound. She put her hand to her throat.
“Oh, dear me. My daughter-in-law killed my son, Mr. MacLeod. There’s no question about that.” Her eyes flashed angrily. “Your job is to find reasonable doubt for the jury, enough maybe to keep the district attorney from prosecuting her. That’s what I’m paying you for.”
I looked her square in the eyes.
“You handled the murder weapon. You even fired it. Even if, as you say, only a fool would think you’d shot him, that’s enough reasonable doubt right there to keep your daughter-in-law out of jail. Loren is a damned good lawyer—he’d have a field day with that.”
“Let me make myself clear, Mr. MacLeod,” she said contemptuously. “As long as there is breath in my body, no one named Sheehan will go to prison for anything. No matter what I might think of her and what she has done, my daughter-in-law is a member of my family, and I will do everything in my power to ensure that she does not spend a single night behind bars for her crime—no matter how much I would enjoy seeing that happen. And I am not about to be painted as a murderer in a court of law to save her. My son had plenty of enemies. I want you to look outside my family. Is that clear?”
She stood up and walked to the door. “Ten o’clock, tomorrow morning, Mr. MacLeod,” she said, turning back to me. “Do be punctual.”
I heard her heels click softly in the hallway as the door closed behind her.
I poured myself a gin and tonic from the little bar in a corner of the room. It was at my lips when Barbara said from the doorway, “Pour me one of those, will you, dear? That woman will drive anyone to drink.”
Barbara took the glass from me and plopped down on the sofa. I’d never seen her drink anything other than champagne—usually mixed with orange juice. She tossed the drink back like it was nothing and set the glass down on the coffee table.
“I’m sorry to get you involved with that awful woman, but I didn’t have a choice,” she said.
I sat in the wingback chair again. “What do you mean, you didn’t have a choice?”
“Let’s just say I owe her and leave it at that.” Barbara closed her eyes. “I am truly sorry, Chanse, dear. I hope you don’t come to regret working for her like everyone else who deals with her. But please don’t ask me to say any more.”
I knew better than to press her.
As the owner of Crown Oil, Barbara was the wealthiest person in Louisiana. We’d been working together for years. She’d started out as my client, when she was being blackmailed and hired me to help her. She’d slept with a pair of underage bodybuilding twins and there were pictures. The whole thing had been a setup. I’d gotten the pictures and negatives back for her and she had put me on the payroll of Crown Oil as a consultant. I did quarterly checks of the security systems at their refineries and other facilities, and made recommendations for improvements. I did background checks of prospective executives and board members, drawing on my contacts and two years’ experience working in the New Orleans police department. She’d also had me check out several men she became involved with later—when you’re the richest woman in the state, you become a target for fortune hunters. In return for these services, she paid me a generous salary, more than enough to support my own investigation business and pay an assistant, considering that she owned my building and only charged me $100 a month rent for an apartment worth $1,200. In addition to the cushy consulting job, she brought me clients. I wasn’t about to upset the apple cart unnecessarily.
I decided to get whatever basic information I could about the Sheehans and continue making notes.
“They all lived in the same house?” I asked Barbara. “That must have been uncomfortable.”
“It’s Cordelia’s house and she wouldn’t hear of them living elsewhere. Everything is Cordelia’s. She controls the money. Wendell had none of his own. I’m sure he hoped she’d die every day of his life. Imagine having that for your mother. I’d hang myself after twenty-four hours in that place.”
“Did she tell you anything about what happened?”
“Just that Janna killed Wendell, and she needed a private eye whose discretion could be counted on. She knew about you—that damned Loren McKeithen sent her to me.”
I felt sorry for Loren for a moment. Barbara would make him pay for this.
“I’d say Cordelia should be more worried about herself than about her daughter-in-law. She not only handled the gun, she fired it. At least, that’s her story. I take it she didn’t tell you that.”
Barbara smiled. “Well, well, well. She left that out. Seems like Cordelia’s got herself into a bit of trouble.” She seemed to enjoy the idea.
I wondered what exactly she owed Cordelia for. It was obvious she detested the woman.
“But knowing Cordelia, I’m sure she thinks no one would ever think she’d commit murder,” she added.
“You nailed that one right on the head,” I said. “Do you know the widow?”
“Janna? Yes, I know Janna. The poor thing had no idea what she was marrying into. I felt sorry for her. I still do.”
She got up and poured herself another gin and tonic. Mostly it was gin with a bit of tonic splashed in the glass.
“She was what Cordelia and her sort consider a nobody—unsuitable to marry the heir to the throne. She was only in her mid-twenties when she married Wendell. She was one of his secretaries. You could have knocked us all down with a feather when he it happened. I’d always assumed that if he married again it would be Monica Davis—and I’m sure Monica thought so too.”
“And she is?”
“Monica teaches political science at Tulane. She’d been with Wendell for years—some say even before his first wife died. I heard that the two of them had started up again, but that could just be talk. You know how people are—and no one really liked Janna very much, the poor thing.”
“Why not?”
Barbara fixed her green eyes on me. “She was from Hammond, Chanse. She had no pedigree. Her father was a janitor. She was never a debutante, never a maid or Queen of Comus or Momus or Rex. Everyone looked down on her—the same way they did me when I married Roger Palmer. I tried to be nice to her, take her under my wing, but she wouldn’t have anything to do with me. I’m sure Cordelia told her a lot of unpleasant things about me. But I could understand what she was going through, because I’d been through it myself. Until, of course, I married Charles Castlemaine and suddenly had more money than God at my disposal. The power of being richer than they are can never be underestimated.” She gave me a hard smile. “They’re polite to me now, but I’m not one of them. I never will be. And neither will Janna.”
“Do you think she could have killed him?”
Barbara didn’t answer me at first, and when she finally spoke, she didn’t look at me.
He was a horrible man, Chanse, an absolutely horrible man. Every bit as awful as his mother. If Janna did kill him—and I am not saying she did—I’m certain she had her reasons.”
She glanced at her watch.
“Good Lord, I have to get running. I have a meeting in half an hour.”
She rose and walked quickly to the door.
“You can see yourself out, can’t you, dear? And again, I am so sorry.” She winked at me. “I promise to make it up to you.”
*
As I sat in my car waiting for the air-conditioning to kick into gear, I called my research assistant, Abby Grosjean. “We got a job,” I said when she answered. “I need you to find everything you can on Wendell Sheehan, his wife, Janna—hell, anything you can find out about the entire Sheehan family.”
“Wendell Sheehan was killed last night,” Abby said. “It’s all over the news.”
“That’s right,” I said. “We’re working for the Sheehan family.” I looked at Barbara’s house. “I need it as soon as possible. And while you’re at it, find out everything you can about Barbara Castlemaine.”
“The boss? Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
I’d never checked out Barbara before. I’d always considered it an invasion of her privacy. I knew some of her secrets, of course—you couldn’t work as a private eye for someone as long as I’d worked for Barbara without learning some things about her. And from time to time she’d let something personal slip. But I’d never done a background check on her, and now my curiosity was piqued. She obviously hated Cordelia Spencer Sheehan and her son. So why would she do her a favor?
Maybe I should just leave Barbara alone—she might not appreciate the intrusion into her privacy, and she was certainly my golden goose. I’d be up shit creek if I lost the Crown Oil gig, and with Abby on salary now, it wasn’t just me that would be affected.
Then again, Cordelia had something on her—and for Barbara to put up with the dismissive way the old woman treated her, it had to be something really bad. Truth be told, if I was careful, the only way Barbara would find out was if I told her—and I could make that decision later.
As for Janna Sheehan, it would be interesting to meet her. I already felt a little sorry for her—under the best of circumstances, it couldn’t be easy to be that woman’s daughter-in-law.
*
I parked in the lot alongside my house and went into the living room of my apartment on the first floor in the front of the building. Plopping down on the sofa, I called my best friend, Paige.
Paige and I went back all the way to our college days at LSU, which now seemed a million years ago. She’d been a reporter for the Times-Picayune until last year, when she’d accepted the job as editor-in-chief at Crescent City. In that short time she’d turned the glossy monthly from a barely break-even piece of fluff into a must-read for locals. When she’d been at the Times-Picayune, she’d often pulled information from the morgue for me, and while she didn’t have that same kind of access at Crescent City, she might know someone at the paper who would do her a favor. She answered on the first ring, breathless.
“Chanse! I can’t talk long—deadline looming. How’s your mother? How are you?”
“Hanging in there, and my mother…”
I hesitated. Paige had been the one to convince me to go to see her in the first place.
“She’s responding to the treatments, but who knows?”
“I’m so sorry… Look, Chanse, it’s really crazy around here right now. Why don’t I stop by later with dinner? Ryan’s visiting the kids tonight.”
Ryan Tujague was her boyfriend. His ex-wife and two kids had lived in Mandeville since Katrina.
“Have you heard about Wendell Sheehan?” she continued, seemingly changing the subject. “He would have to go and get himself killed right before we put the magazine to bed. Everyone around here is wondering if we’ll have jobs tomorrow.”
“What does Wendell Sheehan’s murder have to do with the magazine?” I asked.
“Do you ever listen when I talk to you, Chanse? The Sheehans own the Crescent City Publishing Group. I mean, he stepped down as publisher in order to launch his Senate campaign, shortly after I came to work here, but he was the one who hired me. Who knows what’s going to happen now, or who’s going to be in charge? I just pray to God it’s not his mother. But she never shows her face here. Rachel’s fit to be tied.”
Rachel Delesdernier was Crescent City’s new publisher. I’d never met her, but Paige loved working for her. I decided not to tell her she’d never mentioned Wendell Sheehan to me before, or that Cordelia Spencer Sheehan had hired me, at least not yet.
“I’ll tell you about my mom over dinner,” I said. “It seems like forever since I’ve seen you.”
The job did take a toll on her private life. Paige often worked twelve to sixteen hours a day without time off for weeks on end. It was causing problems with Ryan, as well.
“Plan on me being there around seven. If we don’t have the magazine done by then, heads will roll.”
She hung up.
I grabbed an empty manila folder from the box on the bookcase next to my desk and wrote SHEEHAN on the flap, then opened a new document on my computer. I typed in the pertinent information—date and time hired, rate of pay, client, task—and stared at the cursor for a moment, hearing Mrs. Sheehan in my head.
I want you to look outside my family. My son had a lot of enemies. Of course she did it! But as long as there is breath in my body, no member of this family is going to spend a single night in jail.
Maybe it was my years in the NOPD, but I didn’t like the idea of helping someone get away with murder. It was why I had never considered going to law school. I have very clear opinions about people who commit crimes. You do the crime, you do the time. The notion that there was a separate justice for the rich went against everything I believed in.
But something else was bothering me. Cordelia Spencer Sheehan might be any number of things, but she was not stupid. So why, if she were innocent, would she pick up the gun that had obviously been used to kill her son? Even if she were in shock, as she claimed, it wasn’t natural. The natural thing would have been to scream, or go to her child, or even faint. Why on earth did she pick up the gun?
Maybe she honestly believed that despite the evidence, her word would be enough for the police and the district attorney. And maybe she was right. She was rich, powerful and well-respected throughout the state. She was also well connected. Probably she could use her pull to quash the investigation. That was how things worked in Louisiana.
So why hire me?
There was a hell of a lot more here than I was being told. I also wasn’t convinced that what she’d said was true. My instinct was to remove myself from the case. I don’t like it when clients lie to me, especially when the lies are so obvious they wouldn’t fool anyone. They certainly wouldn’t fool the police.
“Stick to the facts, Chanse,” I said out loud. “It’s entirely possible she did exactly what she said she did. Smart people have done stupider th
ings.”
And then there was the Barbara angle. For whatever reason, she owed Cordelia, and was using me to pay off that debt. I certainly owed Barbara a lot myself. The least I could do was get that awful woman off her back.
But Cordelia Spencer Sheehan didn’t strike me as the sort who would forget whatever debt Barbara owed her just because I’d taken on this case. Whatever she had on Barbara gave her power over her, and Cordelia Spencer Sheehan enjoyed power and control. She kept her entire family on a leash. Life in that house must be one hell of a freak show.
It was time to get to work.
Chapter Two
Janna Sheehan was a beautiful woman, despite the dark circles under her gray eyes. In her early thirties, with long, thick auburn hair, she had clear, smooth skin the color of white porcelain. I could see blue veins in her long throat. She was short, barely five feet tall, with a tiny waist and ample hips. She looked as though she weighed less than a hundred pounds. Given the size of her frame, her breasts seemed almost too large to be real underneath her green Tulane T-shirt.
We were sitting in a gazebo behind the Sheehan mansion on St. Charles Avenue. A ceiling fan whirred overhead, but it wasn’t providing enough breeze to keep me from sweating, and the glass of iced tea wasn’t helping any more than the fan. My shirt was soaked. Janna had led me out here so we could speak without being overheard by anyone. I’d thought it odd, but acquiesced.
She blew a cloud of smoke out of her mouth and gave me a brittle smile. “Of course she killed him,” she said. “But how would I know why? Cordelia doesn’t share that kind of information with me.”
“Just tell me what happened the night of the murder.”
She flicked ash into a green glass ashtray. “I was waiting up for Wendell. He’d been coming home late more and more, saying he was working on strategy and so forth for the campaign. Whether he was doing that or not, I don’t know. I had my suspicions. He often came home smelling like a brewery.” She gave me a tired look. “I didn’t much care one way or the other, but that night I needed to talk to him. I’d been putting it off for a while and it was getting to the point I couldn’t wait any longer. I was in my room—it’s right at the top of the stairs, the first door—and I saw his headlights from my window. I went to the window and saw him get out of the car in the rain. He was drunk again. I got scared and decided it could wait another night.”
