Murder in the Garden District (Chanse MacLeod Mysteries)

by Herren, Greg

  So why did he wait until this morning to take a shot?

  I didn’t believe that Vinnie Castiglione had left town. He would keep trying until he got another chance. I had to be on my guard.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  I texted Abby to go home.

  Chapter Nine

  The front windows were already boarded over, and someone was optimistically writing Ginevra go away! in spray paint on one of them, when I arrived at Allegra Gallery. A soft, round man with a reddish face and graying hair brushed in a futile attempt to cover a deeply receding hairline supervised a staff crating prints. He wore a seersucker suit over a pale blue shirt topped with a dark blue bowtie.

  “I’m looking for Kenneth Musgrave,” I said as I approached them.

  The man interrupted what he was doing.

  “I’m Kenneth Musgrave,” he said, looking up. His eyes were watery and his skin looked damp, despite the frigid air-conditioning. “How can I help you?”

  “My name is Chanse MacLeod. I’ve been hired by Cordelia Sheehan—”

  He cut me off. “Come to my office.”

  He asked a reedy blonde with severe black glasses to take over, and gestured for me to follow him.

  “Have a seat,” he said.

  He poured two glasses of wine from an open bottle on a gold tray perched on a bureau behind his desk, beside a seersucker fedora. He handed me one and downed the other, then poured himself a second glass.

  “Mrs. Sheehan hired me to look into her son’s death,” I said, holding the glass in my right hand without drinking.

  He polished off his second glass, poured a third and settled into his chair behind the desk. He leaned forward on his elbows, perspiring a bit at the hairline.

  “The son of a bitch murdered my sister,” he said, staring into the wine. “I suppose it’s okay to say it now, him being dead and all. I won’t be mourning that bastard.”

  It was a peculiar opening gambit for a conversation with a stranger, and it made me suspicious.

  “I was under the impression your sister died in a fall down the stairs,” I said, keeping my voice neutral.

  “It was no accident. Wendell threw her down those stairs. I warned Grace…” He cleared his throat. “I saw her that afternoon. She was going to leave him.”

  Apparently, he’d been waiting for a chance to mouth off about his sister’s death for quite some time. I let the silence grow between us, to see if he would rush in and fill it, glancing around to see what five thousand per month can do.

  Kenneth Musgrave’s office reeked of expensive. The soft leather armchair I’d sunk into probably cost more than all the furniture in my apartment. If his huge desk wasn’t an antique, it was a costly reproduction. Black-and-white prints of swamp scenes in gold frames hung meticulously spaced at exact distances from each other on the emerald green walls. A flat screen monitor, computer keyboard and black multi-line business phone sat lonely on the otherwise bare desktop, their only company a little golden tray with business cards neatly stacked in a way to discourage taking one, precariously close to the edge nearest me. There were no papers or folders anywhere in evidence.

  Musgrave drummed his fingertips on the desk, getting more and more agitated with each silent, passing second.

  “She should never have married him,” he said finally. “Our mother was against it. She thought Grace was making a terrible mistake, and she was right. Our mother had been part of that world. Grace was forced into it growing up, and she hated it.”

  “Politics?” I asked.

  “New Orleans society. The balls, the right charities. All of that nonsense that means so much to people in the Garden District. Grace thought the Sheehans weren’t part of it, that it was just politics. She believed in Wendell. She wanted to help him. I think she believed they could end up in the White House. Wendell certainly thought they would.”

  “And you weren’t part of that world? The Garden District society?”

  “We had different fathers. Our mother was a Caldwell.”

  “Okay,” I said. The name meant nothing to me, although he seemed to think it would.

  “After Grace’s father died, our mother married my father—” His already reddish face flushed a bit. “—a nobody accountant from Metairie. It was social suicide. But they loved each other, and they were happy. Her parents never forgave her.”

  I noted that he referred to their maternal grandparents as her parents.

  “Grace inherited a lot of money from her father, and her bloodlines were impeccable. The crime of our mother’s second marriage wasn’t held against her. She was Queen of Rex, you know—Grace’s grandparents on both sides pushed her into New Orleans society while excluding our mother.”

  Unspoken but implied were the words and me.

  “Grace hated all the balls and parties, but our mother thought she should do them. She was twenty when she married Wendell Sheehan. She had Alais a year or so later. It was a tough pregnancy, and afterward she couldn’t have another child. That’s when the marriage went south.”

  “Then why did she stay?”

  “She loved him, I suppose. She never said anything against Wendell, but I could see she wasn’t happy. There were other women. Wendell didn’t keep it a secret. Grace didn’t seem to care about that. If it was good enough for Hillary Clinton, I think Grace felt she could put up with it. She focused her energies on Alais.”

  “So, after all those years, why did she finally decide to leave him?”

  He emptied the glass and rolled the stem between his fingers.

  “I’m not sure. We had lunch that day at Galatoire’s. That’s when she told me she was taking Alais and leaving him. She’d rented herself an apartment and was meeting with a divorce attorney that afternoon. When I asked her why, she said she’d finally had enough. She didn’t want anything from the Sheehans. The money her father left her was more than enough for her to live on the rest of her life. She just wanted out. I told her Wendell might not want a divorce. He was attorney general then, and he was pretty open about running for governor in the next election cycle. She said Wendell had two choices: a quiet divorce or a long, drawn-out ugly one for adultery. I thought she was bluffing. Surely she didn’t want the whole world to know her business. She left Galatoire’s to meet with her lawyer—and died that night. You do the math.”

  “You don’t have any proof?”

  He smiled slyly. “I knew what I knew.”

  “Enough to blackmail him?”

  I pulled out the photocopies of Wendell’s checks from my bag and tossed them on the desk. His face turned scarlet as he shuffled through the papers.

  “I wasn’t blackmailing him.”

  “Then what were the checks for?”

  He slid them back to me across the desk.

  “Grace left me a trust in her will. Wendell controlled it. I’d had some problems when I was younger, and Grace set it up that way because she was afraid I’d go through the money if I had it. Wendell invested it and paid me the monthly interest on the principle.”

  But the checks hadn’t been drawn on a trust account. They were from a discretionary account.

  “It’ll be very easy to check into that, you know.”

  “Are you calling me a liar?”

  “Merely pointing out a fact,” I said. “It is a murder investigation, after all.”

  He shifted in his seat.

  “What’s to investigate? Cordelia shot him.”

  “There’s some question about that. That’s why she hired me.”

  “Of course she’ll get away with it,” he said dismissively. “The Sheehans get away with everything. They’re a law unto themselves.” He flashed a nasty smile. “The law is for the common people.”

  “Like you?”

  “He got away with killing my sister, didn’t he?”

  “You seem so certain Grace was murdered.”

  He glared at me.

  “Alais saw the whole thing. She heard them arguing and opened
her bedroom door. Grace came out of her room and Wendell pursued her. He grabbed her at the top of the stairs and started slapping her. She tried to get away. Finally he picked her up and threw her down the stairs. She broke her neck.”

  “Alais told you this?”

  He spun his chair around, grabbed the wine bottle and refilled his glass.

  “We used to be close. When I heard about Grace, I went over there. Alais was… Neither Wendell nor Cordelia seemed much concerned about her. She wouldn’t talk to anyone. It took me a while, but I was able to get the story out of her. She was only eight years old, poor kid.”

  “And rather than going to the police you decided to blackmail Wendell. Might I ask why you sold yourself so cheaply?”

  He couldn’t look me in the eyes.

  “That wasn’t what the money was for. Wendell collected art. He paid me to find pieces for him.”

  That was a lie. I’d gotten a look at some of the work still on display in the gallery. There was no way Cordelia Sheehan would allow abstract art on her precious walls.

  “Then where did you get the money for this place?”

  He was unable to keep from smiling. “Wendell released the trust.”

  “And you promised not to tell anyone what Alais witnessed the night her mother died.”

  I didn’t try to veil my contempt.

  “It was my money,” he said. “Grace had left it to me. I always wanted to run a gallery. It was my dream. But I could never come up with the money. When I was younger, I did a lot of stupid things—drugs, alcohol—things I now regret. That’s why Grace wouldn’t back the gallery. It made me angry, but I understood. She was afraid I’d blow it.”

  “And when Alais told you how her mother died, you saw that as an opportunity to get what you wanted.”

  “Like I said, it was my money. If she’d lived, eventually Grace would have backed the gallery. I really believe that.”

  It was getting hard to control my disgust. All I could think of was Alais, an eight-year-old child who’d witnessed her father kill her mother, and her uncle using the information to extort money from him. What a house of horrors to grow up in. No wonder she’d finally run away.

  “It must have been difficult for you, being an outcast while your wealthy older sister was welcomed into society.”

  “It wasn’t fair. My mother was a Caldwell and her parents—my grandparents—never acknowledged me. Not one birthday, no Christmas presents, nothing. My father felt terrible about how they treated me and my mother. But they couldn’t do enough for Grace. When they died, they left everything to her.”

  “You said you were no longer close to Alais. Why was that?”

  “After—”

  He picked up the wine glass, and carefully put it back down. He had the decency to sound ashamed.

  “One of the conditions of Wendell releasing the trust was that I no longer be a part of Alais’s life.”

  “You sold out your eight-year-old niece—the daughter of the sister you say you loved—for this gallery.”

  “For my dream.”

  I stood up.

  “One last question. Where were you on Monday night?”

  “I was here all night. Now get out of my office. I have work to do.”

  With pleasure, I thought angrily.

  *

  I slammed the door behind me. The reedy woman looked at me curiously as I strode through the gallery, but I ignored her. I was heading for my car when she caught up to me.

  “Mr. MacLeod, was it?”

  “That’s right. And you are?”

  “Meredith Cole.” She smiled, and her entire face changed.

  Meredith Cole was tall and almost excessively thin. Her tight black wool dress left little to the imagination, but flattered her slender, long-legged figure. She had no curves to speak of. Her blond hair was pulled back in a tight chignon, and she wore minimal makeup above the simple gold chain around her neck. She glanced back at the gallery door, and her smile faded.

  “Ken wasn’t here Monday night, if that’s what he told you.” She flushed. “I don’t want to cause any trouble. I know this is none of my business. But Tuesday morning, Ken ordered me to tell anyone who asked about it that he was here all night on Monday.”

  “And he wasn’t?”

  She shook her head. “I was here until almost midnight, catching up on the books—by myself. And when I saw the news—

  “Wendell Sheehan came to the gallery on Monday morning and they argued, I don’t know what about. Ken was in a really bad mood after he left. Nothing anyone did was right. I almost quit.”

  “Had Wendell ever come by before?”

  “Not that I recall, other than openings. I got the impression Ken didn’t like him much. Wendell was always almost rude to him, if you know what I mean. Ken doesn’t take that from anyone, but he always took it from Wendell. I assumed Wendell was one of his backers.”

  “Ken said that he procured art for Wendell.”

  “I keep the books and do the billing. Wendell Sheehan never bought a thing from us.”

  My cell phone rang.

  “I need to get back,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. She slipped her business card into my hand. “My cell number is on there—if you have any more questions.”

  I thanked her, and answered my phone.

  “This is Monica Davis. I’m returning your call?”

  I waited for the gallery door to close before I responded.

  “I’m a private investigator. I was wondering if I could come by and ask you some questions?”

  “That’s what you said in your message. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out why you want to talk to me. My dinner plans just canceled, so if you want to come by now, I shouldn’t be too drunk. Here’s my address.”

  I promised to be right there, and headed uptown.

  There was no traffic on St. Charles. At Calliope, cars were backed up as far as I could see, all the way from the highway on-ramp. I dialed WWL for news.

  The latest report from the National Hurricane Center showed Ginevra at Category 4, predicted to strengthen to Category 5 in a few hours, with a high probability of New Orleans taking a direct hit. A lot of people weren’t waiting for the mandatory evacuation order. Traffic was at a standstill on I-10, and highway patrol projected a five- to six-hour drive to Baton Rouge. Hotels along the route were booked as far as Houston. An hour ago, the mayor had called a press conference to announce that the city and state had arranged bus transportation for those without the means to evacuate on their own, and urged everyone to leave as soon as possible. The National Guard were airlifting hospital patients out of the city, and the governor had stated that anyone planning to ignore the mandatory evacuation order when it came should expect no assistance or rescue.

  I turned off the radio. The other side of St. Charles was clogged with cars, but in the uptown direction I was pretty much the only driver. Businesses were closed, windows boarded up. It was so strange—there were no clouds, the sun was shining, and the sky itself was an amazing shade of blue. It was a beautiful day, yet deadly winds, flooding rains, death and destruction moved inexorably towards the city. I tried to remember the days before the last evacuation, but like everything pre-Katrina, the memories were foggy and unclear. I gave up. The situation was depressing enough without dwelling on it.

  *

  Monica Davis lived on Dante Street in Riverbend, a nice, quiet neighborhood with streets lined with massive live oak trees arching like canopies over the pavement. The area was named for a near-ninety-degree turn in the Mississippi River, past the universities and Audubon Park where St. Charles Avenue ends and the streetcar line makes a ninety-degree turn onto Carrollton. I rarely made it that far uptown. Her house was on a corner lot, a small bungalow-style building with a covered carport, beneath which a white Lexus was parked. I pulled in front of the house. There were very few cars anywhere. Everything was eerily silent.

  A short woman answered the door, holdin
g a drink in her left hand.

  “Chanse MacLeod, I presume?”

  Monica Davis was maybe five feet tall, and couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds. Apparently Wendell Sheehan liked his women short. She was wearing a green and white nylon jogging suit with the Tulane emblem across the chest. Her dirty blond hair was cut short in a bob, with an occasional strand of gray here and there. Her only makeup was a touch of lipstick and maybe something around her eyes. She looked to be in her forties and was aging gracefully. As she unlatched the screen to let me in, I saw that she was in her stocking feet.

  Her small, square living room was painted pale blue. The low ceiling made me a bit claustrophobic. The furniture looked lived-in and chosen for comfort rather than fashion. There was no television, but the stereo was softly playing a recording of Pachelbel’s Canon.

  “Thank you for agreeing to see me,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

  “What else do I have to do, listen to doom and gloom on the radio? Please, have a seat.”

  She sat down in a rocking chair and rattled the ice in her drink at me.

  “Can I offer you something? I’m having Kahlua and cream. If you prefer it, I have vodka and some Abita Light. Or a soft drink.”

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  I sat down on the couch. There wasn’t enough room for my legs between the couch and the coffee table, so I turned slightly sideways and crossed them.

  “Are you going to join the mass exodus?” she asked.

  “Right now, I plan on waiting,” I said. “There’s still a chance it could turn, right?”

  The truth was, I was hoping that if I waited long enough Ginevra would turn and I wouldn’t have to leave town.

  “I’m not going,” she said. “I know it’s crazy, but after the last time I swore I wouldn’t ever leave again. I’m afraid if I do I won’t come back, or I won’t be able to come back. I don’t want to be anywhere else.”

  That was exactly how I felt.

  “We were able to come back last time.”

  “If the levees fail again? I don’t think so. Plenty of people the last time thought we shouldn’t have been helped, that the city should just be allowed to die. If it happens again, this soon, there will be even more who feel that way. And what if it comes up the river this time? Do you think the river levees will hold?”