Who Dat Whodunnit

by Greg Herren

  Jesse shrugged. “I like coffee, so I make it good. What brings you guys out on such a cold day? Man, if I didn’t have to work I’d have just stayed in bed.”

  I pulled a business card out of my wallet and slid it across the bar. Jesse picked it up and did a double take. “We came here because we need to ask you a few questions, Jesse, and since you’re not busy…” I let my voice trail off.

  “Detectives, wow.” Jesse poured himself some coffee and took a sip. “I’ve never met a real private eye before.” He winked. “Sure, go ahead. Ask some questions.” He crossed his arms and leaned back against the cooler.

  “Something was taken from the Bradleys’ apartment on Sunday night, most likely during the party,” Colin said smoothly, taking the lead. “So, we’re talking to everyone who was there that night.”

  “Makes sense.” Jesse nodded. “I didn’t take anything, though, and I didn’t see anyone take anything.”

  “You may have seen something and not even realized it,” Colin went on. He was, I reflected, rather smooth. “We realize a lot was going on—and pretty much everyone was primarily paying attention to the football game, right? But I want you to think for a minute before you answer. Did anything seem out of the ordinary to you on Sunday night?”

  “I…” He paused, wrinkling his forehead as he thought about it. “I don’t know. I’d never been there before, you know?” He turned to me. “I’d never really met your parents before that night. I mean, I’ve seen them around, and I knew they were the Devil’s Weed people, but we’d never really met.”

  “So why were you there?” I asked.

  “Because I invited him as my guest,” a voice said from behind us.

  Before I could turn around, a tall, slender black woman raised a panel in the bar and walked through it. Dominique DuPre was more striking than beautiful. She had a long nose, high cheekbones, and a pointed chin. Her hair was styled in braids that hung down her back. She had long legs—she was well over six feet tall—and a small waist. She was wearing a cowl-necked black sweater over a pair of black wool slacks and low-heeled shoes. A gold cross glittered on a thin gold chain around her neck. She’d been in New Orleans for several years, opening Domino’s just two years before Katrina came barreling up from the Gulf. There had been some trouble when she first opened the club—I’d heard rumors her ex-husband was a mob lawyer—but she kept a relatively low profile. During the time when the rumors about her were flying, Mom made a point out of befriending her, which was how I knew her. I liked her—she was an amazing singer and also was a pretty good photographer—and the best thing about her was you always knew where you stood with her. Dominique was not big on being nice just for the sake of being nice.

  “Is this Colin?” She raised an eyebrow and smiled faintly. “Damn, boy, you’re even better looking than I’ve heard.” She held out her hand. She had long elegant fingers, and a French manicure. Colin delighted her by raising it to his lips and kissing it.

  “Enchanté, mademoiselle,” he said, his French accent perfect.

  I refrained from rolling my eyes.

  “You’re quite a charmer,” she said. “Jesse, would you mind getting me a cup of coffee? Put some Baileys in it, too.”

  Jesse stepped back and did as directed.

  “Cecile is missing something?” She accepted a mug from Jesse and took a long sip. “I can assure you, I wouldn’t steal from her.”

  “Did you notice anything out of the ordinary?” Colin asked. “Anything at all that seemed off to you?”

  She frowned, a few lines appearing on her forehead. “Well, it was a rather eclectic gathering of people, but one always expects that from John and Cecile—which is why one always goes. You never really know what you’re in for.” She laughed, a tinkling sound. “I’d thought about simply watching the game here, keeping an eye on things—we were packed to the gills that night—but I wasn’t really in the mood to be around a crowd. I’d done two shows both Friday and Saturday nights, and so I felt something a little more intimate was in order for the game.” She hummed for a moment, closing her eyes. “I don’t really recall anything strange. I certainly didn’t see anyone take anything.”

  “I don’t mean to be offensive, Ms. DuPre—” Colin started but she cut him off.

  “Dominique, please call me Dominique.”

  “Okay. Dominique, with all due respect, you hardly strike me as the kind of woman who would, um”—he had the decency to blush—“date one of your employees.”

  She threw her head back and a hearty laugh erupted. After a few moments, she wiped delicately at her almond-shaped eyes. “How delicately put.” She reached over and patted Jesse’s arm. “No, I am not dating Jesse, but I also didn’t want to go to the party alone. I knew Jesse had no plans for the evening, and so Saturday after my second performance I asked him if he would escort me to the party. Being gallant, he agreed.” She smiled at him, and he smiled back. “I am seeing someone else, but we’re going through a difficult patch.” Her eyes darkened. “But I feel confident we’ll get back on the right track again soon.”

  Jesse snorted. “Not if that Bourgeois bitch has anything to say about it.”

  Dominique gave him a look that should have blasted him into smithereens. “Now, Jesse, they’re not interested in my personal life.”

  “Not—not Tara Bourgeois?” I blurted out, getting an equally nasty look from Colin. “Is that who you’re talking about?”

  Dominique hesitated before leaning on the counter. “You’re not really interested in hearing about my love life, are you?”

  Before I could answer, Jesse said, “What the hell?” and grabbed a remote control from underneath the bar. He aimed it at the big-screen television mounted in the corner on the opposite side of the room. “Speak of the devil.” We all turned to look. Tara’s face was plastered across it, smiling weakly in her pageant dress, her black hair teased and hair sprayed into a huge bouffant around her head. As the little green line moved across the bottom of the television, her voice got louder.

  “And I’m sorry, I think marriage is for a man and a woman, it’s just how I was raised, but I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or offend anyone but I was raised as a Christian with Jesus Christ as my personal savior and I believe, like all Christians do, that the Lord meant for marriage to be between a man and a woman…”

  The television cut back to Jessica Johnson, a local news reporter. “To repeat, controversial former Miss Louisiana Tara Bourgeois was found shot to death earlier today—”

  The television clicked off.

  Dominique set the remote control down on the bar. Her hands were shaking. “I can’t believe she’s dead,” she whispered.

  Jesse put an arm around her. “Well, now things can get back to normal for you and Jared.”

  Jared.

  I couldn’t have heard that right.

  “Jared who?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from shaking.

  Dominique didn’t look at me. “Your cousin, Jared Bradley.”

  Colin and I exchanged looks. “You were dating Jared?” Colin asked.

  She nodded.

  “Why?” I blurted out.

  That elicited a bitter laugh. She looked up at me. “I wish I knew, Scotty.” She shrugged, reaching for her mug of coffee and Baileys. “I have the worst taste in men, apparently. I always pick the wrong ones.” She took a long pull at her drink, made a face, and put it back down on the bar again. She poured herself two fingers of Wild Turkey and tossed it back. She smiled. “As for Jared, well, I’d be a fool to stay with him now. It’s just going to happen again. Once a cheater, always a cheater.”

  Colin and I exchanged glances. I was reeling in shock. I couldn’t believe Jared was dating a black woman—I certainly didn’t have a problem with it, but there were plenty of other Bradleys who would. Papa Bradley, for one—and Uncle Skipper for another, and I wasn’t 100% sure MiMi would be all that cool with it, either.

  He definitely would have lost his s
tatus as favored grandson.

  “What exactly is going on with you and Jared?” Colin asked slowly, rubbing his knee against mine. I knew exactly what that meant—let me do the questioning.

  “We met at a charity event here at the club,” Dominique poured some more Wild Turkey into her glass. “We were raising money for Women of the Storm.” She frowned. “Daughters of the Storm? Whatever—-you know that group. I got in touch with the Saints and asked them if they could send some players over—maybe some autographed jerseys for the silent auction, that kind of thing. Scott Fujita, Darren Sharper, and Jared were the ones who showed up. Jared and I clicked. He asked me out. I said yes.” She waved a long finger at me. “I didn’t know he was related to you, was John and Cecile’s nephew. I didn’t know he was originally from New Orleans. I just figured, since I never met his family or anything, that he came here when he was drafted for the Saints.”

  “And he let you think that, too,” Jesse interjected. “No offense, Scotty, but your cousin’s kind of a douche bag.”

  Before I could say preaching to the choir, Colin asked, “But you did eventually find out?”

  She nodded. “During the Giants game—we always show the games here to get a crowd—this woman was sitting at the bar.” She rolled her eyes and laughed. “She kind of looked out of place here. So I struck up a conversation with her. Turns out she’s Jared’s mother.”

  “Aunt Bethany,” I breathed out.

  Skipper and Bethany’s divorce was legendary in the family. For one thing, it was one of the few divorces ever in the Bradley family—all of them, come to think of it, were Uncle Skipper’s—and it was bitter and ugly. I didn’t know the details, but the legal battle lasted nearly three years, and basically Papa Bradley wound up paying Bethany several million dollars for Skipper to have primary custody of Jared. Bethany had remarried, and had another couple of kids with her second husband. She now lived across the river in Algiers Point. I’d only met her a couple of times, but she made me uncomfortable. She made it very clear she hated anything with the name Bradley.

  “You can imagine how shocked I was,” Dominique sipped at her Wild Turkey. “But it was pretty clear why Jared never introduced me to his family—Bethany Cutrere is a racist through and through.”

  She’s not the only one in the family, I thought, trying to imagine what would happen if Jared had ever brought Dominique to the big house on State Street. MiMi would get drunk—well, drunker—and Papa Bradley would have an apoplectic stroke. I’d never heard Skipper say anything particularly racist—but Aunt Enid definitely was. I shivered.

  “We had quite a few fights about that,” Dominique went on. “But I got it, you know? I didn’t like it, but Jared just wasn’t ready to have that kind of battle with his family. And I loved him.”

  “You said ‘loved,’” Colin observed. “Do you not love him anymore?”

  “He’s seeing—well, was seeing, Tara Bourgeois.” Dominique finished her drink. “I don’t know how long it’s been going on—maybe he was seeing her the whole time he was seeing me, who knows? But when I found out last week, I kicked his ass out.”

  “Jared was the one who found her body,” Colin said. “And Cecile’s gun was there.”

  Dominique laughed. “And you were wondering if I took Cecile’s gun to kill her with?” She tilted her head to one side. “I have my own gun. I didn’t need to take Cecile’s. I don’t even know where Cecile kept hers.”

  “What about you, Jesse?”

  Jesse was wiping the counter so hard he was probably taking the varnish off. “I didn’t take Mrs. Bradley’s gun,” he muttered. “And I didn’t have a reason to kill that woman. I didn’t even know her.”

  “Oh, now, Jesse, you hated her, too.” Dominique put her hand on his arm.

  “One last thing—where were you both last night?”

  Dominique smiled. “Well, I was playing hostess down here until around one thirty in the morning, and then Jared came by.”

  I almost fell off my bar stool. “Jared came by here?”

  She nodded. “He stayed upstairs in my apartment until around seven this morning.”

  He had an alibi? Why hadn’t he told us?

  “How did he seem?” Colin asked.

  She shrugged. “He’d had a rough night, he said—some family dinner thing. But other than that he seemed fine.”

  “And what about you, Jesse?”

  If Dominique’s revelation had knocked me for a loop, I certainly was in no way prepared to hear Jesse reply, “I had dinner with David Williams and spent the night at his place.”

  “David?” I blustered. David was my best friend and longtime workout partner.

  Jesse laughed. “I spent the night with him after the party, too.”

  Colin slid off his bar stool and placed a ten on the counter. “Thanks, you two. If we have any more questions, we’ll come back.” He smiled at them both. “The police will probably question you both.”

  Dominique barked out a bitter laugh. “Won’t be the first time.”

  Colin waited until we were back out on the street before asking, “What did she mean by that?”

  “A boyfriend of hers was murdered before Katrina—I don’t know the details, but the story I heard was it was some kind of mob hit.”

  Colin stared at me. “Dominique is involved in the mob?”

  I shook my head. “No, it had nothing to do with her—I think his father was the judge presiding over a mob trial, or something like that. Her ex-husband is supposedly a mob lawyer in Atlanta—but that’s just a rumor.”

  He whistled. “We need to do some deep background on her.”

  “Can you believe Jared had an alibi and didn’t tell me or Storm?” I still couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

  “He doesn’t really have an alibi,” Colin observed. “He could have killed Tara and come to Domino’s from there.”

  “I don’t think so.” I shook my head. “I can’t see Jared killing one girlfriend and then spending the night with another. And I can’t believe Jesse—and David…”

  “Why not?”

  “For one thing, I would have never guessed Jesse was gay.”

  Colin laughed. “Don’t tell me your gaydar is on the fritz. Where should we head next?”

  “Okay.” I consulted the list. “Ken Taylor’s place is over on Dauphine, between Dumaine and Bourbon. Let’s head there next.”

  A car pulled out of a parking space down the block, and I stepped back onto the curb.

  “Look out!” Colin screamed as the car headed right for us.

  Chapter Seven

  Two of Swords

  Indecision

  I just stared.

  It was like one of those horrible nightmares when you know something is going to happen—but you’re frozen in place and can’t move.

  What is that driver doing? I thought.

  It was inconceivable to me that he couldn’t see he was heading for the curb and right where we were standing.

  “Scotty!” Colin screamed from somewhere behind me.

  The car was heading right for me and wasn’t slowing down. If anything, it was speeding up.

  In my daze, I couldn’t tell anything about the driver, but he seemed male. He was wearing a black ski cap with the ubiquitous gold fleur-de-lis on the forehead—but he had it pulled down, obliterating his face.

  It was a dark blue car, midsize, maybe a Honda or a Nissan or a Toyota.

  It was also incredibly dirty.

  There was a dent in the hood and a crack across the windshield.

  Somehow all of those things registered in my mind as it came right at me.

  The next thing I was aware of was someone grabbing me. I was lifted right off my feet and thrown backward. I landed on my heels and fell back as the car jumped over the curb—right exactly where I’d been standing—before swerving back onto Bourbon Street.

  I heard a woman scream just as my body hit the sidewalk.

  My head hit something hard
and bounced.

  And everything went black.

  I was drifting through mist.

  I was weightless, and I wasn’t cold anymore—which was a really nice feeling.

  Everything was gray, like it always was when the Goddess chose to speak to me. It had been a while—not since my last murder investigation—and I was a little relieved to know that She was still willing to appear to me. I’d offended Her the year of Katrina and She had turned her back on me, leaving me on my own. She’d forgiven me during my last murder case—primarily because I was in a position to help right an affront to another one of Her apparitions. After the wrong had been righted, the visions ceased—although I was still able to read the Tarot with some degree of success.

  There was the familiar sense of love and protection wrapping itself around me, and a sense of peace and calm I always wished I could replicate when I wasn’t having a vision. I always felt safe in this place She summoned me to—whether it was between worlds or dimensions, I didn’t know, nor would I probably ever know.

  There was a strange silence as I continued drifting down through the mist. I closed my eyes and let the smells intoxicate me—lilacs and lavender, roses and jasmine. I breathed the fragrances in deeply as the warmth worked its way through my body, banishing the damp and the cold.

  I drifted down, and my bare feet touched soft earth.

  I opened my eyes, and the mist began to dissipate. There was a glowing light to my right, reflecting off the fading mist. “Holy Mother?” I called softly. “Are you there?”

  “Scotty.” Her voice called softly from the same direction the light was coming from. I turned so that I was facing the soft glowing light, and the mist began clearing completely as She walked toward me. We were standing in a meadow, and the sun came out of the grayness, and its warmth caressed my skin.

  As She drew nearer, I couldn’t help but smile.

  She was wearing a black Drew Brees jersey, with the big number 9 in gold in front. As always, I couldn’t make out Her face clearly; it was always blurry and indistinct, unless She was appearing to me in a completely human form. Her bare feet were floating several inches above the grass as She moved closer to me.