Who Dat Whodunnit

by Greg Herren

  “Well, she gave Jared keys. There’s no telling how many other people she gave keys to.” I thought for a moment—which wasn’t easy. The Vicodin was making me loopy. “What about that Joe Billette guy? The one who made the sex tapes? Did he have keys?”

  “How would he have gotten Mom’s gun?” Storm pointed out. “I mean, Mom’s gun pretty much rules out everyone who wasn’t at Mom and Dad’s for the game.”

  “Lucky for Jared Mom used the gun Sunday afternoon,” I mused. “But unlucky for the killer. If Mom and Dad hadn’t gone shooting Sunday afternoon, the gun might have been gone for days—weeks, even, without either of them knowing.”

  Storm nodded. “Imagine how bad it would look for him if she hadn’t. He had keys, he obviously would have known about the security lapses, and it’s his aunt’s gun. He had an argument with her that night. That’s a pretty powerful circumstantial case.”

  “But he has an alibi—he was at Dominique’s.”

  “It’s pretty convenient, though.” Storm laughed. “By giving him one, she’s also giving herself one…she’s the one who could have taken the gun—and she definitely had some issues with Tara. Suppose, for a moment, that Dominique took the gun. Maybe she wanted to kill Jared. He led her on, broke her heart, lied to her on more than one occasion, right? Sunday night, the Saints win the NFC Championship—which means the Saints are going to be feted and honored, and it looks like it’ll be Tara Jared’s taking around with him instead of Dominique. The gun is just right there in the junk drawer. She takes it, puts it in her purse, and it goes home with her. The next night, Jared shows up, wanting to talk to her privately. Here’s her chance, right? So, she takes him upstairs…he tells her some lame story. She’s in love with him, so she believes it—it’s amazing the bullshit people in love will believe—and they have sex. He falls asleep—and there are Tara’s keys right there on his key ring. She slips out with the gun, goes over to Poydras Tower, lets herself in to Tara’s apartment, shoots her, leaves the gun, and gets out of there. Who’s to know any different?”

  “You are a good lawyer,” I replied. “If I were on the jury, I wouldn’t convict Jared.”

  “That’s why I make the big bucks, Scotty.” He shrugged. “They could be working together, for all we know. Dominique took the gun and gave it to him, and they alibied each other. Or you can argue the exact same story, only in reverse. Dominique took the gun to use on him, but he smoothes everything over with her, and when she’s asleep he takes it, kills Tara, and comes back so he’s there when she wakes up in the morning.”

  “Do you really think Jared’s that smart?” I made a face. “Not the Jared I know. Besides, if Jared were using Dominique as his alibi, he would have provided one from the beginning.”

  He laughed. “No, I don’t think he’s that smart. But I’ll be curious to hear what Jared says. Be interesting if he denies being with her, wouldn’t it? I mean, I can see why he wouldn’t want to tell anyone he was with her…but surely he had to know she’d eventually come forward.”

  The front door opened and once again, a cold blast of air blasted through the apartment before it could be shut again. I looked down the hallway and sighed with relief to see Colin walking down the hall.

  Colin kissed me on the cheek—his lips were cold—and plopped down on the end of the couch, unzipping his leather jacket. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m really tired of everyone acting like I’m an invalid,” I said sharply. “I hit my head. Big fucking deal—don’t say a word, Storm,” I warned as he opened his mouth with a grin. “What did you find out, Colin?”

  “You’re not going to believe this, but every single person at that party had a reason to kill Tara Bourgeois.” He shook his head. “I swear to God, it’s like Murder on the Orient Express.”

  “You’re kidding.” I exchanged a look with Storm.

  “I wish I were,” he replied. He pulled his notepad out of his coat pocket. “Gia Romano, believe it or not, was actually in the Miss Louisiana pageant—she was Miss Slidell.” He sighed. “Gia was the favorite going in—it was really down to between her and Tara, no one else was close. But on the final night, Gia was sabotaged. Her dress was torn—she had to get a last-minute replacement dress that didn’t really fit right, and she tripped on the hem. Her guitar strings were broken—and while she was able to restring the guitar, she was so rattled she messed up her song—and she wound up falling completely apart in the Question. She wound up third runner-up…after it was over, a stage hand told her he’d noticed Tara alone with her guitar. She confronted Tara, who admitted sabotaging her…but there was nothing Gia could do at that point.”

  “Is that really a reason to kill someone?” Storm asked.

  “If you take into consideration Gia entered the pageant primarily because she needed the money for college, yes, it is.” Colin said, his face grim. “She had to drop out, and now she’s working in a tanning salon, trying to save enough money to go back to college.”

  “But why wait, what, a year and a half?” I pointed out.

  “True.” Colin shrugged. “And there’s her roommate, Mike.”

  “Surely he wasn’t in the Miss Louisiana pageant.” Storm joked.

  “No, she just got him fired.” Colin shook his head. “You know, the more I hear about Tara, the more I think she got what she deserved.”

  “Nobody deserves to be murdered, Colin,” I objected, stifling a yawn. The Vicodin was making me sleepy.

  “She did—she was a horrible person.” Colin made a face. “Mike was hired by the pageant officials to keep her in shape—he had a very lucrative business as a personal trainer out at Airport Fitness—and he was doing very well. He’s gay, by the way—and after the big brouhaha at the Miss United States pageant, he refused to keep training her.”

  “And who could blame him?” I yawned again. “If she were my client, I would have quit, too.”

  “Unfortunately for Mike, the gym owner didn’t know he was gay,” Colin went on. “Tara complained to him, and got Mike fired. He lost his entire clientele.”

  “Seriously?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I spent the majority of my twenties working as a personal trainer. Granted, the gym I worked at was on the edge of the French Quarter and probably about fifty percent of the clientele were gay—but it was hard for me to imagine any gym owner firing an employee for being gay.

  Colin nodded. “He’s been trying to build his business back up at this gym over on St. Charles Avenue—but he’s been in pretty dire straits for a while. He had a car repossessed, and that’s partly why he moved in with Gia. He couldn’t afford to live on his own anymore.”

  Storm whistled. “And he just happens to be in a band with a girl who was also in the Miss Louisiana pageant with Tara.” He shook his head. “I see what you mean about Murder on the Orient Express.”

  Colin started going down the list, ticking off motive after motive. “The only person I spoke to without a connection of some sort to Tara is Lurleen Rutledge.”

  Storm’s phone started ringing. He got up and walked into the kitchen.

  Colin sat down on the sofa with me. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “My shoulder is the main problem—it’s really sore and stiff.” I sighed. “I really must have landed on it funny. I took a Vicodin, and it’s made me sleepy.”

  “I’m so sorry. I probably yanked it too hard when I pulled you out of the way.” He leaned down and kissed my forehead. “But all I could think was—”

  “You can give me a massage after Storm leaves.” I winked at him. “And I’m sure Frank’s going to need one when he gets home.”

  “You have no idea how much I miss you both when I’m not here—”

  He was interrupted by a shouted obscenity from the kitchen. “Are you all right?” I shouted as Colin and I exchanged puzzled looks.

  Storm walked back into the living room, his face mottled with anger. “That was Venus on the phone.”

  “Calm down,” I
advised.

  Storm just gave me a look and poured more Johnnie Walker into the glass he’d been using. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  “Believe what?”

  “Mom’s gun was also used to kill Marina Werner.”

  Chapter Nine

  Ace of Cups, Reversed

  Hesitancy to accept the things of the heart

  I woke up the next morning just before seven.

  I slipped out of bed and pulled on some sweats before heading into the bathroom to do my usual just-woke-up routine. I could smell the coffee brewing from the kitchen—I’d remembered to set the timer before going to bed for a change—and it drew me in. I moved my shoulder around a bit. It was a little stiff, but it didn’t hurt anymore. I sighed with relief.

  After Storm got the news about Mom’s gun, we’d sat around and tried hashing out different theories of the crime. Knowing Mom’s gun had been used to kill Marina Werner certainly changed everything we’d already been thinking about the case—and meant starting over from scratch.

  The two murders were definitely connected, but how?

  The obvious connection was the anti-gay rally—Marina was an organizer, Tara was the headline speaker—but I hadn’t found anything to connect anyone at Mom and Dad’s party to both women.

  “Besides Mom and Dad,” Storm pointed out, only half joking. “This would look really bad for them if we hadn’t all been there while someone was killing Tara.”

  We got absolutely nowhere.

  Storm had finally gone home shortly before Frank got home from Biloxi. Colin and I had to go over everything again with him. We stayed up a little while longer, but I could barely keep my eyes open. Frank was also exhausted both physically and emotionally, and so we finally decided to just hit the sack and start fresh in the morning.

  Steam rose from my coffee mug as I headed to the desk. It was freezing in the apartment, so I turned on the heat for a little while to take the edge off.

  I sat down and started doing some research on Marina Werner.

  I was on my third cup of coffee when I finally exhausted all avenues of online research.

  She wasn’t, I thought as I printed out my summary of her life, particularly interesting. She was the oldest child of Dick Werner, founder and minister of the Dove Ministry of Truth out in Kenner on Airline Highway. She’d been in her early thirties, and according to the pictures I’d found of her online, not a particularly pretty woman. She had brown hair she kept cut extremely short, and rather plain, nondescript features. She wore glasses, had narrow shoulders and ample hips. She apparently favored knee-length skirts, blouses, jackets that matched the skirts, and sensible flat-heeled shoes. She worked as the treasurer of the Ministry, had a business degree from the University of New Orleans, and had pretty much been her father’s right hand in the Ministry from the day she graduated from college. She’d never been married even though she was in her late thirties—which I found a little odd. Why wasn’t she married? I wondered, peering at the best photograph I’d found of her online, from the Ministry’s website. Granted, I didn’t believe a woman was worthless unless she was a wife and mother—an archaic mentality of the patriarchy—but her father was the minister of a denomination of Christianity that was all about “traditional values.”

  Surely her father would have pressed her to get married?

  She was the product of an early first marriage to a Rebecca L. Burleson—they’d apparently been very young when they married. The divorce (so much for traditional values!) came not long after he started the Ministry, and he hadn’t waited long after the divorce was final before marrying his current wife, Mary Ellen Kirkwood, with whom he had three sons. The oldest was apparently taking over some ministerial obligations from his father—rather creepily, his name was actually Dick, Jr., but he went by DJ.

  DJ was obviously the favored child, probably because he was going into the family business. His picture was everywhere on their website, most often standing between his parents. Like his father, he had a big toothy smile and what Mom always called “God’s hair,” a full head of thick hair sprayed rigidly into place. There were some shots of him in khaki slacks, a polo shirt, and a hard hat working on a construction project—a homeless shelter in Kenner.

  Are there a lot of homeless people in Kenner? I wondered as I stared at his picture. He was in pretty good shape—something you couldn’t really tell in the shots of him wearing suits and ties. His chest looked well developed, his stomach was flat, and definition showed in his biceps as he swung the hammer.

  He was good looking if you liked that type.

  I didn’t.

  I clicked on the page marked The Ministry’s History. Dick had started preaching, apparently, in a small town out in Plaquemines Parish. He eventually heard the call to move his ministry to Kenner, where he and Mary Ellen had bought an old abandoned church on Airline Highway and founded the Dove Ministry of Truth. The page read like a press release, written in breathless prose with lots of exclamation marks and claims of MIRACLES!!! and GOD’S HAND showing itself. It made me want to throw up, but still—I had to give them credit. Twenty years ago, they opened their church with just five parishioners, and they had built it into a rather impressive megachurch with thousands attending services in person and who knows how many hundreds of thousands more watching on television.

  They certainly knew how to market and promote their brand of snake oil.

  I couldn’t help but be amused as I noticed that Mary Ellen Werner’s hair had also gotten bigger and her make-up thicker over the years. It was almost as though the Ministry’s growth could be measured in the size of her hair and thickness of mascara. Her hair, though, was truly impressive—and had to be at least part wig. The most recent photo I could find on the site was from DJ’s wedding last summer to a woman who looked barely out of her teens. She was pretty enough, and all smiles as she looked up adoringly at her newly wedded husband—who was smiling at the camera instead of at his wife.

  Mary Ellen’s hair was a masterpiece, though. The curls were piled up at least three inches tall on top of her head, and more curls cascaded down over her shoulders and down her front—and probably in the back as well.

  I was so fascinated by Mary Ellen’s hair that I almost missed Tara Bourgeois standing on the other side of the bride.

  Tara was wearing a frilly dress that was sea foam green and completely unflattering, and was holding a small bouquet of flowers as she gave the camera a forced pageant smile.

  It was a bridesmaid’s dress if I’d ever seen one.

  I leaned back in my chair. Well, it only makes sense, I thought. Tara was from Kenner, it’s not much of a stretch she would go to services at the Dove Ministry of Truth. But if she was a parishioner there, wasn’t it kind of shitty to make them pay her to speak at their homophobia rally?

  I distinctly remembered hearing Mom say the Dove Ministry was paying Tara ten grand to talk about the “Homosexual Agenda.”

  I got up and refilled my coffee cup. I could hear someone in the bathroom brushing their teeth, so I started another pot brewing before I walked back into the living room. I sat down on the couch.

  Whoever killed both women could have just been targeting them because of their anti-gay stance.

  In which case, it was logical to assume that Peggy MacGillicudy was next on the hit list.

  But Mom’s gun was the murder weapon. That meant the killer had been at Mom and Dad’s on Sunday night.

  That was a chilling thought.

  Frank sat down next to me, yawning as he set his coffee mug down on the table. He glanced at the print-out of the Marina research. “You’re getting started early.” He stretched and put his arm around my shoulders.

  “Yeah.” I put my head down on his shoulder. “Turns out, Tara knew Marina—at least, she knows Marina’s brother and his wife—she was in the wedding party.” I shook my head. “But who at Mom and Dad’s was connected to both women? It just makes my head hurt, Frank.”


  “There might be another connection between them we haven’t found yet,” Frank pointed out, picking up his coffee and taking a big drink. “We didn’t even know the murders were definitely connected until last night. And you know better than anyone else online research isn’t as good as old-fashioned legwork. How’s your head this morning?”

  I felt around until I found the knot under my curls. “It feels like it’s gone down some—and I don’t have a headache. My shoulder’s a little tight, but it’s okay.”

  “Glad to hear it.” He stretched and I could hear his back cracking. “I’m kind of stiff today myself—was a hell of a practice yesterday. I wish I didn’t have to go back over there today.” He made a face. “I’d rather stay here and help you guys crack this case.” His face darkened. “It really pisses me off someone used Mom’s gun to kill people.”

  “I wish you didn’t have to either—but it’s not every week you get a title shot.” I patted him on the leg. “What time do you have to be over there today?”

  “I’ve got to be there at eleven.” He frowned. “I have a photo shoot.” He rolled his eyes and laughed. “Did I really just say that?”

  “You said it, supermodel.” I grinned at him. “I have to say, though, it doesn’t feel right investigating a case without you helping out.”

  He grinned back at me. “Let me go hop in the shower—I think I hear Sleeping Beauty rustling around in there—and I’ll make us all breakfast.”

  I watched him walk out of the room and was about to reach for my coffee cup when I noticed my laptop was still sitting on the end table where I’d left it when Storm showed up yesterday. Oh yeah, I was researching Lurleen Rutledge, I thought as I reached for it. Not much point in finishing that—I can’t imagine a gallery owner’s widow having a reason to run around killing homophobes.

  But when I touched the computer, it whirred and the screen came back to life. It was set to go to sleep if there wasn’t a keystroke in five minutes—and the search engine where I’d plugged Lurleen’s name into had continued to search when I put it aside.