Who Dat Whodunnit

by Greg Herren

  We both nodded.

  “First off, does this have anything to do with the Tara Bourgeois or Marina Werner murders?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “I mean, I think so, but—”

  “It’s possible.” Colin cut me off. “Yesterday a car tried to run us down on Bourbon Street—and today, when we drove out to the Dove Ministry, what appeared to be the same car followed us out there.” He shrugged. “After we had dinner in Metairie, I thought I saw the same car following us down here. Turns out I was right—Rhoda and Lindy had that car in their sights the entire time.”

  “And what exactly are you doing down in this neighborhood in the first place?”

  “My aunt Enid lives in that building right there.” I pointed at the house. “Those are her windows on the second floor. We had some questions for her, and when we came out, this guy started shooting at us.”

  Venus’ right eyebrow drifted up a bit, as did the right corner of her mouth. “An interesting woman.”

  To say the least, I thought. “She was at the memorial service tonight at Dove Ministry for Marina and Tara—we wanted to know why. Why weren’t you and Blaine there? Don’t the cops always show up at memorial services for the victim?”

  Venus rolled her eyes. “We were ordered not to.” She shrugged. “Even though the two cases are definitely linked by the gun, Kenner has refused to give up jurisdiction on the Werner murder. We’re refusing to give up jurisdiction on the Bourgeois murder. We’re kind of at an administrative standoff.”

  “Dear God,” Colin replied. “What is it with Americans being so goddamned territorial? Isn’t catching the killer the most important thing?”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Venus smirked. “But that’s a fight going on with the higher-ups—the ones who want to be on TV every chance they get. This is a big case, Colin. The Kenner detective in charge of the Werner investigation went to the Academy with me—I’m godmother to his kids. So we’re sharing information.” She glanced over as the crime lab truck drove up. “Don’t go anywhere. Excuse me for a minute.”

  “Like we’d go anywhere,” I muttered. On the other side of the live oak I could see Lindy and Rhoda gesticulating while they spoke to Blaine, who looked confused.

  Then again, that was a pretty normal expression for him. He’s not one of my favorite people.

  “I think we should tell Venus what we know, trade information,” Colin whispered to me.

  “What do we know?” I looked at him. What the hell was he talking about? “And she’s not going to—” I stopped talking as he got a smug look on his face. I knew that look.

  “She will.”

  I sighed as Venus made her way back over to us. “Does the name Roger Kennicott mean anything to either of you?”

  “Is—was that his name?” I shook my head. “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Me, either,” Colin said. “Venus, I think we should all pool our information—I can get a background on this guy a lot faster and more thoroughly than the NOPD.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she opened her mouth. She closed it again with a sigh. “And if I say no, you’ll just make a call and I’ll wind up having to anyway, right?” She sighed resignedly. “For the record, I find that to be incredibly irritating.”

  “Catching the killer is the most important thing, right?” I pointed out.

  She nodded. “Go ahead, see what you can find out about him. His driver’s license number is LA 1000352.”

  Colin winked at her and walked away from us, pulling out his cell phone.

  “I’m sorry,” I commented. “We must drive you crazy.”

  “Yeah, well—believe it or not, you’re not the biggest pains in my ass.” She laughed and looked back over at the body. Camera flashes were going off as the medical examiner poked around. “But Colin has resources I can’t access, and like you said, catching the killer’s the most important thing. I don’t give a damn who gets credit, you know?”

  “You’ll get the collar, Venus,” I pointed out. “We can’t arrest anyone, after all. You don’t really think Emily killed Marina Werner, do you?”

  She sighed. “We had enough evidence to book her, Scotty. The district attorney’s office is riding the commissioner’s ass on this one. This has all the makings of one of those cases that’ll go national if we don’t solve it quickly. After the hurricane, with all the bad press the city officials got, and with crime on the rise again—” She sighed. “And of course, the Saints are getting the city a lot of great press. If we can’t resolve the murders of two high-profile nationally known women—one of whom was dating one of the Saints—it’s going to look bad. Really bad. Baton Rouge hasn’t gotten in on the act yet, but the governor has national aspirations, you know. The last thing we need is pressure from upriver.” She glanced at me out of the side of her eyes. “But off the record, no, I don’t think she killed Marina Werner, and neither does my buddy in Kenner. She certainly didn’t kill Tara Bourgeois—her alibi more than holds up.” A vein started pulsing in her temple. “But it was the same gun that killed them both—your mother’s gun.” She sighed. “Every time the Bradleys get involved in one of my cases, it’s worse than a goddamned migraine—no offense.”

  “None taken,” I replied meekly.

  “She’s going to get a low bail, is my guess. She’ll be out in the morning.”

  Colin came walking back over to us with a shit-eating grin on his face. “Blackledge is on it, Venus. They’re going to e-mail me a report in a few minutes.”

  “Thanks, Abram.” She gave him a mock salute.

  “Looks like it’ll be Agent Golden in your report after all, huh?” I sighed. “So, who are you really looking at for this?” There are benefits sometimes to having a superspy boyfriend when you’re a private eye.

  “I don’t have any evidence, but my gut tells me there’s something not right about Joe Billette,” Venus said slowly. “No alibi for either murder, and he had some serious issues with both women.” She nodded. “You know, he was blackmailing them both. He admitted to demanding half a million dollars from Tara to make the sex tapes go away. Turns out Marina Werner made a down payment of a hundred thousand to him last week. She was supposed to make the last payment on Monday night—but she called him on Sunday afternoon to tell him she was finished with it all, she wasn’t going to pay another red cent. He warned her he’d go public but claims she told him to do what he had to do, he wasn’t getting another cent from her. He was furious, to say the least, and called Tara. He says Tara was stunned Marina had changed her mind, told him she would talk to Marina and resolve whatever the problem was.”

  “So, he was a blackmailer,” I replied. It wasn’t really much of a stretch to leap from blackmail to murder—but usually it was the blackmailer who wound up dead. “Wow, the first tape was released on Tuesday morning. He sure worked quick.”

  “Tara had until that morning to get the money to him,” Venus went on. “Obviously, she was dead by then, so he went ahead and e-mailed the digital file to one of those tabloid shows when he didn’t hear from her—they paid him a pretty penny for an exclusive.” She shook her head. “He was pretty shook up when he found out she was dead.” She made a face. “You know he actually asked me if I thought the value of the remaining tapes would go up because she was dead?”

  “Ew,” I said involuntarily. “What is wrong with people?”

  “You tell me,” she replied wryly as Colin’s phone beeped. He excused himself and walked away. “So, what have you boys turned up?”

  “We-ell,” I said, thinking. I gestured over to my aunt’s windows. “My aunt was at the memorial service. Apparently, she was friends with both Tara and Marina—that’s how my dopey cousin Jared met Tara in the first place, Enid set them up together.” I shook my head. “She’s a member of the Dove Ministry.”

  “Those are some seriously whacked-out people,” Venus commented. “But what would—” She broke off as Colin came walking back over, a big grin on his fa
ce. “What’s the word?”

  “Roger Kennicott is—was—employed as security at none other than the Dove Ministry of Truth.” He glanced down at his phone again. “He has a record—nothing major, some assaults—mostly bar fights—from when he was in his twenties. He was dishonorably discharged from the military—I couldn’t get those records.” He winked. “At least, not yet. But he went to work for the Dove Ministry about four years ago, after doing a couple of years for his last arrest. He’s been clean ever since.”

  “Why was someone from the Dove Ministry following us?” I turned and stared at the body. “And tried to kill us yesterday? Why? What do we have to do with them?”

  Blaine came walking over to us. Lindy and Rhoda were standing, watching him, with their arms around each other. “The car was registered to the Dove Ministry,” Blaine said with a big grin. “I got an APB out on it now.” He gestured back over his shoulder at the Ninja Lesbians and whistled. “Their story checks out. We found a bullet in the railing of that building, just where they said we would—and it’s a slug from a Colt, which is what the victim is carrying.” He was bouncing on the balls of his feet. “This is definitely linked to the Dove Ministry, Vee. I can’t wait to hear the good reverend try to talk his way out of this one.”

  “Don’t call me Vee,” she replied irritably. She filled Blaine in on what Blackledge had dug up on Kennicott. His smile grew wider and wider.

  “Yes!” He did a fist pump. “Come on, let’s get out there and bring down some homophobe ass!”

  I’d often wondered about Blaine’s sexuality. During the Mardi Gras case, he tried playing me by claiming we’d had a one-night stand once—and I almost fell for it. After that, I’d been sure he was straight—and that was, I realized, part of the reason I didn’t care for him. I didn’t appreciate some straight cop playing gay to weasel his way into my confidence.

  But if he was gay—I felt myself softening toward him.

  A little.

  “All we can do is question him,” Venus replied. “We don’t have proof that Kennicott was acting on his orders.”

  “According to Kennicott’s financials, some major funds were moved into his account yesterday morning,” Colin interrupted. “A hundred thousand, to be exact. We don’t know yet where it came from”—he frowned down at this phone—“but they’re working on tracing it.”

  “I bet you anything it was from one of the Ministry’s accounts.” Blaine started bouncing again, a big grin on his face.

  Venus frowned at him. “We don’t know that. You need to calm down—until we have proof, there’s not a damned thing we can do.”

  A theory started forming in my mind, and all the scattered pieces began fitting together. I looked up at my aunt’s apartment. She was standing in one of the tower’s windows, looking down at us, talking into her phone.

  “The thing that’s been confusing us all,” I said slowly, “is the issue of Mom’s gun, right? It was used in both murders, so we have been working on the assumption that the same person killed both women.”

  They all turned and looked at me. “Go on,” Venus replied.

  “But we also originally assumed whoever took the gun was the killer, and we were wrong about that,” I pointed out. “We now know Emily was the one who took Mom’s gun, but she didn’t use it. She took it over to Marina’s to confront her. It went off, she got scared and left—and also left the gun behind.” I kept staring up at Enid in the window. She was talking, very agitated. “Marina was originally planning to pay off Joe Billette—and then on Sunday, she changed her mind and called it all off. That couldn’t have made Tara very happy. Joe told Tara on Sunday night she had until Tuesday morning to finish paying him the balance—and Tara didn’t have that kind of money lying around, right? So, where would she get the money from?”

  They just kept looking at me.

  “Well, Peggy MacGillicudy and her group might have that kind of money,” Colin said dubiously.

  “But if you were Tara, would you ask her for it? Think about it—would you ask the group that’s promoting you and getting you on every talk show in the country to pay off someone blackmailing you with sex tapes? Too big of a risk, I’d think, and I’m pretty sure Tara would have thought that, too. So ask yourself this question: If I were Tara, what would I do?”

  “Well, the first thing I’d want to do is find out why Marina changed her mind.” Venus looked around all of us. “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Makes sense.” Blaine nodded.

  “So why did she change her mind?” Venus asked. Colin just grinned at me.

  “Marina spent Saturday night with Emily Hunter, and Sunday morning she walked Emily to work,” I went on. “Her mother saw her. Her mother saw her kiss Emily. After years of being rejected by her daughter for being a sinner, for committing adultery, lo and behold, her sinful mother finds out she’s a lesbian! And human nature being what it was, her mother couldn’t resist mocking her.

  “So, here you have Marina. She’s a closeted lesbian whose father is one of the biggest homophobes in the country. His church—which she works for—is just as homophobic and is hosting a big anti-gay rally this coming weekend in conjunction with a national anti-gay group. Marina is about to be outed. She’s about to lose everything. But she also knows PAM’s spokesperson is a big phony, and she’s about to buy off the blackmailer who could expose Tara—with church funds, most likely.

  “Marina knows the church will turn on her. She knows her father will turn on her. She’s about to lose everything. And I think, that Sunday afternoon, Marina had an epiphany.

  “I think Marina finally came to terms with who she was.” I took a deep breath. “And she decided, at long last, to do the right thing. She wasn’t going to pay off Joe Billette. She was going to let him expose Tara—hey, if she was going to lose everything, so should Tara. It would be her coming-out present to the world. So she told Billette she wasn’t going to pay him. He told Tara she needed to come up with the money herself.”

  “That wouldn’t sit well with Tara,” Colin said, catching on. “Not with her big book release coming up.”

  “Exactly. Now, imagine you’re Tara again. It’s Sunday night. You’re going to be on every major talk show in the country to promote your new book. You’re in the Superdome watching the most important football game in the history of New Orleans—and if the Saints win, you’re going to go to all the celebrations on Jared’s arm—it’s the culmination of all your ambitions, everything you’ve been working toward for months.”

  Colin jumped in. “Only she’s about to lose it all because of Marina, the person she thought would help bury her past once and for all. What a night of hell that must have been for her—Jared even said she was acting funny.”

  I nodded. “So what do you do if you’re Tara? She had to confront Marina, ask her why she was backing out, why she wasn’t paying Joe off—try to convince her to give him the money. Everything was crumbling around Tara—this was worse than just being publicly embarrassed, remember. She was going to become a laughingstock, the punch line for every comedian in the country. So, Monday, she gets up and goes over to Marina’s. Emily had already left. I imagine Marina, who was already an emotional wreck before Emily went over there, was pretty fucking distraught. They had a confrontation of sorts—maybe Marina told her the truth, we’ll never really know. But at some point, Tara picked up Mom’s gun and shot and killed Marina. She took the gun and got the hell out of there.

  “But now she was really screwed. She still needed the money. Where could she turn? Who could give her the money and save her ass? She couldn’t ask Peggy MacGillicudy for the money. She couldn’t ask Reverend Werner. Her mother certainly didn’t have the money. She sure as hell couldn’t ask my cousin Jared. The way I see it, there was only one person she could logically ask.”

  I looked from Venus to Blaine to Colin. They stared back at me, not saying anything, even Colin, who raised one arm in a “so?” gesture.

  I pointed up at my au
nt in the window. “My aunt Enid.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Fool

  A promising new beginning

  “Enid?”

  I couldn’t help but grin at the incredulous look on Colin’s face. “Yes, honey, dear old Aunt Enid. We’ve been looking, almost from the beginning, for someone who was connected to both Marina and Tara.” I started ticking things off on my fingers. “Who introduced Tara to Jared? Enid. Who just told us Marina Werner was ‘like a sister to her’? Enid again. Who did Tara know who had access to the kind of money she needed? Bingo—Enid.” I glanced back up at her window. She was still standing there, only she’d turned her back to the window. She was still talking on her cell phone. “She has a Bradley trust fund, just like I do—only hers is way bigger than mine. Enid told us Marilou Bourgeois, Tara’s mother, was a dear friend, too. So who else would Tara turn to in her hour of need?” I shook my head. “I don’t think Tara went to Marina’s planning to kill her—I do think she just went there for answers. But she was in a highly emotional state—everything she’d worked so hard for was about to blow up in her face—and Marina was also volatile. We’ll never know what happened that morning, since they’re both dead, but we do know when Tara left, Marina was dead. And Tara brought the gun back to her own apartment.”

  “So, you think there were two killers, is what you’re saying?” Blaine asked. “Tara killed Marina, and someone else killed Tara.”

  “That’s exactly what I think.” I swallowed. “We’ve all been going crazy trying to find a double murderer—but I believe there were two killers who just happened to use the same gun. That’s why we can’t find someone to fit both crimes! Everyone who might have killed Tara had an alibi for Marina’s murder, and vice versa.” I looked back up at the window. “But I think the person who can answer the rest of our questions is Enid.”