Louisiana Lament

by Julie Smith

  “Rashad and Cassie was friends. That’s all.”

  “How about Rashad and you?”

  “Well, I like him a lot.”

  “And what else?”

  “We hang out together, tha’s all.”

  Talba said, “You told me he’s the closest thing you have to a boyfriend. Is that what you told the police?”

  “They ax me was I sleepin’ with him. It’s disrespectful.”

  “Are you?” Eddie asked.

  “That ain’t ya business.”

  “Janessa, this is a murder case. Talk to us.”

  Janessa looked as if she might cry. “He’s not my boyfriend. Okay?”

  “Let’s move along,” Angie said. “Tell Dad and Talba what you told the police before I got there.”

  “Told ’em what I tol’ y’all—ain’t their business. Then they ax me where Rashad is. I say I don’t know. They ax do I know Cassie involved with him; I say she ain’t. Then they ax me who his frien’s are. I tell ’em, then they go back to the other thing. They get all nasty, try to bully me and stuff. So I say I ain’t tellin’ ’em nothin’. This goes on for a while, and I cry and yell and stuff and I say they can’t talk to me that way and they say I’m in big trouble. So I say, am I under arrest, and this one dude, Sergeant Crap-it, he say, ‘Okay. Read her her rights.’ And some other one do. I know I got a right to a phone call, so I call Talba.” She shrugged. “That’s it.”

  Eddie said, “What did you say when they asked who Rashad’s friends are?”

  She shrugged again. “I tol’ ’em.”

  “How about if you tell us?”

  “I don’t know ’em all. But he live with his brother, Marlon, before he come stay with Allyson; I tell ’em that. I know Marlon pretty good. He work for Miz Allyson, too; her and her other daughter, Arnelle. Rashad got lots of poet frien’s, too. And Hunt and Lynne.”

  “Hunt Montjoy?” Talba asked. “He was a friend of Hunt Montjoy?”

  “Yeah. Like he Allyson frien’. Mr. Montjoy try to help him. He got a teacher like that, too. Wayne. I ain’ know his last name.”

  Talba said. “Who’s Lynne?”

  “Mr. Montjoy’s wife.”

  “Do you know the Montjoys?”

  “Seen ’em at Allyson’s, tha’s all.”

  Talba was curious about something. “Didn’t the police ask you about Austin?”

  “Oh, yeah. Ax the same things—did I know his frien’s? But I didn’t. Hardly know Austin, he just there a few days.”

  “Where does he live?” Angie interjected.

  “Don’ know.”

  “Okay,” Eddie said. “Tell me the truth, Janessa. Did you kill Cassie?”

  “Whose side you on?” Janessa snarled.

  “Come on, baby. You know we’re on your side—all three of us. We’re gonna get you through this.” He glanced ever so briefly at Talba, but it was long enough for her to see that he’d come to a decision. “I promise you, ya not going to jail if ya didn’t kill anybody. I just want to hear it from you—did you kill Cassie?”

  Janessa leaned against the back of her chair, squaring her shoulders as if to show she understood the seriousness of the situation. “No, sir, I did not,” she said.

  “Did you kill Allyson Brower?”

  “No, sir, I did not.”

  “That’s all we need to know then. See how easy that was? That’s all we need to know. We’re gon’ get you outta this. I promise.”

  Janessa said nothing.

  Eddie stood and offered his hand. “Shake on that?”

  Gravely, Janessa stood and shook his hand. Talba could have kissed him.

  “Take Janessa home, will ya?” he said. “She’s had a rough day.”

  Talba could see Janessa falling a little bit more in love. “Come on, kid,” she said, and Janessa said, “I’m not your kid.”

  The rain was falling more gently now, and the evening seemed almost peaceful. On the way to Mystery Street, Talba focused on her driving, wanting for a little while to forget Janessa’s troubles. But when they arrived, her sister said, “Just because he gave Cassie his book, that s’posed to mean he was in love with her?” Her voice was furious. “He gave me one, too.”

  Talba was jolted. “Who? Rashad?”

  “You want to see it? Here, I’ll show you.” And she ran up the steps.

  Chapter Five

  Talba arrived home to find her mother in a black funk. Miz Clara, who cleaned houses for a living, had evidently been home for quite a while. She’d changed into a pair of clean sweats and put on her old blue slippers. Instead of “hello,” she said, “Some girl call for ya. Say she ya sister.”

  Uh-oh. Talba had never thought Janessa would call the house. She kept her voice casual. “Did she leave her name?”

  “Jocasta. Somethin’ like that.”

  “Janessa, maybe?”

  “I guess.” Miz Clara’s sulky voice matched her don’t-mess-with-me face.

  “When did she call? Am I supposed to call her back?”

  “Few minutes ago. Say she call tomorrow. Sandra, what’s goin’ on here?” Her mother used the name she called her daughter instead of the one Talba had chosen for herself. Neither one was her given name, which was never mentioned within the family.

  Talba considered whether it was possible to protect Miz Clara from finding out about her father’s love-child. Too early to tell, she decided, and took the coward’s way out. “I never mentioned Janessa?”

  “No, you did not. Who this girl is?”

  “She’s just somebody I know.” Talba looked at her watch. “Mama, Darryl’s due here in ten minutes and I’m not remotely ready to go out. Did she leave a number or not?”

  “Say she call tomorrow.” Her mother was simmering with suspicion, but the mention of Darryl’s name kept her from pressing the issue. Darryl Boucree, Talba’s boyfriend, was the best thing in her daughter’s life, so far as Miz Clara was concerned; she wasn’t about to stand in the way of progress.

  Talba went off to get out of her white shirt and blue skirt, her invariable work outfit. Before getting her PI license, she’d done time as a temp, and she couldn’t see putting money and energy into snappy work clothes. Her performance clothes, the ones she wore when she assumed her poet persona, the Baroness de Pontalba, were the very antithesis of low-profile. Thus she had a closet full of glamorous flowing garments, with a few generic work outfits squished into a corner. The latter worked just as well for a PI as a temp—she was always professional, never memorable.

  She peeled off her disguise, slipped into the shower, and on emerging, selected a T-shirt and black jeans from yet a third stash of clothes, the ones she wore “to slop around in,” as Miz Clara would say. As she dressed, she heard Miz Clara entertaining Darryl, the sullenness now gone from her voice, replaced by a birdlike quality it acquired only in Darryl’s presence. Even if Talba hadn’t adored him, she’d have had to keep him around to retain her mother’s approval. Miz Clara had only contempt for her previous boyfriend, didn’t think much of poetry as a profession, and the PI field appealed to her only when her daughter got her name in the paper. “Waste of a perfectly good education” was a phrase Talba had heard more than once. But she considered Darryl on a par with a Harvard MBA.

  By the time Talba had her lipstick on, Miz Clara had Darryl eating leftover gumbo. “Mama! You always do this. How do I get him to take me out to dinner if he’s already eaten?”

  “Nobody said you can’t have some.”

  “I want to go to Mona’s.”

  Darryl stood and gave her a kiss. “Hello to you, too, Samantha Spade. It was just a little taste.”

  Resigned to spending the evening by herself—or maybe secretly happy about it—Miz Clara held the door for them. “Y’all have fun, now.”

  “I’ll be home early, Mama.” Talba and Darryl often had short dates, since Darryl had a love-child himself—the troubled (and in Talba’s view, bratty) Raisa, whose mother had custody but who nonetheless spe
nt a good bit of time with her father. So they went out on week nights just to have time alone together, even though both had to get up and go to work the next day. For Darryl, being a teacher, these were literally school nights, and for Talba, there was often literal homework.

  Since Miz Clara tended to cook Southern—and so did nearly every restaurant in New Orleans—Talba liked the Mideastern food at Mona’s in the Faubourg Marigny for a change. It was a bit out of her neighborhood, but that was a good change, too.

  “Remember that party we went to at Allyson Brower’s?” she asked when they’d ordered their chicken schwarama.

  Darryl laid down his menu. “I heard about her on the radio,” he said softly. “I was going to tell you if you didn’t know. Sad, sad thing. And that poor daughter of hers.”

  “Yeah. Real nasty thing.” Talba paused for a minute, trying to figure out how to tell the rest of it. Finally she decided simply to plunge in. “Listen, there’s big news—really big news.”

  “I’m bracing myself.”

  “Are you ready for this one? My sister, Janessa, discovered Allyson’s body.”

  “Janessa,” he repeated. He squinched up his eyes in disbelief. “You mean you finally heard from her—after all this time?”

  The case was confidential, but Talba never stood on ceremony—when she needed to talk with Darryl, she did. This was something she really had to run by him. She told him what had happened, having to stop about every two seconds, as he peppered her with unbelieving questions. When she got to the part about Janessa calling her house, he said, “Oh, boy. What’d you tell Miz Clara?”

  “Nothing yet. What do you think I ought to do?”

  The chicken came, and he speared a bite. “You want my honest opinion?”

  “That’s why I asked.”

  “You’ve got to tell her. Did you give Janessa your home number?”

  Talba tried to remember. “You know, I don’t think so. Uh-uh. I’m sure I didn’t.”

  “Okay, she’s going where she hasn’t been invited—it won’t be the last time.”

  Talba sighed, thinking that she herself should break the news, not Janessa. Not at all a pleasant thought. Miz Clara could be a terror under the best of circumstances, and her least favorite subject was her late husband, Denman Wallis.

  During dinner, she and Darryl spoke of almost nothing but the case—not too romantic, but then they’d see each other on the weekend. When she kissed him good night, she said, “I’m reading at Reggie and Chaz on Friday—usual open-mike thing—” Darryl had seen it a hundred times “—so why don’t you and Raisa bond that night? And I’ll see you Saturday.”

  “Counting the minutes,” he said, but she could tell he was relieved.

  “However, don’t forget what’s important.”

  “And that would be?”

  “I am a baroness.”

  “Pardon me. Counting the minutes, Your Grace.”

  She went to bed early, intending to call on Marlon Daneene first thing in the morning. One of the things Eddie had taught her was that the best time to get people at home is before they go to work—and before their defenses go up. She had a fairly recent address on the river side of Magazine Street, in the Irish Channel—that is, for Marlon and Rashad, before Rashad moved in with Allyson. With luck, Marlon was still there.

  Miz Clara was sitting at the old black-painted kitchen table, reading the Times-Picayune when Talba bustled in for breakfast. Her mother was still sulky and silent, and wasn’t about to relinquish the front section, but looking over her shoulder, Talba saw two familiar faces: Allyson Brower (the picture was one taken at the literary lion party) and Cassie Edwards. And suddenly a picture came to Talba—of Rashad at Allyson’s party, talking to that beautiful blond girl. It was Cassie.

  She had been wearing the white shirt and black skirt of a catering employee. Talba wondered whether her mother had gotten her the job with Food for Thought.

  “Terrible thing,” Miz Clara muttered. “Mother and daughter murdered. Mmm. Mmm. Mmm.”

  The reality of it had only just begun to hit Talba the night before, when she told the story to Darryl. It was a terrible thing, but she felt more sadness for Cassie than she did for Allyson, perhaps because Allyson had seemed so much more like a character in a play than a real person. She wondered what Cassie had been like.

  “No one’s gonna get us, Mama,” she said. “We’re too mean to die.”

  To her surprise, Miz Clara cackled. “You got that right. Mmm, mmm.”

  Talba gulped some coffee, hopped in her old Isuzu, and pulled up at Marlon’s house shortly after seven. It was half a double shotgun, shabby and ordinary. She wondered if he lived there alone.

  The young man who answered the door was still in his underwear, hiding behind the door to preserve a little modesty. “Marlon Daneene? Hi, I’m Talba Wallis. My sister Janessa’s a friend of your brother’s.”

  “Janessa?” he said. “I be knowin’ Janessa.”

  “She asked me to come see you. Could I come in and talk to you?”

  “You mind waitin’ a minute?”

  “Not at all.” Definitely not if that meant he was going to put his pants on.

  A moment later, his place was taken by a woman about her own age, but heavier. No, pregnant, she realized, seeing that the woman’s white T-shirt was caught on a melon-shaped shelf. Her hair was clipped close, almost as short as Miz Clara’s. Evidently she was getting ready for motherhood. But maybe not because the ’do suited her. She had a well-shaped head and gentle features set off by gold hoop earrings. “Marlon’s gone to put on his clothes,” she said. “I’m Demetrice.”

  Talba repeated her spiel.

  “Come on in,” Demetrice said. “You seen Janessa? I mean since—you know.”

  “Yes. She was the one who discovered Mrs. Brower’s body. Did you know that?” She’d managed to read enough of the article over Miz Clara’s shoulder to know that the paper had described the discoverer only as “an employee.”

  “We thought it was. Had to be either her or Carmen.” She led Talba into a thoroughly chaotic kitchen, and asked if she wanted coffee, which Talba accepted. Another of Eddie’s tricks was to take refreshments when they were offered so you’d have an excuse to stay till you’d finished.

  She’d only had time for a sip when Marlon rejoined them, in jeans and extra-large T-shirt, though his build was slight. He was a light-skinned man, lighter than Rashad, but not nearly so attractive as his brother, who managed to have that poet’s… what? Not sensitivity, exactly. Perhaps alertness would describe it; Rashad had seemed a lot more alive than his brother.

  And no wonder, Talba thought. Marlon was about to have more responsibility than he probably bargained for at his age. He poured himself a cup of coffee and said, “Let’s go in the living room.” He glanced at the cluttered kitchen as if he was slightly ashamed, but the living room wasn’t much better. A pair of women’s shoes were still on the floor, where Demetrice had probably removed them while watching television. Various shirts and jackets had been left hither and yon, and mail, both opened and sealed, had been left unattended, scattered on the floor and various other surfaces. Demetrice didn’t seem like much of a housekeeper.

  Marlon sat in a recliner and Demetrice on the shabby sofa, probably in their usual places, leaving Talba a straight-backed dining room chair that looked out of place in the room. “Janessa’s worried about Rashad,” she began. “The police are looking for him.”

  Marlon nodded. “They were here last night.”

  “She wants me to try to help him. Find him if I can. I’ve got a good friend who’s a lawyer.”

  Demetrice said, “Wonder if he just got fed up with that Allyson bitch.”

  Marlon started. “Demetrice, what you talkin’ about? You know Rashad ain’ done nothin’.”

  “Rashad and Allyson didn’t get along?” Talba interjected. “I had the impression they were pretty tight.”

  Demetrice sniffed. “That woman the dev
il. Cheated people; wouldn’t pay ’em what she owed ’em. Rich bitch. She wouldn’t pay Marlon. Wha’s up with that?”

  Talba turned to Marlon. “You worked for her, too?”

  “Yeah, I’m a painting contractor. When she started doin’ work on her house, Rashad brought me in to help her. Both of us work there—other guy quit she was so hateful.”

  “What other guy?”

  “The one doing the murals. Doug something. He quit, Janessa say she could finish the marsh scene. She pretty good, too.”

  “Wait a minute. What order did all this happen in? Rashad knew Allyson and got the painting job, is that it? Then he brought you in?”

  “Yeah. He bring Janessa in, too. She wasn’t no professional painter or nothin’, but she real careful—real good at doin’ trim. He know her from poetry class.”

  “That’s what she said.”

  The mention of poetry seemed to have triggered Marlon’s memory. “Wait a minute. You a poet, too! You the one they call the Baroness—Janessa always talkin’ about ya.”

  Janessa’s secret life, Talba thought—the one where I exist. “That’s me. I even met Rashad once—at a party at Allyson’s.”

  Demetrice rolled her eyes. “Her and her damn parties.”

  “I thought I saw Cassie there, too. She worked for the caterer, right? I forget her name.”

  “Tasha. Yeah, Cassie work for Tasha.”

  “Were she and Rashad involved?”

  Marlon and Demetrice looked at each other and seemed to hesitate. Finally, Marlon said, “Think they was just friends.”

  “How about Janessa and Rashad?”

  “Oh, no, uh-uh,” Marlon said. “I’m not goin’ there. She ya sister.”

  “Listen, both of them could be arrested for murder at any minute. I think we’d better get some things out in the open.”

  Again the couple looked at each other. Finally, Demetrice shrugged. “I don’t know. You know, Marlon?”

  “I ain’ know,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

  “One police theory is that Janessa killed Cassie because she was jealous of her.”

  “That’s plain ridiculous,” Demetrice said.