Louisiana Lament

by Julie Smith

  “Looks like she did it, Baroness. All the time it’s been her—or at any rate, there’s something very important she forgot to tell us.” She told Talba about the prints on the glass.

  Janessa and Marlon and some other man—part of the painting crew, Talba surmised—were sitting on the front steps of a big brick house, taking a break. Janessa had on overalls, with a bandanna tied around her head against paint drips. Talba got out of the car and waved from the street. “Hey, Janessa, come on. Let’s go to lunch. Hey, Marlon. I won’t keep her too long.”

  Janessa hurled herself happily down the walk and flung herself in the back seat. “Where we goin’?”

  “Byblos,” Angie said, picking a Mideastern restaurant something like Mona’s, but fancier. Lately, these had proliferated in New Orleans, and offered good, fresh food without a lot of deep-frying and sauces—always a good choice, in Talba’s opinion.

  Janessa was immediately suspicious. “What’s that?”

  “Mideastern, you’ll like it.”

  “Eeeew. You mean, like with the library paste you scoop up with some kind of round bread, tastes like sawdust?”

  “How about Semolina?” retorted the ever-flexible Angie.

  “Pasta,” Talba said. “Giant portions.”

  “Okay, yeah,” the girl said.

  Angie got on her cell phone. “Dad. Meet us at Semolina.”

  That made Janessa happy. “Mr. Eddie comin’, too? What y’all found out?”

  “We’ll tell you when we get there.”

  Privately, Talba wondered if a restaurant was really the right place to have this conversation, but then again, it would put them all in better moods. She thought Angie was doing all right, but the minute Eddie walked in, you could see something was wrong—at least she could. He was limping more than usual, his face was slightly red, his pouches looked like something you could buy at Hold Everything—and his eyebrows met in the middle. That was the real tip-off. He scared Talba and he wasn’t even mad at her.

  But Janessa seemed oblivious. “How ya doin’, Mr. Eddie? ’Sup? Y’all found Rashad?”

  “Janessa. The cops want to arrest you for murder.”

  The waitress picked that moment to appear. At the mention of the “M” word, she turned a color somewhere between mauve and magenta. “I, uh, uh…” she stammered, but Eddie was unfazed. “We’ll have the Malibleu salad,” he said. “Bring us four of ’em, four iced teas.”

  So much for Janessa’s pasta. Talba noticed her sister’s color wasn’t too good, either.

  Eddie’s face had taken on the wrath of the Old Testament God. He turned his pouches and unibrow frown full on his young client. “What the hell were you doing at Cassie’s the night of the murders?” His voice was somewhere between a croak and a growl.

  Finally, Janessa had the good sense to look scared. For the whole last week, Eddie had played good cop to Angie’s tough one. Janessa swiveled her head, as if seeking the former Mr. Nice Guy, or maybe an exit.

  Apparently seeing no way out, she turned her attention to her former protector, tears shining in her eyes. “I wasn’t at Cassie’s. What you talkin’ about?”

  “The police say you were, Janessa. They found your fingerprints.”

  “Well, I been to Cassie’s. Just not that night.”

  “That’s not gonna fly. They found the prints on one of Allyson’s wineglasses.”

  Janessa looked utterly bewildered. “Y’all ain’ makin’ no sense.”

  Talba took pity on her. “They think you took the glass over there.”

  “Why’d I do a dumb thing like that?”

  “Because you didn’t think it was dumb,” Angie said. “You thought you were being real smart.”

  Janessa went pouty. “I don’t know whatcha talkin’ about.”

  “Why’d ya try to slip one by us, honey?” Eddie said. He was the good cop again.

  Frustration was pouring off Janessa like sweat. “I didn’t lie to nobody. Look, Austin tol’ ya, didn’t he? Thought y’all was takin’ him to the po-lice.”

  “We did,” Angie said. “And that’s when they told us about your fingerprints.”

  “They believe Austin? They let him go?”

  “Janessa. What about the glass?”

  Their salads were now being delivered, but the waitress looked ready to run for cover if anyone made a sudden move. Janessa said, “Whoa. That thing’s big enough for three people.”

  “Two, anyway,” Eddie said. “Shouldn’t have ordered so many. But these are on Angie—you’re her client. Or you were. Angie, you firin’ her?”

  “No, I’m not firing her. If anybody needs a lawyer, it’s Janessa here.” She took a bite of her salad, which had bits of apple and blue cheese in it. “This is delicious, Dad. I wouldn’t have thought it was your thing.”

  “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t have thought butt-dragons were yours.”

  That seemed to interest Janessa even more than the threat of life imprisonment. “Butt-dragons?” she asked, and Talba could only be grateful. What the hell had Eddie meant?

  Angie was wolfing her salad, looking a lot more relaxed than usual, in fact, almost happy, which wasn’t her usual expression. Was there something about having a client neck-deep in bean dip that she thrived on? She had an almost dreamy expression. “Not dragons,” she said. “That’s ‘dragon,’ singular. Forget about my dragon. Janessa, I want to know why you took that glass over to Cassie’s.”

  “I didn’t take no glass to Cassie’s.”

  “Well, were you there? Were you drinking out of it?”

  “No, I wasn’t drinkin’ out of it. I don’t even like wine. Hardly ever drink wine. I need to see that waitress.”

  Scowling, Eddie signaled the poor woman, who arrived in about a millisecond, eager to avoid offending Janessa. Janessa pointed to the rest of her salad. “I need a go-cup for this.”

  “A go-cup?” The waitress looked like she’d rather die than disobey.

  “She means a doggie bag,” Eddie said, and the woman disappeared with a swish. He turned back to Janessa and saw that she had started to cry. “What is it, honey?”

  “I thought y’all were my friends. Thought ya were tryin’ to help me.” She turned on Talba. “And you! You my sister. Come here callin’ me a liar and a murderer. I don’t need this kind of shit. Listen, I did it, okay? I killed Cassie and I killed Miz Allyson. Y’all satisfied?”

  The waitress, who’d just returned with the packaged-up salad, gasped and dropped it like a bomb on the table. Eddie gave her a benign smile. “Pretty good, isn’t she? We’re rehearsing for a play.”

  “Oh.” The woman’s teeth showed, but her cheeks were tight, the smile not quite coming off, her face more or less saying, “Too late. I just wet my pants.”

  Turning back to his client, Eddie said, “Great, Janessa, that’s just great. Now we’ve got a witness who heard ya confess, and she’s not ya friend—what ya want to do something like that for? And what in the name of God do ya mean ya killed Cassie and Allyson?”

  “That must be how my fingerprints got there, right? Ain’t that what y’all are sayin’?”

  “No, we are asking you how your prints got there.” Angie’s relaxed mood was as dead as the plants on her plate. “We’re saying that’s what the police are going to say—in court. And furthermore, we’re saying you better come up with the real explanation.”

  “It was like they said—I was jealous of Cassie, ’cause Rashad, he couldn’t leave her alone. And I killed Miz Allyson ’cause she come in and caught me. She brought her own wineglass. She was drinking wine, and she come in and—”

  “Right, kid,” Eddie said. “You were busy killing Cassie with a knife, but you happened to have a gun handy for Allyson. That the way it went down?”

  “No, she had the gun and I got it away from her.”

  “Uh-huh. How’d you get her body back to her house?”

  “I, uh—I made her drive back and I shot her over there.”

  �
�What’d you do that for?” Eddie asked quietly.

  “Um… I don’t know, I wasn’t thinkin’ straight. See, I was so nervous, I drank Miz Allyson’s wine after I shot her, and after that—”

  Talba was in mild shock, but nothing Janessa said surprised her anymore. Angie had gone dead-white at first, but her color had come back a little bit at a time—and then some. She was getting redder and redder. Eddie was laughing.

  Angie said, “Janessa, hear me! You may not say anything like that to any police officer or anyone else—anyone at all, do you hear me? They will throw your ass in jail so fast you’ll time-travel—you’ll get there before you left home, you know what I mean? And once you’re there, do you have any idea how hard it’s going to be to get you clear of this? They have enough evidence to arrest you right now—do you get that? They could arrest you for murder. The only reason they haven’t already is, they aren’t sure you did it. They still need to talk to Rashad, and also check out Austin’s story—though I wish them good luck on that one—but they could arrest you. And if you walk into a police station and tell them you did it, they will. And that’s the last thing you want, do you understand?”

  Eddie said, “Ah, let her go, Angie. Her story’s so full of holes, it’s the best thing she could do for herself.”

  “Dad, keep out of this!”

  “Janessa, ya full of it, aren’t ya? Why’d ya go and tell us a stupid story like that?”

  But Janessa was starting to cry again. “Y’all are hateful. Cain’t tell who ya are, what ya want. Y’all just hateful!”

  She picked up her parcel and left the restaurant. In a great gust of sympathy, Talba went after her. But by the time she reached the door, Janessa was halfway down the block.

  “JanessAAAAA! Wait up!” Talba wasn’t sure whether she would or not. But the girl stopped and let Talba catch up.

  “Don’t be mad. We’re all trying to help, the best way we can.” If you only knew, she thought.

  “Don’t seem like it to me. Seem like ya’ gangin’ up on me, maybe settin’ me up.”

  “What was that confession thing about, Janessa?”

  The girl shrugged. “Maybe I did do it.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, I’ve got something for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “An invitation. My mama wants to meet you.” She knew this had a truly excellent chance of backfiring; but on the other hand, she couldn’t think of any other way to get Janessa’s trust back.

  “Ya mama?”

  “Uh-huh. You want to be part of the family, don’t you? Mama says to bring you home.”

  Janessa said, “Forget that shit,” whirled, and walked toward the bus stop.

  “I saw Rashad this morning,” she called, and Janessa turned around.

  “Ya pitiful, ya know that?” she said.

  I think, Talba muttered to herself, she might be right. She went back into the restaurant and said, “Why are we working so hard for this girl? I thought we were going to give her up because we couldn’t get a response out of Rashad. Now we’re all over her again.”

  Eddie said, “She didn’t do it. And Crockett wants to fry her.”

  Angie locked her hands behind her head. “Well, I’ve got two reasons. One is, I’m not doing it for Janessa—I’m doing it for you, Talba. But I’m also doing it for Allyson and Cassie. This thing’s getting to me.”

  “I know what’s gettin’ to you,” Eddie said, but Angie chose to ignore him. “You’re her sister,” he said to Talba. “And you’re the one who’s giving up?”

  “Oh, hell. No. Of course not. But she’s such a pain, with all that drama. And I feel so bad because—”

  “She’s in pain, Ms. Wallis.”

  She was hugely relieved, but she spoke lightly. “I’m not used to being the older sibling. This is giving me a new respect for Corey.” But there was quite a bit more to it. She was embarrassed for her sister, and hugely guilty on her account. She’d been about to say she felt bad because the case was such a drain on the firm. She was frustrated, sure, but deep down, she’d also wanted to give Eddie an out. She wouldn’t have blamed him for taking it, but he’d come through like a champ.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Also,” he said, “she’s scared out of her mind. Question is, why the hell’s the kid so scared?”

  The answer to that was simple, in Talba’s mind. If Janessa didn’t do it herself—and Talba had to admit, the least a murderer should know about her crime is how she did it—then she had to be afraid for Rashad. The same Rashad who wouldn’t even talk to Talba after she’d spent days tracking him down.

  Talba was starting to think he had done it.

  She recognized that Janessa, with her manipulating and whining, was still a child in many ways (Talba really couldn’t wait till Janessa met Miz Clara), but she also sensed that her sister was lying about something. Certainly she was lying about having killed Cassie and Allyson—unless she was much more clever than Talba thought—but there was something else. She smelled it. And it wasn’t about when she left Allyson’s Monday night, unless Austin was lying, too.

  Talba was thoroughly sick of the whole tangled mess, and felt worse because Angie and Eddie were in so deep.

  She thought about how to approach the case in a new way. What if she looked at it like a homicide cop would? As simply a case to be solved, not a client to be cleared?

  In her haste to find Rashad, she’d left a few leads unfollowed. There was one person who’d been close to Allyson, for instance, whom she hadn’t yet interviewed. Maybe she’d go see Rosemary McLeod, then try to find out names of close friends of Cassie’s and track them down, too.

  But the truth was still the same—they needed to find Rashad. The only two witnesses said he was the last person who’d seen Allyson alive.

  For today, though, she decided to let it go.

  She got online, looked up Rosemary McLeod, and found that she lived on Upperline Street. This kind of thing really was sinfully easy these days, she thought, only briefly flirting with the idea of calling first. Surprise was always better, she figured.

  The thing she failed to consider was the possibility of her being the surprised one. Rosemary was home, all right. She was ensconced in a bed in her front parlor, dressed in a pink nightgown with some lacy thing over it. And she was completely bald.

  Talba was admitted after a maid carried a couple of messages to Rosemary, a uniformed employee who clearly thought Talba had no business visiting her boss. Which, probably, she didn’t. She now remembered something Lynne Montjoy had said about Rosemary being ill. She really seemed to have dropped the ball on this—first forgetting Rosemary entirely, and then forgetting she probably shouldn’t be dropping in unexpectedly.

  But apparently, in the long run, she was welcome, because she’d been ushered in and Rosemary was heaving herself up to a sitting position. “Miss Wallis. If I’d known you were coming, I’d have put on my wig.” She extended a papery hand. “I’ve never met a real private investigator.”

  She had as sugary an accent as any Talba had ever heard. Usually these Uptown magnolias put her off—they sounded to her like someone doing a bad accent in a movie set in the South. But Rosemary possessed a gentleness that seemed real. Perhaps she was really a terror momentarily beaten down by chemo, but Talba decided to go ahead and like her anyhow. She smiled. “Oh, gosh—PI’s are famous for bad manners, but this really is beyond the pale—I should have called first. I do apologize.”

  Rosemary waved her fragile little hand. “I welcome the company. Sit down, Miss Wallis. Would you like some iced tea?”

  “Thanks. Just some water.” A compromise between Eddie’s rule about taking what you were offered and a guilty need not to put the maid to too much trouble.

  “You want to talk to me about poor Allyson, I understand.” She touched a hand to her bald head. “My problems seem absurd when I think that in two days we’ll be burying my oldest friend, and her daughter.”

  “They’ve sch
eduled the funeral, then?” Talba asked.

  “Sorry, I misspoke. I believe they’ve decided on cremation. They’re having a memorial service at Allyson’s house. I don’t suppose Arnelle and Austin managed to agree on it—probably Arnelle just went ahead and did it—but they have scheduled it.” Rosemary dabbed at her eyes and it occurred to Talba that she might finally have met someone who actually liked Allyson.

  “Your oldest friend,” Talba said. “Mmm. Mmm.”

  “Oh, we go all the way back to when we both lived in Tallahassee—we were both young, bored divorcees in those days. Always trying to find some new way to get in trouble.”

  It was all Talba could do not to gasp, given what she’d been told about Hunt and Allyson. She said, “Allyson studied poetry, I believe.”

  Rosemary nodded. “Very smart woman. Yes, indeed, she did. She was getting her master’s. And she had the most adorable little shop. She was quite a good designer, you know. Even now—I mean up till her death—she designed most of her own clothes. Back in Tallahassee, I worked for her for a while. I was divorced and had a teenaged son. And ambition.” She played with the soft pink cotton blanket between the white sheet and the wine satin duvet cover. When she finished pleating it, she looked up at Talba almost defiantly. “Lots of ambition, Miss Wallis. I was definitely going to set the world on fire, with my amazing handmade jewelry. Can you imagine? I actually thought I was going to make money designing jewelry.” She laughed. “Fortunately for me, I met Johnny McLeod. And Allyson married as well, of course—twice, in fact.”

  “I take it Allyson sold your jewelry in her shop?”

  “Oh, yes, she was very supportive. But, truthfully, if it hadn’t been for spousal support, I’d never have made it—until I met Johnny, that is. Anyway, I did meet him, and we moved here, and Allyson and I kind of lost touch for a while.

  “But then one day out of the blue she called to say she was moving to town and she had a great idea for a business. She wanted to start a catalogue company that would sell New Orleans art—isn’t that terrific? I jumped at it, naturally. Think of all the great local designers we have here, of just about everything—furniture to metalwork, to jewelry (that’s still my first love)—to Mardi Gras masks, wall clocks, art glass. Anything you can name, some artist does it here. We sold everything from JazzFest posters to one-of-a-kind works by fine artists—absolutely everything. And we carried books—those count as art, don’t you think?”