Crescent City Connection (Skip Langdon Mystery #7) (The Skip Langdon Series)

by Julie Smith

  Someone had been there. She knew it as soon as she entered the house, though what signals she read she never figured out. All she knew was, the hair on the back of her neck stood up.

  She backed out of the house, and when she locked the door, it occurred to her she’d had to unlock it to get in, but she didn’t stop to analyze; she just ran.

  Isaac wasn’t at the gallery. That terrified her still more.

  She couldn’t call the police. That was the last thing she could do.

  Isaac had told her about Revelas. Perhaps she could get him to go back to the house with her. But she found her knees were weak, and she couldn’t face it, couldn’t talk quite yet. Maybe if she went back to the house…

  No. Not that.

  She went outside to try to get her bearings, think what to do. Someone touched her arm—a bald, clean-shaven man in jeans and a black T-shirt.

  She gasped and pulled away. “Get away from me.”

  The man laughed and pointed to his eye, then his chest: I. Me.

  “Isaac?” she said. The man looked like a pirate.

  He nodded and gave her the come-here sign. They walked together to La Marquise, where he borrowed a pen and began to write.

  “The police are looking for me—but they want you, I think.”

  “You were the one at the house.”

  “I heard you come in, but I couldn’t catch you. I was cleaning up after this.” He touched the top of his head.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “They were looking for a guy in white—with hair and a beard, I presume. What do you think of the new look?”

  “How can you be The White Monk without your robes?”

  He shrugged. “Monks have shaved heads. Listen, they must know what you look like, too. You need to turn into a brunette or something.”

  “But… what’ll the Royces think?”

  “The Royces?”

  “Oh, Uncle Isaac, I forgot to tell you! I got the job.”

  “That’s wonderful. What’s wrong with a dark-haired cook?”

  “I can’t be a whole different person from the one they met.”

  “Lovelace, listen. I think this involves my dad. Do you realize how serious that is? He’s a murderer.”

  In the end there was nothing to do but what he said. He gave her money, and she called hair salons until she found one that would take her. When she came out, she was nearly as bald as Isaac, with a quarter-inch or so of crow-black hair, like a gutter-punk.

  It did cause comment at the Royces’.

  Brenna said, “Jackie? Jacqueline?” as if she weren’t sure. “Kind of a new look?”

  Lovelace couldn’t help laughing at the way she was trying to be tactful. She said, “Awful, isn’t it? I could just kick myself. A couple of girlfriends were doing it and they talked me into it.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t look like this the day before yesterday. Charles is waaay conservative.” She rolled her eyes, then she leaned back and gave Lovelace a long, assessing look, an artist summing up a subject. “But I kind of like it. You have great bones, you know that?”

  A boy of about ten came into the kitchen. “What’s for lunch?”

  “Tim, can’t you say hello? This is Jackie.”

  “Hey, Tim. How about a burger?”

  The kid’s eyes widened. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  The other kid came in for a burger as well. Paul, his name was. Both of them were blond cherubs, as skinny as their dad was chubby. Bottomless pits. Next time she’d make fries to go with the burgers, and maybe a pie for dessert. She gave the adults some salad and vegetable soup she’d made at home, and then she started making a list for dinner.

  Brenna came in again. “We just asked some friends over for tonight. Could you manage four?”

  Lovelace shrugged, feeling in control. “It’s just as easy as two.”

  “How about six?”

  “Sure, no problem. Want me to make anything special?”

  “Whatever you want. And could you stay to serve it? We’ll pay overtime, of course. And cab fare home.”

  “I’ll be glad to.” Lovelace was liking this a lot. “How about something Asian? Japanese, maybe.”

  “Perfect.”

  She grilled salmon with teriyaki sauce, served some rice and spinach on the side and a few other little tidbits—what could be simpler? Not being really up to speed yet, she gave the kids macaroni and cheese. But the Royces acted like they’d discovered gold, and she was it.

  She enjoyed the work, but she absolutely basked in the admiration. She was deeply in love.

  She liked their friends, too—a psychiatrist and her husband, who was a house painter; a math teacher and his wife, who was a fund-raiser.

  What enormously normal people they all were. And fun. After dinner, they went into the living room and put on old R&B albums and danced.

  Lovelace couldn’t believe people could live like this.

  * * *

  It took Daniel a long time to get over being angry. At first he couldn’t believe his father could pull something like that—springing a long-gone mother on him—but in the end, he had to admit it was exactly the sort of thing he would do. How could you be mad at a person for being who he was? Besides, as his dad would say, he had bigger fish to fry.

  “Why, Daddy?” he had asked. “Why’d you call her? Why’d you make me get on the phone with her?”

  “Well, I think she might just be an asset to the movement. What do you think?”

  “What do I think? I think you must be out of your mind—with all due respect, sir.”

  He was mad enough to speak like that, but he knew his father was going to hit him. He was braced for it and he didn’t care. This mother thing was not an everyday occurrence.

  When Errol just laughed, threw back his head and guffawed big-time, that was when Daniel began to doubt his father’s sanity. Something about this woman robbed him of his senses.

  “I’m going to go see her, son.”

  “What do you mean you’re going to go see her? Police in fifty states are looking for you.”

  “The lady lives in Dallas and I’m going there. They got this kind of VIP room in the airport. We’re just gonna meet there—I’ll fly in, fly out, nothing to it.”

  “If someone recognizes you, you’re dead—and so is the movement.”

  “Who’s gonna recognize me? I’ll just be another dude in a baseball cap and shades.” He hee-hawed again, and it was enough to make Daniel throw up. The Reverend Errol Jacomine in a baseball cap! Hell seemed to have frozen over.

  Daniel shook his head. “Dallas isn’t that far. Get Pete Joseph to drive you. A lot fewer people’ll see you.”

  His dad considered. “Lot of wisdom in that, son. But I got a better idea. I might need a bodyguard—I’m gon’ take you.”

  “Ohhh, no! I got things to do here.” God knew what his dad had in mind once they got there.

  “You’re going, boy. Don’t even think about getting out of it.”

  The idea was, the woman—that was how Daniel thought of her—would meet Daddy at the airport. Daniel would get him to some VIP lounge kind of shit and say his name, which was Mark Mathews on this occasion, and some flunky would whisk him to some private room where the woman would meet him.

  Daniel had never been in one of those VIP kinds of things. It turned out this one wasn’t strictly private. He got his daddy in and took him to a bar where there were tables that looked out on the runway. The woman was sitting at one, and he was astonished at how pretty she was.

  His daddy said, “Come meet your mama, son.”

  “No way.”

  “Come on, goddammit.”

  “I’ll just sit over there and keep an eye on y’all.”

  He ordered a beer and tried to focus on landings and takeoffs. But they were laughing loudly. They were fucking billing and cooing. For the second time where she was concerned, he thought he was going to throw up.

  After about an hour
, he went and found a television and watched it. When his dad came over, he had the woman with him. Daniel stuck out his hand and said, “Hello, Mrs. Owens.”

  She tried to hug him, but he backed away, knowing there were going to be consequences. But his dad was in such a good mood he didn’t even get mad. When they were on the way back to New Orleans, his dad said to him, “Son, how would you like your mama back?”

  “It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”

  “Now, son, the Lord says to forgive. I have forgiven her and I want you to do it, too. I think she could be a real asset to our movement. She believes in the kinds of things we’re doing.”

  “Daddy, you told her? You told her what we’re trying to do?”

  “Shit, the whole world knows about The Jury. I just told her we’re it, that’s all.”

  “She could be working for the fuckin’ FBI for all you know.”

  “Well, she’s not. She’s with us. Lot of folks are with us. You got to get some confidence, boy.”

  “How the hell could she help us?”

  “She’s got money, Daniel. We could use some of that, couldn’t we?”

  “Daddy, you’re living in a dream world, you know that? That woman’s nothing to do with us.”

  “Don’t talk that way about your mother.”

  Sixteen

  THE BEST SKIP could do was get the FBI to tap Rosemarie Owens’s phone. She wanted a full-time tail on her, but they wouldn’t go for it. “Why not?” she ranted. “Why the hell not?”

  Shellmire shrugged. “They don’t think it’s worth it. They think it’s grasping at straws.”

  “Well, what else are we going to grasp at?”

  “Hey, I just work here.”

  She started calling on all the art galleries in town, asking if anyone knew an artist who wore white and had a beard. There were nearly two hundred listings in the New Orleans phone book, but a surprising number proved to be antique stores. That might have narrowed it down, but plenty of gallery owners knew dealers or reps who worked out of their homes, people who weren’t listed in the book, but who knew plenty of local artists whose work had to get sold. Everywhere, she had to say the same thing: No, she didn’t know what kind of art he did. He could be a glassblower, he could be into graffiti. All she knew was, he wore white, and maybe he didn’t talk much. Everybody said if he wore black and wouldn’t shut up, they could probably help her.

  Shellmire called the Wednesday after she’d talked to Rosemarie Owens. “Any luck?”

  “Not yet. You?”

  “Not exactly. But something funny’s happened.”

  She didn’t like the tone of his voice. It sounded … what? Sheepish. “Oh, no. Something bad, you mean.”

  “It might have nothing to do with the case.”

  “Come on, what is it?”

  “Rosemarie Owens’s husband has turned up dead.”

  “Dead? What kind of dead?”

  “Suicide, maybe. He fell off a balcony.”

  “Pretty damn suspicious.”

  “Yeah, well. That’s what I said.”

  “When did it happen?

  “Last night. The Dallas police have already talked to Rosemarie.”

  “And let her go?”

  “Hell, she wasn’t even in town. She was in Atlanta with some friends.”

  “Damn convenient.”

  “Yeah.” He sounded a little sulky.

  “Anything from the wiretap?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I guess we weren’t soon enough.”

  “Now, Skip, don’t get your panties in a bunch about this.”

  “Don’t you dare talk to me that way.”

  “Just don’t get excited. Maybe he was remorseful about the way he treated her. Or maybe he got loaded and fell.”

  “Turner, will you do me a favor? Get the damn twenty-four-hour tail on her?”

  “I think that can be arranged. Sure. We got their attention now.”

  She could practically see him grinning. She grinned back, though neither could see the other. But as she hung up the phone, she started to think about what this meant.

  It’s my fault. Goddammit, it’s my fault.

  She got Steve to take her to a movie that night, and afterward she didn’t want to go home. She wanted to go in the Blacksmith Shop and drink awhile.

  They talked about the movie and Steve’s project and Layne’s miraculous cure. They didn’t say one word about The Jury, or Jacomine, or Rosemarie Owens. She didn’t want to think about it until she had to.

  Because it was only a matter of waiting. If she was right, she’d know soon enough.

  The next morning Roger Owens’s death was splashed all over the paper, with pictures of the tearful Other Woman, the young model who’d succeeded Rosemarie, and a summary of Roger’s accomplishments on the planet Earth, which he’d apparently devoted his life to destroying.

  Shellmire’s call came around noon: “The Dallas police got a letter.”

  “The Jury?”

  He sighed. “They’re faxing it over. You’d better come into the office.”

  In a way, it was like the others, especially so far as the rhetoric went: The Jury wanted justice and couldn’t get it through conventional means. Roger Owens was the kind of man who gave philanderers a bad name. Politicians talked about family values to stir up working-class people, while the fat cats who really ran the country, the ones at the top, did anything they damn well felt like, and got their pictures in People magazine. And that was only the tip of the iceberg.

  Global Operations Ltd., which Roger had founded and of which he was the CEO, was the biggest polluter in the world today, having strip-mined thousands of acres in seventeen countries and dumped toxic gunk in every river in every one of those countries. Along with exploiting the land, Global had exploited the poor, paying slave wages under life-threatening conditions, and causing more deaths each year than cancer. He was as much a murderer as Hitler or Idi Amin, yet because of his connections, and because of his money, Owens would never be convicted of anything, let alone punished for it.

  “Well?” said Shellmire.

  “Shit. Just shit.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Skip didn’t answer. Though she’d done nothing wrong, though she’d call Rosemarie Owens again if she could turn the clock back, she was too mad at herself to say anything.

  “The guys here don’t think it’s genuine.”

  She nodded. “It looks like a copycat. It definitely looks like one. It isn’t a criminal justice issue. That’s what The Jury’s supposed to be into, right? Is that how they’re reading it?”

  “You got it. This one’s all over the map—feminism, environmentalism, you name it. I mean, Owens might have been a bad guy—sounds like he was a kissin’ cousin to the Prince of Darkness—but it doesn’t feel right. The other issues were cut-and-dried, more or less. At the risk of sounding crazy myself, they were easy to identify with. Popular causes.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is that all you’ve got to say?”

  “The letter is genuine, Turner. I swear to God the thing’s genuine. Jacomine killed him for his lady love. Avenged her honor, so to speak.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “For a price, Turner, for a price. He’s going to try to collect it now. And that’s where we come in.”

  “Would you mind telling me what you’re talking about?”

  “Listen, have you met Rosemarie Owens?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’ve talked to her on the phone, and Jacomine may well have met his match. I tipped her unwittingly—she was ready for him when he called. With a tiny little errand for him to run.”

  “Wait a minute, now. Hold it. You’re a good cop—therefore you didn’t tell her he’s a suspect in the Jury case.”

  “No, I just got her to thinking. She had to know he was already a murder suspect. And let me tell you, she’s the kind of woman who gives hard bitches a bad name. I�
��m telling you she got him to kill hubby. By the way, they’re not divorced yet—I’ll bet she still inherits. But I doubt she actually hired him. They probably just had a nice, friendly talk—real gentlemen’s agreement kind of thing. Terms probably weren’t even slightly spelled out. But I’ll bet Jacomine got the idea a lot of Owens’s dirty money might just make its way into his hands if he did his ex-wife a good turn. Who knows? Maybe she’s going to join up with him— maybe they’re the new Barrow gang.”

  * * *

  Daniel had rarely seen his father so exuberant. “Things are going great, son. Things are going our way.”

  Daniel usually stood while his father sat. Today he sat, too. His dad was in too good a mood to complain, for one thing. For another, he felt deflated. Depressed about the way things were going; not at all in agreement with his father.

  “Daniel, boy, you want your little girl back?”

  “Daddy, you know I do. I’d like to work on that now.” That was the closest he dared come to saying what he meant: I haven’t had a spare second, goddammit. I couldn’t look for her because I’ve been too busy gratifying your damn teenage crush.

  “I’m very happy with the way things are going. Aren’t you?”

  No.

  But he said, “The Bazemore hit was real important.”

  His dad only nodded. It was impossible to rile him today. “Yeah. The Owens thing too. We have done a lot of very important work. For a while now, there’ll be no more killing.”

  “I think that’s a good idea.”

  “We’re in tune, boy. We’re right in tune.” His father just kept nodding and smiling. “Now we’ve got two projects to do here in New Orleans. Then we’re gon’ move on. First thing is to get our little family back together. We’re gonna find Lovelace and get her to come join us. The second thing is, we’re gonna pop a six-foot blister on our hiney.”

  “Say what?”

  “Did I ever mention those run-ins I had with a fat, nasty bitch of a cop in this town?”

  “Oh, yeah. Once or twice. Also, it was in Time and Newsweek and everywhere else.”

  His father laughed. “Sometimes I can’t remember just how far our little movement’s come. You do me good, Danny. You know that, boy?”