Mean Woman Blues

by Smith, Julie

  But Skip could see too, out of the corner of her eye. The woman went to Bettina’s door, rang the doorbell, and waited, not even slightly nervous, as if she belonged there and wasn’t expecting cops for breakfast.

  Skip cut her motor and parked, still attracting no attention.

  Abasolo said, “Let’s go.”

  “No, wait. Let’s see if she gets in.”

  The woman rang the bell again and knocked. For good measure, she hollered something they couldn’t hear, and even held her ear to the door. When she turned around and for the first time, Skip saw her face, she yelled, “Oh, shit. Let’s get her!”

  She got out of the car and started walking. The woman, realizing someone was in the street, looked in her direction and registered nothing.

  Skip heard the men get out behind her, and suddenly the woman took off running. Must have looked scary as hell, Skip realized.

  She hollered, “Halt! Police!” but the woman wasn’t about to halt. It was a fairly neat little block, mostly single-family homes with front yards unencumbered by fences. Provided there were no cars in driveways (at the moment there weren’t), you could race across them at will, and the woman did.

  “Fuck!” Skip muttered to herself and pounded after her. She didn’t hear the men behind her. The woman was younger, smaller, and faster. She rounded the corner, slowing down only a second, but that, and the fact that the girl was not a sprinter, not in shape at all, began to give Skip an advantage. She yelled again, “Halt! Police!” and wondered why she bothered.

  But another half block and… yes! A running tackle. She had the girl on the ground, and she was just realizing she was too exhausted to cuff her.

  Abasolo loped up. “Turner’s waiting. He’s getting too old for this shit. And by the way, what shit would that be?”

  Skip’s breath was ragged. “Cuff her, would you? I can’t move.”

  The girl came to life. “You can’t arrest me. I ain’ done nothin’.”

  “Oh, yeah? Then why’d you run?” Abasolo didn’t even know why Skip had run, but he was right there, bless his heart.

  “Meet Mary Jones,” Skip finally managed to gasp.

  “Ah. As in, ‘Mary had a little statue.’ Well, that just do explain things.”

  “That ain’ my name,” the girl said.

  Abasolo cuffed her while Skip dusted herself off. “Now, Mary…”

  “I said that ain’ my name.”

  “All right, what is your name?”

  “Trenice.”

  “Okay, Trenice, what were you doing at the Starnes apartment this morning?”

  “I take care of Jacob.”

  “You’re the babysitter?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Nobody answer this mornin’, though. I don’t know why. Bettina ain’ call me or nothin’; car’s there and everything. And I know I heard Jacob cryin’.”

  Skip and Abasolo let their eyes meet. He said, “You and Shellmire go. I’ll take care of her.”

  Once again, Skip broke into a dead run; realizing how far she had to go, though, she slowed to a jog, and it irritated her, watching Shellmire watch her toil. He hadn’t put his jacket back on. Maybe getting older isn’t so bad, she thought.

  “That was the babysitter. Says she got no answer, but she heard the baby crying and the car’s still there.”

  “You beat that out of her or what?”

  “I’ll explain later. You do the honors.” Her speech was ragged; she was still out of breath and sweating heavily. Shellmire banged loudly, and they waited. And in the silence, a loud wail came back at them, obviously a baby’s cry.

  “Jacob?” Skip yelled. “Jacob, it’s okay.” Her dream of termites came back to her, the termites that in her mind, meant Jacomine; meant disaster.

  “Do you smell something?” Shellmire asked.

  She sniffed the hot air. “Very faintly. I’ve got a bad feeling, Turner.”

  On impulse she tried the door; to her amazement it opened.

  The smell was stronger, not overpowering, but unmistakable. Something was dead in there. Except for the baby’s cries, all was quiet.

  “Bettina? Jacob?”

  They split up, guns drawn, Skip down the hall to the bedrooms, Shellmire to the living room and kitchen.

  She found the baby first standing up in his crib, now evidently so frightened— or fascinated— he’d stopped crying.

  “Hi, Jacob,” she whispered. “You okay, Buddy? Hang tight one more minute, okay?”

  Bettina was in the next room, very obviously dead in her bed, an empty medicine vial and a Jim Beam bottle on the table beside her. The room was hot; green flies were already crawling on her. “Turner! In here!”

  About that time, the baby started howling again. Shellmire stopped on his way to pick Jacob up. Skip met him in the hall and took the kid. “She’s dead; go look. I don’t want the baby in there.”

  She took Jacob into the living room, where she rocked and petted him, not even stopping to open windows. Shellmire came back in, glancing nervously at Jacob. He said, “Ambulance and child protection guys on the way.” He pressed his lips together a moment. “Skip, there’s a note. It’s just lying on the bureau— no envelope, nothing.”

  “Take the baby, would you?” Jacob howled anew when she left.

  “Without Him, I am nothing,” the note said. And then, without further ado, it got down to business: “I do hereby bequeathe my only son, Jacob Starnes, to the custidy of my sister, Rose Maintree. All my worldly goods I leave to my sister Rose. I am sorry to leave this way.”

  It was signed “Bettina Starnes.”

  So probably, despite the speed of decomposition, she’d killed herself only the night before. The late spring heat was merciless.

  In the past, Skip might have suspected that somehow this had been engineered by Jacomine himself.

  Maybe, in a way, it had. Maybe he’d told Bettina to kill herself if he died. Or maybe it was her own idea. If you believed what she wrote, it amounted to the same thing. She must have left the door unlocked, figuring the babysitter would try the door when she got no answer.

  It was another hour before the baby had been called for, the body removed, and the crime lab satisfied. In the course of it, Mary Jones had been sent back to the Third in a district car, to await questioning— something Skip was going to enjoy— and Turner, who didn’t have to hang around for the formalities, had left to get an address on Rose Maintree.

  When they were all free, Abasolo said, “You can do the talking at Rose’s.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Skip said.

  “Not at Rose’s house, though,” Shellmire said. “The woman’s a math teacher at Warren Easton High School.”

  That might bode well for Jacob, Skip thought. It had to be better than being raised by Bettina, who might be a child who needed a father, a religious fanatic, or just a crazy person, depending on how you looked at it.

  Skip went in alone and broke the news to a dry-eyed, distant Rose Maintree, who, to her surprise, thanked her politely but didn’t ask a word about Jacob. Skip revised her opinion: The little boy, born with physical problems and now orphaned before age two, simply couldn’t catch a break.

  Shellmire eyed her when she got back. “How’d it go?”

  “Might as well have been talking to a robot. That’s some family; she didn’t even ask about Jacob.”

  The agent made a sound like “ooof.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The termites swarmed that night, driving the whole party— Skip, Steve, and the Scoggin-Ritter family— out of the courtyard and into the Big House.

  Sheila had made the entire dinner— a light summer supper, really— to practice her new skills and to celebrate the family’s delivery from what Uncle Jimmy had taken to calling “The Fear Years.” Skip had just told the story of her day.

  “It’s almost like Jacomine wasn’t human,” Sheila said.

  Skip nodded. “No sociopath has human feelings; that wasn’t what was so scary. Jacomin
e had no sense of his own limits. Karen told me he actually thought he could be president!”

  Steve stopped his fork in midair, like somebody’d ordered him to halt, “Come on!”

  “Swear to God. He was going to use the Mr. Right gig to become the most popular man in America— follow right in Ronald Reagan’s footsteps.”

  “Oh, my God. Batshit doesn’t begin to describe…”

  “Well, it never stopped him before; all in all, being nuts was his biggest asset. That and knowing how to tap into emotional veins. No question that Mr. Right show was becoming a phenomenon in Dallas.”

  “I’m just curious,” Layne said. “How far do you think he’d have gotten if Terri hadn’t been on his show?”

  “Actually, not much farther. The producer told the FBI she thought he’d knocked his wife around after the show, and Karen kept talking about losing a baby. I just wonder if he caused her to miscarry.”

  “Meaning he was starting to decompensate?”

  “Yeah. He was used to giving all the orders. In the real world— without his precious ‘following’— he couldn’t be his usual megalomaniac self.”

  Kenny looked puzzled.

  “What’s the matter, sport? Don’t you know that word— megalomaniac?’

  “Oh, please. You can’t live in this house and not know megalomaniac. Power crazy, right? I was thinking of Mary Jones. How’d she pull that scam off, just her and Bettina?”

  “Oh, Trenice. I forgot. That’s the best part. She completely caved, told the whole story. She’s just a neighbor of Bettina’s, not a Jacomine follower or anything like that. Bettina offered her money to do that little impersonation she did. Looks like that’s the whole gang, just Bettina and the babysitter. Plus a couple of guys Bettina hired to steal the stuff they put in Steve’s backyard.”

  “Either of them named Lobo, by any chance?”

  “That’s the bad news. Darnell and William.”

  Steve grumped, “Lobo’s probably the asshole that poisoned Napoleon.”

  “And shot at me.”

  “So what’s gonna happen?” Kenny asked.

  Skip shrugged.

  “Lobo’s Frank O’Rourke’s headache; O’Rourke’s the point man on Isaac’s case, and good luck to him. But Trenice’ll probably go down. And maybe somebody at the Times-Picayune’ll get a good yarn out of it all.”

  “Like Jane Storey.” Jimmy Dee said, naming a reporter friend of Skip’s. “Should we go call her?”

  Skip tried to look innocent. “Adam and I sort of talked to her this afternoon. Adam felt pretty bad about what happened to me. And I felt bad about Rooster Blanchard. Jane’s even doing a special little feature on him.”

  “Who the hell is Rooster Blanchard?”

  “Guy who saved my life when this whole thing started. Remember that? We gave him a real bad day back then, poor bastard. But now he’s probably going to get some sort of commendation. Whatever that’s worth.”

  “Ah. And you’re vindicated. Things are shaping up.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” Skip smiled and raised her glass.

  Things were good tonight. At the moment, she could hardly remember Dallas.

  THE END

  To the best and truest of friends, Mary Ann and Larry Walker

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to the regulars: retired NOPD Captain Linda Buczek, Kathy Perry, Greg Herren, Betsy Petersen, Dr. Ken White, Charlotte Sheedy, Vicky Bijur, Win Blevins, and, of course, my incomparable husband, Lee Pryor. Can’t do a book without ’em.

  Also, thanks to Dr. Mark Cousins, Kit Wohl, retired District Fire Chief Dave Tibbetts, Kathy Fontenot at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Kathy White, Kiley McGuire (my Dallas expert), Lynn Kuriger Stanton (on Texas divorce law), and Ace Atkins (for title consultation). Any mistakes are my own and not theirs, bless their hearts— they did their best to make it simple.

  The ugly affair of the bank is based on a real incident. A thousand thanks (and all my sympathy) to the person who shared details of the ordeal.

  WE GUARANTEE OUR BOOKS…

  AND WE LISTEN TO OUR READERS

  We’ll give you your money back if you find as many as five errors. (That’s five verified errors— punctuation or spelling that leaves no room for judgment calls or alternatives.)

  If you find more than five, we’ll give you a dollar for every one you catch up to twenty.

  More than that and we reproof and remake the book.

  Email julie@booksbnimble.com and it shall be done!

  If you Enjoyed this Book...

  MEAN WOMAN BLUES is the ninth and last book in the Skip Langdon series. If you liked Skip, why not try the spinoff Talba Wallis series? Find the first, LOUISIANA HOTSHOT, at www.booksbnimble.com or click here for more fabulous books by Julie Smith. (If your reader does not have a built-in browser, you can simply type: http://amzn.to/104wF7k in the browser to be taken directly to Amazon's books by Julie Smith.)

  “Talba Wallis has to be one of the most distinctive female detectives in the business. Her personality and her poetry are riveting reasons to read this book.”

  — The Times-Picayune, New Orleans

  “Smith has launched Talba Wallis on a welcome series of her own. Wallis is fine fun to get to know… a consistently interesting and likable woman of depth and complexity.”

  — The Washington Post

  The Skip Langdon Series

  (in order of publication)

  NEW ORLEANS MOURNING

  AXEMAN’S JAZZ

  JAZZ FUNERAL

  DEATH BEFORE FACEBOOK (formerly NEW ORLEANS BEAT)

  HOUSE OF BLUES

  THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

  CRESCENT CITY CONNECTION (formerly CRESCENT CITY KILL)

  82 DESIRE

  MEAN WOMAN BLUES

  Also by Julie Smith:

  The Rebecca Schwartz Series

  DEATH TURNS A TRICK

  THE SOURDOUGH WARS

  TOURIST TRAP

  DEAD IN THE WATER

  OTHER PEOPLE’S SKELETONS

  The Paul Mcdonald Series

  TRUE-LIFE ADVENTURE

  HUCKLEBERRY FIEND

  The Talba Wallis Series

  LOUISIANA HOTSHOT

  LOUISIANA BIGSHOT

  LOUISIANA LAMENT

  P.I. ON A HOT TIN ROOF

  As Well As:

  WRITING YOUR WAY: THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL TRACK

  NEW ORLEANS NOIR (ed.)

  A Respectful Request

  We hope you enjoyed Mean Woman Blues and wonder if you'd consider reviewing it on Goodreads, Amazon (http://amzn.to/104wF7k) or wherever you purchased this book? The author would be most grateful. And if you'd like to see other forthcoming mysteries, let us keep you up-to-date. Sign up for our mailing list at www.booksbnimble.com.

  About the Author

  JULIE SMITH is a New Orleans writer and former reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle and the New Orleans Times-Picayune. New Orleans Mourning, her first novel featuring Detective Skip Langdon, won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel, and she has since published eight more highly acclaimed books in the series, plus spun off a second New Orleans series featuring PI and poet Talba Wallis.

  She is also the author of the Rebecca Schwartz series and the Paul McDonald series, plus the YA novels CURSEBUSTERS! and EXPOSED. In addition to her novels, she’s written numerous essays and short stories and is the editor of NEW ORLEANS NOIR.