Murder in the Rue Ursulines

by Greg Herren

  “No!”

  “I’m going to need to speak to each of them.” I interrupted.

  Glynis’s head whipped back around to me. Her entire face relaxed into a smile. “Of course. I want this matter cleared up just as much as Freddy does, I’m sure.” Without looking at her, she commanded, “Rosemary, get their phone numbers together for Chanse.” She sank back down on her sofa. She waved her right hand in a fluttery motion. “I’m getting a headache. Rosemary, after you get Chanse the numbers, would you mind showing him out?” It was an effective dismissal. I thanked her for her time and followed Rosemary into the hallway. Rosemary shut the door behind us. “Go wait in the front room, and I’ll join you shortly,” she whispered, and hurried off down the hall.

  I walked back to the front room and sat down in one of the chairs. I opened the folder and started paging through the e-mails. The next step, I figured, was to make a calendar of the dates and times the e-mails were sent—and compare that with the household schedule. Granted, that was assuming Glynis hadn’t sent them herself. I closed my eyes and went over the entire interview again.

  Was she telling me the truth?

  I opened my eyes as Rosemary came back into the room. She handed me a piece of paper with the names and numbers of the rest of Glynis’s staff printed clearly on it. I smiled at her. “She seems like a rather difficult woman to work for.”

  “Oh, no, she’s just having a bad day.” Rosemary smiled at me. “She gets these horrible migraines—suffers terribly from them. Today is one of her bad days. Most of the time, she’s an absolute doll—very kind and thoughtful. One of the best employers I’ve ever had.”

  I stood up. “How long have you been with her?”

  “Since she came to New Orleans.” Rosemary pushed an errant lock of hair back from her forehead.

  “So, about two weeks?”

  Her eyes widened. “Two weeks? Oh, no, she’s been here for about two months now. I was hired about a week or so before then—her former assistant had quit to have a baby—and I put the house together for her, found the housekeeper and everyone else.” She looked down. “It’s really an honor to work for her. I’ve been a fan for years.” She bridled a bit. “She says she wants me to come back to California with her when the movie wraps.”

  “Wow.” I smiled at her. “Are you going to go?”

  “I’ve always wanted to live in California,” she said wistfully. “And it’s a wonderful opportunity for me.” She took the piece of paper back from me and pulled a pen out of her pocket. “Let me give you my cell number. You can call me anytime. I’m at your disposal.” She wrote it down. “I’ll let everyone know you’re going to be getting in touch with them, and that it’s okay for them to talk to you.”

  “I appreciate that.” I folded the paper and slid it into the folder. I walked over to the front door.

  “It was nice meeting you.” She said, offering me her hand again. “And remember, call me if you need anything, okay?”

  All the way back to my apartment, I replayed the whole interview in my head. Rosemary seemed okay, but I didn’t quite buy the ‘she’s a great employer’ routine. It seemed a little rehearsed—and the way Glynis had acted toward her made it seem like bullshit. Granted, maybe Glynis was having a bad day—she’d said she was—but something my landlady told me once about another woman in her social circle kept coming back to me.

  Barbara Castlemaine moved in the stratosphere of New Orleans society—and had been one of my first clients. I’d handled something for her with discretion, and we’d become friends over the years. It had been at a party she’d given at her Garden District mansion, and after I ‘d been talking to this perfectly charming woman for nearly an hour, Barbara had peeled me away from her and in a low voice warned me away from her. “She’s a horrible woman,” she’d insisted over my protests. “You can always tell what kind of a person someone is by how they treat the help—and she treats hers like garbage.”

  Glynis had certainly treated Rosemary that way. I wondered if she was that way with her other employees.

  I called Loren to check in with him, see how he wanted me to proceed—or if he wanted me to. I got his voice-mail and left a rather detailed message about my progress so far—tracing the computer and so forth. I closed with, “Unless I hear otherwise, I’m going to proceed with checking out the people who had access to Glynis Parrish’s computer.”

  I left messages for Glynis’s posse, then sat down at my desk and turned on my own computer. I opened a spreadsheet, and started logging in the dates and times the e-mails had been sent. It didn’t take long for the pattern to start to emerge. All of them had been sent in the early afternoons—and always on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

  I started reading them again. Glynis had been right about one thing—the e-mails were all vile. They all alluded in some way to something Freddy had done—how his public persona was not who he really was. You act like such a do-gooder, one taunted, but those of us who know what you’re really like know better. You might be able to fool the world with your St. Freddy act, but I know the real Freddy. How do you sleep at night?

  What on earth did that mean?

  I logged onto the Internet and did a search for Freddy Bliss— and was promptly rewarded with over a hundred thousand hits. I moaned. It would take me forever to wade my way through all of them—and Glynis and Jillian probably had just as many on-line mentions. I sighed, and started clicking on links. A lot of them I was able to dismiss out of hand—movie reviews, fan sites, etc. What I was interested in was gossip. But even that wasn’t much help. Outside of his pre-Glynis romances with any number of actresses, Freddy appeared to have lived a fairly blameless life. There were no drunk driving citations, no crazy or errant behaviors in public. He was in his early thirties—close to me in age, actually—and had been born and raised in Newton, Kansas. He’d gone to a small university, Emporia State, for a couple of years, taking courses in theater, before he dropped out and headed out to Los Angeles to try to make it as a movie star. He’d guested on some TV shows, but his big break came in a small role in a film called Separate Vacations, about a married couple who always took separate vacations. He played a beach bum who seduced the wife, and had all but stolen the movie. After that, he signed with a major agency and moved on to starring roles. His marriage to the reigning television queen of sitcoms had been a big story—although they hadn’t been called Frynis or Gleddy. Despite being called a ‘golden couple’ by the gossips, they hadn’t been big enough to become a one-word entity. That story, though, had been eclipsed by the affair with Jillian—and the messy divorce that followed.

  I stood up and stretched. It was just past five, and I wanted to take a quick shower before heading down to meet Paige for dinner. My neck was sore from hunching over the computer screen. I tried calling the people on the list again, but once again didn’t get anyone. I made a mental note to check in with Rosemary again after dinner, to see if she had in fact called them all for me.

  At five forty-five, I pulled into a parking spot just past St. Philip Street on Burgundy. It was about a six-block walk to Port of Call from there, but my standard rule of parking in the French Quarter is to always grab the first parking spot I saw—there may not be another one in the entire neighborhood. And there’s nothing I hate more than driving around trying to find one. Besides, I always enjoy strolling through the Quarter—and Paige would be late as she always was. I decided to walk up Ursulines past Glynis’s house—it was on the way. I got out and walked down to the corner at Ursulines, and turned right. It was already dark, and the street lamps were casting their glow over the sidewalk. There wasn’t another soul to be seen anywhere. I looked over across the street. The gas lights on the front of Glynis’s house were flickering. There was no sign of light behind the closed shutters. I glanced at my watch—five fifty-two. I shrugged and started walking down the street.

  I was about halfway down the block when Glynis’s front door opened. Out of the corner of my e
ye I saw a man step out and slam it loudly. I stopped walking and looked over to watch. He came down the front steps in a hurry, almost stumbling on the bottom step and having to grab the metal rail to keep from falling onto the sidewalk. He was wearing a loose-fitting pair of jeans, and a hooded purple sweatshirt with LSU emblazoned on the front in bright gold. The jeans hung down low enough for me to see his lower abdomen and the waistband of his underwear. The hood was pulled up over his head, hiding his hair. It was also pulled down low in the front, covering the top of his face. Something flashed in my brain—I know that guy—as I watched him, trying to remember who it was and where I knew him from. There was something about the build, the way he carried himself, that struck a familiar chord.

  New Orleans is a small town, and that happens a lot. Everyone looks familiar, but when I see them out of a familiar context, at first I blank on who they are and where I know them from. I once had a long conversation with a guy in a bar, never once giving away that I had no idea who he was or where I knew him from. Two days later, when I went into Café Envie, one of my regular Quarter hangouts, there he was, working behind the counter—and thankfully, wearing a nametag.

  This guy across the street didn’t seem to notice me, and I was just starting to think I was mistaken when he reached the bottom of the steps and turned to walk towards the river. In that moment, he was directly under a street lamp, and I did a double take.

  It was Freddy Bliss.

  I opened my mouth to shout hello before crossing the street, but before I could form the word in my throat, he started walking up the street at a very fast pace, breaking into a run when he got to the corner at Dauphine. I stared after him until I lost him in the darkness.

  I glanced back at the house. It was silent, no sign of life there other than the gas lights. That’s odd, I thought, what the hell was Freddy doing there? A cold chill went down my spine as I remembered my call to Loren. Surely Loren had passed the information along…had Freddy gone over to confront her?

  You might be fooling the world with your do-gooder act, but I know what you really are.

  I shuddered in the chill evening air.

  I laughed to myself a little bit, trying to shake the feeling. I crossed the street and stared at the front of the house for a moment. I debated whether I should knock or not.

  The house was completely silent.

  A dog barked, and I jumped.

  Get a grip, Chanse. Besides, it’s really none of your business, is it now, what Freddy was doing there?

  I shrugged, put it out of my head, and headed to Port of Call.

  Chapter Four

  Port of Call is on the edge of the French Quarter on the corner of Dauphine and Esplanade streets.

  I was on Dauphine about halfway down the block between Barracks and Esplanade when I was assaulted by one of my favorite smells in New Orleans: burgers, being cooked over an open flame. I stopped for a moment, standing there on the sidewalk, my eyes partly closed, savoring the smell. My knees got weak, my stomach growled, and my mouth filled with saliva. There’s nothing I love more than hamburgers—and if they’re cooked over an open flame or charcoal, so much the better.

  Every publication and website having to do with New Orleans always ranks Port of Call as one of the best places in the city to get a burger. They also have great drinks.

  I was hoping there wouldn’t be a wait—the majority of tourists who’d come in for Mardi Gras were probably already on their way home, nursing their hangovers and swearing off liquor permanently. I crossed my fingers as I reached the corner, please, no line, please no line. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I got a whiff of the grill, and now I was starving. As I walked around the corner, I breathed a sigh of relief—not only was there not a line; but, miracle of miracles, Paige was sitting on the steps leading to the door, puffing on a cigarette.

  Paige is an unrepentant smoker; I’d finally managed to quit, although the desire for a butt never really went away. Louisiana had finally passed a law about smoking in restaurants, something to do with how much of the place’s income derived from food vs. liquor…after which Paige swore she would never eat anywhere that wasn’t legally considered a bar rather than a restaurant.

  Her protest didn’t last long. It was harder to swear off Port of Call than it was to quit smoking.

  She stood up when she saw me come around the corner, and flicked her cigarette into the street with a practiced snap of her fingers. She was wearing a rather nice knee length black skirt, a red silk blouse, and black high-heeled shoes. If given her preference, she would dress more like a gypsy, but her new editor at the Times-Picayune, whom she referred to as “that bitch Coralie” had imposed a dress code on the reporters…which was also driving her crazy.

  “More professional, my fat white ass,” she’d snarled when she told me about it. “Does that stupid bitch really think it makes me a goddamned better writer if I dress the way she wants me to? God, I hate her.” Paige’s shoulder-length red hair with blonde streaks looked tangled, and her lipstick had rubbed off on her cigarette butt. The most striking thing about Paige was her eyes—they were mismatched: one green, one blue. “Christ, what’s wrong?” She asked as she presented her cheek for me to kiss. “I got here before you? I am surely slipping in my old age.”

  I showed her my watch. “You’re even early.”

  She ran a hand through her hair. “Oh, dear lord. It surely must be the end times.” She laughed and shrugged. “Well, these days I can’t get out of the office fast enough. That bitch Coralie was definitely in rare form today.” Paige’s longtime editor, Joe LeSeuer, had retired after the hurricane and left New Orleans. “Maybe the book will sell for a million dollars and I can tell her where she can shove her fucking dress code.” Ever since we graduated from college, Paige had been puttering around with a romance novel called The Belle of New Orleans, set during the War of 1812s. A few months after the flood, she’d taken all of her accrued vacation, grabbed her laptop, and rented a cabin in the Tennessee mountains for eight weeks, determined to finally finish the thing.

  Oddly enough, though, once she got up there she started writing a new book called Head Above Water, an autobiographical novel about her experiences during the hurricane and the weeks thereafter. “Once I started it, I couldn’t stop writing it,” she’d confided to me when she returned to the city, “It was like it took on a life of its own.” I’d tried reading it, but it was too painful for me. Everything the city had been through—and was still going through—was still too fresh, raw and painful for me to relive it all through Paige’s writing. She was damned good—too good. She’d rewritten and revised it several times, and now it was in the hands of several high-powered literary agents in New York, all of whom were interested in it. It had become a kind of mantra for her: When the book sells for a million dollars, I am telling Coralie where she can put her dress code and I am walking out the door.

  She rolled her eyes. “Get this—she wants me to try to be more ‘warm and fuzzy’ in my pieces. Warm and fucking fuzzy!”

  “What did you say?” Much as I hated to admit it, I found the endless power struggle between the two women highly amusing.

  “I told her I worked for a newspaper the last time I checked, not fucking Hallmark.” She sighed. “Get this—she put out a jar. Every time someone uses bad language”—she made air quotes around the words—“you have to put a quarter in the jar, and she’s going to use the money to go toward the office Christmas party.” She gave me an evil smile. “I got up, put a twenty in there, and gave her the finger.”

  “She’s going to fire you one of these days.”

  “I can only hope.”

  We entered the dimly lit restaurant and took a table in a quiet corner. It wasn’t crowded, and our waitress looked somewhat tired as she took our drink orders. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in days, and most likely, had been working double shifts throughout Carnival. We went ahead and ordered our burgers as well. After the waitress moved away
from us, Paige gave me a wicked glance. “Thanks for having dinner with me.” She sighed. “After the day I’ve had, I needed to be around someone with a brain.”

  I couldn’t resist. “Good thing Ryan’s with the kids, then—since he obviously doesn’t have one.”

  “Because someone with a brain obviously wouldn’t date me. Right. I get it.” She rolled her eyes. “When do you leave for Texas? That’s coming up, isn’t it?” The waitress placed our iced teas in front of us and scooted away.

  “Not for a few more weeks.” I hesitated and bit my lip. I always talked about my cases with Paige—and she often used her resources at the paper to get information to help me out.

  “That bitch Coralie started harping on me getting an interview with Frillian again,” Paige didn’t seem to notice my hesitation, wrapped up as she was in her own anger. She took a sip of her tea, grimaced and added a pack of artificial sweetener to it. “Like it’s that goddamned easy, like I haven’t tried everything I can think of! She’s so stupid, I guess she probably thinks I can just drop by their place sometime and they’d be thrilled to see me.” She sighed. “I swear to God, she must have gotten her journalism degree online or from a mail order catalogue. If I’d only known she was going to turn into such a power hungry bitch, I’d have taken the damned job myself when they offered it to me.”

  Paige had often theorized that part of the reason Coralie seemed to pick her out for ‘special’ treatment was because management had offered her the job first. Paige had turned it down. She smacked her forehead. “Stupid, stupid, stupid. But then no one had the slightest idea she’d turn into such a fucking Nazi.”