Murder in the Rue Ursulines

by Greg Herren

  All the hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I stepped into the house, leaving the door open behind me. No sense in having to try to open it again if Paige and I had to make a quick escape. I slowly started making my way across the room, trying to be as silent as possible.

  And then a board groaned under my feet.

  “Is that you, Mr. MacLeod?” A voice called from the next room. “There’s no need to try to sneak up on us, you know. You might as well come and join us.”

  “Paige are you all right?” I called out.

  “Do as she says, Chanse. She has a gun on me.”

  I walked through the door, and gasped.

  The second room, like the first, was completely bare of furniture other than two rickety looking old kitchen chairs. Paige was tied to one of them. Her purse was open on the floor next to her. And Rosemary Shannon was seated in the other chair right next to Paige. In her hand was a gun she had pressed to Paige’s temple. Paige was very pale, and a dark purple bruise glared at me from her right cheek. In Rosemary’s other hand she held Paige’s iPhone. She smiled when she saw me, and tossed the phone back into Paige’s purse.

  “The police are on their way,” I said. “You’re never going to get away with this.” I pointed my gun at her. “Karen.”

  “So, you figured it all out. But it looks like we have reached an impasse.” Rosemary smiled at me. She looked terrible. Her reddish hair had frizzed and stood up in every direction, like she’d had an electrical shock. She was wearing a purple smock-type blouse over black sweat pants. “You shoot me and I pull the trigger. You might miss me, but I won’t miss. And your friend here’s brains will be splattered all over the wall.”

  “If you hurt her—“ I hissed through gritted teeth. My head was roaring. In that instant, I hated Rosemary Shannon more than I’d hated anyone in my entire life. I wanted her to suffer, I wanted her to die a long, slow, painful death. I wanted to pull out her fingernails one by one. I want to rip her frizzy hair out of her head, lock by lock, slowly, to make it as painful as possible.

  “The two of you are smart,” Rosemary went on. Her voice pierced through the haze in my head, shrill and not quite sane. There was a glint in her blue eyes that I had seen before. She wasn’t sane, not by a long shot, and my heart sank even further. You can reason with a sane person. But she was crazy, had gone completely around the bend. “But not smart enough, you know. You figured out it was me—but you thought I was trying to get away with something.” She laughed, and I’d never heard a more evil sound in my life. It was chilling. “I don’t care if I get away with it!”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I loved him,” She went on. “I did everything for him in college. I loved him the first moment I saw him. I gave him presents, I wrote papers for him, I did everything I could to show him how much I loved him. I did everything for him!” she screamed, spittle flying from his lips. “But nothing was ever enough for him. It was always never good enough.”

  “So you accused him of raping you?”

  “You spoke to my bitch of a mother.” She snarled the words, and then smiled again. “Yes, I did. Maybe I did let him, maybe I did give myself to him willingly, but there are other kinds of rape, you know. He raped my soul. He raped my heart. And they let him get away with it, and he left…even though we were meant to be together. He went to Hollywood…and I knew it was because he wanted to be a star, to make a lot of money so he could make it all up to me, make up for telling me I was crazy, for acting like I wasn’t good enough, and then he married that slut Glynis Parrish.”

  “So, you killed her.”

  “It was fate, you know? When I saw that he and that old whore he took up with were moving to New Orleans, I decided to come down here so I’d be here when he finally tired of that old bitch. And then Fate put Glynis into my hands, as though it were meant to be. I became her assistant, and I knew somehow I would be able to get through to him because of her.” She sniffed. “What a horrible person she was! Every day when I would listen to her, I wondered what Freddy, my precious Freddy, could have seen in her. Why did he ever want that monster? She didn’t deserve to live.”

  “But why frame Freddy?” Keep her talking, I told myself. Venus and the police will be here soon, keep her talking, but don’t agitate her. If that gun goes off Paige is a dead woman. I strained my ears listening for sirens. But I heard nothing.

  “He came by to see her.” She pressed the gun tighter against Paige’s head. “And he didn’t know who I was. He didn’t remember me. He looked right through me like I wasn’t there.” Her crazed eyes glistened with tears. “After everything I’d done for him, he didn’t know who I was! And that’s when I knew what I had to do. He had to be punished…and so did Glynis. She didn’t deserve to live, anyway. But how? I wondered. How could I do it? And then I saw that boy one night sitting on the stoop smoking. I thought it was Freddy at first—but then I realized it was just someone who sort of resembled him. I went out and talked to him, became his friend. And then I knew. I could pay him to do errands—get him into the habit of showing up at the same time every week. It was fate, it was meant to be.”

  “So you killed Glynis, and poor Joey showed up right on time.”

  She smiled. “I realized, you know, that killing Freddy wasn’t the best punishment for him. What meant more to Freddy was his damned career. It didn’t matter if he actually did it or not. That was in Fate’s hands. I didn’t care if he was tried or convicted…just the suspicion would be enough to make him notorious instead of famous.”

  “And you killed Joey last night?”

  “That was YOUR fault…” She shrugged. “He called me. Told me all about your little visit to the Rail, and how he now knew what the truth was. He wanted money. So I met him on the neutral ground and shot him. I wasn’t ready to be betrayed just yet. And it was all a part of the plan, you see.” Her eyes glinted at me. “You see, the just punishment for Freddy is really for me, the girl he didn’t love, the one who wasn’t good enough for him, to be even more famous than he is.” She laughed. “And I will be. Our names will be forever linked from now on. No one will ever think about Freddy Bliss without remembering Rosemary Shannon, the woman he scorned and betrayed, who killed his first wife. He’ll never be written about, without my name being linked to his. We may not be married for real, but we will forever be married in notoriety.”

  “But you’ve already accomplished that. There’s no need to kill Paige,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and soothing. “The police are on their way right now. Just put the gun down, and we can wait for them, and you can tell them your story. And Paige is a reporter, you know. She can write it for you.”

  She looked at me as though I were the one who was insane. “I’m not going to jail, Mr. MacLeod.” She took the gun away from Paige’s head. “And now, there’s no to kill your friend anymore. I know she’s a reporter. She’s heard the entire story now, there’s no need for me to kill her. She’s the only one who knows my story. It would be stupid of me to kill her.” She shook her head. “No, that’s not the plan.” She smiled at me. “Tell Freddy I loved him.”

  She put the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger.

  Epilogue

  It took about two weeks for my fifteen minutes of fame to come to an end.

  I can’t say I was sorry to see the pack of hyenas in front of my house gone for good. I don’t know how celebrities deal with it on a daily basis.

  I didn’t talk to the press, other than Paige. When her first story for Crescent City magazine hit the newsstands, the magazine sold out the first day. It was, as she said, a great debut to make as editor in chief of the magazine. That bitch Coralie even called her to congratulate her—and Paige was gracious enough not to rub her face in it.

  I, of course, would have. She’s obviously a better person than I am.

  Venus and Blaine got commendations from the city for their efforts in solving the case.

  I never met with Freddy and J
illian again, but about five days after Rosemary Shannon killed herself, I got another check from them in the mail. This time it was for ten thousand dollars. There was no note or anything, which was fine with me. All I cared about was whether the check would clear, and it did.

  According to what I read in line at the grocery store, Freddy and Jillian’s marriage is in trouble. I can’t say that comes as a big surprise.

  Interestingly enough, the gun Rosemary used to kill herself—and Joey—was a match for the gun used to kill Tim Dahkle. So, the Kansas cops were able to close an open homicide.

  Paige is really happy working at Crescent City. The publisher has given her carte blanche to reshape the magazine the way she wants. She and Ryan haven’t set a date yet, but there’s no question in my mind it won’t be long.

  Joey’s family refused to claim his body, so I did. It seemed like the least I could do. I’ll never know what went through his mind that night. I’ll never know if the Joey I’d talked to was just pulling an act, but I prefer to think he was just a nice kid caught up in something too big for him to really handle. I had his body cremated, and on a beautiful spring morning, I dumped his ashes into the river at Wollenberg Park.

  I even allowed myself to shed a tear for him.

  Jephtha and Abby are both taking a private eye course. I’m sponsoring them, and am even considering making them partners in my business.

  Every once in a while, I catch a rerun of Sportsdesk, and I can’t help but feel sorry for Glynis Parrish. She really was talented. Marrying Freddy had doomed her, but there was no way she could have known that at the time.

  It really makes you stop and think, doesn’t it?

  Author’s Note

  Murder in the Rue Ursulines wasn’t supposed to be the fourth Chanse MacLeod novel; that was supposed to be Murder in the Garden District.

  But a funny thing happened on the way to the publisher.

  My career was rather chaotic after Hurricane Katrina. I write two different series—in addition to the Chanse series, I also write a lighter funnier series about a gay French Quarter private eye named Scotty Bradley—but after the devastation suffered by New Orleans after the failure of the levees on August 29, 2005, I didn’t really see how I could write a ‘funny’ series about New Orleans any longer. So, the Scotty series went on hold for a while.

  But in 2007, I had an idea that seemed right up Scotty’s alley. Since the turn of the century, New Orleans had started wooing the film and television industry with tax breaks and other incentives to start filming here. This proved to be enormously successful, to the point that New Orleans was nicknamed “Hollywood South.” Before Katrina, I had thought about writing a mystery built around the filming of a movie—I’ve always loved the movies, and books about the movies—but I never quite got around to it.

  After Katrina, there was some major concern about the burgeoning film and television industry here in Hollywood South—but the production companies did come back, and one of the most popular parts of the city for filming became the neighborhood where I work, the Faubourg Marigny, and especially Frenchmen Street.

  One day, I was walking down to the deli from my office to get a soda and a snack while some filming was going on. All of a sudden gunshots rang out, and I almost jumped out of my skin. My heart racing, I spun around just as someone yelled “cut” and it was with no small sense of relief that I realized it had all been just a part of the filming.

  And just like that, I saw the opening scene of my next Scotty book: on his way home from an errand, someone starts shooting at him, and he gets pulled inside a gate about a block from his house. That was it, but I kept seeing it over and over again in my head, and when I got home from work that night I sat down at the computer and started writing the scene. As I wrote it out, I realized two things: one, that Scotty isn’t the intended target but bears a strong resemblance to him and two, the intended target should be a movie star. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. I titled it Vieux Carre Voodoo, and the next morning I wrote a quick proposal and outline, printed them out along with the chapter I’d written, and sent it off to my publisher.

  Usually in those circumstances, I generally don’t start writing the book until I have a signed contract in hand. But I was really into this story, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. As I was waiting for my other publisher to make an offer on Murder in the Garden District, and at loose ends, I started writing the first draft of Vieux Carre Voodoo. The more I worked on it, the more I liked it.

  Ironically, my publisher decided to drop the Scotty series—and let me know the very day after I finished the first draft. Disappointed, I put it aside.

  A month later, there was some turmoil at the publisher of the Chanse series, but once it settled down, it turned out they wanted Murder in the Garden District—but there was a catch; they needed it as soon as possible. As I hadn’t even started writing it yet, we went back and forth for a few days—and then a solution occurred to me: I’d already written the first draft of a New Orleans mystery; I could probably rewrite and revise that in ten weeks and convert it from a Scotty book to a Chanse book.

  But if I was going to put myself through this, I also wanted a contract for Murder in the Garden District, which I would write next.

  They were desperate enough to agree to my terms, and I was very proud of myself…right up until the moment I started trying to convert a Scotty Bradley novel into a Chanse MacLeod.

  I wasted probably two weeks before I realized it wasn’t possible.

  I threw out almost everything I had already done and kept some basics: I kept the Hollywood South stuff and the characters, and the basic skeleton of the plot: the ex-wife of a major film star is murdered, and their divorce had been very public and very ugly. I wrote like a demon, and even managed to incorporate the ‘mistaken identity’ trope (which had sold me on the story in the first place) into the book. I turned it in, and even convinced my publisher to contract my friend and mentor Julie Smith to work with me as my editor once it was finished.

  And once Julie got her hands on the book, we wound up throwing out about a third of the story—as well as a new boyfriend for Chanse I had introduced—and I had to rewrite like crazy all over again. We didn’t have much time—perhaps a month at most—and we both worked like demons, but we got it done, finished, and turned in.

  And then I had to start writing Murder in the Garden District.

  When the opportunity came along to bring Murder in the Rue Ursulines back into print as an ebook, again the temptation was there—as it was with the others—to revise and rewrite it. From beginning to end, the book was written, rewritten, edited and rewritten again, in a little over three months.

  But, as with the others, I decided against it. Murder in the Rue Ursulines, whatever it’s faults, should remain what it always has been since it was first published in the fall of 2008. I hope you enjoyed it.

  And who knows? I might resurrect that original Scotty novel again someday. It was really a good idea—and pretty damned funny.

  --Greg Herren

  New Orleans, February 2012

  Table of Contents

  Synopsis

  By The Author

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

 

 

 
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