Murder in the Arts District

by Greg Herren

  Apparently, my poker face had slipped because Tom said quickly, “Myrna is nothing like the piece in the Times made her out to be.” He shook his head sadly. “We’ve known her for years. She loves New Orleans and was absolutely mortified when that piece came out. That wasn’t Myrna at all.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other,” I replied.

  “Myrna’s father and I went to college together,” Bill went on. “He was very big in the gallery scene in Manhattan for years, and of course he was my go-to when I started collecting art. Alas, he was killed in a robbery at his gallery about ten years or so, but Myrna was fresh out of college and ready to take over the gallery. I’ve always been fond of the girl—she’s like a daughter to me—and I was, of course, delighted when she and her husband decided to relocate to New Orleans, which meant she would be close by. So of course, when she told me about the paintings, and showed me photographs…I was interested.”

  “Who else knew the paintings were here?” I frowned. “And is it standard to take possession of paintings before getting the provenance and finalizing the sale?”

  “It was a bit odd,” Bill admitted, “but Myrna was nervous about keeping them in her gallery, obviously, and so once the money was put in the escrow account and the deposit paid, she brought the paintings out here. She hired security, of course, to escort her.”

  “Did anyone else beside Myrna and the security guards know the paintings were here?” I kept typing madly away at the touch screen keyboard on my phone.

  “We didn’t tell anyone,” Tom said.

  “You don’t think Myrna had something to do with the robbery?”

  Bill shook his head. “She would never do such a thing—especially since her father was killed during a robbery.”

  “What kind of security do you have?”

  “Alarms and motion detectors, of course. But we weren’t keeping the paintings in the house,” Tom replied.

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “We are planning on opening Belle Riviere to the public,” Tom went on hurriedly. “And we’re planning on using what used to be the slave quarters—well, we’ve renovated them and turned them into a gallery to display our art collection. It’s climate controlled, of course, and there’s a generator in case of power failures, to protect the work. The paintings were out there.”

  “And the thieves didn’t trigger the alarm?”

  “The alarm wasn’t on.” Tom made a face. “I’d swear I turned it on, Mr. MacLeod, that night. I am curating the collection until we can hire a professional—Myrna was looking into hiring someone for us. I finished working down there that night and set the alarms, and came back up to the house. The following morning when I went down there, the door had been kicked open and the three crates were gone. I immediately called the police, of course. They came out, looked around, and did absolutely nothing…and now claim that we never had the paintings in the first place and are trying to pull some sort of scam.” He rolled his eyes. “But like I said, the parish sheriff has it in for me because the law firm I’m clerking at while I study for the bar is suing the sheriff’s office.” Bill started to say something but Tom held up his hand to cut him off. “I think he’s trying to discredit me and Bill by making us look like criminals, and since I work at the firm,” he shrugged his muscular shoulders, “by extension he’ll discredit the firm. Can you help us?”

  “Did anyone else know how to turn off the alarm? Who all knew the code?”

  “Just me and the alarm company.” Tom licked his lower lip. “Bill didn’t even know it. I must not have turned it on that night…”

  Strange coincidence that you didn’t turn on the alarm the night someone broke in, I thought.

  “We’re responsible for the paintings.” Bill’s expression was serious. “The owner has them insured, of course, but without a police report proving they were stolen…I’m financially responsible for them. I’ll have to pay for them.”

  “Which Sheriff Parlange is well aware of,” Tom went on grimly. “So, what do you say, Mr. MacLeod? Do you think you can help us?”

  I thought about it for a few moments. Ah, what the hell, Todd will seriously owe me one.

  “I can’t guarantee I’ll find the paintings, or who stole them,” I replied. “But I can certainly look into it.”

  “Well, we can’t ask for more than that,” Bill replied, removing a checkbook from his inner jacket pocket. “It’s certainly more than we’re getting from the police.”

  I briefly explained how I worked and how much I charged. I found a blank contract on the Dropbox app on my phone and sent it to the email address Bill provided. Bill wrote out a check, which he handed to me with a flourish. “I’ll print out your contract and sign it. I can fax it, or have it scanned and emailed to you?”

  “Scanned and emailed would be great,” I replied, standing up and shaking his hand. “Either I or my partner will email you progress reports every few days or so, and you can decide to terminate our services at any time, of course.”

  “Did you want to take a look at the gallery?” Bill’s voice sounded tired.

  “Actually, I have another appointment in the city,” I lied. The truth was my back was beginning to throb more, which wasn’t a good sign. It was also information I didn’t want to share with a client. “Either I or my partner will be back out tomorrow or the day after.”

  “Tom, would you mind showing Mr. MacLeod out?” Bill asked. He closed his eyes and slid down a bit in his chair.

  “He’s having some heart trouble,” Tom said in a low voice as we walked out the door, which he closed behind us.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” I replied.

  He brushed against me slightly as we started walking down the enormous hallway to the front door. “This whole mess isn’t helping matters any.”

  The maid materialized with my cap and trench coat, which she handed to me before disappearing through another doorway. “I would imagine not.”

  “I’m sure you’ll get to the bottom of it in no time.” His smile grew broader, and he winked at me.

  Is he flirting with me? With his sugar daddy just down the hall? “Like I said, I can’t promise results.”

  “Well, thank you so much for taking our case.” He opened the front door, holding out his hand.

  I finished buttoning my trench coat and shook his hand. He held on to mine for just a couple of beats too long. “You’re sure we’ve never met before?”

  He laughed. “Trust me, I would remember you.” He gave me yet another wink as he shut the front door.

  Chapter Two

  By the time I was heading up the on-ramp onto I-10 East, my back was hurting so badly I wasn’t completely sure I’d be able to drive back to New Orleans.

  I’d been afraid this was going to happen. Todd and Blaine were going to owe me big time. I took a deep breath and gritted my teeth. I was about forty minutes from home, give or take, depending on how heavy traffic was. If this was just a minor twinge, I’d make it with a minimum of discomfort. If it was one of the bad ones—well, hopefully I could make it at least to Kenner before it got so bad I’d have to pull over. If I could make it at least to the dry ground on the other side of the bridge, I could pop a painkiller then and make it home before my mind swam out of focus.

  I floored the gas pedal as I merged onto the highway. There was an eighteen-wheeler coming up fast in my lane. I watched as the numbers on the digital speedometer shot up until it read eighty miles per hour—ten miles over the speed limit. Most highway patrol officers would turn a blind eye to that—it was the parish police trying to make quotas I had to worry about. I’d never heard of any speed traps between Redemption Parish and New Orleans, so I set the cruise control and tried to relax. I twisted a bit in my seat, trying to ease the pressure on my lower back, and turned the seat warmer back on, hoping the heat might loosen the muscles a bit and relieve some of the throbbing going on back there.

  It’s funny how your entire life can chang
e in the blink of an eye.

  Just four months earlier I hit the big milestone of my fortieth birthday. Everyone I knew had been giving me hell about what this birthday meant—the usual “one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel” kind of thing. I laughed along with them. Getting older wasn’t something I’d ever been overly concerned about. I’d spent most of my teens waiting for eighteen—which was when I started counting down the days till I turned twenty-one. The other milestones had come and gone without anything changing—twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five. I certainly had no reason to believe forty was going to be any different. Sure, I was now shaving my head—but my hairline had started receding in my early twenties. Some of the stubble was now grayish or silver, but so what? I was in good health, I was in probably the best physical condition of my life, and even my emotional state was probably the best it had ever been. Sure, I didn’t have the same energy I used to have, and sometimes when I really pushed myself at the gym the soreness didn’t seem to go away as quickly as it used to—and sometimes there were aches and pains in my joints and muscles that didn’t used to be there. But I had nothing to complain about, really.

  It was about three weeks later when it happened, when everything changed. I was heading uptown on Prytania Street on a beautiful early September afternoon, one of those gorgeous days after the humidity has broken and the heat has dropped down to the high seventies / low eighties, when everything is green and the sky is cerulean blue without a wisp of cloud and the perfume of the sweet olive still hangs in the air. I had turned off the air-conditioning in my car and had the driver’s side window down, my arm resting on the door frame as I cheerfully hummed along with an old ABBA tune playing on the car stereo. The light at Washington turned green and I floored the accelerator. As I went past the cemetery I was aware I was speeding—maybe about forty in a thirty zone. I was coming up to the intersection at Seventh Street when I noticed a police car stopped at the corner. I took my foot off the gas pedal, worried about possibly getting a ticket, when I noticed the police car was a little farther into the intersection than it should be. As I got closer, I saw that it was starting to creep forward slowly, and the female officer behind the wheel was looking the other way.

  Oh my God she is going to pull out in front of me and doesn’t know I’m coming LOOK OUT YOU STUPID—

  In a split second I checked to make sure the other lane was free and started to turn my wheel while honking the horn at the same time and shifting my foot to the brake pedal—and then there was the loud crash and my car stopped dead.

  My ears were ringing as the airbag deflated. I could taste chemicals in the back of my throat and I started coughing. Everything seemed surreal—the daylight streaming through my windshield now spider-webbed with cracks, the green leaves on the branches of the live oaks hanging over the street, and my inability to hear anything over the ringing of my ears. I began to tremble as the adrenaline drained out of my system, and I knew the weirdness was shock. My heart was pounding in my ears and I tried to control my breathing because I knew I was close to hyperventilating. I could see the female officer was slumped over the steering wheel. In the haze I somehow noticed in the rearview mirror that a fire truck had already blocked the street behind me and there were police cars everywhere, their lights flashing. Man they got here fast, I thought as I reached to open my door, get out and make sure she was okay, make sure I was okay. My hood was crumpled and smashed, and so was the fender on the right side of the car. I could see steam coming out from under the police car’s hood but none from mine. But when I tried to move, bolts of agonizing pain shot from both my neck and my lower back. Oh my fucking God I’m injured went through my head over and over again as I collapsed, wincing, back against my car seat.

  I’d never felt anything like this pain, and I’d played football for eight years—four at the collegiate level at LSU. It felt like my back was broken. My neck was so stiff and painful I couldn’t turn it.

  And no matter how much I coughed, I couldn’t get that goddamned chemical taste out of my throat.

  All I could do was close my eyes, bite my lower lip, and grip the steering wheel while I tried not to scream.

  An eternity later—but it was really only a couple of minutes—I was trying to listen to the accident investigator over the roaring in my ears. I kept apologizing and pointing out that I was in excruciating pain. I could see the sympathy in his face as he knelt next to my open car door, taking notes as EMTs dealt with the other driver. Messed up and in pain as I was, I had enough presence of mind to not admit to speeding. Finally he was finished and an EMT was asking me questions, shining a penlight into my eyes, probing at my neck with her fingers. Carefully, they moved me from the car to a stretcher and loaded me into the back of an ambulance. I also had the presence of mind to tell them to take me to Touro Infirmary rather than LSU Medical Center. I wound up staying in the hospital overnight. I had a ridiculous battery of tests and X-rays and consultations with experts and nurses and physical therapists and surgeons—all of whom I had difficulty hearing, and that damned chemical taste would not go away.

  Finally, I was released the next day with prescriptions for pain pills (“the Vicodin is for moderate pain and the Oxycontin for overwhelming pain”) and a referral to a physical therapist. I also had follow-up appointments. The X-rays showed damage to some of my lumbar vertebrae—compressed disks that caused bulging cartilage, and incredible pain. My options were to have surgery or to try to rehabilitate it by making my back stronger through stretching and exercise. I chose to try rehabilitation. Both options involved painkillers. I wasn’t too thrilled about that. After Katrina I’d had a problem with prescriptions for anxiety and panic attacks. I wasn’t too keen on risking another addiction, so at first I decided to only take a pill when the pain became too unbearable.

  I got over that pretty damned fast.

  My car was totaled, a complete loss—which only made sense, since I’d just finished paying it off the month before.

  I was also forbidden from working out at my gym—anything other than yoga or the exercises my physical therapist took me through twice a week. I gained about five pounds the first week of not going to the gym. I was used to going a minimum of three times per week, with an hour devoted to weight lifting and another hour on one of the cardio machines. Reluctantly I cut everything fattening out of my diet and started trying to eat smaller portions.

  It was a miserable existence.

  And now, driving back home, the pain was starting up again. I had some of my pain pills in the armrest between the front seats, but rather than taking one I slipped a lumbar pillow behind my lower back for extra support. I drove up onto the bridge over the lake marshes and the Bonnet Carré Spillway. The traffic was light, and by controlling my breathing I was able to focus on something besides the dull ache in my back. Just get home and take a pill, I reminded myself. It was only about another twenty minutes. I would have taken one in the car but I hadn’t had lunch so there was nothing to delay the pill taking effect, and I worried I might start get loopy and woozy around the time I passed the parish line from Jefferson into Orleans. I’d made the mistake of driving on Vicodin once. The second time I went through a red light because my mind was wandering and I couldn’t focus was when I realized I was a danger to everyone, so I turned the car around and headed home as quickly as I could.

  To take my mind off my back, I started thinking about the case.

  And the more I thought about this case, the less I liked it.

  I seriously doubted they’d given me the whole story. It wouldn’t be the first time a client had lied to me, nor would it be the last. In my line of work, you kind of get used to being lied to by clients. Maybe they just weren’t telling me everything. That was possible. Their story just didn’t add up for me. Tom was handsome and had a great body, but he’d been to law school and was clerking at a law firm. Sure, even the smartest people fuck up from time to time, but not setting the alarm for a building with s
everal million dollars’ worth of art stored inside had to take the prize for stupidity. And of course that just happened to be the night the thieves showed up. I kind of saw the Redemption Parish sheriff’s point—it did look bad for Tom, especially if he was the only one who knew the alarm code.

  I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know anything about art. The only art in my apartment was black-and-white photography, mostly landscapes and male nudes. Most of those had been gifts; I’d bought the others at gallery shows Paige had dragged me to when she didn’t have a significant other. I’d never paid more than five hundred bucks for art, so the concept of putting a couple of hundred thousand dollars into escrow for the right to buy some paintings wasn’t something I could wrap my head around. Taking possession of extremely valuable paintings I might not wind up owning also seemed a little odd to me.

  Then again, maybe that was the way the art world worked when it came to big-ticket items. I was neither an art collector nor rich beyond belief. However, I did know several people who were one or the other or both. My landlady and primary employer, Barbara Castlemaine, lived in a mansion in the Garden District filled with art she’d collected. She wasn’t in town at the moment—she was actually in Europe, buying art—but she was due back on the weekend.

  And since he’d gotten me into this, I was definitely going to talk to Todd Laborde about his friends.

  Bill had seemed a little evasive about how he made his money, so that was also something I’d have to look into—if he wasn’t above cutting a corner here or there to make money, it was logical to assume he wouldn’t be above questionable legal tactics when it came to collecting art. And restoring Belle Riviere must have cost a small fortune. The New Orleans Advocate had run a story when Bill bought the place. The previous owners had gone bankrupt trying to maintain the property and had let it go a bit to seed over the years. The monthly power bill alone had to run to the thousands. The cost of the renovations had to have been astronomical—so Bill was clearly sitting on top of quite a fortune.