Murder in the Arts District

by Greg Herren

  And that was the end of the report.

  I pushed my chair back and stood up. The apartment was warmer, but there was still some cold and damp in the air. There was still the report on Bill Marren to read, but I was tired of sitting at the computer. It would keep until later. The information about the Marwoods was interesting and established a pattern of unethical conduct for the Lovejoys, but it didn’t really pertain to my investigation. There was probably no reason to look into them any further. Their damage was in the past, and it was highly unlikely Myrna Lovejoy or her husband was still involved with them in any way. Besides, it had nothing to do with the theft of the paintings. If I talked to either of the Marwoods, all they would be able to do was shed some light on the Lovejoys’ characters—that might come in handy, of course, but they were hardly unbiased sources.

  It’s been my experience that women whose husbands cheated rarely have anything insightful to say about the mistress who ruined their marriage.

  I needed to talk to Myrna herself. I thought about calling and making an appointment but decided it was probably best to try to catch her off guard, without giving her a chance to come up with explanations and excuses. She was probably expecting to hear from me anyway—surely Bill had told her he’d hired me.

  I got dressed, going for a professional look: blood-red button-down shirt, silver silk tie with matching blood-red circles, black slacks, and my black camelhair jacket. I suspected Myrna was the type of woman—her piece in the New York Times notwithstanding—who was impressed by men in suits wearing power ties. If I dressed the way I usually do—black sweater and blue jeans—she wouldn’t give me the time of day. I checked the address of her gallery one last time to be certain, then walked out my front door.

  There was a lot of traffic on Camp Street, like always. It was still cold, but at least it had stopped raining. I brought a small umbrella along just in case. The sky was still gray, and the dark clouds were moving faster. I shivered and crossed the corner at Melpomene. I tried to walk as little as possible since the accident, but I still felt good. I’d tucked the Vicodin bottle into one of my jacket pockets to be on the safe side.

  As I walked downtown I couldn’t help but think about how much Camp Street had changed since I’d moved there. After taking the job with the NOPD and my basic training at the Louisiana Police Academy, I’d rented a studio apartment in a carriage house in the French Quarter. (That’s what the rental agent had called it; I knew it was a slave quarter. There were still holes in the old bricks where the manacles had been mounted.) I’d lived there the entire two years I worked for the NOPD, using my off time to cruise the gay bars only a few blocks from my gate and look for love (lust) wherever I could find it. I tired of the bullshit politics in the police department pretty fast and left to start my own agency after two years. I also left the Quarter, finding my apartment in the then-sketchy lower Garden District neighborhood. There used to be an on-ramp for I-90 to the bridge to the West Bank. A lot of old-timers felt the Camp Street on-ramp was responsible for the decline in the neighborhood over the years. For years the ruins of the ramp, two lanes of concrete rising into the air until it came to an abrupt halt about ten feet up, ending in jagged edges of concrete and rusted metal jutting out, stood as a testament to the ruination of the neighborhood. It was finally jackhammered into oblivion and the pieces taken away. Palm trees now lined the neutral ground between Camp and Coliseum Streets, and even in this area between Melpomene and Calliope the houses were coming back, renovated and painted and looking better than they had in years. The beautiful old Coliseum Theater had been torn down after a fire had ravaged the inside. It was a shame. I’d always hoped the gentrification of the neighborhood would lead to someone renovating the theater and reopening it. The old-style Prytania Theatre uptown was still operating, so I’d always thought the Coliseum could survive as well. It would have been nice to be able to walk to see a movie.

  The Lovejoy Gallery was on Magazine Street just past Julia. I walked past the World War II Museum on my way and reminded myself again I should visit it at some point. Julia Street was still torn up—Magazine narrowed to one lane at the intersection and continued as one lane until it reached the corner at St. Joseph. A lot of streets in the city were being torn up—a lot of the federal money allocated after the flood needed to be used up or returned, and apparently the mayor was determined to use every cent of it. There was a restaurant called the Peche Seafood Grill on the riverside of the street—I’d never noticed it before. It was hard keeping up with all the changes in the city over the last few years. Restaurants and bars had always come and gone in New Orleans, but not at the rate they had since the flood.

  All this gentrification had to be a good thing, right? New business meant jobs and an increase in tax revenues for the city.

  Maybe I should start reading the newspapers or watching the news.

  I was a creature of habit and rarely tried places I’d never been to before. Rory was a self-admitted foodie and loved dragging me to some new restaurant I didn’t even know existed. I had to admit he had excellent taste in food—I’d never had a bad meal with him. Of course, a bad restaurant wouldn’t last long in New Orleans. That had been true even before the flood. Like everything else about New Orleans, the restaurant scene had changed so much over the last few years it was hardly recognizable. I’d recently driven up Magazine Street on my way uptown and noticed all kinds of food places we’d never had before—Thai, Polynesian, Ethiopian, etc.

  Change was good, right?

  The gallery was between Julia and Girod Streets. I seemed to remember the building had once been a furniture shop. I stood on the sidewalk in front, looking at it. There were enormous windows on either side of the door, tinted dark to keep the sun’s glare out, but I could see statues on columns and enormous paintings hanging inside. In bright yellow neon, the word Lovejoy was spelled out in cursive in the window just above the door. Other than that, there wasn’t the slightest indication that it was a gallery. There were no hours listed on the door. I stood there for a moment, took a deep breath and walked in.

  It was freezing inside, and I shivered involuntarily. There was a receptionist’s desk right there by the front door, but no one was manning it. There were no signs of life anywhere in the big room, actually, other than the Fleetwood Mac music playing softly through hidden speakers. There wasn’t a bell or anything to ring. I glanced around. On a pedestal designed to look like a Grecian column sat a blue glass ball. It was maybe a foot around, and if I were so inclined, I could just pick it up and walk out with it. I wasn’t so inclined—even after checking the little card on the pedestal informing me it was called Blue Glass Ball and had been “sculpted” by someone named Jane Meakin, and the gallery thought a collector should pay $3,500 for it. I took out my phone and took a picture surreptitiously with the camera before slipping it back into my jacket pocket. Before I could take another step a female voice said from behind me, “Oh, a million pardons! I had no idea you were here waiting. I hope you didn’t have to wait long?”

  I turned around and saw a familiar-looking face. She was tall and slender, wearing a navy blue blazer with a matching skirt. Her coral blouse was silk, and a long rope of pearls hung around her neck. Her blond hair was pulled back into a French braid and she smelled of expensive perfume. Her face was tastefully made up. Her navy blue shoes had massive stiletto heels.

  As I tried to remember where I knew her from, her eyes narrowed and she tilted her head to one side. “I know you from somewhere…” Her forehead wrinkled in concentration. She snapped her fingers. “You were the detective who helped me out when Kenny Musgrave was murdered! During the evacuation for Hurricane Ginevra!” She smiled. “At the Allegra Gallery?”

  Of course. I’d met her when I’d gone by the Allegra Gallery to interview him as a potential witness in another murder. The next day when the city was being evacuated, she’d found his body in his office. Unable to get through to the police during the madness of a mandatory
evacuation and not knowing what else to do, she’d called me. “Meredith Cole, right?”

  She held up her left hand. Her nails were perfectly manicured, but I couldn’t miss the diamond ring and the wedding band beside it on her ring fingers. “Meredith Channing now.” She held out her slender hand for me to shake. An expensive watch was at her wrist. “I always meant to call you to say thank you afterward, but…” Her voice trailed off.

  I waved away her concerns. “No need, Meredith.” I gave her my winningest smile. “I don’t mind, really. Just glad I could help.”

  “You’re very kind, but really, I don’t know what I would have done that day if you hadn’t turned up.” She glanced over at the glass ball. “Are you interested in that?”

  “No, but I am amazed that someone thinks it’s worth thirty-five hundred dollars.”

  “Things are worth what people will pay for them.” She barked out a laugh and then looked over her shoulder. She lowered her voice. “My boss—the gallery owner—is amazing. She could sell ice to eskimos.” She shrugged. “Are you here to look at art…?”

  “No. I’d actually like to talk to your boss. Is she in?”

  She shook her head. “No, and it’s weird. She had an appointment earlier this morning—she’d lined up a serious sucker, thought she’d be able to move a bunch of this crap”—she waved her hand tiredly at the displays—“to this actor”—her voice dripped with scorn—“here to make some TV show. He bought some big house on Esplanade and wants to fill it up with art.” She rolled her eyes. “Myrna never showed. I tried calling her cell and her landline, with no luck at all. That’s not like her.” Her eyes widened. “You don’t think she’s dead?”

  I bit my lower lip. “I doubt it, Meredith.” I tried to make a joke of it. “What are the odds that you’d work for two gallery owners who turn up dead when I show up?”

  She barked out another nervous laugh. “This is New Orleans, Mr. MacLeod. Anything can happen here.”

  She had a point. “Maybe you could help me, now that I think about it.”

  “I’d be happy to.” She fidgeted nervously. “Seriously, it’s not like her not to pick up her cell phone. She’d answer it during sex, I think.” She made a face, as though to say New Yorkers. “I don’t know that I necessarily agree with her tactics…she can talk a good game about art, but she doesn’t really know anything about it.” She drew herself up a bit proudly. “I have a master’s degree in both art history and art appreciation from Ole Miss. Art is more than commerce.” She laughed dispiritedly. “But I needed a job, so here I am. Jobs for my degrees aren’t exactly falling off trees. The original dipso duo.”

  “I don’t want to get you in trouble—”

  “Thank you, but I’m a big girl. If helping you would get me into trouble with Myrna, I can always say no.”

  “All right. I’ve been hired by Bill Marren about the theft of some paintings—”

  She held up her hand. “That whole situation is very strange. Definitely set off some alarm bells with me.” She sat down behind her desk and leaned back casually in her chair, crossing her long legs at the ankles. “For one thing, that particular art sale didn’t come through the gallery.” Both of her eyebrows went up, and the corners of her mouth twitched. “That in itself isn’t unusual; of course, gallery owners often sell work they aren’t currently displaying. How much do you know about how this whole thing works?”

  “I spoke with Todd Laborde this morning, so he gave me a bit of an overview.”

  “It isn’t unusual, like I said, for a gallery owner to sell works they’ve never displayed.” She shrugged, her shoulders going up maybe an inch before relaxing again. “A gallery owner really works as an agent for an artist, and of course whenever an owner represents an artist, they create a catalogue. A good gallery keeps files on what their clients like, and when you run across some work you think the client will like, obviously you get in touch with them.” She waved her hand at the computer screen. “I’m very good at that sort of thing—and of course, when so-and-so came to his unfortunate end, I may have kept his client list. They were mostly my clients in the first place. But I don’t know anyone who’d want that ball. Anyway, no, those paintings were never displayed here, were never put into inventory. One day they were there, in the storeroom, in their crates. I asked Myrna about them—if they were going to be hung, who was the artist, et cetera—and she told me not to worry about them, they were already sold, and Bill Marren would be sending someone to pick them up in a van, that afternoon.” She nodded. “A very handsome, well-built young man named Tom something or another came by and got them that very day, signed for them, loaded them up into the van, and that was the last I saw of them.”

  “Was Bill Marren a regular customer?”

  “Not of ours.” She shrugged. “I thought he primarily bought from Todd Laborde. We’ve sent him any number of invitations to shows here, but he’s never come. The young man—that Tom—he has, of course. I recognized him. Very charming. I don’t know that I trust him, though.”

  “Anything in particular?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Do you want to look at the file?” She winked. “You’ve got my curiosity going.” She went behind the desk and retrieved a set of keys from her purse. “I’ve got the key to Myrna’s office. Won’t take a second.”

  “You sure? I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  She shook her head. “If you won’t tell, I won’t. Be back in a sec.” Her heels clacked across the floor, and she opened a door in the rear of the gallery. She used her foot to click the doorstop into place and went down the hallway. She unlocked a door and screamed.

  I ran across the room and down the hallway.

  A man was sitting in the chair behind the desk, his eyes wide open and staring at us.

  The bullet hole in his chest explained why his shirt was soaked in blood.

  Chapter Five

  It started raining while we were waiting for the police to arrive. Enormous drops of water pelted and battered the enormous plate glass windows lining the street wall of the gallery. Cars passing by on Magazine had their headlights on and were driving so slowly they barely seemed to be moving.

  It was almost like nature was putting an exclamation point to finding the dead body.

  I’d somehow managed to get Meredith out of the office without touching anything. Once she stopped screaming, I’d taken her by both hands and started talking to her quietly, got her turned around, and led her back out into the main room of the gallery. I sat her down at the desk, got her a cup of coffee, and retrieved her coat from the coat tree in the small kitchenette at the end of the short hallway. Her teeth were chattering and she was shivering by the time I got back to her. She was going into shock. I draped the coat around her shoulders and pressed her hands around the hot mug of coffee. “Drink,” I instructed, and she obeyed without question. I got up and turned the lock on the front door, flipping the switch on the neon Closed sign. I called Venus on my cell phone to report the body, speaking very quietly, before heading back to check on Meredith. I knelt down on the floor in front of her, holding both of her hands in mine, rubbing my thumbs on her inner wrists. I’d always heard that helped with people on the verge of shock. She had almost drunk all of the coffee, and she wasn’t shivering anymore. Some of her color came back as I knelt there, rubbing her wrists. “The police are on their way,” I half whispered, aware that I wasn’t going to be able to keep kneeling there for much longer. My back was starting to ache a bit, and my thighs were burning.

  I’d been out of the gym far too long.

  She pulled free of my hands and gave me a heartbreakingly sad smile. “Thanks, Chanse. I—I think I’ll be okay now. I appreciate it, you’re very kind.” She held out the empty coffee mug to me. “Would you mind getting one more cup? I think I just need one more and I’ll be fine.” She blew out a long breath and shook her head. “I guess you shouldn’t have made that joke about dead bodies, huh?”

  W
hen I came back with her coffee she asked, “Do you ever get used to it? Seeing death, I mean.” She gave a brittle laugh. “I suppose it’s like anything else, you see it enough you get desensitized, right? Obviously morticians and coroners—obviously it doesn’t bother them.”

  “I’ve never gotten used to it,” I said, not kneeling again because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get back up. I bit my lower lip. “That’s not true, I suppose. It doesn’t affect me the way it used to, and I don’t know if I like knowing that, you know?” I closed my eyes. Maybe it was because I had actually killed before, but always in self-defense. “I gather that was Collier Lovejoy?”

  She nodded. “Yeah.” She swallowed and closed her eyes. Her skin took on a slightly greenish tone, and she gagged. I grabbed the little trash can and held it in front of her as the coffee came back up. I handed her the box of Kleenex tissue sitting next to her phone. She took it from me, wiping at her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. She gave me a wan smile. “Sorry. Good thing I didn’t have breakfast this morning.” She took a couple of breaths. “I’m okay now.” She stood up and held on to the edge of the desk for a moment. “Would you mind if I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth?” She sounded like a child asking for permission after already being put to bed.

  “Of course. Just don’t look in the office.”

  She closed her eyes and nodded. I watched her walk across the room, her heels clacking on the floor. She gave Myrna’s office door a wide berth and pointedly looked away as she went past it. She disappeared from sight for a few moments, and when she came back she was carrying a plastic bottle of water in her right hand.

  I moved the garbage can around to the other side of the desk as she approached. She looked better. Her makeup was a bit smudged—she’d clearly splashed cold water on her face, as there were little drops on her eyebrows, but she gave me a brave smile as she sank back down into her chair. “Better.”