Murder in the Arts District

by Greg Herren

  Clearly, that was what I was going to have to do with both women.

  I finally allowed myself to send Rory a text, apologizing again for having to break our date, but he couldn’t be bothered to respond, either.

  He was undoubtedly pissed, and it was probably for the best anyway. Neither one of us was going to move on if we kept seeing each other and sleeping together on occasion.

  A clean and total break was best for both of us.

  But that was easier said than done.

  I crossed Magazine when the light changed, and climbed up the steps to Coquette. I shivered as I stepped into the warm air inside the restaurant. The hostess, a pretty and petite young woman with a smile that appeared genuine, came walking toward me with a menu in her hands just as I noticed Tom. He was sitting at a table back near the door to the staircase leading upstairs to the private party room.

  “I’m meeting someone,” I said before she could ask me anything, “and I’ve just spotted him, thank you.”

  “Go right ahead, sir, and enjoy your meal,” she said, slightly bowing her head to me.

  I walked past her in the warmth, unbuttoning my coat and removing my hat. Tom saw me coming and stood, a smile lighting up his face. “Hey, so glad you could make it,” he said as he stuck out his hand.

  I smiled back as I shook his hand. He was wearing a black wool blazer, a pale yellow shirt unbuttoned at the neck, and a pair of matching pleated black slacks. He’d slicked his hair down, but the curls were starting to come back at the ends. His eyes twinkled in the dim restaurant light. His outfit was extremely flattering, tailored to show off his broad shoulders. There were spots of color in his cheek. He held my hand for a second too long, then removed his jacket and draped it over the back of his chair.

  “I took the liberty of ordering a bottle of wine,” he said, sitting back down, and scooted his chair back under the table. “I hope you don’t mind red?”

  All I know about wine is there are two different colors, and that white goes with fish and chicken. I folded my trench coat and draped it over one of the extra chairs at our table. “No, that’s fine.” I returned his smile as I sat down in my chair. My feet brushed against his legs as I pulled my chair into the table, and I apologized, shifting a bit in my chair.

  “No problem,” he said as he filled my glass for me. “I hope you like it.”

  I raised the glass to my lips and took a sip. It was tart and full-bodied, with just a hint of a wood flavor to it. “It’s excellent.” I set it back down on the table and took a sip of water. I’d taken another Vicodin before leaving the house to help me get me through dinner, and downing a lot of liquor on top of it was probably not the best idea.

  Especially since I was driving.

  Maybe I should have taken a cab, I thought, taking another sip of the wine. It was a good red, whatever it was. I picked up the menu and started looking through the entrees.

  “Thank you again for joining me,” Tom said, looking up from his menu with his ever-present smile on his thick lips. “Some friends recommended this place to me, and I’ve been wanting to try it for a while, but I really don’t like eating alone.” He shook his head, the light brown curls bouncing a bit on the sides of his face. “People always look at you when you’re alone, like they feel sorry for you. I hate that.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve never really thought about it that much.”

  “You don’t care what people think, do you?” He tilted his head to one side as he watched my face. “I kind of sensed that when we met the other day. It’s a great quality. I try not to, and I’ve gotten better about it, but I still find myself worrying about what people think.” He rolled his eyes dramatically. “Maybe someday.”

  “It’s incredibly freeing,” I replied, deciding to have the red snapper. It’s what I’d had the other time I’d eaten there, and I was nothing if not a creature of habit. “So, what brought you into town today?”

  “I had some business at the federal courthouse.” He made a face and set his menu down. “I had to drop off some paperwork to the judge for a case my firm is working on.”

  “Is this the case that’s put you on the outs with the Redemption Parish Sheriff’s Department?”

  He nodded. “Yes. It was a very flagrant abuse of our client’s civil rights—not to mention police brutality. Nothing makes me angrier than cops who think they’re above the law they’re sworn to serve.” The red color in his cheeks darkened. “Redemption Parish—the situation there is really bad—I don’t know if you’re aware of what it’s like there. It’s like the old South. The sheriff runs the entire parish like it’s his personal fiefdom, like he’s a dictator or something. He controls everything there. No one can get elected without his approval—and he definitely has his price. He has his sticky fingers in everything that goes on in the parish. It’s a level of corruption you’d think wouldn’t be possible today, but there we are in Redemption Parish with our own petty version of Boss Tweed—although I imagine he sees himself as more of a Leander Perez.” Leander Perez had been the longtime boss of Placquemines and St. Bernard Parishes. Tom shook his head. “As if the corruption isn’t bad enough, the way he and his men have treated this poor woman is really abominable.” He leaned across the table. “The firm thinks this case is the key to bringing him down, like pulling a thread that unravels everything. Bill doesn’t seem to get it, or doesn’t want to. He thinks I should resign from the firm, find another place to clerk. Maybe he’s right. I don’t know.” He sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Anyway, when Sheriff Parlange and his men basically accused us of faking the robbery, I knew we couldn’t back down. If we let him get away with this, there’s no telling what he would do next. That’s why I wanted to bring you in on the robbery case.” He refilled his wineglass. “Bill doesn’t really care one way or the other. He’s willing to just take the loss.” His mouth twisted. “Must be nice to be able to throw away a couple of million, right?”

  “So, are you all responsible legally for the paintings, or is Myrna Lovejoy? Doesn’t she have insurance?”

  “She does, but she’s been, like we said the other day, oddly uncooperative.” He scratched the side of his face. “Maybe Parlange’s gotten to her.”

  “Do you think the sheriff could be behind the robbery?”

  “Nothing he could do would surprise me, frankly, Chanse.” He made a steeple with his fingers. “He has his fingers in so many things. It’s entirely possible he could have pressured the alarm company to give him our pass code.” He sipped his wine. “Bill would rather believe I was stupid enough to forget to set the alarm that night. I don’t make mistakes like that, Chanse.”

  “Is he afraid of Sheriff Parlange, do you think?”

  Before he could answer, our waitress came by. We both ordered the red snapper. After she walked away, he replied, “I suppose it’s possible. I’ve never known Bill to be afraid of anyone before, though—he actually has always seemed to thrive on this sort of thing, if you know what I mean? He doesn’t like to back down. I’ve never seen him back down. It’s part of the reason why he’s been so successful. He’s smart and he’s relentless. So to see him be so lackadaisical, so unconcerned, about this mess and the things Sheriff Parlange has said to us? Usually Bill would have a team of lawyers breathing down his neck and slapped him with a multimillion-dollar slander suit. You cross Bill, he doesn’t rest until he’s completely destroyed you. He leaves scorched earth behind—that’s the way he’s always operated. I’m frankly baffled that he’s pretty much washed his hands of this whole thing and left it up to me to handle it. He doesn’t even like to talk about it.”

  “Maybe Sheriff Parlange has something on him?” I buttered a piece of bread. “Have you thought of that?”

  He stared at me for a moment, blinking, like I was crazy. Then he started laughing. “I’m sorry,” he finally said after getting a hold of himself. “I know it’s rude, to laugh, and I’m sorry. Please forgive me. But what could the sheriff have on someone li
ke Bill? It’s absurd.”

  I swallowed and picked up another roll. “I don’t know, Tom. But I have to consider every possibility. Maybe the robbery and the lawsuit aren’t related. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that Collier Lovejoy was murdered last night.” I tilted my head to one side. “But you know, the common denominator in all three of these things is you.”

  His jaw dropped. He blinked, unable to do anything other than stare at me.

  I shrugged. “Anything you want to tell me?”

  He spluttered for a moment. “I don’t know how you could—I didn’t have—how can you tie me to Collier Lovejoy’s murder? I barely knew the man. And I wasn’t in the city last night. I was at Belle Riviere all night.”

  I took another sip of my wine. I was starting to feel a little buzzed and a little mellow around the edges, which had to be a combination of the wine with the Vicodin. I put the glass down and shook my head to try to clear it a bit. “I wasn’t accusing you of killing him, Tom. What I was saying is that you are the common thread in all three cases. You’re the link between them, like it or not. Bill’s not involved in the lawsuit, for example, but you are.”

  “Christ,” he breathed.

  “That’s how the cops are going to look at it, you know. They look for commonalities. Nobody believes in coincidences.” I picked up my glass of water and took a drink. “I don’t know what motive you might have had for killing Collier, but you’re a lawyer. You know they don’t have to have a motive to convict. They’re going to take a long, hard look at everyone involved with Collier and Myrna. This whole thing with the paintings is going to look pretty fucking weird to the homicide detectives. It looks kind of weird to me, too, if you want me to be completely honest.” Shut up, slow down, shut up, the wine and Vicodin are impairing your judgment, shut the fuck up already.

  “Oh.” He gulped down the rest of his glass and refilled it. “I suppose you’re right,” he said after another moment of awkward silence, just as I was about to say something to fill it. “I mean, it should have occurred to me already.”

  “Why? Why would it?” I asked, taking another drink from my water glass. Damn, the wine is really fucking with me, I thought, hoping diluting it somehow would help. “It’s my experience that most people don’t consider themselves to be suspects in crimes, especially when they’re innocent.” I smiled at him. “Your reaction pretty much clears you, at least in my mind. You didn’t know Collier well?”

  “I don’t—didn’t—know either of them well.” He rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Bill knew them, of course, from New York. That’s how I knew them—through Bill. Bill was the one who bought the paintings, made all the arrangements with Myrna.”

  “And you swear you turned on the alarm that night?”

  “I would be willing to swear in court that I did, but I must not have.” He sighed. “It’s the only explanation.”

  “How do you think the thieves got inside the gate?”

  “I don’t know.” He scratched his chin. “But they did.”

  “If they got inside the gate, they had to have had the code, right?” I tilted my head and shrugged. “If they could get the gate code, is it really such a stretch to think they could have gotten their hands on the alarm code as well? How many employees are there at Belle Riviere?”

  “The only person who has the code is our housekeeper, LaDonna. You met her yesterday.”

  “And you trust her?”

  “Yes.” He laughed. “If LaDonna wasn’t honest, she could have robbed us blind by now.”

  I should have checked her out already. I swore at myself. The pain pills are messing with my ability to do my job properly. Maybe I should just turn the whole case over to Abby and butt out. I changed the topic. “How did you and Bill meet?”

  “He hired me.” He said it without any shame, without blushing. “I worked as an escort while I was attending the University of Connecticut. He saw my online ad and hired me.” A smile played at the corner of his lips. “Does that lower your opinion of me? I’m not ashamed of my past, Chanse.”

  “No.” It would have when I was younger, but I wasn’t the same judgmental fool that I used to be. “Is that how you paid for college?”

  He bit his lower lip and exhaled. “Yes. I did some modeling work, too. I didn’t see anything wrong with it, still don’t, actually. I generally don’t share the information with people. Not because I’m ashamed, but because people can be so judgmental.” He gave me a hint of a smile. “I still care what people think.”

  “You modeled?” I took another drink of the wine, setting the glass down, remembering as I swallowed that I hadn’t intended to drink any more. “Maybe that’s why you look familiar to me.”

  “Are you into wrestling? Because that’s the only way you’d know me from that. That was the only kind of modeling I really did.”

  Wrestling.

  A wave of nausea washed over me.

  But that could just have been the Vicodin and the wine.

  Of course.

  I could see him very clearly in my mind, leaning against the black wall in the white square-cuts, his body covered in sweat. I cleared my throat. “Did you know two guys whose stage names were Cody Dallas and Jude Jensen?”

  “Yes.” His eyes widened in surprise.

  “Your stage name was Jamie West, wasn’t it?” I closed my eyes. I could feel my heart pounding in my ears.

  My ex, Paul, had done wrestling videos under the name Cody Dallas.

  It had eventually gotten him killed.

  I gripped the arms of my chair and took some deep breaths.

  Paul.

  “Yes, I was Jamie West,” I heard Tom saying. His voice sounded delighted. “So you were a fan?”

  My heart was pounding, and I could feel my underarms getting wet with sweat, and beads of water formed on my forehead. I hadn’t thought about Paul in years.

  Paul was my first boyfriend. My first real boyfriend. I’d never been involved with anyone before seriously. My “friends-with-benefits” arrangement with Blaine was the closest I got to having a relationship with another man. Everything else had just been sex—guys I met in the bath house for clandestine couplings in the shadows, guys I picked up in bars whose names I’d never bothered to learn, whose phone numbers I threw away as soon as my front door closed behind them in the morning. I’d met him one night when he was high on Ecstasy. I’d seen him earlier that day at my gym, working out in pale blue cotton shorts and a matching tank top. His body was amazing. The whole time I worked out I kept finding my glance drifting back to him as he went through an intense workout, as his tank top got progressively more and more wet and clingy. There was no fat on his body anywhere. His entire body was perfectly proportioned, from the broad shoulders narrowing down in a V to the ridiculously small waist, the perfectly shaped butt and strong, thickly muscled legs. That night I’d gone cruising in the Quarter gay bars, only to see him, dancing in a pair of jeans with his shirt off on the stage at Oz around one in the morning. His carved and defined torso was beaded with sweat, as was the waistband of his jeans. I myself had a pretty healthy buzz going from a combination of beer, tequila shots, and marijuana. He’d gone home with me that night. He turned out to be a flight attendant who’d just moved to New Orleans. We started slow, but over the course of a year I fell in love with him. We were in the stage where we had started to talk about moving in together, going to the next level, when I found out about his past as a video wrestler and a nude model through another case I was working.

  I hadn’t handled it well, to say the least.

  “Chanse?”

  I took another drink of my wine. My hand was shaking. “Not a fan per se,” I said. My voice sounded rough, harsh, distant, like I was talking in a wind tunnel or something. “I have seen some of your work.”

  “Like I said, I’m not ashamed of how I paid for college.”

  “I’m not judging you.”

  “It sounds like it.” He broke off and
we both smiled at our waitress as she placed our plates in front of us, asked if we needed anything else, and disappeared when we both said no. “I grew up very blue collar. We didn’t have a spare cent. I was an athlete in high school, football and wrestling and baseball. I knew the only way I’d get to college was a scholarship, but I wasn’t talented enough to get one. And when my dad found out I was gay my senior year, he threw me out.” He grimaced. “I stayed with a friend’s family until I graduated and got a job as a personal trainer at a gym in the city. But it wasn’t something I wanted to do the rest of my life. And when I saw an ad in the gay paper in Boston looking for experienced wrestlers, I answered it. It was good money, and the guys were great. It was like I finally found a family, you know?”

  “Do you have a relationship with your family now?”

  He shook his head. “My mom died when I was a teenager, and my dad remarried, has a daughter with the new wife. He took early retirement and they live in Florida somewhere now. I talk to my brothers, but not my dad. He can go fuck himself.” His face colored again. “So, that’s how I paid for college. Making wrestling videos and escorting. That’s how I met Bill. He hired me. I was close to graduating. He hired me a few times, and then he offered me the opportunity to become one of his protégés. I would have been crazy to say no—and I can see by the look on your face you’re wondering if we still have a sexual relationship. The answer is no.”

  “No?” I took a bite of the red snapper. It was fucking incredible and melted in my mouth.

  “No,” he replied firmly. “Bill is a good guy, Chanse. He’s had a long list of protégés, young men he thought had potential. He mentors them, helps with school expenses, and then launches them out into the world.” He refilled his glass and topped off mine. “Once I pass the bar exam, I’ll have to move out of Belle Riviere and find another place to live. My ‘free ride’ will be over, and I’m fine with that. Bill and I haven’t had a sexual relationship since I agreed to become one of his protégés.”

  “And Bill has no residual feelings for you?”