Murder in the Arts District

by Greg Herren

  For a while, we had made each other happy.

  And the picture was beautiful.

  Frowning, I picked up my phone again and scrolled through the list of recent calls. I was a little surprised to see there was nothing from Rory—no texts, no calls, nothing.

  Did you really expect he’d call to check on you? You need to call him and apologize for bailing on him the other night. It was last minute—even if it couldn’t be helped—and you owe him that much at least. He deserves better than that. Isn’t that what finally drove the final wedge between us? Because you refused to let yourself be happy?

  I sighed. Apologies had never been easy for me, so I tended to avoid them. But I was getting too old for that kind of behavior. I needed to be an adult for once. Rory deserved better than that from me.

  I got up and turned the heater down. The floor was still ice cold but the apartment was getting that hot, dry stuffy feel that I hated. I sat back down on the couch and started checking my emails on my phone. I still hadn’t read Abby’s report on Bill Marren—but that needed to wait until Tom was gone. A few moments later, Tom came walking into the living room. His jacket was over his arm, his tie draped around his neck. He sat down in the easy chair and set his coffee cup down on the table. He smiled at me. “Thanks for letting me shower and stay the night.”

  “It’s the least I could do.”

  “Seriously, though. I was pretty tired myself.” He yawned. “I might not have made it home last night. I appreciate it.”

  “Well, I probably owe you an apology as well as thanks,” I said hesitantly, taking another sip of my own coffee. “I shouldn’t have had wine on top of the pain meds. I’m sorry you had to deal with that, and thank you for making sure I got home safely.”

  His smile grew wider. “It was my pleasure, Chanse. I’m only sorry you were so messed up that we couldn’t”—he gestured with his head back in the direction of the bedroom—“have some fun, you know? I hope we can get together again sometime.”

  “That would be nice.” Even though you’re a suspect. What the fuck am I saying here? I was attracted to him, that was true.

  “I hope you really mean that.” Tom crossed his legs. “I really like you. I want to get to know you better.” He hesitated for just a moment. “I’m just going to put my cards out on the table, Chanse. I really think you’re attractive, and you seem to have a great personality. You’re maybe a bit guarded…I want to get to know you better because I want to get to know the person behind that shield you have up.” He looked up at the photo of Paul. “I didn’t know Paul well, but he was a great guy. If you two were involved, that means you had to be a great guy, too, because I don’t believe Paul would have been involved with an asshole. So I hope you’ll agree to have dinner with me again.” He pulled out his phone and fiddled with it a bit. “I think I’m going to have to be in town again in a couple of days. Would you be up for having dinner again?”

  “Sure.” Why not? What could it hurt?

  He’s a suspect, dumbass, that’s what it could hurt. No matter how fucking hot you think he is.

  “Great. I’ll pick you up this time, make it a proper date.” He frowned. “Do you need me to take you back to your car?”

  “I took another pill before you woke up. That’s why I was awake, the pain woke me up.” I shook my head. “I can have Abby swing by and take me to the car later this morning.”

  “If you’re sure—then I’ll be on my way.” He stood up, and we walked over to the door. I slipped the dead bolt key in and turned it. He paused for just a moment, then went up on his toes and brushed his lips against my cheek. I resisted the urge to take him in my arms and really kiss him good-bye.

  He smiled at me. “Thanks again. And the next time I sleep over, we’re not just going to sleep.” He winked, went down the steps and out the gate.

  I waited until he drove off before shutting the door and locking it.

  I got another cup of coffee and sat down at my computer. I checked my emails, but there was nothing that couldn’t wait for a few days. I started to open Abby’s report but felt my edges starting to spin out of focus again. No, probably best to read that when I’m not drugged.

  Instead, I pulled up a search engine, typed “Top Rope Productions” into it, and the first link that came up was the website I remembered looking up after Paul had confessed his past to me all those years ago. I clicked on the link and the website came up. I clicked the box stating I was twenty-one and hit enter. The page loaded, and there was a hot young muscleboy smiling at me, with thumbnail shots of six additional ones to the side. Max Coleman gets taught a lesson in Belly Busters 14! the headline screamed at me. There was a search engine in the upper right hand corner, and my fingers trembled as I typed the name I never thought I’d look for again: CODY DALLAS.

  I hit return and a list of DVDs came up. And sure enough, there was the one I’d seen, Mat Studs 8. I clicked on it and the first of five matches on the DVD came up.

  And there he was, Tom Ziebell, in a skimpy pair of tight white bikini-style trunks, smiling at the camera.

  The caption under his name read Jamie West.

  I sat down hard in my chair and took another drink of coffee.

  What a fucking bizarre coincidence.

  Cody Dallas, of course, was my former boyfriend, Paul Maxwell.

  I could feel my heart racing in my chest.

  I looked back up at the picture over the mantel.

  There had been a time when I didn’t think I’d be able to not think about him, not remember that horrible fight we’d had the last time we’d seen each other or the way he looked when the police and I had found him in that psycho’s house, battered and dying and unconscious, in Bay St. Louis, or the horrible days that followed, as machines kept him alive in the ICU at Touro Infirmary.

  Or the really terrible day when his parents finally decided to turn the machines off and allow his organs to be harvested. I’d sleepwalked through my life the next year, getting involved with one of Paul’s other wrestling buddies, Jude from Dallas, and that was where I’d evacuated when it had become apparent that Katrina was coming to New Orleans. When I’d come back to New Orleans, when I began coping with everything with medication and therapy, I’d slowly started to get over what I now referred to obliquely as the Time of Troubles. I’d met Rory when I was back on my feet again, starting to live and ready to get on with my life.

  But that didn’t work out so well, did it? You fucked that up with your inability to commit, to admit that you wanted to spend the rest of your life with him.

  Maybe—maybe I wasn’t as over the whole Paul situation as I had thought?

  But Tom made me feel the way I used to feel with Paul—the way I hadn’t felt with Rory. Rory and I had been able to go slow because even though he was cute and had a nice enough body, the attraction wasn’t there the way it had been with Paul.

  The way it now was with Tom, whether I wanted to admit it or not.

  I got some more coffee and did a search on the Top Rope site for Jamie West. He’d done quite a few matches for them. Mat Studs, Belly Busters, Ring Battles, Demolition—he’d appeared in almost every series they had. There even was a Starring tape, in which he appeared in every match. I clicked through the photo galleries. He always wore the same white square-cut trunks and wrestled barefoot, even in his ring matches. Jude had explained some of the terminology to me—it looked like Tom / Jamie had been what they called a “heel,” a wrestler who always won his matches and sometimes cheated in order to win. I could hear Jude’s voice in my head, explaining, “Some guys just look like villains, you know, and others look like good guys. Paul was a good guy, what they call a face, who’s good-looking and a good wrestler and always fights fair. He’ll lose sometimes to someone who cheats, but if he does they have to give him a rematch so good can triumph over evil.”

  Jude. I closed my eyes and remembered Jude. I hadn’t thought about him in years. He’d been so good to me after Paul died, after
the flood…and I had treated him pretty badly.

  Rory’s not the only person you owe an apology to, I thought.

  Calling to apologize would also give me a chance to ask him what he knew about Tom.

  It wouldn’t hurt to do some checking on him, would it?

  I got up and walked over to the hallway closet, sliding the doors open and reaching up onto the shelf. I pulled down the small box where I kept my mementoes of Paul, opened the lid, and pulled out the DVD case.

  Mat Studs 8.

  It wouldn’t hurt to have a look at Tom in action, would it? And he never had to know I’d watched it, did he?

  I walked back into the living room and loaded the disc into my DVD player.

  I sat back down on the coach, turned the television on, and clicked play on the DVD remote.

  Chapter Nine

  The dulcet tones of Lady Gaga and Beyoncé singing “Telephone” dragged me out of a deep, drugged sleep.

  I opened my eyes and reached for my phone. It was daylight, and I was sprawled out on the couch. My throat and eyes were dry. The apartment was hot, stuffy, and dry from the heater running. It was still going as I wiped at my eyes with my free hand. The caller ID said Blaine Tujague, and his smiling face stared at me from the phone’s screen. I yawned and slid my finger across the screen to accept the call, but it was too late—it had already gone to voicemail. It was also after eight in the morning. I sat up, yawning. The TV screen had gone back to blue with the brand logo of the DVD player floating around lazily from corner to corner. I was still feeling groggy, my mind fuzzy as I stood up. I walked into the bathroom and brushed the new gunk off my teeth, splashed some hot water into my face, and called Blaine back as I put a cup of the lukewarm leftover coffee from earlier into the microwave.

  “Did I wake you?” was how Blaine answered his phone. “Sleeping beauty?” His voice was teasing, the way it always was. Part of his charm was his happy-go-lucky nature. Blaine was only somber when he absolutely had to be.

  Most of the time it was adorable. When I’d just woken up and was still sleepy, not so much.

  “What’s up?” I managed to slur out as the microwave dinged.

  “Wanted to make sure you were alive, for one thing.” He went on cheerfully. “Since you never showed last night and you never answered our texts or returned our calls. You do, however, sound like shit this morning.”

  I took a big swallow of the coffee. Reheated always tasted odd, but it would have to do for now. “Yeah, sorry about that, I got kind of sidetracked,” I said, dumped the filter and refilling it with coffee grounds. I poured out the dregs of the old pot and filled it with water. “And then I took a Vicodin and drank wine on top of it.” I stifled another yawn as I dumped the pot full of water into the reservoir, replaced the pot on the burner, and hit the brew button. “I was pretty wasted—I had to be helped home.” And then I remembered my car was still parked on Washington Avenue, and swore under my breath. Hopefully Abby would be able to take me down to pick it up.

  Or you could walk, it wouldn’t kill you to get some exercise even if it is cold outside.

  “Dude, mixing painkillers and liquor is a really bad idea,” Blaine said quietly.

  “I know, I wasn’t thinking.” I shook my head, taking another drink from the reheated coffee and grimacing. It was undrinkable, so I poured it out. “I was having dinner with a client—”

  He started laughing. “Chanse, I don’t want to tell you how to run your business, but it’s not a good idea to get so wasted in front of a client that he has to help you home.”

  “Fuck you, Blaine,” I replied companionably. There was enough coffee brewed for a cup. I filled my cup with relief and walked back into the living room. “Any news on the Collier Lovejoy murder? Or do you just want to compare notes?”

  “Are you too sleepy to walk across the park?” Blaine teased. “Seriously, put some clothes on and come over. Venus went out and got some muffins and donuts. We can have a nice healthy breakfast and some coffee while we talk.”

  “Sounds good,” I replied. “Be there shortly.” I hung up the phone and scrolled through the list of recents. There was nothing from Rory—neither call nor text. Quit putting it off and call him—you owe him a real-time apology.

  I sighed and walked back down the hallway to the bedroom to get dressed.

  Twenty minutes later, I walked across Coliseum Square to Blaine and Todd’s place. Venus must have been watching for me from one of the front windows because she came out as I crossed the street to meet me at the gate, which she unlocked and opened. “What the fuck, man?” she asked with a stern shake of her head. “You don’t respond to texts messages, you don’t return calls, you don’t show up—just not cool, man, making us worry like that. Your meds again?”

  “Yeah.” I stepped inside and she swung the gate closed behind me. I followed her up the front steps and inside the front door. The house was overheated, and I shook my leather jacket off. “Didn’t Blaine tell you? One of my clients called and invited me to dinner and I completely spaced about meeting you guys. My bad, and then I drank wine on top of taking a Vicodin and it really fucked me up. My client had to help me home.” I shook my head and gave her a crooked smile. “Besides, the murder investigation is your headache, not mine.”

  “Yes, well, your case is mixed up with ours, whether you like it or not.” Blaine appeared in the doorway to the front sitting room. “And Myrna Lovejoy still hasn’t turned up. And that has us both a little concerned.”

  “She hasn’t?” I whistled as I sat down on the couch. There was a tray with a coffee service set out on the coffee table, along with several plates of muffins and donuts. I helped myself to coffee and a blueberry muffin with sugar crystals glittering on it. I looked back and forth from Blaine to Venus. “That’s odd. And suspicious. You think she might have plugged her husband and run? What about the kid? What’s his name? Cooper?”

  “Well, we’re not sure what it means. No sign of her at her house, she’s not answering her cell phone, and we’ve got an APB out on her car.” Blaine poured himself a cup and leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs. “Cooper is staying with friends in the meantime.”

  “Poor kid—he must be freaking out.” I finished the muffin and reached for another one. My lower back throbbed dully as I leaned forward, not bad enough to warrant a pill. It was a nice little reminder to be careful with how I moved, though.

  I noticed Venus’s eyes narrow as she watched me. “If something hasn’t happened to her, then she’s the worst mother in the world.” Venus pursed her lips as she watched me. “Cooper is pretty freaked out, as you can imagine.” She shook her head. “Seems like a good kid, too. I hate this kind of shit.”

  “When did he last hear from her?” I asked, narrowing my eyes back at her.

  “The last time he saw his parents was two mornings ago before he left for school. They all had breakfast together—he said they always had breakfast and dinner together. When he came home after school there wasn’t anyone there, so he packed his bag and went to his friend’s house, where he was staying. The plans had been made for a while—they were working on term papers due yesterday.” Blaine shrugged his shoulders. “It was convenient for the killer that Cooper wasn’t home to miss them that night.”

  “So you think it was premeditated?” I looked from him to Venus and back again. I refilled my coffee cup. It was going to have to be the last one—I was starting to feel a bit over-caffeinated. But at least the cobwebs in my brain had been swept away.

  They exchanged a look. “Well, nothing we can prove yet, but it had to be premeditated,” Venus said after a brief pause. “Why else would Collier be there after hours? Meredith Cole said she was the last to leave, when she closed up no one was there. And it was unusual for either one of the Lovejoys to be there late, anyway. She said if they were there when the gallery wasn’t open, it was usually early rather than late.”

  “But they had been there late before,” I observed, “a
nd if they were ever there after closing time, if she’d already left she can’t say they didn’t come by later, can she?”

  “True,” Blaine said. “And the safe hadn’t been opened—it doesn’t look like there was a burglary, so we can rule that out. But the most telling thing is that Meredith had to turn the alarm system off when she arrived yesterday morning. Whoever killed Collier knew how to turn the system on.”

  “Why would Myrna do that, though?” I replied. “It doesn’t make any sense. If Myrna killed him, why would she turn the alarm system on if she was going to run?”

  “That’s why I believe something’s happened to her.” Venus sat down and picked up her coffee cup. “Like you said, it doesn’t make any sense unless someone forced her to turn the system on when they left. Or she killed her husband and she’s the most awful mother since Medea. The kid is really torn up.”

  “Well, from everything I’ve heard, she’s a pretty awful person in general,” I said, trying to wrap my mind around it all. “So you don’t think she killed her husband?”

  “Well, it’s still too early to rule anything out,” Blaine replied. “And considering that the security camera recordings are missing for that night—”

  “Say what?” I looked back and forth between their faces. “The recordings are gone, too?” So, Myrna most likely had to have been there…unless Meredith was involved somehow.

  No. I dismissed that. There was no way she was a good enough actress to fake her shock and horror at finding Collier’s body.

  “The gallery had a top-of-the-line security system,” Venus took over the story from Blaine. “Several cameras, positioned so there were no blind spots, including one mounted on the corner of the building and trained on the front door. The DVR machine recording the broadcasts was actually located not in Myrna’s office, but in another office—the one where she kept the safe—which, by the way, we still haven’t been able to get into. Meredith didn’t have the combination. The discs covering the period from nine p.m. the night of the murder to the following morning are missing.” She shook her head. “Whoever took the discs knew what they were doing—knew which discs to take. So, we have no idea of who was there that night, or when they showed up, or how long they were there. Meredith Cole claims Myrna had left for the evening just before her, around seven. As we know, Cooper was spending the night at a friend’s—and fortunately, his friend’s family don’t have a problem with him staying longer while we try to locate Collier’s sister. Apparently she’s the only living relative the kid has, besides his parents.”