Murder in the Arts District

by Greg Herren

“She wanted to know about paintings that Ms. Anschler might have bequested to the museum, and I gave her the list. There weren’t any paintings, of course…well, there were three, but they were so badly damaged they were irreparable. Ah, yes, here it is.” She whistled softly. “There were three paintings, not framed, but rolled up and bound together with twine. They’d been damaged by water, damp, mold…at the time we tried to have the paintings repaired and restored, but the mold and rot had gotten into the canvas…according to my notes, Ms. Anschler had been living in quite an advanced state of poverty. Such a shame, too—the paintings were works of her father’s and would have really been worth a fortune, and would have been an excellent addition to our collection here at NOMA.”

  “Was that common knowledge? About the paintings, I mean?”

  “I can’t imagine that it was.” She hummed a bit, and I could hear papers rustling. “At the time of the bequest, when she died, no one here at NOMA really knew who she actually was. It wasn’t until they found some of her father’s sketches amongst her things that the connection was made. The state of the paintings—according to the notes here in the file, the director didn’t want to make a public announcement unless the paintings could be saved—which of course would have been big news—but since they weren’t salvageable…” Her voice trailed off. “I think they figured it wasn’t a story anyone would have any interest in.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “No, thank you.” I disconnected the call.

  My mind was racing as I drove past the airport exit and out toward the lake marsh bridge. Bill had to have known the paintings had been ruined. He was a friend of the family. So why would he have put up a couple of hundred thousand dollars for paintings he knew didn’t exist? Granted, he had more money than God, but one thing I’d noticed about rich people—they could be very tight-fisted, and they watched their money pretty damned closely.

  And what had been Myrna’s game? She had to have been in on the whole thing with Rand / Tom from the very beginning. What was in it for her? The money?

  I called Jephtha back. He answered on the first ring. “I still haven’t heard from her, Chanse.” His voice had gone up another register. Pretty soon he’d be able to shatter crystal.

  “I’m on my way. I’m on the lake bridge now.” I tried to keep my voice calm, smooth, one note, to help him level off and not lose his mind completely. “Do you have the financials on the Lovejoys handy?”

  “Why do you ask me for reports if you’re not going to read them?” He sighed. “The Lovejoys were way over their heads, as you’d know if you’d read the damned reports. They were pretty extended. Credit cards were all maxed out. The money they got for the sale of the gallery and the apartment in New York didn’t cover the house here or the gallery space, so they’d opened another line of credit. Bill Marren cosigned that line of credit, by the way—they would have never gotten it on their own, not as overextended as they were. I don’t know how they were paying their bills.”

  “Bill Marren?” That didn’t make sense to me. Why would Bill Marren—

  Rand.

  Rand had somehow managed to get Bill to sign that application, or had forged his name to it. Bill probably had no idea…

  And now he was dead.

  What were the odds that his will left everything to the man he thought was Tom Ziebell?

  “Yeah, I thought that was weird,” Jephtha was saying as I flew past the exit to I-59 north and Hammond. “I mean, he cosigned the loan for their house, too.”

  “Thanks. If you hear from her, call me.” I disconnected the call.

  So, “Bill” had cosigned the mortgage for the Lovejoy house, and a line of credit for them that was keeping them afloat. He’d also sunk a couple of hundred thousand dollars for paintings he should have known no longer existed.

  I tried to remember everything about the day I’d been out there, the day he’d hired me. My back had been hurting, and I’d not been paying as close attention as I should have because of that.

  You need to get the fucking cortisone shot.

  Collier and Myrna were broke and desperate. They’d had to leave New York under a cloud of disgrace, and they’d come to New Orleans to start over. Bill Marren, a friend of her father’s and a longtime client of her gallery in New York, had recently moved to the area—in fact, visiting him at Belle Riviere was what made them decide on New Orleans in the first place. It wouldn’t, I suppose, be much of a stretch given their longtime relationship to assume Bill would cosign things for Myrna.

  But why would Myrna try to swindle Bill?

  Why wouldn’t Myrna try to swindle Bill?

  “Call Redemption Parish Sheriff’s Department,” I instructed the Bluetooth as I drove down from the bridge onto dry land. I was getting close to the exit. Someone in the sheriff’s office answered and I asked for Sheriff Parlange, giving my name and being put on hold, which forced me to listen to “Friends in Low Places” by Garth Brooks for far longer than was absolutely necessary.

  “This is Sheriff Parlange.”

  “Sheriff, this is Chanse MacLeod again—”

  “No one has seen your partner,” he interrupted me. “I can’t really justify putting out an alert on her just yet.”

  “I know, and I appreciate what you’re doing already—”

  He laughed. “Well, just between you and me, she’s been flitting around here the last couple of days asking all kinds of questions and getting people all stirred up. One of my deputies kind of has a thing for her now. She’s a hell of an investigator, all right.”

  “What I want to talk to you about now is the robbery at Belle Riviere—the robbery and the murder,” I said. “I have some—”

  “Now, Mr. MacLeod, I don’t want any trouble with you but I have to tell you even before old Mr. Marren was murdered we had some questions about things out there,” he replied. “I know Mr. Marren had some questions about our investigation, but I am telling you, I wasn’t trying to do anything against the law. I know I have a reputation—my enemies like to spread stories about me. That young fellow of Mr. Marren’s thought I was trying to mess up their lawsuit, but this had nothing to do with that.” His voice was grim. “I tried to settle that lawsuit any number of times but the lawyers won’t have it. Well, that’s fine, my boys messed up and they’ll have to pay for it. My preference would be not to go to court but it’s not up to me. But I don’t appreciate that Ziebell boy telling people that I have a vendetta against him because of that lawsuit and we didn’t investigate that robbery proper. We did everything by the book, Mr. MacLeod, and I am telling you, no one broke into that place that night. No one. And I told Mr. Marren that himself.”

  “What?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “I told Mr. Marren when I made my report to him—what day was that? Monday.”

  The day before they hired me.

  “I don’t understand. If Bill believed your report—”

  “He believed me, all right. He thanked me for my time, even offered to make a donation to my next campaign fund, so you can see why I was so surprised to hear he’d hired a private eye. I went out there on Wednesday night to talk to him, and he told me I didn’t have anything to worry about.”

  “And he was killed later that night.” The exit for Avignon was coming up on my right, so I turned on my signal and started slowing down.

  “Yes, that’s right. He was.” His voice was grim. “I understand that you’re in a position to give Tom Ziebell an alibi?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” I replied as I took the off-ramp and turned the signal on for the left turn I was going to make at the bottom of the ramp. “He was in New Orleans that night—we had dinner—but from about nine o’clock until about four in the morning I can’t vouch for him.” I quickly explained my reaction to the wine, the pain pills, and my suspicions about being drugged. “He was there when I woke up at four in the morning, but to be honest, I
don’t remember even going home from the restaurant.”

  He whistled. “Interesting.”

  I made the left turn and accelerated. I was about a mile from the T where you turned right for Avignon or left for Belle Riviere. “And his name isn’t Tom Ziebell. It’s Rand Barragry.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. His real name is Rand Barragry, and he’s wanted for petty theft and fraud in Rhode Island. About nine or ten years ago, I believe he murdered Tom Ziebell and took over his identity. You can check with the Providence police—they found a body with Reed Barragry’s ID on it, with the face messed up and the arms missing. They didn’t bother to verify the ID. But it wasn’t Barragry, the body was Tom Ziebell.” I explained why the Ziebells hadn’t been missing their son.

  “I’ll be damned.”

  I slowed for the stop sign. There were no cars coming from either direction. “Like I said, Sheriff, I’m worried about my partner.” I made up my mind and turned left and headed for Belle Riviere. “I’m about a mile or so from the plantation house.”

  “You need to stay away from Belle Riviere—I’ll get a car out there.”

  “I can’t wait, Sheriff.” I disconnected the call and headed down the river road. The pain in my back was getting worse, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was getting there and making sure Abby was okay.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The gate at Belle Riviere was open.

  I turned into the driveway and put the car in park.

  Unsure what to make of the gate not being shut, I glanced up at the left side and saw the security camera was there, pointed at the driveway.

  What the hell, I decided, might as well go on.

  I took a deep breath, resisting the urge to slam the gas pedal all the way down to the floor, and drove slowly through the gate. I was worried, but losing my head wasn’t going to solve anything. It certainly wouldn’t help Abby—if Abby actually was here and in need of help. She can take care of herself, I reminded myself as I drove down the long strip of road under the canopy of branches, probably better than you can take care of your own self, remember? Her brain hasn’t been fogged by pain pills for the last few months. She doesn’t have a martyr complex. She knows how to handle men, much better than you can, and she’s bright and she’s alert and she can get herself out of a tight situation. She doesn’t need to be rescued.

  But there was always a first time, wasn’t there?

  I also had to remind myself that I was here on nothing more than a hunch.

  As I came out of the trees I could see the parking area in front of the house was empty other than the Mercedes and the Aston Martin. All the shutters were closed on both floors. I stopped, shifted the car into neutral, and thought for a moment.

  The house is a crime scene. It wouldn’t look right for Tom / Rand / whatever his name is to stay here afterward, in the same house where his mentor was murdered. But both cars are here. I don’t see Abby’s, though—but that doesn’t mean she isn’t here and the car isn’t parked somewhere else.

  Abby’s car was hard to miss. It was incredibly conspicuous. It had been Jephtha’s grandmother’s car originally, part of his inheritance that included the house. It was an old 1988 Oldsmobile Delta Royale 88 that ran like a dream and looked like it should be run through a compactor. Jephtha’s grandmother had babied it from the day she bought it, with the end result that it had lasted all these years and still ran. Awful as it looked, it was one of the most comfortable cars I’d ever ridden in. The paint job looked leprous—the blue paint Oldsmobile had used for that year had been defective, bubbling and blistering and peeling away. Jephtha’s grandmother had declined to take advantage of the recall to get it repainted, and the more years that passed, the worse the paint looked. The windshield was cracked, and the driver’s side mirror was duct-taped to the door to keep it on. The driver’s side window crank was also broken, so a screwdriver had been inserted on the inside between the door and the window glass to keep it from sliding down. It had well over two hundred thousand miles on it, and when it was parked on the side of the road it looked like it had been abandoned. Jephtha had bought a new car almost four years ago for her, but she preferred the Oldsmobile. She’d been saying she was going to get a new one for several years now, but somehow never got around to it. If she ever needed to be inconspicuous, she borrowed Jephtha’s navy blue Malibu—he never drove it anyway.

  Relieved that I’d been wrong, I pulled into the parking lot and whipped the Jeep around in a wide circle, ready to head back into Avignon. I glanced in my rearview and noticed something that looked odd. I put my car into park and turned around to look out the back. The back end of a car was barely visible behind one of the outbuildings behind the main house. I realized the building was the gallery, and it looked like the rear end of the Oldsmobile. I bit my lip and kept driving in a circle until I was facing the right direction and followed the drive around the side of the house and headed for the back building.

  As soon as I’d come around the back of the main house I could see Abby’s car, sitting there in plain view. I pulled over and turned off my engine, retrieved my gun, and moved the safety off. I got out, closing the door gently so it didn’t make any noise, and started creeping across the back lawn.

  You’re being ridiculous. As far as you know nothing’s going on and Abby is fine. But then what is her car doing back here? She doesn’t know that Tom’s not who he claims to be, and Tom doesn’t know that I know. For all he knows, she’s just my partner and she’s here to help him out. But why is she out here?

  The wind was howling and the gun was cold in my hand. In my rush to get out here, I’d forgotten to grab a pair of gloves. I cursed my stupidity as my nose started to run from the cold. The frozen, dead grass crunched under my feet.

  As I got closer to the gallery, I could see through the side windows. The shutters were open, of course, and the lights were on inside. I could hear snatches of music over the whistling of the wind, but not enough to recognize what it was. I could see Tom and Abby standing in front of a painting. She was wearing a red wig, a pleated plaid skirt, knee socks, and a sweater. Glasses perched on the end of her nose, and she was scribbling notes on a notepad as he talked. Tom, wearing only a pair of tight jeans and an extremely tight T-shirt, was pointing at the picture as he talked, pointing things out to her, no doubt.

  I sighed in relief and slid the safety back on before depositing the gun back in my coat pocket. She was okay—but I still had to get her out of here.

  And where was the car the sheriff had said he was sending?

  I climbed the steps to the front porch of the gallery and knocked on the door before turning the knob handle and walking inside.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” I said quickly.

  “Chanse!” Tom’s face lit up with a smile. He looked like he hadn’t slept much, the bags under his eyes looking deeper, and his eyes appeared to be red and sunken. He crossed the room quickly and threw his arms around me, catching me off guard as he gave me an enormous hug. “It’s so nice to see you,” he whispered in my ear, tightening his grip on me.

  Having no choice, I hugged him back, trying to signal Abby over his shoulder to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.

  She just made a face back at me, not understanding what I was trying to say to her.

  “I still can’t believe it,” Tom said brokenly as he let go and stepped back. His eyes actually welled up with tears. “I can’t believe someone killed Bill.”

  “If you need me to come back another time, Mr. Ziebell, I’d be happy to,” Abby said quickly, closing her notepad and slipping it into her enormous purse.

  “Oh, no—no, that’s fine. I’m sorry.” He wiped at his eyes with the tail of his shirt, revealing his flat stomach and the fine brown hairs leading down to his jeans, the muscles of his arms flexing as he did. “Chanse, this is Tiffany Glade from Crescent City magazine. She’s doing a story on Bill’s”—his voice broke again—“art coll
ection. She’d called, of course, before the murder”—he paused, taking a few quick breaths and biting his bottom lip before continuing—“and I thought it would be a nice distraction, take my mind off…you know…” His voice trailed off and he turned away from both of us.

  He was quite a good actor. The performance would have been convincing had I not known it was a performance. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Glade,” I said, trying to keep my voice normal while gesturing with my head for her to get the hell out of there. “I’m Chanse MacLeod, a private investigator.”

  She shook her head slightly, giving me a dirty look that clearly meant she wasn’t going anywhere and what was more, she wasn’t thrilled I wanted her to get out. “A private investigator!” she said, raising her voice. “I’ve always wanted to meet a private eye. Are you the private eye they hired about the stolen paintings?”

  “Yes.” I was afraid to make another gesture for fear he would turn around and see me.

  “And how’s that going? Have you had any luck tracking down the thieves? Do you think the murderer and the thieves are connected somehow?” She gave me a weird look I couldn’t interpret. She pulled her phone out of her bag and gestured her head at it as she started typing on it. I pulled out my phone and turned it to vibrate.

  What r u doin here? popped up on my phone screen.

  Tom turned and faced us both again, wiping at his eyes. “Is there news? Is that why you’ve come?”

  I opened my mouth to answer just as we all heard the sound of a siren in the distance. Tom frowned. “What the hell are they coming back here for?” He looked at me. “You can imagine how nasty they were to me, Chanse. Have they called you? Tiffany, Chanse is my alibi.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe I even need an alibi. I can’t believe anyone would think I would kill Bill, after everything he’s done for me. I owe him everything.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you do,” Abby replied, slipping her phone back into her purse. “Do you want me to go?”

  “No, if they’re coming here to harass me some more, it might be nice to have a reporter here,” he said grimly.