Cities of the Dead

by Linda Barnes

  “And,” Pierce added, “we bailed Dora out.”

  “She’s here?”

  The butler nodded. “Sleeping. An adjoining room.”

  Spraggue followed his aunt’s voice into the dining nook and found her presiding over the ruins of a banquet. A rich, spicy smell pervaded the room. The table, its length extended by a room service cart, had been swathed in a white linen cloth. Elaborate place settings—two wineglasses apiece and a flotilla of silverware—were scattered in disarray. Brown sauce congealed on the dinner plates. A half-full wine bottle kept two empty ones company in the center of the table.

  A gaunt older woman, her long face full of harsh lines that gave it character, sat at his aunt’s right. She was wearing beige slacks and a shapeless checked shirt. Her shoulders would have done credit to a fullback. On Mary’s left sat another woman, this one young and pallidly pretty, in a sprigged cotton dress of Victorian cut.

  Denise Michel, the older woman, offered a no-nonsense jerk of her head and a firm handshake. Paulette Thibideaux, the younger, blushed.

  “We have had the most marvelous meal,” Mary said, beaming. “Barbequed oysters, chicken Pontalba—”

  “Nothing so special.” Denise Michel ducked her head in what looked like honest embarrassment. Her cheeks were flushed. “Paulette did the oysters very well, I thought.” She had a rough croaking voice, with a slight French lilt, that Spraggue found attractive.

  The young woman blushed again. Spraggue wondered if she did anything else besides cook and blush. Speak, for instance.

  “You’re a cook here?” Spraggue asked the question mainly to test her vocal capabilities, although he was puzzled by her presence at the table.

  “Only a waitress really.” Her voice was both reedy and nasal. With that voice, a blush sufficed. “On the banquet staff. But Denise—Miss Michel—is teaching me to cook.” There was hero worship in her glance, that and a little more.

  “Denise was just telling me about Henri Fiorici,” Mary said, slurring her words. Her gentle smile included everyone in the room, inviting them all to join her as she raised her wineglass to her lips.

  Two and a half bottles of wine for three people. Mary’s tipsiness had to be an act. She was the world bantamweight drinking champion. Spraggue watched as his aunt, her hand steady as a rock, unobtrusively refilled first Denise Michel’s glass, then Paulette’s.

  Denise Michel outweighed Mary by fifty pounds. By virtue of sheer size, she should have been able to handle a bottle or two without risk of indiscretion, should have been able to drink tiny Mary under any table. But Denise was the one with the flushed cheeks. And fragile Paulette seemed to be having trouble sitting up straight.

  “To Henri.” Denise lifted her glass in a toast, and Paulette solemnly echoed her motion. “Again, he takes off at the first sign of trouble. Just like the old days …”

  “The old days?” Spraggue repeated.

  “He is gone. Already. He flew yesterday back to New York. Never any guts. I tell that to Dora, way back.”

  “Dora worked at Fiorici’s restaurant in New York, after she left New Orleans.” Mary’s quiet response to Spraggue’s lifted eyebrow came quickly enough to prove her sobriety.

  “Did the police say Fiorici could leave town?” Spraggue aimed the question at his aunt, but Denise intercepted it.

  “But certainly. Why not? They think they have the killer dead to rights. How was I to—?” She stopped abruptly. “Sit down,” she said to Spraggue. “Why do you stand? Paulette, fetch another wineglass off the tray. Or give him one of yours. You drink?”

  Spraggue’s liking for Denise Michel increased. “You bet,” he said. The white burgundy would rinse the bar champagne off his tongue.

  Denise poured. Her hand was huge and gnarled, the wrist as big as any man’s. “I have been gossiping with your aunt,” she said, and let an unexpected giggle escape.

  Not quite drunk, Spraggue thought, but with a definite buzz on, a pre-drunk glow.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “it was long ago. It no longer matters. Every week Henri Fiorici would beg Dora to marry him. Every Sunday when he got back from Mass, she told me. After confession, he had more courage.”

  “Is that why you invited him to the Great Chef’s banquet?” Spraggue asked. “Because he used to know Dora?”

  “Me? I did not invite him.” The idea upset Denise Michel. “He is a member. Yes, it’s true, I arranged that he should sit with us. But I was not responsible for the invitations—”

  “Except for Dora’s,” Spraggue said.

  “She, too, is a member.”

  “But she’d never have come if you hadn’t seconded the formal invitation with a personal plea,” Spraggue said. “Isn’t that true?”

  “Perhaps. Believe me, if I had for one moment thought, if I had known—” Denise opened, then shut her mouth, pressing her lips together in a frown.

  Not drunk enough. “Known what?” Spraggue asked.

  “That Fontenot would get himself killed, of course. What else? That the imbecile police would arrest the wrong person. Out of all the host who hated Fontenot, how could they be so stupid as to arrest Dora? The logic, you understand, it escapes me.”

  “Denise did not care for Mr. Fontenot,” Mary said quietly. “As a chef.”

  “A chef!” Denise made a squawking noise and flung her arms wide, barely missing a wine bottle. “A short-order cook! Or rather a long-order cook, always simmering pots full of slop. What did the man do? Peasant food. Soup and stew. Cheap messes with no delicacy, no refinement. The man knew nothing about food, nothing! He had no training, only a big mouth. And he fooled everyone.”

  “Not everyone,” Paulette said loyally.

  “I’m sorry.” Denise smiled at the younger woman. “I get carried away, you can see. Cooking is passionate business. And that Fontenot, he made everything crazy.” She turned her attention to Spraggue; he was a new audience for a well-rehearsed scene. “Here we have Creole food, which is in the grand French tradition, and Cajun food, which is also good, but which is truly peasant food. To open a gourmet Cajun restaurant—mon dieu!—it is the same thing as to open a fancy-dress McDonald’s with marble arches!”

  “Absolutely!” Paulette shook her head vigorously in agreement, like a spaniel wagging its tail.

  “Eh, bien!” Denise threw up her hands, ruffled her short graying hair. “Why do I go on like this, fighting with a dead man, eh? It is only that he infuriated me so. Do you know what this man did? Do you know? I write cookbooks. Good cookbooks, and this man was jealous. He went to my publisher, and he said that he would do a better cookbook than me.”

  Denise Michel leaned back and folded her arms, leaving her listeners to appreciate the utter absurdity of Fontenot’s claim.

  “Is cookbook writing also passionate business?” Spraggue inquired. “Like cooking?”

  “For me, it is money business. For others?” She shrugged her massive shoulders. “It is fortunate I have an ironclad contract with my publisher, yes?”

  Did she? “Miss Michel—” Spraggue began.

  “Denise,” she corrected.

  “Denise.” He repeated it as she had said it: Denize. “When did you realize that Joseph Fontenot was the man who had married Dora under another name?”

  The creases across her forehead deepened. “It is hard to say, monsieur. There’s such a separation in time, you see. One does not think about them together. Dora cooks in New Orleans in, oh, the early sixties. Fontenot, I never hear of until, eh, maybe ’seventy-seven, ’seventy-eight. And then I do not meet him. He is only a name, a man who cooks pretentious Cajun food. But then, we are thrown together this past month. I have met him before, but never for more than a passing moment. Both of us are on the committee to arrange the Great Chefs’ meeting. I am honored to have them come to my hotel. Always I have looked forward to being the hostess of such a dinner, with fine food and fine wine, and people who appreciate fine food and fine wine. And even that, this Fontenot spoils�
��”

  “Why tell the police,” Spraggue said slowly, “about Dora and the dead man. She was your friend—”

  Paulette got defensive. “What else could she do? There was the man, dead on the floor—”

  “Calm yourself, Paulette.” Denise spoke as if to a child. “I can speak for myself, cherie. Monsieur, listen to me. I tell the police only the truth. All my life I have read crime stories, mostly French ones. Romans policiers. And always someone does not tell the truth. And always, it would have been better if they had. I do not believe that my old friend killed this Fontenot. He was a man well hated, a man waiting to be killed.”

  “You can tell the truth,” Spraggue said, “and still hold something back.”

  There was a sharp knock on the door. Spraggue looked at his aunt, but she shrugged her ignorance.

  “We must go.” Denise Michel stood and Spraggue was awed by her height. The massive shoulders were in proportion to the rest of her. The mousey Paulette was dwarfed as she rose unsteadily to her feet.

  “One more thing,” Spraggue said quickly. “During the banquet, did you leave the room? Go to the kitchen to check on things?”

  “The kitchen here is well run by my staff. I have no need to race back and forth and attend to every detail myself.”

  Pierce loomed in the archway. “Detective Sergeant Rawlins to see you.”

  It was Paulette who whirled at Pierce’s voice, upsetting her wineglass. In a flurry of awkward actions, she blushed, stammered an apology, and gazed up at Denise like a spaniel about to be whipped. Her napkin staunched the stream of pale wine.

  Spraggue asked, “Which table did you wait on that night, Miss Thibideaux?”

  “Oh, please,” she said, “I’m not usually so clumsy. I didn’t—”

  “No. I’m not accusing you of spilling anything. I just wanted to know if you’d noticed Fontenot that night.”

  Denise said, “Shall I send you up another bottle of wine?”

  Mary nodded gravely. She looked entirely sober now. She could probably play back the entire dinner conversation with the accuracy of a tape recorder.

  The interruption gave Paulette a chance to regroup. She clung to the back of her chair. “I waited at the head table, monsieur,” she said, borrowing a little of Denise’s French lilt. “Where the judges sat. It was an honor for me. I don’t recall seeing Monsieur Fontenot.”

  Denise bowed her way out, Paulette mimicking her ungainly stride. Spraggue drained his glass and set it back in the forest of glassware on the table. His right bicep felt like it had been squeezed in a vise.

  “Interesting,” Spraggue said.

  “What?” Mary was surveying the wreckage of the tablecloth. Breadcrumbs, wine stains, spilled coffee. “Let’s go into the study.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “Me?” Mary drew herself up with dignity. “Mainly, I poured. A waste of good wine.”

  “Just who is little Paulette?”

  “Denise knows her mother. She’s taken a special interest in her. In training her to cook. That’s what she said, at any rate.”

  “Paulette brought up the food?”

  “Yes. Cook, waitress, and unexpected guest. Denise will probably send someone else to handle the clean-up. Paulette doesn’t handle her drinking well.”

  “But she seems devoted to Denise,” Spraggue added thoughtfully. “Denise invited her to join your little party.”

  “Yes. And I agreed, because she was a waitress at the banquet. What about it?”

  “I don’t know.” Spraggue shook his head to clear the fog of Scotch, champagne, and burgundy. “Something about the way Paulette looked at Denise, it bothered me. Sometimes she looked like a worshipper at an altar. And sometimes …”

  “Yes?”

  “Sometimes she looked like the sacrifice.”

  ELEVEN

  Sergeant Rawlins looked thinner than he had at the station. His navy suit camouflaged his stomach. His jawline showed the evidence of a hasty shave. He’d even made an effort to slick back the cloud of white hair. When Mary offered her hand, he leaned over and brushed it with his lips.

  Spraggue wondered if he ought to get lost.

  Mary said, “You look like a man bearing good news.”

  “You didn’t tell me she was a mindreader.” Rawlins flashed a sidelong grin at Spraggue.

  “Only when the moon’s full,” he replied.

  Mary shrugged. “The rest of the time, I’m reduced to reading tea leaves. Have you got something?”

  “Have I got somethin’?” Rawlins patted the pockets of his suit until one of them yielded a folded sheet of paper. “Set yourselves down and take a peek at this. I only made the one copy, so’s you’ll have to share.”

  MURDER IN MORGAN CITY screamed the headline.

  “Huh?” Spraggue unfolded the paper. It was legal-size, cheap and white, fresh from a Xerox machine. Either the original clipping had been in bad shape or the copier needed service. “Where’s Morgan City?”

  “Read first, questions later.” Rawl sat in the only chair designed for his weight, folded his hands over his paunch, and turned into a smiling Buddha. Mary and Spraggue huddled on the couch, heads bent close together.

  In a mid-morning attack on an armored car carrying the payrolls of several major oil drilling companies, one guard was killed, one severely wounded, and a third man, allegedly one of the robbers, was shot and later apprehended by the Morgan City Police. Estimates of the loss range from $150,000 to well over $1,000,000.

  “What’s this got to do with—” Mary began.

  “Read,” Rawlins replied sternly.

  Lieutenant Gil Dumais of the Morgan City Police stated that three masked assailants were involved in the well-planned robbery, two armed with handguns, one with an automatic weapon. Two of the suspects escaped and are the object of an intensive police search.

  The wounded were taken to Sisters of Mercy hospital, where the name of the injured guard was not immediately available. The dead guard’s name is being withheld pending notification of next of kin. Both were employees of Southeast Security, Inc. The name of the wounded suspect, now under guard at Sisters of Mercy, is given as James French, age and address unknown.

  There was a date handscrawled on the corner. Spraggue thought it might be September, ’66. He glanced questioningly up at Rawlins.

  “Wait till your aunt’s done readin’.”

  Mary sighed. “If this is supposed to make lightbulbs appear over my head, I’m afraid I may disappoint you.”

  Rawlins leaned forward and rubbed his palms together in anticipation. “Lookit, your nephew said somethin’ to me this afternoon, about checkin’ out the dead man, ’cause he married your cook usin’ an alias. I wouldn’t have even tried fingerprints, except we got this fancy computer scanner system on loan from the Feds. Japanese make it. NEC. Costs enough to pay five hundred extra beat officers or somethin’, so I’m bettin’ we never buy one, but I sure am gonna stick in a good word for that machine after this. Checks six hundred and fifty file prints per second! Picked those prints out so fast my head’s still spinnin’. Woulda taken a good print man thirty years. If he got lucky.”

  “Sergeant Rawlins—” Mary began.

  “Hey,” Rawlins said reproachfully, “I thought we agreed on ‘Rawl.’”

  “Rawl, I’m not understanding this. What’s an old robbery got to do with fingerprints?”

  Rawlins turned to Spraggue. “You talk to Jeannine Fontenot this morning? She say her old man spent some years away from her?”

  Had Rawlins had him followed? Was there a fine for impersonating a trashy journalist? “She said he spent time in France, learning to cook.”

  “France, huh?” Rawlins leaned back, a grin splitting his plump face. “Angola’s pretty damn far from France.”

  “Angola?” Mary said. “As in African Angola?”

  “Angola as in Louisiana,” Rawlins announced. “Site of Louisiana State Prison.”

  Spraggue broke t
he silence with a low whistle.

  “What I mean is,” the sergeant continued, pleased with the reaction, “this guy who got arrested for robbin’ the payroll in Morgan City, back in ’sixty-six, under the name of James French, keeps the same damn prints on the ends of his fingers as Joe Fontenot. We’re not lookin’ at a dead man who changed his name once for the purpose of connin’ some poor lady into matrimony. We’re starin’ at a six-year jail term and multiple aliases.”

  “James French,” Spraggue repeated. “And when he married Dora, he was Jacques Forte.” He ticked off the names on his fingers. “When he married Jeannine, he was Joe Fontenot. Must have had monogrammed underwear.”

  “Rawl,” Mary said, “this is wonderful!”

  The detective’s fat cheeks reddened.

  “Is there more?” Spraggue asked.

  “Well.” Rawlins stretched out the syllable, while he patted down his pockets again, then removed a tiny notebook. “I got a few things jotted down. Got a guy on the way over to Morgan City right now.” Rawlins thumbed through the pages, held the notebook open at arms length, moved it slowly closer.

  “Rawl,” Mary murmured.

  “Okay, okay,” he muttered, reaching into his breast pocket, yanking out a leather case. “I’m not tryin’ to hold back.” Reluctantly, he perched a pair of reading glasses on the bridge of his nose. They were thin rectangular slits, framed in black. “I want to say it all at once, and I don’t know right where to start. I might just head up to Angola to talk to the warden tomorrow—”

  Pierce had an entire vocabulary of door knocks. This one was subdued, perfunctory—an announcement of interruption rather than a request to enter. He presented a bottle on a silver tray.