by Julie Smith
The next Skip Langdon mystery is HOUSE OF BLUES; find out more at www.booksbnimble.com or www.juliesmithbooks.com
“A genuinely moving mystery…It’s always a pleasure to spend time with Skip, a no-nonsense, level-headed heroine in a wild and reckless city.”
—THE BALTIMORE SUN
HOUSE OF BLUES
by Julie Smith
A sneak preview of the next Skip Langdon mystery
“MRS. HEBERT? I’M Skip Langdon.”
Skip had arrived with her platoon, all in the same car, because there weren’t nearly enough unmarked cars to go around. They must have looked terrifying, a six-foot woman and three men in suits, advancing like a phalanx.
The woman on the porch, looked blank. “Yes?” she said, as if unable to comprehend why strangers were invading her house. If she were Sugar Hebert, she’d just arrived home to find her husband shot dead in the dining room.
“Detective Skip Langdon. I’m from Homicide.”
“Oh, I see.”
Skip was talking because she was the one who’d caught the case, meaning she’d been next on the list when the call came. She gestured for the others to go in—she’d interview the witness, they could divide up the other chores.
Rather than sad, the woman seemed bewildered and scared out of her mind, though she’d had a little time to calm down. The district officer had arrived first and had called Homicide. Hebert said, “They’re gone. All of them. I only left for twenty minutes.”
“Shall we talk in the car?” Hebert looked as if she could stand to sit down.
“Yes. Please. They said I couldn’t stay in the house.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well, not that I’d want to.” They were side by side now, and something passed over Hebert’s face that could have been a memory—of her dead husband, perhaps.
Another car arrived—Paul Gottschalk from the crime lab and Sylvia Cappello, Skip’s sergeant. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“We were having dinner—my husband and my daughter Reed, along with her husband Dennis and Sally, their little girl. Somebody spilled something on Sally, and I went to get her clean overalls. When I came back, it was like it is now. Blood everywhere, and Arthur—”
“The other three were gone?”
“Gone! Disappeared into thin air.”
Slowly, Skip drew the story out of Sugar Hebert—how the family had dinner every Monday, how they had recently celebrated Arthur’s birthday and he had announced his retirement, but tonight had reneged; how they had fought, the other three, though Sugar didn’t participate. How she had been gone only twenty minutes—thirty at the most—and had come home to find her world in shards.
“Did you touch anything?”
“No. Not even Arthur. I couldn’t stand to look at him; it was too…that wasn’t my husband down there. I just sort of crabwalked to the nearest phone and called the police.”
“And where was that phone?”
“In the hall.”
In the house. So she had touched something. “Did you call anyone else?”
“My son, Grady. But he wasn’t home.”
“Would you like to call him again?”
“I left a message.” She looked around, as if she expected Grady to be in the car.
The obvious explanation, it seemed to Skip, was that the argument had escalated, someone had pulled a gun—probably Dennis—and shot Arthur. Then Reed and Dennis had fled with their daughter.
“Excuse me a minute,” she said, and radioed for a district car to check Reed and Dennis’s house.
She turned back to Sugar. “Do you know anywhere else they might go?”
“Not really.” She looked uncomfortable.
“Are you sure?”
“Well, Dennis’s parents live here. But they’d never go there. Why would they?”
“What’s their address?” When she had it, she radioed for a check there as well.
“Do you know,” she said when she was done, “if Dennis carried a gun?”
“I know he didn’t. He and Reed are dead against guns.”
“So Reed didn’t either.”
“No.”
“What about your husband? Did he keep a gun around the house? In case of intruders?”
Skip heard running footsteps and looked up to see a young man approaching, his face white, hair disheveled. “Mother? Mother, what’s going on?”
“Oh, Grady.” Hebert got out, extended her arms, and fell against her son, letting out what she’d been holding in. She sobbed against him for a while and then she said, “Oh, Grady, I was only gone twenty minutes.”
“What happened?”
Briefly, Hebert told him. Getting out so she could hear the woman, Skip listened carefully, but it was the same story she’d been told before.
Sugar Hebert was as ordinary a woman as Skip had ever seen, perhaps a trifle overweight, but she was trying, with careful make-up and hair, neat pink slacks, sleeveless sweater. She looked like nothing so much as a career mom and grandma.
Skip found Grady quite a contrast. He was a weedy young man, tall and too thin, as if he smoked a great deal and ate little. He had on a white shirt so old it was gray, and a pair of jeans that had been worn a few times since their last washing. He wore glasses and his hair was greasy.
Skip introduced herself, staring at his face, assessing him. Like his mother, he seemed bewildered, still putting pieces together.
“What happened here?” he asked. “Where are Reed and Dennis?”
“Maybe you have some ideas.”
“Me? Why would I?”
“What did your mother’s message say?” Skip wasn’t sure why she asked the question; it was something about the breathless, pale way he’d arrived.
“It said, ‘Your father’s been murdered. Come as soon as you can.’ ”
“Did it really?” She found it hard to believe Mrs. Pretty-in-Pink had been so cold.
“Well, it got my attention.” Grady smiled a little nervously, aware he was apologizing for his mother.
“Perhaps you can help us.”
But he glanced at Sugar, who was now weeping quietly. “I think I need to call someone to help with Mother.”
“I’m afraid you can’t use the phone till the investigation’s finished. We don’t seal homicide scenes, but we won’t be out for a long time.”
“Oh, God, she’s going to need a place to stay.” He turned to Sugar. “Mother, did you call Nina?”
Hebert shook her head.
“I’m going to get her to come over.” He left in as much of a flurry as he’d arrived in.
Glad to get out, probably, Skip thought. Something about him didn’t strike her as intensely filial.
She and Sugar got back in the car. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Kind of numb. I wish Reed were here.”
“Tell me about her.”
Hebert looked dumbstruck. “Tell you what?”
“What she’s like. Where she’d go if she needed a safe haven.”
“A safe haven?” Sugar pondered, as if unsure what the words meant. “That just isn’t Reed. People would come to her to be safe.”
“Does she have friends?”
“Nina. The woman my son’s calling. She works for us at the restaurant—she’s kind of Reed’s assistant.”
“You mean her secretary?”
“Oh, no. I mean her right-hand woman. She was Reed’s maid of honor.”
“Does Reed have other friends?”
Sugar thought. “Not really. She’s pretty busy with Sally and Dennis and the restaurant and everything.”
“How about Dennis?”
“Oh. Well. His business partner. They run a nursery— Dennis likes plants. Like his mother-in-law.”
“Ah, you like plants.”
“Flowers. I paint them.”
“Tell me something, Mrs. Hebert. If you were someone outside the family, how would you describe Dennis and Reed?”
&nb
sp; “A lovely, hard-working young couple. Absolutely devoted to their little girl. Arthur would never give Reed credit—” Her eyes flashed and her voice started to rise, but she stopped. “I guess that’s family business.”
Skip let it go for now. She could afford to be patient; before she was done, every secret the Heberts had, every scrap of “family business,” was going to be picked over and examined.
“Could you do me a favor? Could you step outside with me and point out your car? And Arthur’s and your daughter’s?”
“There’s mine over there. And Arthur’s in the driveway.”
“I’d like you to show me Reed’s.”
Sugar opened the car door. “I’ll try.”
It was dark now. But when she noticed, apparently for the first time, that most of the neighbors were outside, she retreated back to the car. “I don’t think I’m up to it. Is that all right?”
“Sure.” Skip could get Grady to do it. “Do you have a picture of Dennis and Reed?”
“Inside—shall I go get it for you?”
“I can get it.”
“It’s on the little table in the living room.”
“How about one of Sally?”
“In my purse—on the table in the foyer.”
Skip found the purse, checked it for weapons, and asked Paul Gottschalk to photograph and dust it. While he did that she went in to get a good look at the dining room, to fix the crime scene in her mind, and then found the picture of Dennis and Reed.
It was a wedding picture that showed only faces—Reed’s radiant, surrounded by tulle, Dennis’s a little daunting. Reed was a classic Southern beauty, natural-looking with straight brown hair and straight white teeth—teeth whose straightness had not come cheap, Skip imagined, but the orthodonture was worth it.
Dennis was another matter. His features were very distinct, his lips generous, his eyes intense. He had a little baby fat like the young Brando that softened him, made him slightly vulnerable. But there was something brooding about him.
Heathcliff, Skip thought, but a man who liked begonias—or whatever he had at his nursery—didn’t fit the stereotype.
For now, she left the photo, giving Paul a little time to get it dusted, and retrieved the purse.
She went back to Sugar. “May I borrow the picture?”
“Of course.” But she hesitated.
“For the investigation,” Skip said, and Sugar nodded. “May I see the one of Sally? And could you check your purse to see if anything’s been stolen? I looked, but I didn’t see a gun. Do you carry one?”
Sugar gave her a quizzical look. “No. Arthur says…but never mind. I don’t.” Quickly, She checked her credit cards, checkbook, and money. “Everything’s here,” she said and drew from her wallet an Easter snapshot of a pretty towhead in a pink dress. The girl was holding a basket of eggs.
“Can you tell me what they were all wearing? And their heights, weight, eye color—all that?”
To Skip’s surprise, Sugar’s lip started to tremble. She tried to control her face, but lost the battle. An anguished rasp escaped her, not quite a sob. “Sally!” she managed to gasp. “She must still be wearing the dirty overalls.”
Skip said nothing for a few minutes, but the information trickled out: Dennis was dark, Reed was light, he wore jeans, she wore a summer dress with sandals, and Sally wore overalls.
Skip wondered what else there was to get. She repeated Sugar’s earlier statement “Reed and Dennis really hate guns.”
“Hate them. Feel strongly. Arthur tried to give Reed a little gun to carry around—you know how dangerous it is in the Garden District—but neither of them would hear of it. They said they didn’t want to live like that.” She turned away for a moment. Gazing back at Skip, she said, “Of course, Arthur had a lot of opinions.”
Once more, Skip heard a clatter. It was Grady, back with a handsome young woman in tow, a black woman, though probably she’d describe herself as Creole. She was barely beige in color, and she wore her straight hair in a low-riding ponytail.
“This is Nina Phillips. She’s our director of sales; at Hebert’s.”
Before Skip could shake hands, Sugar had repeated her performance with Grady—fallen upon Nina Phillips’s neck, wailing.
“That’s right,” said Nina. “Grady’s told me everything. You just go on and cry.”
It was a good time to talk to Grady. While Sugar wasn’t listening, she asked him the same question she’d asked his mother. “Tell me a little about Reed and Dennis.”
He pondered a moment Finally, he said, “The couple of the nineties. She’s the brains of the operation. Also the brawn.”
Skip smiled. She didn’t think he was nearly done. “How so?”
“God forbid anyone should call me a feminist—they shoot guys for that in some parts of town—but look, he’s got it easy, she’s got it hard. She brings home the bacon and then she cooks it; after changing into some diaphanous frock and also changing the baby, of course. I guess it’s like that apochryphal old woman said: ‘I makes the livin’ and he makes the livin’ worthwhile.’”
“I gather you don’t think much of your brother-in-law.”
“Oh, completely wrong. Fine fellow. Charming fellow. Anyone my dad hated can’t be all bad.”
Skip’s heart speeded up.
“But don’t get too excited.” He shrugged. “There weren’t all that many people he liked.”
“Your dad had enemies?”
Grady looked startled. “The kind who’d kill him, you mean?”
Skip nodded.
“Well, I never thought of it that way. He was irascible. You don’t kill people for that, do you?”
“You tell me.”
“Tell you what? Tell you I did it? What is this?”
Skip said nothing.
“Look, some thug broke in here and killed him. What could be more obvious?”
“In that case, what happened to Reed and Sally and Dennis?”
Grady’s face, so facile, so obviously trying to betray no emotion, went slightly pale again. “I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.”
Neither do I, she thought. The Heberts were a prominent family. She didn’t know how much money they had, but it might seem reasonable to someone that they’d pay a good-sized ransom for a kidnapped member. Perhaps Arthur’s murder was the result of a kidnap gone wrong. But then, why take the remaining three when one would do?
Because they knew the kidnapper’s face.
Which didn’t bode well for their future.
Sugar was beginning to come around again, talking quietly to Nina. Skip addressed the younger woman: “Do you know if Reed or Dennis had a gun?”
Sugar said, “I told you—” but Nina interrupted, smiling, shaking her head. “They wouldn’t be caught dead with a gun. Neither one of them. Dennis—um—lost a relative once….” she let her voice trail off, apparently thinking of something too regrettable to mention.
“I already told you that,” Sugar said; it sounded a lot like a whine.
“How about Arthur?”
“Arthur?”
Skip nodded.
“Arthur had a gun.”
“Where did he keep it?”
“In a safe in his office. Here, I mean. In the room he called his office.”
“Would you mind telling Mr. Gottschalk? Our crime lab man.”
“Of course not.”
She smiled sweetly at Sugar. “Will you be all right alone?”
Sugar looked a little disoriented, as if things were moving too fast for her. “I guess so. You mean tell him now?” She put a hand on her chest. Skip couldn’t tell if she was faking or not. But she nodded at Grady. “You can go with her if you like—just to the porch. An officer will meet you there.”
She wanted some time with Nina. “I feel for them,” she said, nodding at Grady and Sugar.
Nina simply shook her head, as Skip had seen dozens of friends and relatives do when confronted with death.
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br /> “Have you worked for them long?”
“A few years.”
“I gather from Grady the old man was difficult.”
She shrugged. “Grady’s not so easy himself.”
“And Mrs. Hebert?”
“Complicated. I feel sorry for her.”
“Why?”
“Arthur treated her like dirt, for one thing. For another, she’s got some real little emotional knots.”
“What sort?”
“She doesn’t really have a lot of self-esteem.” Phillips thought a moment. “And I guess she thinks she can get it by pretending.”
Nina had a maddening way of throwing out enticing generalities that made little sense initially. “Pretending what?” Skip asked.
“Whatever. It varies.”
Skip still didn’t get it, but she couldn’t stay there. There was too much to cover in a hurry. “Do you know the family pretty well?”
To her surprise, Nina snorted. “I’d say so. Grady and I were an item once, God help me.” She paused here. “Reed and I are best friends. And Dennis is my cousin.”
“Dennis! But I thought—” She stopped, but Nina made her complete the sentence. “I thought he was white.”
“Oh, he is, I guess. He’s from a white branch of the family, anyway. We didn’t grow up together; I didn’t even know about the Fouchers—the white ones. Dennis looked me up when we were already grown.” She snorted again. “He wanted money.”
“Was this before or after you knew the Heberts?”
“Before. He introduced me years later. What you have to understand is he was a different person then. He was an addict.”
“I see.”
“Oh, there never was any harm in him, not a bit. He’s a gentle soul—a very sweet man.” She stopped and stared at the wall. “Lord, lord.”
“What is it?”
“I was just thinking how much he and Grady are alike. Passive. Sweet, but ineffectual.”
Grady hadn’t struck Skip as sweet, but she kept her mouth shut.