Midnight on the Mississippi

by Mary Ellis

  “Detective Russell Saville,” the intruder said in a slow drawl, pulling a badge from his trouser pocket. “New Orleans Homicide. Are you Hunter Galen?” He asked the question with his focus never leaving Ashley.

  Saville was tall and wiry, with thick, oily hair, a flat nose, and olive-toned skin. His suit stretched across his wide shoulders and muscular chest. A weapon bulged beneath the fabric of his jacket, and the man looked rough even wearing a suit and tie.

  Ashley rose gracefully to her feet and smoothed down her skirt. “Are you done staring, Detective?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Begging your pardon.” He bowed his head slightly.

  Hunter stepped in front of Ashley to break off the little tête-à-tête. She possessed the uncanny ability to make every situation revolve around her within moments. “Do you usually just walk into people’s homes, Detective? What’s this about?”

  “Like I said, the front door stood open so I didn’t wait to be invited. I did announce myself, but you must not have heard.”

  Hunter suddenly had enough of the man’s insinuations. “Ashley, please close the front door and then give us some privacy.” She did have a penchant for leaving doors, cupboards, drawers, and even car doors open behind her as though she expected a personal maid to trail behind her and tidy up.

  “Yes, of course, darling.” She brushed a kiss across his cheek before walking out of the room.

  “Do you have a warrant, Detective? I’m pretty busy here.” Hunter flexed his fingers unwittingly.

  Saville’s eyes had followed Ashley. “Fine-looking woman, Mr. Galen. You two engaged or anything like that?”

  Hunter stared at him speechlessly. Was he serious? “Could I see your badge again, Saville? Because I don’t know who you are or what you want. And I’m sure not seeing a warrant.”

  The cop drew out his ID again. “I don’t need a warrant to ask an upstanding citizen like you a few questions. I would think you’d want to help us find your partner’s killer.” Saville walked to the bank of windows overlooking the garden. “Man, we’re going to need an ark if this rain don’t stop.”

  When he turned around, Hunter saw his moustache twitch. If the guy weren’t wearing a gun under his sport coat, Hunter would have loved taking a swing at him. “If you’re here about James, was it a suicide or not?” He exhaled his pent-up irritation.

  “Oh, we’re pretty sure it was no suicide. You see, Mr. Galen, when somebody offs themselves, we usually find the gun still clutched in their dead hand. All the muscles in the hand and arm tighten up. But Nowak’s fingers weren’t locked around any gun.”

  “Is that right?” Hunter knew the guy was purposely trying to bait him with his callous referrals to James’s death.

  “Somebody wanted this to look like a suicide, and that somebody doesn’t know squat about guns—probably the intellectual bookworm type. Most likely, he or she didn’t go there to kill Nowak or they would have had a better plan in mind. Nah, they went to talk to the guy, chew the fat, and then they shot him when Nowak didn’t see things their way. They hoped it would look like a suicide, but shooting him was definitely an afterthought. No robbery. No mutilation. Somebody just decided the world would be a better place if James-the-Stockbroker was dead.”

  “Apparently you think that somebody is me,” Hunter murmured in a low voice, digging his fingernails into his palms.

  “You ready to confess yet? Then I can tidy up my paperwork and move on to the next mess. I hate having open cases.” Saville slouched against the windowsill, a strand of gelled hair falling into his eyes.

  “If that’s what you came for, get out of my house.” Hunter was losing the battle to control his temper.

  “Easy now, Mr. Galen. There is one more little thing. We just arrested Nathan Price. I think you know the guy. He’s on his way down to central booking as we speak.” A glint sparkled in the detective’s dark eyes.

  “What for?” Hunter closed the distance between himself and the detective.

  “Why, obstruction of justice, of course. He crossed into a secured crime scene. He claims the uniformed officer on duty watching the perimeter gave him permission to take files and your computer. But, funny thing, the cop on duty doesn’t remember saying anything like that.” Saville’s thin lips stretched into a sneer. “At the very least, we got him on impeding an investigation. With him arrested for breaking and entering a couple years ago in Metairie, we have enough to yank his PI license for a while. At least until a judicial review board takes a good long look at the guy.” The sneer turned into a downright grin. “Man, you hang around with some pretty shady characters, Galen. And here I thought you college-boy types just flocked together at the espresso shop or out at the country club.”

  “And here I thought Katrina washed all the corruption out of the police force.”

  “Ouch, that hurts.” Saville pushed away from the windowsill and moved within inches of Hunter’s face. “I think you’re just mad ’cause I figured out your little plot.”

  Hunter straightened his spine. “What plot would that be?”

  “Maybe you blew your partner away in some heat-of-the-moment tiff and then sent over the family handyman, Price, to tidy up your mess. Yeah, I know Price has been cleaning up after Galens for years. And I’ll bet you left something behind besides your fingerprints all over the weapon. You’re not all that smart are you, college boy?”

  Hunter’s fingers balled into fists as he shifted his weight into an aggressive stance.

  “Hunter!” Ashley strode into the room. “Don’t let that detective goad you into doing something foolish. Nothing would please him more.” She wedged herself between the two men. Apparently she had been eavesdropping and felt the need to intervene.

  Hunter could feel his entire body break out into a cold sweat.

  “You’re a fortunate man, Galen,” Saville said. “Having a woman—a beautiful woman—to fight your battles for you. Whoo-wee, I wish I was born lucky like you.”

  “Ashley, go back into the kitchen, please. Everything is fine here.”

  “And have you punch out this officer and end up in jail?” She turned toward Saville. “We’re about to announce our engagement and don’t need this trouble.” Her lower lip protruded in a pout.

  “I see your point, sugar. You surely can’t be betrothed to someone in the slammer. How will that look to your mama’s friends?” Saville rocked back on his heels with amusement.

  Hunter relaxed his fists one finger at a time. “You’re spinning your wheels, Detective. The only reason Nate was there was to find out who killed James. That’s what you’re supposed to be doing instead of wasting time harassing me. I had no motive to kill my business partner. Even if you slept through most of your academy classes, motive must factor in here somewhere.”

  Saville’s grin waned and then disappeared altogether. “Motive still looms large, Galen. That’s why I requested a search warrant for every financial record in your office, including your computer’s hard drive. My fellow slackers are executing it right now. Forensic accountants will rack up plenty of overtime picking apart your books. I’m betting we find all the motivation we’re looking for.” Saville stepped past Galen, purposely bumping shoulders on his way to the foyer. In the doorway, he paused and launched one last salvo. “It’s too bad the Galen family’s other trained seal retired last summer—Lieutenant Charlie Rhodes. Man, didn’t he come to the rescue more than once? But all that’s over with. No more tipped scales of justice—one for the rich and one for the rest of us.” The venom he aimed at Hunter had nothing to do with the Nowak murder case.

  “What’s the matter, Saville? Were you expecting to make chief of detectives but were passed over for someone with a brain?” Hunter knew this adolescent sparring was a mistake, but the detective had crawled under his skin. Too little sleep, too much caffeine, and too many things going wrong had conspired to make him a crabby man.

  “Don’t you worry. I’m smart enough to bring you down. This town’s been reb
orn. Your kind ain’t in charge anymore.”

  “Maybe the fact I didn’t do it might get in the way of your personal agenda,” shouted Hunter, but Detective Saville had already left the apartment, slamming the door behind him.

  Hunter went to the sideboard to pour himself a drink but reconsidered. He needed a clear head. And he needed Ashley to leave. He was in no mood for her opinions on Saville’s manners or anything else at the moment. “Ashley, why don’t you take your purchases home and I’ll call you later.” He tried to keep his voice as level as possible.

  After a few minutes of halfhearted resisting she left, promising to call when she returned from a work seminar in a few days. Hunter breathed a sigh of relief when her cloud of perfume followed her out the door. He had plenty of work to do. Fortunately, his assistant fretted about computer viruses or corporate espionage and had hard copies of the firm’s financial records for the last five years. She kept them in a closet in his apartment, dutifully bringing over a new file every month. Pulling out the boxes of files, he had a long night ahead of him.

  Detective Russell Saville wouldn’t be looking for James’s killer now that he’d tweaked the guy’s nose. And he probably wouldn’t have anyway. The guy was lazy, evident in the way he walked, and even the way he chewed gum like a cow’s cud. But Saville wasn’t Hunter’s most pressing problem at the moment. Forensic accountants would be going over his company books as though combing hair for lice. They would soon know more about the Galen-Nowak financials than he did. And that was his fault. For too long he had let James manage the office, including the corporate money flow, so that he could devote himself to the portfolios of their large corporate clients.

  That had been a mistake. He feared James’s personal appetite for risky, high-flying investments may have gotten out of hand. He’d suspected James had been up to something fiscally unsound, yet he hadn’t confronted him. Why? Because James was his best friend and he didn’t want to jeopardize that friendship.

  Hunter had never liked confrontation. In fact, he usually did everything he could to avoid it. A shrink would probably conclude the tendency stemmed from the middle sibling’s role of arbitrator, which in truth would be correct. But as he carried box after box of financial reports to the dining room table, one idea niggled in the back of his mind. If he had confronted James, if he’d asked the right questions, would his partner still be alive today?

  EIGHT

  Nicki stared out the pizza shop window as the dismal rain finally dwindled to a drizzle. But even sunshine couldn’t improve her overall bad day. Words from her conversation with Hunter as they went to pick up her car stuck in her craw. “You need to work on your surveillance techniques, Miss Price. Lurking behind a menu may work occasionally, but taking pictures with your cell phone needs to be rethought. You should get one of the cool mini cameras James Bond used.” James Bond, indeed. She would have told Mr. Smarty Pants off if she hadn’t needed this job. Besides, she worked for Nate, not for Hunter. She didn’t care who paid her expenses.

  Finally, her number was called. Nicki set a six-pack of Coke next to the pizza at the register and pulled out her wallet. She had no intention of showing up in Chalmette empty handed. Not that she was hungry after the quantity of food she’d consumed at lunch. Why had she eaten like a farmworker after her mom packed two perfectly fine tuna sandwiches for the drive to New Orleans? Maybe because the food in that hoity-toity restaurant had tasted so good. The turtle soup reminded her of Mamaw’s, and the jambalaya had been loaded with shrimp instead of being merely a bowl of pink rice with bits of what could have been seafood at some point. Food like that shouldn’t go to waste, and she didn’t care what Hunter thought of her anyway.

  She knew one thing for certain. Despite the newspaper’s insinuations, he didn’t kill his business partner. Men like him would never pull a trigger. They would pay someone to do it. And a professional would have staged a far more convincing suicide than that. Why would he want to kill his partner anyway? If he did have some hidden reason, Nicki planned to ferret it out. Not just to clear his name, but to show her cousin what she was capable of. She wasn’t Nicki-from-the-Mississippi-backwoods anymore.

  The memory of Nate’s introduction still stung after all these years. He may have only been fifteen at the time—and all boys that age were obnoxious—but for some inexplicable reason his opinion meant a lot to her. She would gain his respect or die trying. The jangle of her cell phone jarred her back to the moment. This had better be important—daytime minutes, she thought. She had to be the last person in America without an unlimited calling plan.

  “Hi, Nate,” she said, seeing his name on her screen.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m on my way to Chalmette. This is Christine’s only night off at the coffee plant.”

  “Good. Stay there tonight. Be sure to lock the doors if that tin can even has locks. I sure wish you had your gun permit. Everybody else living there will be packing heat.”

  “Don’t worry so much. I’ll be fine.”

  “I didn’t call to rag on you, Nicolette. Tomorrow morning I want you to head home to Natchez. Tell Aunt Rose I’m real sorry this didn’t work out.”

  “Nate, no! I thought you’d agreed—”

  “I did, but I’m changing my mind.” His voice turned tender. “Nicki, I’ve been arrested for crossing the crime scene at Galen-Nowak Investments. I’m waiting for my lawyer to post bail, but apparently the DA can’t decide whether to charge me with obstruction, which is a felony, or interfering with a criminal investigation, which is just a misdemeanor.”

  “Oh, dear,” she breathed into the phone. Her cousin wasn’t fond of small places. He certainly wouldn’t fare well in jail. “Did you do it? I mean, how did this happen?”

  “I asked the officer on duty if I could take a few files and Hunter’s computer. I showed him my ID. He nodded his head—at least, that’s what it looked like to me. Then on my way to my car, cops surrounded me, slapped on cuffs, and read me my rights.” Nate whistled through his teeth. “This is serious. I could lose my PI license. I had a little trouble a couple of years ago. Now I’ve been suspended pending a full hearing by the review board. That could take months, Nic. I’ve been ordered off the case. So, little cousin, there is nobody here to assist.”

  She tried to get in a word, but the phone line crackled as the signal faltered.

  “I gotta go. They already took away my phone. Civil liberties are few and far between in the clink. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you your big break.” He hung up.

  But he was wrong. Nate was handing her a big break on a platter. She would find out who shot James Nowak and get Mr. Charm-and-Personality off the hook. Nate would be so impressed he’d make her a full partner. Then she would be able to afford her own apartment, maybe in the French Quarter or a loft in the Warehouse District. Someplace chic in the city. No more rural free delivery for her. No more junk cars up on cinder blocks. No more mud washes doubling as driveways, and no more bashed in mailboxes courtesy of teenagers with nothing to do. Nicki would live in the Big Easy even though it wasn’t all that big anymore. And for many people, it had never been easy. But she liked it.

  And this case was her ticket to the big leagues.

  Unfortunately, the road to her dreams contained a stopover in one of Chalmette’s three trailer parks. The former FEMA village was worse than she had imagined. Cars were parked haphazardly. Doghouses, storage bins, motorcycles, bicycles—even kids’ toys were chained to whatever couldn’t be carted away. The tightly packed units offered no privacy whatsoever. When the neighbors argued, everyone heard them air their dirty laundry.

  This is only temporary, she reminded herself.

  After parking legally this time, Nicki knocked on Christine’s door. The two friends had gone to high school together but hadn’t seen each other in four years. Christine and her husband had moved from Red Haw to find employment. Both had found jobs at the coffee processing plant in New Orleans. They bought a shotg
un house in Chalmette and produced two adorable children, at least according to photos in Christmas cards.

  Then Katrina took the house away. A prettier girl on the production line took the husband away. And Children’s Services took custody of the kids after an impromptu inspection. When the social worker found only a day or two’s worth of food in the house, the children were placed with her ex-husband—correction: more often her ex’s mother—an unpleasant woman who had always disliked Christine. Now plenty of paperwork and several inspections had to occur before the children would be returned.

  Her old friend answered the door wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and orange flip-flops. Her left hand held the TV remote, her right a can of diet soda. “Hey, girl, you come bearing pizza? In that case, come on in.”

  Nicki stepped into the tightest packed, closest quarters she’d ever seen. Stuff—boxes, toys, stacks of magazines, mismatched furniture—filled every inch of space.

  “Hi, Christine. Good to see you. Thanks again for letting me stay a while.”

  “What are friends for?” Christine said cheerily as she took the pizza box and plastic ring of Cokes.

  While Nicki moved a stack of newspapers from a chair, a very large man entered from what must be the bathroom. He seemed to take up all the room’s available space. Tattoos decorated his arms, shoulders, neck—everywhere not covered by his jeans or T-shirt. Even his jawline sported art in the design of a colorful goatee.

  “Hi. I’m Nicki,” she managed to squeak as she held out her hand.

  “How ya doin’?” He glanced at her hand but made no effort to shake. “I’m outta here. Don’t need to listen to chicks jabbering all evening.” With a bang of the screen door, the goliath exited the trailer, allowing more space for oxygen.

  Christine handed her a paper plate piled with pizza. “Don’t mind him. Travis is cuddly as a teddy bear once you get to know him.” The sound of a motorcycle engine roaring to life nearly drowned out her words.