by G. T. Herren
That phrase got my attention— “gorgeous man,” I mean. My eyes were about ready to cross from looking at the numbers and I thought to myself, “a girl deserves a break once in a while.” So I walked out to the showroom and saw him. He was standing, watching his friend posing in one of my best gowns in front of a three-way mirror. I almost swooned at the sight of him. His thick curly black hair looked wet, and the sleeveless T-shirt he was wearing also had damp spots on his big chest muscles. And his arms! He looked like he should have been playing Superman, or Samson, or Hercules. He just oozed sex. He was tan, and he was wearing a pair of running shorts. He looked bored but was being polite. His friend was obviously so selfish she couldn’t be bothered even to notice how bored he was. (Girls, you should NEVER bore your man. And you should always check to make sure he isn’t bored. Men do NOT like being treated that way. They need to be made much of. Otherwise you’re going to lose that man.)
Like any woman would take relationship advice from a woman who’d been married five times. But to give her credit, she had landed five husbands— she just hadn’t mastered how to keep one.
He’d flirted with her, and she’d given him her business card.
Flash forward six months, and they were married in Las Vegas.
Her sons were appalled.
I couldn’t believe how ungrateful they were! After everything I’d done for them, they didn’t want me to be happy! All the sacrifices, all the money, all the scrapes and mistakes I’d had to bail them out of, this was the thanks I got from them? How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is an ungrateful child! Well, I’d show them!
The honeymoon lasted about a year— when she realized Tony had maxed out the credit cards she’d given him. She’d already paid his debts and bought him a new car when they’d first been married. She was even willing to co-sign a bank loan so he could open his own gym— but had held off on signing the paperwork.
You can imagine my surprise that he’d already maxed out those cards— what had he spent almost fifty thousand dollars on, if he was still training clients at the gym? I was really glad I hadn’t signed those loan papers. But I was getting ready to go to Fashion Week, and figured I’d have fun in New York— a girl’s entitled to have some fun, isn’t she? I’d deal with Tony’s spending habits when I got back.
Tony didn’t go with her— claiming he’d be bored and he didn’t want to get in her way. When she returned, before she could even address the issue with the credit cards, she noticed something else that provoked her suspicious.
Now, to most people it might seem silly. But I am VERY proud of my reign as Queen of Patroclus, and I keep my mementoes of that time in a glass case in my bedroom. Whenever I get down, or am depressed, or something goes wrong— all I have to do is look at that case and remember I am a Queen, and that’s something that no one can ever take away from me. That gets me through— and I get strength from it. So, as I was unpacking from my trip, I noticed that my tiara wasn’t exactly the way it always was. It’s always centered on its red velvet pillow… and it was off to the side. I went over to look, to make sure, and sure enough, it HAD been moved. And the door to the case wasn’t completely shut… and the closer I looked, I could see that my scepter was turned with the front to the back, and that the sash wasn’t right, either. Someone had moved them around, which didn’t make any sense to me. My cleaning lady has always had explicit instructions not to do anything besides dust the case itself, and besides her, the only other person who should be in my bedroom was Tony. I put everything back the way it was supposed to be… but from that moment on, I wasn’t sure I could trust Tony. So I hired a private detective to prove to myself he was trustworthy. I’d put off the talk about the credit cards until later.
Things went from bad to worse in no time flat.
While the private eye was following him around, she started going through his things. She found a claim check from a film-processing store.
I didn’t even know Tony HAD a camera, so I knew something was up. Well, you can just bet I got in my car and went to that store, marched myself in and paid for the packet of pictures. I could hardly wait to get back in the car to look at them— I knew they weren’t pictures of ME. And I sat there in my car and went through them, one by one… not able to believe my eyes. Here it was— concrete proof that Tony was cheating on me! It wasn’t bad enough that he was cheating, treating our marriage vows like they were worthless. He had to take pictures of his slut. And the pictures were taken in my bed! Naked, on sheets I had PAID for with my work, the sweat of my labors! And to add insult to injury, in some of them she was wearing MY tiara and sash, holding MY scepter! Pissing all over my memories, pissing all over something Tony KNEW meant the world to me! And in every one of the pictures, she was wearing a Mardi Gras mask so I couldn’t even get an idea of what she looked like! The brazen hussy! You can bet your bottom dollar that I went straight home and ordered him out of my house! I called a locksmith and had all the locks changed. Good riddance! A girl is always better off alone than with some cheating bastard.
That was all she had to say about Tony and Amber. The final two chapters were about Katrina, and Marigny’s trip to Russia to try to prove her descent from the Romanovs— which was anticlimactic to say the least, since she couldn’t find anything to back up the story.
As awful as it sounded, she was lucky she’d been killed before she’d gone through with her plan to publish the book; it would have made her a laughingstock in the city.
I couldn’t really use any of the material in the book for the piece. It might have been her truth, as she saw it, but there was no need for Crescent City’s readers to laugh at Marigny.
My landline started ringing, which was odd. Almost everyone calls my cell phone; the landline is always telemarketers or wrong numbers. I glanced at the caller ID and was startled to see the name ARAMIS MERCEREAU.
“Hello?”
“Paige, this is Aramis Mercereau.”
I started to say hello, but he cut me off quickly. “Do you know a good criminal attorney? They’ve arrested Jackson.”
Stunned, all I could say, stupidly, was, “Why?”
“For Mother’s murder, of course.” His voice was impatient. “Can you help me or not?”
Chapter Eleven
It was one o’clock in the morning when I unlocked my door.
I was exhausted, and all I wanted to do was go to bed— but it just wasn’t meant to be.
Ryan was asleep on my couch, with Skittle curled up beside him. Skittle opened his eyes and glared at me. When I shut the door and turned the deadbolt, Ryan’s eyes opened and he sat up. Skittle howled and bolted upstairs as I kicked off my shoes.
“Are you okay?” Ryan asked, yawning.
I nodded, plopping down next to him on the couch. “I’m so tired.” I rubbed my eyes. “What a night.” I smiled at him. “I’m sorry, baby, I know you wanted to talk about—” I hesitated, almost unable to bring myself to say the words but finally forced it out, “the whole marriage thing, but once Aramis called me…”
“It’s okay— I know you were helping a friend.” He grinned at me. “And working on a story.”
“Yeah, it really helps when they’re one and the same.” I looked at him hopefully. “I could really use a glass of wine.”
“You just lie there and relax, I’ll get it for you.”
“There’s an open bottle of red by the microwave,” I called after him helpfully.
Every muscle in my body was tired, and my brain was fatigued as well.
Ryan brought me a glass of wine and sat down next to me. “So, were you able to get Jackson out of jail?”
“Aramis was confused,” I replied. “They didn’t arrest him, they just brought him in for questioning.” If Jackson had been arrested, he would have spent the night in jail— one of the sad truths about Orleans Parish was if you got arrested over the weekend, the earliest you could get out was on Monday morning when the courts re-opened. If you knew a judge, of cou
rse, you could possibly get someone out sooner— but the prison moved like molasses at the best of times. “They don’t have enough evidence to arrest him— yet.”
“You think they will?” Ryan was also a lawyer, but his specialty was contract law, not criminal. He was good at what he did, which was why he could afford an apartment in the CBD as well as a house on the north shore and another over there for his ex and their kids.
“It looks bad,” I admitted, taking a sip of the wine. Venus and Blaine had both flatly refused to give me any information down at the station, and the criminal lawyer I’d gotten for Jackson had told Jackson not to say a word to me. Loren McKeithen was one of the best criminal lawyers in Louisiana. All he would tell me was that the police claimed to have found evidence Jackson was embezzling from the House of Mercereau, and a witness claimed Marigny had confronted him about it the night of the party, even going so far as threatening to have him arrested if he didn’t pay the money back.
Ryan shook his head when I finished bringing him up to date. “Do you think Jackson did it?”
“No.” I didn’t believe Jackson could kill anyone, and especially not his mother. He got frustrated with her from time to time— I couldn’t forget him warning me at the party on Friday that everything she told me would be a lie— but that didn’t make him a killer. I also couldn’t believe for a second that he would embezzle money from his own mother.
Of course, he could be a drug addict, or have a gambling problem I didn’t know about.
I couldn’t rule out either as a possibility even though both seemed preposterous. Stranger things have happened.
“Poor guy,” Ryan said. “Bad enough for your mother to be killed, but to be a suspect? That would have to be the worst. Who is this person telling the police all of this?”
“Apparently they wouldn’t say,” I replied. The wine was good, and I could feel the tension from the long hours sitting in the police station start to slip away. “They don’t have to, at least until there’s an arrest.”
“And he has no idea who it could be?”
I took another sip. “He said he didn’t. He also says the argument never happened. But if you want my opinion, it has to be Marigny’s assistant, Isabelle DePew.”
“DePew?” He grinned at me. “Like the amorous skunk in the cartoons?”
I smacked his leg lightly. “That’s le Pew, not DePew, dumbass.” I couldn’t help it— I started laughing. “She was Marigny’s assistant. But why would she make something like that up?” I sat up, alert. “If someone was embezzling money from Marigny, it makes more sense that it would be the assistant, right? And now that Marigny’s dead, of course it would all come out. There would have to be an audit, right, to settle the estate? And if money was missing—”
“—someone would have to take the blame for it,” Ryan finished, and yawned. “You think she killed Marigny, too?” He barely got the words out before he yawned a second time.
“Baby, why don’t you go up to bed?” I said gently. “You have to get up early in the morning, don’t you? I’ll be up in a minute or two— I just want to check my emails and a few other things.” I kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk about—” I swallowed, unable to bring myself to say the words, “—about what Brady said.”
He stood up and stretched. He grinned down at me. “You know, I’m sorry I sprang it on you that way, babe. Really.” He kissed the top of my head. “I just couldn’t stop thinking about it after Brady said it, you know? We have plenty of time to talk about it. There’s no rush, right?”
I hoped the enormous sense of relief I felt didn’t show on my face. “But we will talk about it, Ryan. We will.”
He kissed me and climbed the steps. Once he disappeared upstairs, I walked into the kitchen and sat down at my computer. I scrolled through all of my emails, finding nothing that needed answering, and then checked my electronic appointment book. The only thing on my schedule for the office tomorrow was a budget meeting at one, so I quickly typed out an email to Rachel, explaining why I wouldn’t be in until later and giving her an update.
I closed the mail program and did an Internet search for Isabelle DePew.
There was nothing, not even a Facebook account.
Who on earth has no presence at all on the Internet? I wondered. That was enough to make me suspicious.
I emailed Chanse and asked him to find out everything he possibly could about one Isabelle DePew.
I shut down my computer and turned off the lights.
I yawned as I climbed the stairs.
Damn, it had been a hell of a weekend.
Chapter Twelve
Ryan was gone when I woke up the next morning at nine, but I could smell freshly brewed coffee downstairs.
I really don’t deserve him, I thought as I brushed my teeth and washed my face, and I’m crazy not to leap at the chance to marry him.
Marriage, though, was an option for my life I’d discarded long ago.
I didn’t even like to think about it.
The fact Ryan wasn’t going to push me only made me love him that much more.
I walked downstairs and poured myself a cup of coffee. I sighed with bliss as I took a drink. Ryan always made the best coffee.
Enough of this, you have work to do, so get to it. That article isn’t going to write itself.
I stared at the computer screen. The word document I’d opened last night taunted me, the cursor blinking maddeningly back at me. I typed two words: Fashion Victim.
That’s a start, I thought with a slight smile. I pushed the cobwebs out of my mind by sheer force of will and started typing:
In the early morning hours of a Saturday, Marigny Mercereau was shot to death in her luxurious Uptown home. Earlier in the evening, she had enjoyed one of the biggest successes of her long career in fashion: her first full showing of a new line of designs since Hurricane Katrina. As she stood at the foot of the grand staircase in her showroom, drinking in the applause of everyone in attendance, she couldn’t have possibly known she had only a few hours left to live.
The words began flowing, the way they always had, and I went into what I always referred to as “the trance,” when everything else around me went away and all that mattered was the words flowing from my mind through my body to my fingers tapping away on the keyboard. Nothing matters when I’m in the trance— my house could burn to the ground around me and I wouldn’t notice. I kept typing, leaving a series of bold question marks in place where I needed to either refer to my notes or verify some information. At some point Skittle hopped into my lap, purring, and went to sleep while my coffee got cold in its cup.
I finally came out of it and sat back in the chair with a heavy sigh. My forearms ached a bit from resting on the edge of my desk. My shoulders and neck were also sore. I pushed Skittle off my lap and looked down at the bottom of the document for the word count. I had typed three thousand words. But I couldn’t finish it because I still didn’t know how I was going to end the piece. I got up and dumped my cold coffee in the sink and poured another cup. The coffee maker had shut itself off— it was past eleven. I heated the coffee in the microwave and ran a hand through my hair.
If Jackson didn’t kill his mother, who had?
The first person the cops look at in the case of a homicide is the spouse. Marigny might be divorced, and there was so clearly bad blood between her and her most recent ex… but why would he wait so long to come after her? Surely Marigny would have changed any will she might have made in his favor. And while she had done an excellent job of assassinating his character in her memoirs, he couldn’t possibly have known that.
But the embezzler couldn’t have been Tony— there was no way he could have stolen anything from her after that nasty divorce. Still it bothered me that he and his mistress had disappeared so completely. I drummed my fingers on the desktop, thinking.
I did not believe for one second Jackson had embezzled from his mother.
Jackson was
certainly extravagant— he liked to put on airs, as they say— but to steal from his mother? I couldn’t believe he would do that. No, if someone was stealing from the House of Mercereau, it made more sense that it was Isabelle DePew.
What had she been doing at Audrey Vidrine’s Saturday afternoon, anyway? I remembered her manner, the way she talked, how her eyes had stayed cold when she put that phony smile on her face. She hadn’t sounded sincere as she raved on and on about Marigny. Something about her was just not right.
I didn’t like not being able to find out anything about her on the Internet.
I sat down at the desk. I pulled up my browser and tried again. Nothing. I went to the House of Mercereau website, but she wasn’t even listed there as an employee when I clicked on the “staff” link. Weird.
I clicked my email program open to see if Chanse had responded.
There was one from Rachel, telling me not to bother coming into the office: The story is a lot more important than the meeting. I’ll reschedule it. Just get this done!
I responded, attaching what I had written so far, along with some notes about what I needed to add to it, what sidebars should be done— and I also requested she send me all the picture files from the party. We were probably going to have to use an old portrait of Marigny for the cover, since the scheduled photo shoot had never taken place. I swore under my breath— where the hell were we going to get an old publicity shot of her? There was one on her website, of course, but it wouldn’t be high enough resolution for print. The house was probably still sealed off as a crime scene, and chances were they’d hauled off her computer as evidence.
Jackson would hardly be in the mood to be bothered at this point. I’d seen him last night at the police station, when Loren McKeithen had finally put a stop to the police questioning. He’d been a wreck, his eyes bloodshot and his face red, his hands shaking. Having witnessed police interrogations plenty of times, I wasn’t surprised he was in such bad shape. He’d barely mumbled a “thank you” to me when Aramis and Loren escorted him out of the station.