Blood on the Vine

by Jessica Fletcher

  “Based upon the Ladington incident?” someone asked.

  “Oh, no,” I quickly said. “That’s too real. Actual murders scare me. I prefer the fictitious kind.”

  “Wouldn’t know it from the way you keep getting yourself involved with real murders,” Seth said. “You should take my advice and stick close to home, make up murders in your mind and stay away from the real thing. By the way, heard lately from your friend in London, the inspector?”

  I smiled. George and I had talked the night before about my flying to London to spend a few days with him, and I’d hung a note on my kitchen bulletin board to remind me to make travel arrangements the next morning.

  “Well?” Seth said, bushy eyebrows raised waiting for my answer.

  “I would love another glass of that Ladington Creek cabernet,” I said, handing my glass to St. Clair. “It is absolutely heavenly, with a succulent nose of black currents, violets, and spices, gorgeous ripeness, and chewy fruit.”

  Seth winced.

  I winked at him, raised my glass, and said, “Salute!”

  Here’s a preview of the next Murder, She Wrote mystery, Murder in a Minor Key, available now from Signet.

  I hadn’t seen Wayne Copely since Friday, when he’d graciously escorted our colleague, Doris Burns, and me to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Wayne was a nationally syndicated jazz columnist and native of New Orleans, Doris and I were visitors to The Big Easy—one of many nicknames for the city—she from Princeton, New Jersey, where she was the youngest history professor on staff at the university, and I from Cabot Cove, Maine, where I plied my trade as a writer of murder mysteries. We’d all met as members of an authors’ panel, promoting our latest works at a Book Club Breakfast hosted by the Times-Picayune, the city’s only daily newpaper. Wayne had used the occasion to announce his longtime search for wax cylinder recordings by New Orleans musical legend Little Red LeCoeur.

  A turn-of-the-century trumpet player, Little Red’s place in the pantheon of early jazz greats was well established in New Orleans, but virtually nonexistent outside that city. Old-timers remembered him as a ginger-haired prodigy with a red-hot temper to match, but one whose music reached heights never claimed before, a sweet sound encompassing the panoramic jazz experience in blues, rag-time, and Dixieland, and presaging the music to come decades later.

  “Some said Little Red was possessed by a voodoo spirit,” Wayne had told the Book Club audience, “and when he was under its spell, magic notes poured from his horn—melodic, inventive music, which drew the other musicians of his day like ants following a trail of honey. They were hungry for his sound, in awe of his skill, and jealous of his talent.”

  If Wayne were successful in his quest for the recordings, he would gain international recognition for the memory of this long-neglected musical genius, and elevate Little Red to the same plateau in the history of jazz as Buddy Bolden and Louis Armstrong. But so far, the cylinders had eluded him. In desperation, he made his public plea for help in finding them.

  “Has anyone come forward with information for you?” I asked him as we strolled around the jazz festival, where the air fairly hummed with the strains of gospel, zydeco, bebop, Dixieland, and virtually every other variation of jazz, which drifted out of the tents and rose on the breeze in a delightful cacophony.

  “I have a few leads,” he said, twirling a pencil between his fingers, “and the paper mentioned it in the article covering our panel.” He pulled a much thumbed copy of the magazine Wavelength from under his arm. “I’ve also got a classified ad in here that should churn the waters.”

  Since then, I’d left two messages on his answering machine and was concerned that he hadn’t called back. He’d already missed one appointment with me, and we were supposed to be dining with his sister in the Garden District that afternoon.

  Wayne’s house in the French Quarter was not far from my hotel, and I walked there Sunday morning. The evening before, the street had been mobbed with people celebrating Saturday night with Hurricanes, a favorite libation in local establishments. Carrying their drinks in go-cups, they hopped in and out of the nightclubs and barrooms, dancing on the banquettes—what New Orleanians call sidewalks—and gathering around impromptu performances by freelance jazz ensembles. Now, the Quarter was eerily quiet, the only sound a janitor sweeping up the crushed cups and other debris that littered the street.

  I checked my address book for the number of Wayne’s apartment house. An old brown Ford was angled into the curb under a NO PARKING sign in front of the building, which had a facade painted in a soft pink. Iron lacework outlined the balconies that ran the length of each floor, and on which I could see a profusion of green plants and a series of tables and chairs demarcating the individual apartments.

  Surprisingly, the double doors leading inside were open. I checked the directory for the number of Wayne’s apartment, climbed the stairs to the third floor, and pulled on a brass knocker in the shape of an alligator. The door swung open and a man in a brown suit frowned at me.

  “Who’re you?” he asked gruffly.

  “Perhaps I have the wrong apartment,” I said, taken aback. “I’m looking for Wayne Copely.”

  “What’s he to you?”

  “I’m a friend, and I haven’t heard from him. I was concerned. Are you an acquaintance of his?”

  I knew the answer before he gave it, and felt my stomach drop. Men like him have a certain look. It’s in the eyes, a world-weariness, a cool appraisal, an unbending attitude worn like a carapace on their backs meant to protect them from the brutalities of life.

  “I’m a cop.”

  “What’s happened to Wayne?”

  “You look a little pale. Come in and sit down, and I’ll tell you.”

  Numb, I entered Wayne’s apartment and slumped down on his green damask sofa. The policeman remained standing on the other side of the glass-topped steel box that served as a coffee table. He tugged at his belt, trying to draw the waistline of his trousers over a protuberant stomach.

  “Is he dead?” I asked, trying to regain some semblance of control.

  “How did you know?”

  His question was like a slap, startling me back to conscious thought. I sat up, alert. After all, I’d had experience with death before.

  “I didn’t know,” I said briskly, “but it’s obvious that if the police are here and Wayne’s not, then something is drastically wrong.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “Friday. When did he die?”

  “Saturday.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “Hey, lady, I’m the cop here. I ask the questions. Why don’t we start over? I’m detective Chris Steppe, NOPD.” He pulled a pad of paper from his breast pocket, and looked down at me. “And you would be?”

  “Jessica Fletcher.”

  “Why do I know that name?”

  I explained to him who I was, how I knew Wayne, and why I’d become concerned enough to come to his apartment. While Detective Steppe scratched away at his pad, I looked around the room. Wayne’s apartment was spare with an innate elegance that was difficult to define. It might have been the warmth of the wooden floor, a scarred broad planked relic from an earlier era. Or it might have been the diaphanous curtains that covered the leaded French doors looking out on the balcony I’d seen from the street. The furnishings were simple—a sofa, a coffee table, a small Oriental rug in front of what I was sure was a decorative fireplace, a line of low bookcases on one wall, and a delicate round table of highly polished dark wood with two matching chairs. No bric-a-brac, no clutter was in sight. There was a calmness to the apartment that I could sense, despite my agitation, a calmness that must have been restful for a high-strung personality like Wayne’s.

  A door from the living room opened into another part of the apartment, and I could hear someone shuffling around in there, opening doors and drawers.

  “Where did you find Wayne’s body?” I asked Detective Steppe.

&nbs
p; “At the cemetery.”

  “The cemetery?”

  “Yeah. Ironic, isn’t it? He was found sitting up against a tomb in St. Louis Cemetery Number One.”

  “What was the cause of death?”

  “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

  “Detective, I make my living writing murder mysteries. I read case histories, interview coroners, pore over police photos. I think I have a pretty strong constitution by now.”

  “No doubt,” Steppe said, pushing his pad back down in his jacket pocket. He hesitated a bit, considering what to tell me. He decided not to. “Well, we’re not really sure anyway. We won’t know officially till the autopsy report comes in.”

  “But you have an idea, right?”

  “I might.”

  “Did he die in the cemetery?” I asked.

  Steppe’s eyebrows flew up. “You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?” He retrieved his pad. “Where did you say you were yesterday?”

  “I didn’t,” I replied stiffly. “You didn’t ask me. But I was at Jazz Fest most of the day, and I can supply you with the names of my companions. In the evening, I went with them to Preservation Hall.”

  Steppe took some more notes and I got up and paced the room, trying to get a glimpse of the layout of the rest of the apartment, and to see whoever was in the other room.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” I prodded.

  “Don’t really know,” he replied. “I’m not the medical examiner. Now tell me, Mrs. Fletcher, why would anyone want Copely dead?”

  I whirled around. “He was murdered?”

  “I didn’t say that, did I?”

  “I don’t know that anyone would want Wayne dead, unless it had to do with his research.”

  I gave Steppe a brief rundown on Wayne’s interest in the recordings of Little Red LeCoeur. “But he hasn’t found any so far,” I added, and then remembered that “so far” was as far as Wayne would be able to go.

  “What do you know about voodoo, Mrs. Fletcher?”

  “Voodoo? Barely anything at all. Why?”

  “Copely was found sitting up against the tomb of Marie Laveau, the famous voodoo queen.” He paused, waiting for my reaction.

  “I know that Wayne knew something about voodoo,” I replied, “but that would be true of anyone raised in New Orleans.”

  “Did he ever wear a gris-gris, Mrs. Fletcher? You know about them, don’t you? They’re those pouches on a string meant to bring good luck or ward off evil.”

  “I never saw one on him.”

  “Well, his corpse wore one, and there’s a little more.” He was eyeing me closely now.

  “Yes?”

  “His hand, Mrs. Fletcher. I saw two puncture marks.”

  “Does this have something to do with how he died?”

  “Probably.” Steppe was stalling.

  “What could have made those marks, Detective?”

  “There’s only one thing I can think of, Mrs. Fletcher.” He stared into my eyes. “Copely died from the bite of a rattlesnake.”