Death Tidies Up

by Barbara Colley

  Judith shrugged. “Could be distant cousins.”

  Charlotte nodded. “I’ll have to ask Nadia. Anyway—” She dismissed the subject with a wave of her hand. “If I can’t feed you, would you like something to drink? Some iced tea or coffee?”

  “No, thanks, Auntie. I just came by to check on you and to let you know that we’ve arrested Sam Roberts.”

  “Arrested him?”

  Judith nodded. “One thing led to another, and he ended up confessing to murdering Drew Bergeron. I have to tell you, though, that was the strangest interrogation I’ve ever conducted. It was almost as if he’d been waiting for us and was relieved when we finally showed up. In fact, even more strange, he seemed more concerned about Marian Hebert than his own arrest. He kept asking was she okay and were her boys okay. He even asked about Darla Shaw—asked if we’d caught her. And that was way before anyone even mentioned anything about her.” Judith shook her head. “Like I said, though, I just dropped by to tell you he’s been arrested and to make sure you’re okay.”

  “Well, it’s a relief that he’s been arrested, and I’m just fine, hon. Now stop being such a worrywart, and get on out of here.” Charlotte nudged her toward the door. “Go get something to eat and—” Charlotte gave her an exaggerated wink. “Tell that nice Billy Wilson hello for me.”

  Judith burst out laughing. “Okay—okay, I can take a hint.”

  As Charlotte stood at the door and watched her niece drive away a few minutes later, she couldn’t stop thinking about what Judith had said in regard to Sam Roberts’ concern for Marian and the boys. And what of Darla Shaw? How had he even known that Darla Shaw was there…unless…

  Just as Charlotte closed the door, she froze, her hand still on the doorknob. “Of course,” she murmured. The reason Sam knew about Darla Shaw was because he’d been there, on the porch. The movement she’d seen through the window had been Sam, not the boys. Could he also have been the person who had called the police as well? But why? If he’d been out for revenge, then why would he want to help Marian?

  Charlotte locked her front door and walked over to stare out the window into the dark night. She would probably never know for sure who had called the police, but in spite of everything, she’d like to think that Sam had been the one. She’d like to think that there was some part of him able to recognize that, like him, Marian had also been an innocent victim.

  Charlotte turned away from the window and stepped over to Sweety Boy’s cage. “People sure do get themselves in a mess, don’t they, Boy?”

  The little parakeet pranced back and forth on his perch. “Crazy,” he chirped. “Crazy, crazy.”

  “Yeah, and birds too, huh, Boy? Even little birds get themselves in a pickle sometimes.”

  Judging by his looks and actions, the little bird had completely recovered from his mishap in the shower. Even so, Charlotte was still nervous and a bit gun-shy about letting him out of his cage again.

  “So tell me. What do you think about Judith and Billy? Any possibilities there?”

  For an answer, Sweety Boy squawked and fluffed his wings.

  “Well, if you want my opinion,” Charlotte told him, “going out with Billy Wilson sure beats the heck out of having an affair with a married man.” She shook her head. “The very nerve of that—that Will Richeaux person. And him with a wife and a child.”

  Charlotte turned away from Sweety Boy’s cage and walked over to the coffee table in front of the sofa. On the table was a small spray of silk flowers and the special candle that she intended placing on Hank Senior’s tomb.

  She smoothed a finger over one of the red roses in the spray. All Saints’ Day was on Saturday, so on her way home from Marian’s earlier, she’d stopped off at a florist on Magazine Street.

  “I should have bought candy too,” she murmured. Though there didn’t seem to be as many trick-or-treaters as there used to be in her neighborhood, she figured it was better to be prepared, just in case. Besides, she was sure that Nadia and Daniel would bring Davy by. Charlotte smiled. She’d have to pick up an extra-special treat for the little boy.

  Still staring at the flowers, she thought of Hank’s offer to take her to the cemetery. Would he remember?

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Charlotte’s doctor appointment was scheduled for ten o’clock on Thursday morning. With dread heavily weighing down every footstep, she walked up to the front desk to let the receptionist know she was there.

  The waiting room was full, with few available empty chairs. Charlotte had just seated herself and picked up a three-month-old issue of Good Housekeeping magazine when, to her surprise, her name was called.

  Even more surprising, a nurse led her back to a small, well-appointed office instead of an examination room.

  “The doctor should be in momentarily,” the nurse told her.

  Charlotte barely had time to look around the office before the outer door opened, and the doctor walked in.

  “Good morning.”

  Charlotte acknowledged his greeting with a nod and a tentative smile.

  After seating himself behind the desk, he opened a folder and studied it for several minutes. Then he glanced up.

  “Everything looks good, Ms. LaRue. Since you don’t have a history of fainting and, according to the test results so far, you appear to be healthy for a woman your age, I really think your fainting spell was probably due more to the stress of the situation.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” Charlotte muttered.

  The doctor held up his hand. “But there is one more test I’d like to run.”

  “What kind of test, and for what?”

  “It’s a glucose tolerance test.”

  Charlotte’s stomach tightened. “Isn’t that a test for diabetes?”

  The doctor nodded. “Make an appointment to come in as soon as you can.” He stood. “The nurse will give you instructions.”

  Diabetes. Charlotte shuddered. “Ah—excuse me, but is that really necessary?”

  He shrugged. “Mostly precautionary, but the sooner you take the test, the sooner we can rule out the possibility of you having diabetes.”

  The minute the doctor disappeared through the doorway, Charlotte pulled out her cell phone and placed a call to Marian Hebert. He’d said “as soon as you can,” and Charlotte figured she might as well get it over with and be done with it.

  Marian’s answering machine picked up the call.

  “Marian, this is Charlotte. Something’s come up, and I’ll either need to reschedule to come in on Saturday instead of tomorrow or I can send someone else out tomorrow. Just give me a call and let me know which you’d prefer.”

  Charlotte disconnected the call and stood just as the nurse came in. She handed Charlotte a paper. “These are your instructions, Ms. LaRue, and an explanation of the procedure. You will need to fast—nothing to eat or drink after midnight on the night before you come in for the test.”

  Charlotte nodded that she understood, and slipping the paper and her cell phone back inside her purse, she followed the nurse out of the office.

  Once back out into the front office, she headed straight for the receptionist’s desk and scheduled an appointment for the next day.

  It was almost noon by the time Charlotte finished running her errands and pulled into her driveway. One of her errands had been to purchase candy for Friday night. Besides a couple of bags of assorted candy, she’d bought an especially huge lollipop shaped like a pumpkin as a special treat for Davy. While picking out the candy, she’d noticed that all of the Halloween decorations had been marked down to half price. Not since Hank was a boy had she bothered decorating her porch for Halloween, so with thoughts of Davy, on a whim, she’d bought a ceramic pumpkin, a fake spider’s web, and other various creepy items to put out.

  The first thing she did once she was inside was check her answering machine. There were two messages. Charlotte tapped the play button.

  “Mom, about Saturday. It looks like the best time for me to
take you to the cemetery is around ten. Let me know if that’s okay with you. Love you.”

  The machine beeped and the second message played.

  “Charlotte, this is Marian, returning your call. Don’t worry about coming in tomorrow, and I’d just as soon you wouldn’t send anyone else. Everything here is still in pretty good shape from Wednesday’s cleaning. And it’s about time those boys of mine learned how to do a few chores anyway. Just make sure you come on Monday, okay?” There was a pause, then, “Another thing, Charlotte. I went to an AA meeting last night. Just thought you might want to know. Oh, and one more thing. My attorney doesn’t seem to think I’ll have any legal problems because of everything that happened, but we’ll talk more later. Bye now.”

  And the truth shall make you free. Charlotte smiled as she headed for the kitchen. It was a start. A good, positive start. Maybe now Marian could finally get on with her life and be the kind of mother her boys so desperately needed her to be.

  After a quick lunch, Charlotte set about decorating the porch. The few things she’d bought didn’t take long to put out. Once she’d finished, she walked to the curb, turned, and with her hands on her hips, she stared back at the porch with a critical eye. Satisfied, she was walking back to the steps when Louis pulled into the driveway and parked.

  Charlotte frowned. “Hi there, Louis. What are you doing home this time of day?”

  Louis shrugged as he approached the porch. “I had some time coming, and I have some thinking to do.”

  Charlotte’s frown deepened. “Sounds serious.”

  “Yeah, I’d say it was pretty serious.” He seated himself on the top step and motioned for Charlotte to sit beside him. Once she was seated, for several moments he simply stared out into the street.

  Finally, he cleared his throat, and still staring out into the street, he said, “I spent a good part of this morning interrogating Sam Roberts.” He shook his head. “Questioning him was a really strange experience. He cooperated fully, even seemed to be relieved that he’d been found out.”

  Recalling that Judith had said the same thing, Charlotte nodded when Louis shifted his gaze to stare at her.

  “He also admitted that he killed Bill Hebert,” Louis told her.

  “I suspected as much.”

  Louis shrugged. “Even if he hadn’t confessed, we could have still tied him to Drew Bergeron’s murder. Just this morning we finished tracing the Mardi Gras mask back to him. With DNA testing, we can also link him to the cigar found at the crime scene.”

  Charlotte tilted her head. “So what’s still bothering you about it?”

  Louis shoved his fingers through his hair and heaved a heavy sigh. “He had it all—reputation, a family, a position in the community—and he lost it. Lost everything. That man has spent most of his life either paying for a crime he didn’t commit or searching for a way to clear himself. According to what he said, once he got out of prison, he spent almost every penny he earned on private detectives to find out the truth about what really happened that night.

  “He started out simply trying to clear his name because he didn’t want his children to think their father was a killer. But somewhere along the way, he snapped, and the lines got crossed. Almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy, he became the very thing he’d been accused of—a killer. Now he has nothing but more prison and probably a death sentence to look forward to.” Louis paused, then muttered, “Such a waste of a life—of three lives if you count Drew Bergeron and Bill Hebert.”

  Along with Marian Hebert, Charlotte silently added as she narrowed her eyes shrewdly. It was obvious that Sam’s fate wasn’t the only thing on Louis’ mind. Something was still bothering him. “You do think Sam’s guilty, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yeah. He’s guilty all right. Tell you one thing, though, the whole thing really made me stop and think, made me realize that life’s too short to waste. When you’re young, you think you have all the time in the world to do whatever. But if you’re lucky enough to grow older, you begin to realize just how little time you really have.”

  He cleared his throat, and when he leveled a look at Charlotte that was tight with strain, she held her breath, wondering what was really on his mind.

  “When Stephen—that’s my son—was about twelve, my wife left us,” he finally said. “She just packed a bag and walked out one day. Said she couldn’t take it anymore, what with the long hours I was keeping and all the trouble Steve kept getting into. The next thing I knew I was being served divorce papers.”

  Charlotte inwardly winced. Louis’ admission explained a lot, and though she didn’t agree with his chauvinistic attitude toward women in general, at least she understood it better.

  “I tried my best to raise Steve by myself after that,” he continued, “but guess I didn’t do such a bang-up job. After she left us, he went from bad to worse and was always in some kind of trouble. For the most part, since I was a cop, I was able to bail him out each time. But when he was seventeen, he and the bunch of no-good hoodlums he hung around with got all drugged up one night while I was working and robbed a liquor store. The owner of the store was killed, and though Steve swore that he didn’t pull the trigger…” Louis’ voice trailed away.

  After a moment, he continued. “That was one time I couldn’t bail him out. He and his buddies were tried as adults and convicted of manslaughter. He served twenty years in Angola.” Louis shrugged. “He’s been out of prison now for about seven years. According to what I hear, he’s doing okay for himself. It was while he was in prison that he began painting, and after he got out, he married a woman who owned the art gallery that had been displaying his paintings. And they had a little girl. He now makes a living down in the Quarter with his paintings.

  “That painting I have—the one of the young girl. She’s my granddaughter,” he confessed. “He sent it to me along with the others.”

  “How old is your granddaughter?”

  Louis shrugged. “I guess about six.”

  “And you haven’t seen or spoken to your son since he got out?”

  With a look of pure abject misery on his face, Louis slowly shook his head. “It’s worse than that. I—I was so angry with him when he got mixed up in that killing, so humiliated—being a cop and all—that I disowned him—cut off all relationship with him. Then, the longer it went, the harder it became to swallow my pride. I haven’t seen or spoken to him since he was sent to prison twenty-seven years ago.”

  “Oh, Louis.” Charlotte was horrified. She couldn’t begin to imagine such a thing, couldn’t imagine having no contact with her son for that long a time.

  Judge not, lest ye be judged.

  The words from the Bible verse she’d once memorized popped into her head and tugged at her conscience. While it was true that she couldn’t imagine such an estrangement, to be fair, she’d never had to deal with a son convicted of murder either, she reminded herself.

  “All my fault,” he continued. “All those years wasted, and even if I try to fix it now, he probably doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. I’m just afraid it’s too late.”

  Charlotte reached out and squeezed his arm in a gesture of sympathy. “Maybe not. Didn’t you say that your son sent those paintings to you?”

  “Yeah, about a month ago.”

  “Then stop being so dense, for Pete’s sake. Can’t you see? That’s his way of reaching out to you, of trying to make amends.”

  “Maybe,” he said with a shrug.

  “So what’s the problem?”

  Louis’ Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “Would—would you go with me—I mean, if he’ll agree to seeing me, would you go along?”

  “Oh, Louis, I don’t know. It’s not really my place.”

  “Well, it is if I say it is,” he retorted indignantly.

  On Saturday, All Saints’ Day turned out to be a warm seventy degrees with plenty of sunshine. With Hank beside her and her arms full of the flowers she’d purchased, Charlotte and her son ente
red Lafayette Cemetery Number One through the Washington Street entrance.

  Cemeteries in New Orleans were unique. Elaborate aboveground tombs and minimausoleums had been erected out of necessity due to the high water table of the city.

  Charlotte paused by the bronze plaque near the entrance. “I’m amazed each time I come here,” she told Hank. “It’s hard to believe this place has been in existence since 1833.”

  Hank simply smiled at her and waited until she was ready to walk on.

  Families were already crowded around the freshly whitewashed tombs that were adorned with beautiful sprays of flowers. Though respectful, an almost festive reunion-type atmosphere prevailed among the many visitors.

  Hank’s father’s tomb was located not far from the entrance, down the second pathway. Charlotte knelt beside it and reverently placed the spray of flowers at the front of the tomb.

  “I wish I could have known him,” Hank told her as he stared at the tomb. When he added, “Known all of them,” Charlotte realized he was referring to his father’s family as well. As was customary, Hank had been buried in the same tomb as his parents and grandparents.

  Charlotte stood, then reached out and squeezed her son’s hand. “Me too, hon. Me too.”

  “Tell me about him again, Mom—about all of them—like you used to when I was a little boy.”

  It had been many many years since her son had asked about his father, and Charlotte’s throat was thick with emotion as she began to talk. “Your father was a lot like you—in looks and personality. He was about your height and build, with the same sandy-colored hair and sky-blue eyes.” She swallowed hard. “Each time I look at you, I see him, especially around the eyes.

  “He was a kind man,” she continued, “a man who truly cared about people.” She paused for a moment, then said, “I think I must have told you that he had also wanted to be a doctor. That’s the reason he went ahead and joined the Army, even before the government began drafting for Vietnam. You see, after his parents’ deaths—your grandparents’—it took most of their assets to settle their debts. Unfortunately for your father, your grandfather didn’t believe in life insurance either, so, like you, he had to make his own way in the world.”