by Herren, Greg
My heart was pounding. I started jogging, to burn off adrenaline. Calliope Street, the feeder road for the highway, was like a parking lot jammed with cars packed full of belongings, pets, and children. I weaved my way through them, focusing on the tall monument at Lee Circle, avoiding eye contact with passengers. Just as I got across, I spotted a little black girl about seven years old, her hair twisted into three or four braids ending in beads sticking out from her scalp, a look of terror on her face. I gave her what I prayed was a reassuring smile, then looked down and moved faster.
Meredith Cole was sitting on the hood of the only car on Julia Street, a silver Honda Accord parked in front of the Allegra Gallery, smoking a cigarette. She flicked it into the street when she saw me. She was wearing flip-flops, a yellow LSU T-shirt, and purple LSU sweatpants.
“Thank you for coming,” she said. “I didn’t know who else to call.”
“Tell me what happened,” I responded, hoping that concentrating on work would calm my jangled emotions.
“I was getting ready to leave this morning. I’m going to my sister’s in Baton Rouge.” Her voice shook a bit. “I realized I’d left my wallet on my desk last night, I was in such a rush to get home. When I got here and put my key in the gallery door, it was already unlocked. I knew immediately something was wrong. I didn’t want to go inside. I tried to call the police, but the circuits were busy. I needed to leave, and I needed my WALLET!”
She screamed the last few words and began sobbing hysterically.
Hating myself, I slapped her.
She gaped at me. Her knees buckled and I caught her, pushing her gently backward until she bumped against the car. I heaved her up until she was sitting on the hood.
“You hit me,” she accused.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Are you okay now?”
“I’m all right.”
“Please finish your story.”
“I went inside. There was all this blood. Kenny was lying on the floor in the middle of it.”
My phone rang. I pressed the message button and read Venus’s text.
“The police are on their way,” I said softly. “You’ve had a shock. Stay here and get hold of yourself while I look inside.”
I left her sitting on the car.
All the gallery lights were on. I took my shirt off, wrapped it around my hands, pushed the door open and carefully stepped inside. There were no footprints anywhere, nothing I could disturb.
Musgrave was wearing the same clothes he’d worn when I’d seen him yesterday. His shirt was covered in blood, and had two bullet holes in it. His mouth was open. His lifeless eyes stared widely at the ceiling, a look of shock on his face. He hadn’t been expecting death. The pool of blood was drying. He’d been dead a while.
I didn’t waste sympathy on him. He was a murderer, even if I couldn’t prove it at the moment.
I took pictures of everything with my phone, then went outside to wait for Venus.
Chapter Twelve
The gates to the Sheehan mansion were open when I parked beside the silver Mercedes Vernita was loading with suitcases. The backseat of the black BMW next to it was packed to the roof. I parked and got out of my car.
“Evacuating?” I asked.
Vernita nodded. “Did you find Miss Alais?” She didn’t look up from what she was doing.
“I’ve talked to her,” I said.
“Well, that’s for the best then. ’Bout time the truth came out.”
“Is Miss Janna here?”
“She’s in the library with Miss Cordelia. She drove down from Baton Rouge this morning.”
“Thanks, Vernita. I’m truly sorry about Jerrell.”
“Thank you.”
The front door was ajar, so I let myself in. The door to the drawing room was closed. In the library, I could see Janna in the wingback chair. I rapped my knuckles on the door a couple of times, to announce my presence. No response.
“We need to talk,” I said, and walked into the room.
Janna Sheehan looked like she hadn’t slept in days. Her hair was carelessly tied back, and she’d made no effort to conceal the dark smudges under her eyes with makeup. Her worn-looking gray fleece sweats had a hole at the right knee. Her feet were bare. She sat in the wingback chair with her legs curled beneath her, staring into her sweating glass of iced tea as though it could show her the future if she stared hard enough.
Even grande dame Cordelia seemed worse for wear, sitting at the desk with a glass of straight Scotch in her right hand. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn she’d put on her makeup without a mirror. Wisps of her usually immaculate hair rebelled against her hairspray. She wore a dove gray skirt and jacket over a white silk blouse, but no jewelry and no gloves. Her right calf had a run in the stockings.
I almost felt sorry for her.
Almost.
“Have you found Alais?” she asked.
Ignoring the question, I sat down and confronted them with the holes in their stories.
“I told you it wouldn’t work, Cordelia,” Janna said. “You’re not as good at this as you used to be.”
“Shut up, Janna,” Cordelia snapped. She sounded defeated.
Janna’s response caught me off guard. “What really happened that night?” I asked her. “The truth, please. It’s time for the lies to stop.”
“Keep quiet, Janna!” Cordelia warned.
“It’s no good, Cordelia. We should have just told the truth from the beginning. Alais wasn’t in her right mind. That was the way we should have gone with it, scandal or no scandal. It’s always better to tell the truth.”
“What do you know about the truth?” Cordelia sneered. “You’ve told so many lies you can’t even keep them straight anymore. Since you’re such a fan of the truth, why don’t you tell him who Carey’s father is?”
Janna flushed. “It isn’t relevant.”
“Isn’t it?” Cordelia sipped her Scotch.
“Actually, it isn’t,” I interjected. “I don’t care who Carey’s father is.”
Janna smiled, inclining her head to me in a slight, almost mocking bow.
“Thank you, Mr. MacLeod.”
She looked at her mother-in-law.
“The jig’s up, Cordelia.”
“What did you and Wendell argue about that night?” I asked. “And before you lie to me again, I know Wendell got home shortly after nine, not at eleven-thirty.”
“They argued about her baby, isn’t that right?” Cordelia hissed. “He knew it wasn’t his, and he told her he was going to get a divorce and take the children away.”
Janna leaped to her feet, knocking her iced tea off the side table. A puddle spread on the floor in the shattered glass. She was breathing hard.
“That’s not true, you stupid, miserable old woman!”
“People thought I hated her because she wasn’t good enough for Wendell,” Cordelia went on, red spots appearing on her cheeks. “I didn’t care that her father was a janitor. What I cared about was my son marrying a slut without the morals of a common alley cat. Isn’t that what happened that night, Janna? When you told him you were pregnant, didn’t he tell you he wasn’t going to pass your little bastard off as his own? Isn’t that why you killed him?”
A slow smile spread across Janna’s face as she sat down again in her chair.
“I take it back, Cordelia. You’re still very good at this kind of thing. But I didn’t kill Wendell—and he knows.” She turned to me. “You found Alais, didn’t you? And she’s talked?”
I nodded, playing along.
“Game over, Cordelia.”
Her mouth worked slightly, but she said nothing. Then her shoulders sagged and she crumpled in her chair. Her hands came to her face, and for just a moment her shoulders shook. When she took her hands away, she was no longer Cordelia Spencer Sheehan, head of one of the most powerful families in Louisiana, but just a sad old woman broken under her burdens. It was horrible to watch, but I couldn’t look away.
“She can’t go to jail,” she said, her voice quavering. “She wasn’t in her right mind. She hasn’t been all summer.”
Janna got up from her chair, sat down next to Cordelia and put her arms around her. Cordelia lowered her head on Janna’s shoulder. Janna stroked her hair.
I found it hard to believe what I was seeing. I couldn’t stop staring at the two women.
Janna looked at me. “What’s next?” she said.
“What really happened that night, Janna?” I asked.
“Wendell got home around nine,” she said. Her voice was strong and authoritative. “I was in the drawing room. He’d been drinking.”
“You were waiting for him, weren’t you? And you had the gun.”
“I didn’t take the gun. I was going to leave him. I was going to get a divorce. You see the damage he did to Alais and Carey. I wasn’t about to let him do that to another child.” She looked at Cordelia. “He laughed at me, told me if I left, he’d see to it that I never saw the children again. But I had an ace of my own to play.”
“You knew he’d been behind Jerrell’s death,” I said. “And you threatened to expose him.”
“It was a bluff. I didn’t have any proof. But it worked. It scared the crap out of him. I told him I’d also charge him with raping me, with physically abusing me, spraining my wrist. I told him if he didn’t let me and the children go, not only would he never get elected to public office again, he’d go to jail.”
Another piece clicked into place. I returned her smile.
“You’re still lying, Janna.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You didn’t just suspect he’d had Jerrell Perrilloux killed. You had a private eye of your own. He volunteered in the campaign office.” I grasped for the name Rory Delesdernier had given me. “Dave Zeringue.”
“That’s not his real name,” Janna said. “But yes, he got the evidence for me.”
“And you gave Wendell copies of it. Copies of checks going back ten years, made out to Kenny Musgrave.”
She looked genuinely confused. “I don’t know anything about that.”
Cordelia raised her head wearily, also confused.
“Jerrell Perrilloux? What does Vernita’s nephew have to do with anything? Why would Wendell have him killed?”
“Who knows why Wendell did anything?” Janna replied bitterly. “I just assumed it was because he was black.”
I looked at Cordelia. “You didn’t know Alais was involved with him?”
Cordelia’s face went white. “I didn’t know—about Alais, or his murder.”
Janna patted her hand again.
“I knew that, Cordelia. If you’d had anything to do with it, it wouldn’t have been so easy to get the evidence. There would have been no evidence to find.”
She got up for a glass of water.
“Wendell didn’t pull the trigger himself,” she explained. “He was at least that smart. He used his usual fixer.”
“Kenny Musgrave,” I said.
“He sent Kenny to Oxford to kill that boy. My detective found the gun, he traced the money transfer, everything. He gave me all the evidence that afternoon. It was my leverage. Wendell argued, but he agreed to my demands. It was either that or jail. I left him in the drawing room, went upstairs to my room, and locked the door. That’s when I noticed my gun was missing. I wanted to have it ready, in case he got even drunker. I didn’t trust him. I wasn’t going to wind up at the bottom of the stairs with my neck broken, like Grace did.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Cordelia said hoarsely.
“I should have,” Janna said. “I didn’t know…Alais must have overheard us arguing.”
“She heard everything,” I confirmed.
“That poor, poor girl,” Janna responded. “It must have been a shock. No wonder she did what she did.”
I ignored this. “What happened next?”
“I stayed in my room until I heard the gunshot. I went downstairs and saw Alais standing with the gun in her hands. I may have said something. I don’t remember. I was so shocked I wasn’t thinking clearly. I don’t know how long I stood there.”
“I heard the shot and knew something horrible had happened.” Cordelia’s voice shook. “I didn’t know what Janna was planning. I ran down the stairs and saw them both standing there, and I knew I had to take charge. Alais was about to fall to pieces and Janna was in shock. I took the gun away from Alais and told Janna to get her upstairs. I wiped the gun free of prints and checked to see if Wendell had a pulse. He didn’t. I fired the gun into the floor.”
“When I came back down, Cordelia told me what to say when the police arrived.” Janna continued the narrative. “I told her I didn’t think the two of us accusing each other would work, that she was crazy for firing the gun.”
With an effort of will, Cordelia straightened herself into her familiar rigid posture.
“Like I was going to allow you to implicate yourself? Risk having you tried while carrying my grandson?”
“Alais didn’t kill her father,” I told them.
Their heads swiveled to me in shock.
“What?” Cordelia said.
“But we saw her.”
“You didn’t see her pull the trigger.”
I turned to Cordelia. “Did it never occur to you that the story you concocted—that you walked in, saw Wendell lying there and picked up the gun—is exactly what Alais did?”
Neither woman answered me.
“What was in the safe?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” Janna replied. “I never had access to it.”
“Cordelia?” I said.
She shook her head.
“Wendell changed the combination several months ago. Before that? Stocks, money, some papers. Nothing out of the ordinary. I just assumed Wendell had opened it that night before Alais shot him. I inventoried the contents for the police, since the safe was open. As far as I could tell, nothing was missing. And since the jewelry and money were still there…”
“Alais didn’t shoot Wendell,” I said. “Someone else was in the house that night. After Janna left him, they forced Wendell to open the safe, then shot him. Does either of you recognize these?”
I opened my bag and tossed the photocopied checks on the table. Janna shook her head and passed them to Cordelia.
“Kenny Musgrave.” She spat out the words.
“Kenny Musgrave claimed that Alais saw Wendell kill Grace. According to Kenny, that was why Wendell released Grace’s trust and wrote these checks every month after she died. Musgrave was a liar. Alais wasn’t even here the night her mother died. Care to clear that up, Cordelia?”
Cordelia’s face was a mask.
“We were in Europe when Grace died. I always thought it was a tragic accident.”
“You never once thought about how similar Grace’s death was to Roger Palmer’s? It never occurred to you that one murder served as the blueprint for the other? I find that hard to believe. Grace was planning to leave Wendell. She saw a divorce lawyer that very afternoon. She was going to take Alais with her. But she made one major mistake. She told her brother what she was going to do.”
Cordelia’s expression never changed.
“Kenny was always looking for a leg up,” I went on. “I suspect he’d done Wendell’s dirty work for him before. I don’t know if we’ll ever know exactly what happened—whether Wendell ordered Kenny to kill Grace or if Kenny did it on his own initiative. Whatever the truth is, Kenny got his timing wrong. Wendell would never have used his mistress as an alibi for Grace’s death. I also don’t understand why Wendell thought Grace had to die. A divorce wouldn’t have hurt his career. Politicians nowadays get divorced all the time, and still get elected.”
“I suspected something.” Cordelia said finally. “But I didn’t want to know.”
“How many of Wendell’s murders did you cover up for him? Or just look away from?” I asked casually. I was enjoying watching the old woman squi
rm. “I know about three of them. How many more were there?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I ticked them off on my fingers. “The first was Roger Palmer. Then your daughter-in-law, Grace. Then Jerrell Perrilloux. Alais thinks Jerrell was killed because he was related to your housekeeper. I don’t buy that. I think it was because he was black, and Wendell didn’t like the idea of mixed-race grandkids any more than you did.”
Cordelia glared at me, her posture remaining rigid.
“Grace, too?” Janna said, bewildered. “I guess I was lucky Monday night.” She gave Cordelia a malicious smile. “Answer him, Cordelia. I’d like to know myself.”
Cordelia poured herself a Scotch from the decanter on a sideboard, then raised her glass to the portrait of her husband on the wall, took a drink and turned to the two of us.
“Roger Palmer was an accident. It wasn’t my idea to cover it up. Bobby was afraid of the scandal. When Wendell called that night…Sure, there would have been a scandal and it might have hurt Bobby’s administration, but I thought covering it up was a mistake. The truth has a way of coming out.”
She sat down across from me.
“He was my only child, Mr. MacLeod. I don’t expect you to understand.”
“What’s to understand? You made yourself an accessory after the fact. I doubt any jury would convict you. I doubt you’d even be prosecuted. It’s amazing how the rich and powerful can get away with murder.”
“Roger Palmer was an accident,” she insisted.
“Grace wasn’t an accident,” I countered. “Why else would Wendell release the trust she left for Musgrave? Why would Wendell have paid him over half a million dollars in ten years, if not as payment for murder?”
“I’d like to know that myself,” Janna said.
Cordelia emptied the Scotch. “I had my suspicions, of course. It was almost an exact reenactment of the story we came up with for Roger. But Wendell always insisted it had happened that way—that she tripped on the stairs. And Grace left no trust for Kenny Musgrave.”
“I guess we’ll never know for sure,” I said. “Wendell certainly felt the need to pay him off. Given that Wendell paid Musgrave to kill Jerrell—”