Murder in the Garden District (Chanse MacLeod Mysteries)

by Herren, Greg

  Cordelia interrupted me. “Why did Wendell have that boy killed? Because he was involved with Alais? I don’t believe it. We weren’t racists. Having his daughter involved with a black boy might have lost him the racist vote, but—”

  I raised my hand to stop her.

  The funny thing about rich people is that, no matter how liberal they may be in their hearts, the people who work for them only exist when they choose to notice them—especially the people who work in their homes. I’d heard the front door open, heard footsteps in the hall, heard them stop. She’d been out there listening for a good ten to fifteen minutes.

  “Vernita? Will you come in here?”

  She entered the library with her head held high.

  “What does Vernita have to do with any of this?” Cordelia demanded.

  I had a theory about that.

  “What was the real problem, Vernita?” I asked gently. “Why did Wendell have such a problem with Jerrell and Alais dating that he had the boy killed?”

  “Because they were brother and sister,” she said defiantly.

  The last piece of the puzzle fell into place.

  The next few moments were chaotic. Cordelia crumpled to the floor. Janna exclaimed and rushed to her side, massaging Cordelia’s wrists and talking to her in a gentle murmur.

  Vernita gave me a sad little smile. She was beautiful, I realized, and not much younger than Cordelia. Her shoulders were bowed and her hands red and cracked from a lifetime of hard work, yet she held herself with dignity. She was slight, her skin dark, her graying hair pulled back into a tight bun.

  It hadn’t been about class, as I’d believed. I remembered looking at Jerrell’s picture and thinking he looked familiar.

  I was vaguely aware of Cordelia sitting up with Janna’s help, Janna getting her a glass of water, then helping her to her feet and into a chair.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, not taking my eyes from Vernita.

  “Fine,” Cordelia croaked. “Vernita, I know I didn’t hear you right.”

  Vernita turned her head slowly to look at her longtime employer.

  “Yes, ma’am, you heard me right. Mr. Wendell was Jerrell’s daddy.”

  “But how— How is that possible?”

  Cordelia was struggling to regain her composure.

  “He had sex with my niece, ma’am. More than once. Don’t you remember? Dinah worked here that summer I wasn’t well. She came around to help out. Mr. Wendell was engaged to Miss Grace then. If I’d had any idea what was going on, I would a put a stop to it. I didn’t know till she got pregnant.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Cordelia’s face was pale. The glass of water shook in her hand.

  “So you could do what? Buy her off, make her give her baby away?”

  Vernita didn’t even try to mask her contempt.

  “Oh, no, Mr. Wendell couldn’t keep his pants on but I worked here long enough by then to know what the deal would a been. You’d a said she was just some gold-diggin’ tramp after money. It would all be her fault.”

  She turned to me.

  “Dinah was a stupid girl. She thought Mr. Wendell would marry her. I tol’ her she might as well just slit her own throat if she tol’ him. I used to bring the boy around just to see if any of you folks noticed how much he looked like his daddy. But none of you did. To you he was just another nigger boy.

  “Then Jerrell got sick,” Vernita went on, “and she didn’t have no insurance. So Dinah tol’ Miss Grace. I was so mad at that girl. I tol’ her no good would come of it. Miss Grace gave her the money, all right, and that next day she died. I tol’ Dinah, ‘That could happen to you if you don’t keep your damn fool mouth shut.’ I don’t know if Miss Grace tol’ Mr. Wendell or not. I don’t think she did cuz Mr. Wendell wouldn’t a let it rest.”

  “And then Jerrell started seeing Alais,” I said.

  “I thought they was just friends.” Her voice shook for the first time. “Jerrell didn’t tell me the truth. If he did, I would a tol’ him. When I saw those pictures Mr. Carey took…I knew I had to stop them afore it went too far.”

  Tears streamed from her eyes, but her body remained still.

  “I didn’t know what to do. So I got his birth certificate and showed it to Mr. Wendell. I tol’ him we had to stop them afore they did something against God. Mr. Wendell, he thank me. He tol’ me he’d go talk to Jerrell. But he kept the birth certificate. He put it in the safe. And then Jerrell got killed.” Her shoulders shook. “I thought Mr. Wendell—but he was here all that weekend. He even put up a reward.”

  “But you still suspected him, didn’t you?”

  “Well, Miss Grace died after she found out, didn’t she? But I wasn’t sure. I went down to the hospital to get a copy of the birth certificate…and it was gone. No one had it anywhere. The only thing to prove my Jerrell was Mr. Wendell’s son was locked up in that safe. That convinced me Mr. Wendell had my boy killed. He didn’t want no one to know. That Monday I decide I gonna get the birth certificate back. I take Miss Janna’s gun. I come back to the house and let myself in through the kitchen like I always do. I leave my car out on the street. I heard him and Miss Janna fighting in the drawing room. I heard what she said about him having that Musgrave man do his dirty work—killing my Jerrell—for him. I wait until she go back upstairs. I walk in the drawing room and point the gun at him. I tol’ him I want Jerrell’s birth certificate and I’d kill him just as soon as look at him. He open the safe, and then come back at me. He say I never shoot him.” Her jaw set. “I pull the trigger. When he go down, I go to the safe. There was a folder with Jerrell’s name on it. I take it and run out the front door. When I get home, all that was in the folder was the birth certificate and them canceled check copies. I put them through your mail slot.”

  “And last night you killed Kenny Musgrave.”

  “I wait until that tall woman leave, and then I knock on the door. He know who I am, so he let me in. I pulled out the gun and said, ‘This for Jerrell’—and I shot him.”

  Except for Cordelia’s labored breathing, the room was silent.

  “What are you doing?” she asked as I took my phone from my pocket.

  “Calling the police.”

  “You can’t!”

  Vernita smiled at me sadly. “You go right ahead, Mr. MacLeod. I’m ready to face judgment and make my peace.”

  “You can’t,” Cordelia insisted. “I’ll pay you. Alais can never know the truth! Remember what happened when she just thought the boy died and her father was responsible. If she finds out he was her brother—what if they—You can’t.”

  She looked pleadingly at me.

  “I don’t have to tell the police why I killed Mr. Wendell, do I, Mr. MacLeod?” Vernita asked.

  I wavered for a moment. I’ve always believed the truth was more important than lies. I couldn’t think of a better example than the Sheehan family. Maybe Roger Palmer’s death had been an accident. But by covering up the truth, Cordelia had taught her son that when you have money and position and power, you can get away with murder. He’d learned the lesson well, and as a result, Grace and Jerrell were murdered when they became problems for him. Everything had come full circle with the deaths of Wendell and Kenny Musgrave. I understood why Vernita had killed them. It wasn’t only because they’d killed her grandnephew. It was because she knew they’d never pay for their crimes. There would be no justice for her Jerrell.

  The law took a dim view of vigilante justice, no matter how well deserved it was. No matter what her motivations, Vernita had broken the law and would have to pay for it. She had neither the money nor the connections to get away with it. A lawyer like Loren McKeithen could sway a jury with sympathy for an old woman of color who’d killed the white men who killed her grandnephew. The fact that Jerrell had been Wendell’s son would only work in her favor. What kind of man hired someone to kill his own blood? And Kenny Musgrave was a despicable man as well. He’d killed his own sister for money. A bla
ck jury just might let Vernita off. Yet she was willing not only to confess to what she’d done, but to protect Alais by not telling the whole truth to the police.

  It wasn’t fair. The entire thing made me sick to my stomach. Just standing in the house made me feel corrupt.

  “I’m not a lawyer, Vernita,” I said finally. “But I’m calling the police.”

  “Please. Mr. MacLeod,” Cordelia pleaded. “We have to protect Alais.”

  “With all due respect, Mrs. Sheehan, I feel badly for your granddaughter, but if I don’t call the police I’m no better than you are. And I don’t think I could live with myself knowing that.”

  As I walked out onto the porch into the sunlight, I had no doubt that the moment I’d left the room Cordelia began hatching another scheme. I suppose I couldn’t blame her. It was who she was, how she did things. I sat down on the steps and dialed Venus’s cell phone.

  Miracle of miracles, the call went through.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I filled Venus and Blaine in on everything, including Jerrell’s parentage. Before they arrived, I wasn’t sure I would. But I realized that Alais was stronger than either her stepmother or her grandmother had given her credit for. Her depression after Jerrell’s murder had been normal. Instead of letting her deal with her grief, they’d put her in the care of some psychiatrist who thought the answer was to keep her in a drugged stupor. The Alais Sheehan I’d spoken to that morning was a survivor. Her world would be rocked when she learned the truth, especially if she’d slept with Jerrell, but I was certain she could handle it. In the future, Janna and Cordelia would have their hands full with that one.

  I texted Abby that the police were at the Sheehans’ and to bring Alais home, then waited for her response: Roger, boss. I got into my car hoping I’d heard the last of this family.

  *

  There was no traffic to be seen on the way back to Paige’s, no signs of life anywhere, other than the occasional dive bar with its neon sign broadcasting OPEN as an enticement to whoever might have stayed behind to face down the storm less than twenty-four hours away. Even the side streets were empty. Apart from that, it could have been a normal summer day. The sun was shining, there were no clouds in the brilliant azure sky and it was hotter than hell.

  I switched on the radio. Ginevra had been downgraded to Category 3 but it looked as though New Orleans was going to take a direct hit, with the eye wall now projected to hit landfall at the mouth of Lake Borgne. I turned it off. Lake Borgne wasn’t really a lake. It was a wide-mouthed bay. New Orleans East sat on a low-lying peninsula with Lake Borgne to the south and Lake Pontchartrain to the north. A narrow channel called the Rigolets connected the two brackish lakes. That was the path the destructive storm surge from Katrina had followed—from the Gulf into Lake Borgne through the Rigolets into Lake Pontchartrain and into the canals penetrating the heart of the city. If that happened again, the levees would be overtopped and some would collapse. Once again, ninety percent of the city would be underwater. Those who hadn’t evacuated would be trapped on roofs. Power and communications would shut down. Hopefully, the lessons learned from the last time would prevent a repeat of the horrible week that followed. But it looked like the deathblow for New Orleans.

  My hands shook. I pulled over to the curb, got out of my car, lit a cigarette and drank in the beauty of the city.

  The first time I’d come to New Orleans was also the night I fell in love with the city. It was like nothing I’d ever seen growing up in a small town forty-five minutes north of Houston. I was eighteen. I’d just begun college. As I walked the cracked and tilted sidewalks of the French Quarter, I knew this was where I belonged. Throughout my undergraduate years at LSU, I came down from Baton Rouge as often as I could, just waiting for the day I could move here for good. My two years on the police force had showed me the dark underside of the city: the crime, the poverty, the racism, the despair and the broken system the Sheehan family epitomized. But despite all those problems, somehow the city was a joyous place that embraced everyone.

  The Mardi Gras after Katrina had been amazing. A mere five months after the storm, the city had rallied and thrown a party to show the doubters and the haters of the world that New Orleans had survived and we would endure. I remembered walking up the parade route on Fat Tuesday, wearing a costume for the first time because it seemed like the right thing to do, and seeing the crowds cheering all along St. Charles. I remembered the signs—

  504EVER and ATLANTA THANKS AND LOVES YOU NEW ORLEANS and ST. BERNARD WE’LL BE BACK—

  and T-shirts saying things like NOPD—Not Our Problem, Dude or Campaign 2006—I’m for Cookie Monster or FEMA—Fix Everything My Ass or FEMA—Find Every Mexican Available or I Stayed for Katrina and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt…and a flat screen TV and a Cadillac and a stereo…

  And the costumes! A group of women dressed as Brownies, only their sashes read Heckuva Job. A group of men dressed as UPS deliverymen sporting What can Brown do for you? on their backs. I saw incredibly flawless and over-the-top drag. It was almost too much to take in. Everyone was so happy and relaxed and having a good time laughing and dancing in the streets. What pride I’d felt in my city, and in my fellow New Orleanians. My eyes swam with tears of joy, my face ached from the huge grin I had on it all day. It was the first time since I’d evacuated that I truly believed New Orleans was going to come back, the first time it felt like New Orleans again. The magic hadn’t gone away, it just hibernated for a while.

  I threw my cigarette in the gutter and got into my car. It would take a hell of a lot more than a goddamn act of nature to kill the spirit of New Orleans. We’d gotten through it before and we’d do it again if we had to, a thousand times over.

  *

  The only car parked on Polymnia was Paige’s battered old Toyota. The backseat was piled high, but she’d left space for Nicky’s carrier. Maybe the marshals were right about Vinnie. I let myself in the gate and walked back to Paige’s apartment. She was sitting on her steps, smoking a cigarette and crying. When she saw me, she wiped her face and forced a smile.

  “So, how’d it go?”

  I sat down beside her and put my arm around her.

  “Case closed. It’s in Venus and Blaine’s hands now. Are you okay?”

  “A little overwhelmed, I guess. Ginevra turned a bit, but it’s worse than before.”

  “I heard it on the radio,” I said.

  “Not again, Chanse. It can’t happen again.”

  “It might keep turning,” I said, giving her a squeeze. “How many times before has that happened? Remember Ivan? And Jorges? Just keep thinking good thoughts.”

  There’s something to be said for comforting another person. The more I talked, the more confidant I felt myself that Ginevra would keep turning west.

  She put her head on my shoulder.

  “I don’t know if I can go through it all again, Chanse.”

  “We can handle it. And this time we know what to expect. The only thing I remember about getting out the last time was the shock and horror. It doesn’t feel the same this time. Come on, let’s go inside and watch some death-and-destruction television.”

  The Weather Channel showed a long line of cars on I-10 West, moving at a crawl out of the city. A pretty blond woman with a serious expression told us the evacuation was going smoothly. There were some snarls in traffic exiting the city, but once the contraflow lanes were reached it went smoothly. Baton Rouge was now estimated at five to six hours away. The latest report from the National Hurricane Center showed Ginevra was still Category 3. Unfortunately, this had not lessened the projected storm surge it carried before it. Although the Army Corps of Engineers had stated that the levees damaged by Katrina had been repaired and could withstand a Category 3 storm surge, city residents were not reassured. All over the South, National Guard units had been called to duty. Relief supplies were being stockpiled and readied for transport.

  Paige hit the mute button. “I think we should wait a
few more hours before we hit the road,” she said calmly, lighting a cigarette. “Let the traffic die down some more.”

  “It should lighten up by then,” I agreed, not taking my eyes from the television.

  “I could really use a drink,” she added. “But…”

  I didn’t need to point out that it was a bad idea.

  “I guess I should call my sister,” I said. I’d been delaying all day, even though I knew she’d be worried about me.

  “Use my landline. I’m going to start emptying out the refrigerator.”

  My sister picked up on the second ring. “Hey Daphne, it’s Chanse,” I said.

  “Chanse!” Daphne half-shrieked. “I’ve been trying to call you all day! Please tell me you’re on the road out of there!”

  “I’ll probably leave in a couple of hours.”

  “You’re coming here,” Daphne asserted. “I’ll get the guest room ready and you can stay as long as you need to. I won’t take no for an answer.”

  “Thanks, Daphne. How’s Mom doing?”

  “Better.” She paused. “It meant a lot to her to see you. She’s worried about this storm. I’ll let her know you’re staying here.”

  “Thanks. I’ll call when I’m leaving. I’ll send a text if I can’t get through.”

  “Don’t thank me,” she said. “We’re family.”

  “Talk to you soon.”

  Family.

  Mothers.

  When Daphne had called three weeks ago to tell me our mother had cancer and was dying, I hadn’t wanted to go. I hadn’t seen my family since the day I packed my car and left for LSU. I’d been so exhilarated when I passed the city limits sign heading south, as though I’d finally gotten out of prison. I was never going back to that trailer park on the bad side of town. I didn’t care if I ever saw my father again. He downed a six-pack of beer every night after getting home from the oil fields. His temper was uncertain and he wasn’t afraid to use violence to vent it. And my mother, who never intervened when it happened. She always smelled of sour alcohol and didn’t care how she looked. High school had been a misery until my talents on the football field made the other kids forget my worn-out Sears Roebuck clothing and my status as trailer trash. No, I was never going back, I swore as I took the on-ramp to I-10 and said goodbye to Cottonwood Wells and my family forever.