Royal Street Reveillon

by Greg Herren

  Serena Castlemaine, who also lives in the Garden District, is a recent transplant from Dallas. Megan Dreher lives in the lower Garden District.

  The other women boast addresses that aren’t necessarily New Orleans: Rebecca Barron lives on the North Shore, and Fidelis Vandiver lives in English Turn on the West Bank.

  But all the ingredients are there for another successful Grande Dames franchise: conspicuous overconsumption, unashamed narcissism, and petty fights and arguments that basically have nothing in common with adult behavior and everything to do with junior high school mean-girl tactics. From most of what I’ve seen of these shows, it always comes down to a variation of the old “telephone” game; someone says something snarky about one of the women to another one of the women, who then tells the woman about whom it was said what was said, which leads to arguments and the other women being forced to either play peacemaker or choose sides between the two who are arguing. Lather, rinse, repeat, lather, rinse, repeat, over and over and over again. The viewers are encouraged to participate in this nonsense by reading the women’s blogs on the Diva TV website, where you can also see deleted scenes and other videos of interest. Apparently, an entire cottage industry has sprung up around these shows; numerous websites and magazines publish recaps of each episode online and encourage comments from viewers; the dames themselves are encouraged to live tweet the episodes and engage with the viewers that way. Some of the women have used these shows quite successfully to promote themselves and their businesses; their personal brand.

  The rest, apparently, just want to be on television, no matter how horrific it makes them appear to the casual viewer.

  Props are certainly due to the production team and the editors who stitched the episode together. New Orleans looks stunningly beautiful in the shots used to provide local color, whether it’s the streetcars going up St. Charles or a carriage ride in the Quarter or a barge moving up the river or the buskers in Jackson Square, the city looks lush and beautiful and inviting to tourists.

  And ultimately, maybe that’s the best we can hope for from this abominable show: that it will encourage people to come visit because it’s beautiful—even if the show makes them wary of engaging with the people who actually live here.

  “Ouch,” I said, looking up from my phone as the car slowed. We were pulling up to the gated entrance to the English Turn development. “Good thing we brought the Jaguar,” I said as we stopped outside the gatehouse. A uniformed security guard whistled as Frank put the window down.

  “That is one beautiful car,” the guard said. He was holding a clipboard. “Are you expected?”

  “We’re here to see Billy Barron,” Frank replied. “And no, he’s not expecting us.”

  “And your name?”

  “Frank Sobieski,” Frank replied, “We’re with the production staff of the Grande Dames?” He said it as though he was used to having people bow and scrape to him.

  The Jaguar was definitely a perfect prop for this performance.

  “Oh. Let me just give him a call.” He stepped back inside. We could see him through the window talking on a telephone.

  “Well, it was worth a try,” I said.

  Just as I finished saying it, the gates swung open as he stepped back outside.

  “Do you know how to find Mr. Barron’s place?” When Frank said no, he gave us directions. Frank put the Jaguar back into gear and we drove into English Turn.

  As far as new houses or McMansions go, it wasn’t so terrible. I’ve certainly seen much worse (the Philadelphia cast all lived in a similar style development along the Delaware just north of the city, and their houses were tacky—the kind of place people who grew up with nothing or poor thought meant classy. And yes, I know that sounds snobbish, but you know what I mean), but there was a newness to the whole area that I didn’t like. The houses on the left backed up to the lagoon that circled the golf course, and between houses we could see the water. Some of the houses had docks or gazebos out on the lagoon. Everything was perfectly manicured. I don’t know, I guess I’ve been spoiled by the Quarter and the Garden District, but it all seemed a little prefabricated, a little too clean, a little too nice, a little too perfect. There were trees, but no massive live oaks with enormous roots to tear up the sidewalks and driveways and the streets. Some of the houses had fountains or statues in the front yards, bushes trimmed into topiary. The lawns were lush and so green they looked like AstroTurf.

  The entire development had been built up around a golf course, so that was probably why the lawns looked like putting greens.

  Billy’s house was typical of nouveau riche Southerners with little to no taste: a two-story stone building, with two one-story wings extending on either side, an enormous front gallery with huge round stone columns. My mother sneeringly calls these houses “offensively racist Gone with the Wind wannabe clichés, and you’d think people would know better now.” The driveway curved to a three-car garage attached to the wing on the left. Dormer windows broke the ceiling line above the porch. The lawn was that same lush dark emerald green, with perfectly trimmed bushes behind white stone gravel beds running along the front of the house. We parked in the carport and rang the doorbell.

  It sounded like a bell tolling for the dead.

  This, I reflected, was an awful lot of house for one person.

  We didn’t have to wait long before the front door opened.

  “You’re not with the show,” Billy Barron said, a smile spreading across his handsome face. “But I knew the name. Great bluff, though.”

  I just stared at him, unable to speak.

  Billy Barron was, without question, one of the best-looking straight men I’d ever seen. He had what some people call star quality, others charisma; whatever you wanted to call it, he had a lot of it. I couldn’t stop looking at him. Standing in the doorway wearing only a pair of tan shorts, his stomach was flat with just a slight ripple of abdominal muscles. He wasn’t ripped, but a focus on diet would get him there in no time. His chest was perfectly shaped and strong, with a patch of dark bluish-black hair directly in the center, a trail leading down over the flat stomach to the waistband of the shorts. His eyes were a sparkling violet-blue, his thick bluish-black hair pulled back into a ponytail. His chin was cleft, his cheekbones high, and there was a knot where the cartilage of his nose met the bone; it had been broken and set badly at some point in his life. His olive face was darkened by a bluish-black shadow from not shaving. His teeth were perfect and almost blindingly white.

  “Come on in!” He waved us past him into the foyer of the big house. “Nice car!” He whistled as he shut the door behind us.

  “You knew my name?” Frank was able to speak, which was a good thing. I’d apparently lost the ability. He led us into a big room with an enormous window, opening onto the backyard with a lovely view of the lagoon beyond. It was decorated in what a bitchy decorator would call straight man cave testosterone. The furniture was dark, bulky, and heavy looking. A gigantic flat screen television was mounted on the brick above the fireplace. The only thing missing was mounted animal head trophies. “Do you mind if I ask how?”

  “Sure.” He pulled an LSU baseball jersey on, the ripples in his stomach flexing as he yanked it down. “Your nephew—he’s the one who was with Eric Brewer the night he was murdered.” He flashed that mesmerizing smile at us again and held up his big hands. He grinned at me. “And you’re Scotty Bradley, right?”

  Dumbfounded, I nodded. “How—how did you know?”

  He laughed. “Serena Castlemaine. I had drinks with her yesterday. She told me all about you guys. You’re trying to clear your nephew, which I can respect. You want to question me, right?”

  Frank and I traded glances. This was going much easier than either of us had anticipated.

  Maybe he has nothing to hide.

  “Have a seat, make yourselves at home.” We obliged by sitting down on the black leather sofa. “Can I get you something? Coffee? Water? Anything? Nothing? Okay.” He sat
down in an easy chair, his legs spread wide in that easy comfortable way of all good-looking straight men. “I’m going to be up front with you, okay? I think what Eric did to your nephew was terrible, absolutely terrible.” His teeth gleamed again. “And I didn’t kill anyone.”

  Telephone, telegram, tell Serena, I thought. Aloud I said, “Has anyone implied that you did?”

  He waved his big right hand dismissively. He was wearing one of his College World Series championship rings. “You hear things. And I don’t put anything past my stepmother.” His face darkened into a scowl. “That gold-digging whore will do anything to keep me from overturning my father’s will. You know she was just a hostess at Barron’s on St. Charles when my father met her and decided to make her wife number five?” He crossed himself. “God rest my poor mother’s soul that she didn’t live to see this.”

  In for a penny, in for a pound, I thought, diving in. “But you were having an affair with Chloe Valence?”

  “I don’t know that I’d call it an affair. Do you mind if I have something to drink? You sure you don’t want anything?” When we both demurred, he got up and grabbed a bottle of Pellegrino from the little refrigerator by the bar. “I slept with her. Probably not one of my better moments, but it was only twice, and we both agreed it would never happen again.” He opened the bottle, filled a glass, and tossed a slice of lemon into it. He sat back down on the sofa, adopting the wide-legged spread from before.

  And I became acutely aware that he wasn’t wearing underwear.

  He sighed. “This stupid fucking show. I went to one of the parties being filmed, at Margery Lautenschlaeger’s. Chloe and I had a bit much to drink, and her husband was out of town”—he held up his hands in a kind of what’s a guy going to do gesture—“and it just kind of happened.”

  “Weren’t you—um—involved with another one of the grande dames? Fidelis Vandiver?” I asked.

  “Fidelis and I have had an off-again, on-again thing for a number of years.” He shrugged. “It’s kind of a love-hate thing. We went to high school together.” He grinned. “In fact, I went to high school not only with Fid but with Megan, too. And Margery’s daughter, Amanda. And yes, Amanda and I had a thing in high school, but…” He sighed. “I know it’s not gentlemanly to say this, but Amanda…well, she’s not right in the head.” He twirled an index finger around his right temple. “I know she’s out of the hospital now, and back living with Margery…but…”

  “Rebecca said that Fidelis was also involved with your father?” I asked. “Was that not true?”

  He made a face. “Rebecca wouldn’t know the truth if it punched her in the face. No, Fid was never involved with my dad. Like I said, we’ve had this off-and-on thing. It never works out for us, but we always seem to wind up back together if, you know, we’re not involved with anyone else.”

  “You know that both Eric and Chloe were killed with blunt objects, that could have been baseball bats?” Frank asked. “And given your own history…”

  “All of my bats are present and accounted for.” Billy smiled, gesturing toward a door on the other side of the room. “My trophies and mementoes are all in that room, in cases.” He smiled. “Well, I don’t have all of my old bats, though. You know where the others are?” He leaned forward, his eyes gleaming. “My father’s house. You know, where Rebecca lives?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Seven of Wands

  Victory depends on courage

  “I guess Rebecca and Billy are pointing the finger at each other to try to get an upper hand in their fight over Steve’s estate,” I said, moaning a little as I bit into my cheeseburger. We’d both been hungry after leaving Billy’s, so we detoured to Mid-city to stop at the Five Guys on Carrollton. I’ve always been a sucker for a good bacon cheeseburger with sautéed mushrooms. Taylor introduced us all to Five Guys—as a native New Orleanian I am a horrible snob about fast food and chain restaurants. I’ll only stop at a chain when I am driving somewhere out of town. We’d all fallen in love with Five Guys, but chose to make it a special treat rather than somewhere we ate regularly.

  The Carrollton corridor—a stretch from the highway to City Park—was nothing like it had been before Katrina. Mid-city was in the process of being completely gentrified. The houses were being redone (and the property values skyrocketing) while grocery stores and pharmacies, cafés and restaurants and coffee shops now lined the once-desolate stretch of Carrollton from Jesuit High School to City Park.

  Back when I’d been a Jesuit High student, there was practically nothing out there.

  All the changes to New Orleans were a little hard to grasp sometimes.

  “Right, and that makes me tend to not believe either of them.” Frank scowled, dipping a Cajun-seasoned fry into a little paper ketchup container. “The real truth is probably somewhere in the middle. I can’t see Billy killing either Eric or Chloe, to tell you the truth. Why would he?”

  “And yet we have a former baseball star smack-dab in the middle of a case where two people were murdered with baseball bats.” I took another bite of my cheeseburger, dribbling some ketchup on my chin. “But…if I wanted to frame Billy Barron, my weapon of choice would be a baseball bat. Preferably one of his, but…” I shrugged.

  “Do you have any idea how many baseball bats there probably are in the New Orleans metropolitan area? Probably thousands—tens of thousands. Think of all the teams there are—Little League, high schools, colleges, on and on.” Frank shook his head. “You wouldn’t need one of his. Using any bat would throw suspicion on him.”

  “But how did Eric’s killer get the baseball bat up to the penthouse without being seen?” I picked up another French fry. “They’re kind of hard to hide.”

  “Good point.” Frank put the last bite of his burger in his mouth. “Christ, this food is good. Good thing it isn’t more convenient, or I’d be the size of a house.”

  I just made a face. Frank was a hard gainer, meaning he’d fought hard for all the muscle he carried on his body, and it was ridiculously easy for him to get ripped. His body was a fat-burning machine; he could eat everything in sight and burn off every calorie without gaining a pound. I used to be the same way. I always ate whatever I wanted whenever I wanted and stayed lean and trim…and then I turned forty. My metabolism had slowed down, and one morning I was horrified to realize that I had a slight roll around my middle and love handles hanging over the side of my jeans. It had become a constant struggle keeping extra weight off. I was having to retrain myself to eat better…allowing myself a treat now and then, like Five Guys. I just had to do more cardio than I was used to doing. I looked down at the remains of my double cheeseburger and sighed inwardly.

  At least we were splitting the order of fries.

  “The problem is all of these people are probably—if not directly lying to us, then coloring the truth to make themselves look good and the others look bad, which is kind of like a Grande Dames episode…trying to control their narrative.” I picked up another fry. “And we haven’t even talked to Fidelis or Megan or Margery yet—and now Margery’s daughter is also in the mix.”

  When we got home it was time to dig out our whiteboard. There were getting to be too many suspects to keep straight, and the crisscrossing stories were getting muddled.

  We headed home down Esplanade Avenue. It was barely over forty degrees, the sky gray with threatening dark clouds, the air feeling heavy with water, like it does before one of those drenching, street-flooding rains. But the houses on Esplanade were all done up for Christmas, the fences and porches covered with lights and Santa imagery, nativity scenes on the front lawns, curtains pulled back to reveal gloriously sparkling and glittering Christmas trees. Many of the street lamps were festooned with candy stripes and big red velvety bows.

  We needed to get all this cleared up soon so we could go back to enjoying the holidays. I still needed to decorate the apartment.

  I pulled out my phone and typed Eric Brewer murder into the search engine. Obviously th
e first links to pop up were coverage of the murder. There was a link to the Diva website, TMZ, popular gossip blogs about the Grande Dames shows, and various other news sites. I started clicking and scrolling through quickly. Every one of them mentioned Eric had been with a “younger man” the night he was killed and that the younger man claimed to have been drugged. None of them mentioned Taylor’s name. So far, Venus and Blaine had kept their word about not releasing his name to the media. But it wouldn’t be hard for some enterprising journalist anxious for a scoop to figure out who the young man was. Hell, Paige had been there that night—she might have seen Taylor leave with Eric. Any one of the cast or crew members there that night could leak Taylor’s name.

  Our best hope was Paige would hold out for an exclusive—which she wouldn’t get if she took his name public—and that Serena saw no advantage for herself in going public with Taylor’s name.

  I felt another headache forming between my eyes.

  Plenty of people did know Taylor was the young man in question.

  It was just a matter of time before Taylor’s name was out there.

  And all hell would break loose.

  “So far Taylor’s name has been kept out of it,” I said, slipping my phone back into my coat pocket. “Frank, we’re going to have to move fast if we want to keep it that way.”

  “I know.” Frank glanced over at me. “I’m also worried about your car.”

  “Please don’t bring that up,” I replied. “I’m in a very lovely state of denial about that.” I know it was childish to not think about it, but if the cops found blood or any other evidence in the back of the CR-V…yeah, better to deal with that when it happened.