by Julie Smith
"I gather you don't think much of your brother-in-law."
"Oh, completely wrong. Fine fellow. Charming fellow. Anyone my dad hated can't be all bad."
Skip's heart speeded up.
"But don't get too excited." He shrugged. "There weren't all that many people he liked."
"Your dad had enemies?"
Grady looked startled. "The kind who'd kill him, you mean?"
Skip nodded.
"Well, I never thought of it that way. He was irascible. You don't kill people for that, do you?"
"You tell me."
"Tell you what? Tell you I did it? What is this?"
Skip said nothing.
"Look, some thug broke in here and killed him. What could be more obvious?"
"In that case, what happened to Reed and Sally and Dennis?"
Grady's face, so facile, so obviously trying to betray no emotion, went slightly pale again. "I don't know. I don't want to think about it."
Neither do I, she thought. The Heberts were a prominent family. She didn't know how much money they had, but it might seem reasonable to someone that they'd pay a good-sized ransom for a kidnapped member. Perhaps Arthur's murder was the result of a kidnap gone wrong. But then, why take the remaining three when one would do?
Because they knew the kidnapper's face.
Which doesn't bode well for their future.
Sugar was beginning to come around again, talking quietly to Nina. Skip addressed the younger woman: "Do you know if Reed or Dennis had a gun?"
Sugar said, "I told you—" but Nina interrupted, smiling, shaking her head. "They wouldn't be caught dead with a gun. Neither one of them. Dennis—um, lost a relative once .... " She let her voice trail off, apparently thinking of something too regrettable to mention.
"I already told you that," Sugar said; it sounded a lot like a whine.
"How about Arthur?""Arthur?"
Skip nodded.
"Arthur had a gun."
"Where did he keep it?"
"In a safe in his office. Here, I mean. In the room he called his office."
"Would you mind telling Mr. Gottschalk? Our crime lab man."
"Of course not."
Skip smiled sweetly at Sugar. "Will you be all right alone?"
Sugar looked a little disoriented, as if things were moving too fast for her. "I guess so. You mean tell him now?" She put a hand on her chest.
Skip couldn't tell if she was faking or not, but she nodded at Grady. "You can go with her if you like—just to the porch. An officer will meet you there."
She wanted some time with Nina. "I feel for them," she said, nodding at Grady and Sugar.
Nina simply shook her head, as Skip had seen dozens of friends and relatives do when confronted with death.
"Have you worked for them long?"
"A few years."
"I gather from Grady the old man was difficult."
She shrugged. "Grady's not so easy himself."
"And Mrs. Hebert?"
"Complicated. I feel sorry for her."
"Why?"
"Arthur treated her like dirt, for one thing. For another, she's got some real little emotional knots."
"What sort?"
"She doesn't really have a lot of self-esteem." Phillips thought a moment. "And I guess she thinks she can get it by pretending."
Nina had a maddening way of throwing out enticing generalities that made little sense initially. "Pretending what?" Skip asked.
"Whatever. It varies."
Skip still didn't get it, but she couldn't stay there. There was too much to cover in a hurry. "Do you know the family pretty well?"
To her surprise, Nina snorted. "I'd say so. Grady and I were an item once, God help me." She paused here. "Reed and I are best friends. And Dennis is my cousin."
"Dennis! But I thought—" She stopped, but Nina made her complete the sentence. "I thought he was white."
"Oh, he is, I guess. He's from a white branch of the family, anyway. We didn't grow up together—I didn't even know about the Fouchers; the white ones. Dennis looked me up when we were already grown." She snorted again. "He wanted money."
"Was this before or after you knew the Heberts?"
"Before. He introduced me years later. What you have to understand is he was a different person then. He was an addict."
"I see."
"Oh, there never was any harm in him; not a bit. He's a gentle soul—a very sweet man." She stopped and stared at the wall.
"Lord, lord."
"What is it?"
"I was just thinking how much he and Grady are alike. Passive. Sweet, but ineffectual."
Grady hadn't struck Skip as sweet, but she kept her mouth shut.
"No wonder Reed and I hit it off so well. We're like mirror images, one black, one white. Otherwise, we could be twins. Well, no, not exactly, I'm more of a rebel than she is.
"Good lord, Goody Two-Shoes is more of a rebel than she is.
"But how we're alike is—we're real obsessive. Can't rest till everything's done; and done perfectly.
"But her daddy criticized everything she did, and to tell you the truth"—she dropped her voice—"her mama's not much different. Reed never steps outside the lines they draw, and in the end she can never really believe she can do anything very well. But of course she's a whiz. Terrific mother, great cook, runs her house, runs the restaurant, supports Dennis in his little venture."
"A nursery, isn't it?"
"Yeah. That's what I mean about him being a gentle soul. Loves plants to death." Something in her voice sounded like contempt.
"Reed sounds like she's wound pretty tightly."
Nina shrugged. "I guess. She's so busy being nice to everybody you wouldn't notice."
Paul Gottschalk came out, trailed by the two Heberts. He said, "The gun's there all right. I'd be surprised if it's been fired."
Skip nodded. "Thanks, Paul. I'm going to leave you folks now."
She wanted to examine the crime scene. "But Mrs. Hebert, I need you to walk with me through the house when we're done, to see if anything's missing. Are you thinking of staying with friends?"
"I might just stay at Reed and Dennis's house—I don't think they'd mind, do you?" She looked at Grady, holding her hands at breast level, rather like a prairie dog. She was beginning to look tired and very frightened. Skip thought the shock was starting to wear off.
Grady said, "My hovel certainly isn't suitable."
"Do you think you could maybe . . . She let it hang, clearly not wanting to ask her son for something.
Grady looked meaningfully at Nina, and Skip realized he wanted her to come to his rescue. Nina ignored him. Finally, he said, "Yes, Mother, I'll stay with you," speaking not nearly so gently as the circumstances called for. To Skip, he said, "Can I take her there and bring her back when you call?"
"Sure, but one last thing. Can you point out Reed and Dennis's car?"
"Of course."
He and Skip walked up and down the street. "It's not here."
"It's not?"
"It's a beige Mercedes sedan—do you see one?"
She didn't. She handed out her card, told everyone to call immediately if they saw or heard from Reed and Dennis, then said good-bye and went into the house.
The district officers who'd checked out Reed and Dennis's, and Dennis's parents' house, reported no sign of any member of the Foucher family. Skip put out a bulletin for them and their car, asking officers who spotted them to contact her immediately.
Because it was her case, it was her job to stay with the body till the coroner took it away. She was standing in the dining room, staring at the carnage, when Paul Gottschalk joined her.
"What do you make of it?"
"I give up. You?"
"Well, I've got a theory. We'll have to see if it checks out, but here's what I think. He was shot first in the right leg—in the groin, actually, and the bullet hit his femoral artery. Blood spurted all over the floor, and the impact threw him back
and twisted him toward the right, toward the wall, where he touched his hand to the wound, then to the wall to steady himself." He pointed to the handprint.
"Then more blood spurted all over the wall—that's why it looks like a knife fight in here. And then he turned around, he might have even walked a couple of steps, and that time he got shot in the chest."
Skip nodded, about to say something, but Gottschalk, strange bird, simply walked away looking satisfied.
When the body had been removed, Skip called Sugar to come examine her house. Nothing was missing.
* * *
The last step was to canvass the neighbors, a task she dreaded. People in the Garden District, with its mansions and its private patrol service, were probably the most frightened of crime in the whole city. She didn't want to look at their dilated eyes and tight lips as they pressed her for details, as they wrung their manicured hands and begged her to tell them how to protect themselves.
She didn't have the least idea how to reassure them, and right now she didn't have time either.
As it happened, the neighbors on the right were on vacation, according to their own right-hand neighbors. The ones on the left had been out at the time of the shooting, and the ones across the street had been closeted in their air-conditioned house.
Two doors down, however, on the Heberts' side of the street, Mrs. Gandolfo did think she'd heard a shot, had even peeked out through her curtains. She called her neighbors, the Heberts' left-hand ones, and getting no answer, dialed the Heberts. A young man answered and said everything was fine and he hadn't heard a thing. Reassured, she'd given up.
"When you peeked out," Skip said, "did you notice any cars parked in front of the Heberts' house?"
"Not really," said Mrs. Gandolfo. "No more than usual, anyway. Maybe a beige one, I guess, or white. And there might have been another one, but I really can't remember anything about it. You know how your mind registers something, but you don't necessarily know what?"
"Can you say anything else about the beige one?"
"No. No, I can't. Except it might have been kind of small."
A Mercedes sedan was at least middle-sized, in Skip's view.
3
Pulses pounding a wild tattoo in her ears, the wheel slick from her sweat, Reed drove the Mercedes like a sports car, finding it clumsy on the turns.
My fault, she thought. Dennis could do this better. Oh fuck, oh fuck, anybody could.
Blind with her own tears, she tried not to think, just drive.
Oddly, the streets were nearly deserted, or the Tercel might have hit another car. She might have as well; a cop might have stopped either one.
But it was a lazy night in the Big Easy—everyone was home from work and staying in, it looked like.
She thought she could remember these words: "If anybody follows me, I'll shoot them through the head, I swear to God I will."
But she wasn't sure. At the time, the words hadn't even registered. Nothing had. Thought had taken a holiday. Reed simply acted on automatic pilot.
Her feet had worked. It was that simple.
She had given chase, seen Sally thrown roughly into the Tercel, as if car seats hadn't been invented, and gotten there too late. The car door was locked.
Reed was getting flashbacks of the scene, as if they were part of a dream. In her mind she saw herself as she couldn't have in real life: tearing out the door, nearly falling down on the front steps and pausing to right herself, losing precious milliseconds, tugging at the car door, through the window seeing Sally's small blond head hit the door on the other side, calling out her name—Sally!—before hearing the Tercel's ignition. The key had been left in it, ready to go.
Reed had had to grapple for her own extra key from under the right fender, a tiny delay that had made the difference. Then began the chase, Reed still on automatic, just doing what she had to do to get her child back. She paid no attention at all to where she was being led, what neighborhoods she went through, where she got on the expressway—she just drove; and now these scenes had started flashing, perhaps the first sign of sanity returning. Could this really be she, Reed Hebert? What did she think she was doing?
She thought she should stop and call the police, but she knew she wasn't about to. She might not be able to find a phone booth. If she did, 911 might be busy; might not answer right away. She'd lose the Tercel.
What if she had stayed at her parents' and called the police from there? That was the only sane thing to do, but she hadn't thought of it; hadn't thought anything at the time, had simply been the burden her feet were carrying. But it now occurred to her that she wouldn't have known anything about the car if she had, not its color or model or license number, all of which she knew now.
So I must be doing the right thing.
She neither believed that nor disbelieved it. It was just something to think while she drove.
They were near Bayou St. John, she noticed.
She thought: This isn't right. What the hell are we doing here? She realized that she thought she understood why Sally had been taken, but a place like this didn't begin to enter into it. Gentilly. The posh, nouveau part, about two blocks from near-slums.
The Tercel stopped in front of an enormous house, an absurdly huge house, as big as any on St. Charles Avenue, built of gray stone and surrounded by a fence of iron bars standing dignified as deacons. A group of men walked out of the gate and turned left on the sidewalk.
The Tercel driver got out of the car and, clutching Sally, raced to the gate, now being closed by a man in a suit who still managed somehow to look like a servant. Sally was screaming: "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!"
Reed certainly wasn't going to bother to park. She simply abandoned her car in the street. As she rounded it, she found herself staring straight into the eyes of one of the men in the little group, who had all turned toward the screams.
It was Bruce Smallwood, whom she knew from her pleadings before the casino board. With him was Lafayette Goodyear, another member of the board, and she thought a third was Barron Piggott, a colleague of theirs, but she couldn't be sure.
Thank God.
She closed her eyes for a second, in relief or silent prayer.
"Bruce! Lafayette! Help!"
None of them moved.
Men she had been to lunch with, sat across a table from.
Smiled for.
Barron had even tried to grab her thigh, but she'd seen it coming and crossed her legs.
The kidnapper was screaming above Sally: "Goddammit, let me in. Get Mo. Tell Mo I'm here, goddammit. Who the fuck do you think you are?"
The entire group of able-bodied men, civic leaders, stood as if nailed to the spot, looking as frightened as she was.
If her child were to be rescued, it was up to her.
She reached for Sally, but the kidnappers body was in the way. She closed her fists and began beating that body as hard as she could—the shoulders, the back, the kidneys, she hoped. But she didn't feel the slightest yield.
"Give her back to me, goddammit! Sally, baby, it's okay. Mommy's here. Everything's going to be—" She couldn't get the last word out. She had intended to say "fine," but she was out of breath. And besides, she hadn't the heart. She didn't believe it. Woefully, she looked again at the group of men.
One had broken from the group, Lafayette, the only black one, who was running toward her, finally moving his fucking ass. But the gate swung open and the kidnapper fell away from Reed. .
Startled, she swiveled and saw that two men had pulled the kidnapper through the gate, Sally kicking as hard as she could. They pulled Reed in too.
* * *
Grady drove his mother to Dennis and Reed's, Sugar sitting quietly instead of running her mouth as usual, eyes facing front; no drama. That puzzled him, but he was thoroughly undone when she climbed the stairs without a word and retreated, dazed, to one of the guest rooms. Following with her hastily packed bag, he watched her turn on the television and lie down on the bed, all her clo
thes on and no expression in her eyes. He had never seen her like that, and the shock moved him to solicitude.
"Mother? Mother, can I get you anything?" His voice sounded oddly meek to his own ears.
Sugar didn't answer.
She wasn't the sort who had to be cajoled. She wanted what she wanted, and it was always the same thing—lots of attention, someone to listen to her, to rant to even if they finally yelled back. She would cry and fall apart, but she would always provoke the same situation again—they'd listen till they couldn't take it anymore, they'd yell back at her, anything to get her out of their face, and then she'd cry and fall apart again. She craved human contact like a child who'd been raised by wolves, and it was usually about as smooth for her.
She sometimes liked a nip at bedtime, for soporific purposes, she said.
"Shall I get you a drink?"
"I don't really think I care for anything." She sounded unconvinced.
"How about some Bailey's Irish Cream?"
She loved that stuff, probably because it tasted like dessert.
"All right," she said, as if doing him a huge favor.
He raced down to look for some, relieved to be doing something; anything.
There wasn't any.
When he came back upstairs, he saw that she'd taken off her shoes, which he took for a good sign. "Mother, I'll have to go out and get some. Will you be all right for a minute?"
She looked at him. "I guess so." He thought perhaps she was afraid.
"Are you sure?"
"I guess so."
He had to get out of there. "I'm putting the alarm on. Don't worry, no one can get in."
He had in mind to go instantly to the House of Blues, but in the end he couldn't bring himself to run out on her. For one thing, he had to take her back for the damned house check.
He got the liqueur and returned to find the phone ringing: the cop asking them to come back. He took his mother home, brought her back, and then utterly amazed himself, the way he spoke to her—the way a good son was supposed to; the way he never did.