No Mardi Gras for the Dead

by D. J. Donaldson

  Frightened, the dog lurched from his master’s arms and scrambled up the escalator to the mezzanine, where he dashed for safety, his chain bouncing behind him. For a fleeting instant, Kit was in shock. A heartbeat later, she realized that the object at her feet was a man lying chest-down but with one leg bent at an impossible angle, his head twisted backward so that his scalp rubbed against the side of the escalator. Through the tortured expression on his face, Kit recognized Arthur Jordan.

  *

  * *

  Broussard met Gatlin at the Winchester’s front entrance. Gatlin looked at the old pathologist with an appraising eye and said, “Good-looking shirt. What have we got and how’s it happen you’re here before me?”

  Broussard pointed at the top of the escalator, both sides of which had been shut off by the maintenance crew. “He’s up there.”

  Ignoring the cop who was making sure that civilians took a different route to the mezzanine, Gatlin started up what was normally the down escalator, closely followed by Broussard, who gave him a quick overview of the situation.

  Jordan lay about where he’d been deposited by the escalator. He had been moved only as much as was necessary for Broussard to determine that he was dead. He was covered by a sheet, brought by a maid at the request of the shaken hotel manager. Two uniformed cops kept away the crowd that had gathered.

  Broussard lifted the sheet and Gatlin bent over to look at the body, which had a vine clutched tightly in one hand.

  “He was alive when he went over the sixth-floor railing,” Broussard said.

  Gatlin looked up. Above a short wall topped by a wood and brass railing, each floor opened onto the thirty-story atrium like a balcony. Set into the wall below the railings were narrow planters whose contents cascaded in leafy tendrils down the sides of the atrium.

  “Damned goofy way to build a hotel, if you ask me,” Gatlin growled. He looked at Broussard. “Why’d you say he was alive when he took the spill? It’s what I’d expect.”

  “We expected to meet him in his rooms.”

  Gatlin pawed the air with one hand. “All right. I get the point.”

  “His neck has a circular bruise around it that wasn’t caused by his fall. Looks like someone tried to strangle him in his room and left him for dead. He recovered, staggered into the hall, and tried to get help by signalin’ from the balcony, but he leaned out too far.”

  Gatlin’s surprise showed on his face. “Where’d you get all that?”

  “The part about him leanin’ out too far and signalin’ for help, from that lady over there….” He pointed to two armchairs across the lobby where Kit was holding an old lady’s hand in her own. “She saw him immediately before he fell.”

  “She see anyone with him?”

  “No. I took a look in his room and found a piece of cord that had been cut from the telephone lyin’ on the floor. Not much doubt about its purpose. Most likely, it was his short neck that saved him.”

  “Could have used a pair of wings to go with it. You didn’t move anything, I hope.”

  Broussard’s bushy brows crept together in reproach.

  “All right, all right. Cut me some slack. I’m not used to having a pro first on the scene. Usually, it’s some gomer in size-fifteen Keds kicking shell casings into the sewer grate. Can I assume there’s a uniform preserving the integrity of the scene upstairs?”

  “You may.”

  Gatlin whistled at Kit and crooked his finger at her. When she reached him, he said, “Doc, as of now, you’re off the case.”

  “Why?” Kit asked, perplexed. “Have I done something wrong?”

  “Not at all. Things have just gotten too hot for you. It’s one thing to put an untrained person on a case with cobwebs all over it, and it’s another when a body almost falls on you. You turned up anything lately I should know about?”

  “It’s all typed up and sitting on my desk.”

  “See what you can do about getting it on my desk.”

  16

  To say that Kit was unhappy at being taken off the Francie O’Connor case would be like saying killer hurricanes usually bring bad weather. Sure, now that there had been one probable and one certain new murder, it was reasonable that Gatlin would have to take a more active role. But to dismiss her entirely as if she were a child, incapable of contributing anything now that things had heated up, was intolerable. Anyone well acquainted with Kit knew that when she was angry, her ears became flushed and hot. Right now, they were the color of well-ripened cayenne peppers. This was what was on her mind as the office phone rang.

  “Would you please hold for Mr. Isom?” a female voice said.

  Isom? The name was vaguely familiar.

  “Ms. Franklyn, this is Harry Isom. I have a message that you called.”

  Kit’s mind grappled with the name, then she remembered. “Mr. Isom, I’m with the medical examiner’s office and the New Orleans Police Department and we’re trying to locate Shirley Elizabeth Guillot. We hoped that since you once handled a real estate transaction for her, you might be able to give us some information on her whereabouts.”

  “That’s possible,” Isom said. “But first you have to come to my office and show me your credentials. I’m not in the habit of discussing my clients with anyone. But if this is police business, that’s a different matter.”

  Isom reminded her of his office location and agreed to see her today if she could get there within the hour. After hanging up, she grabbed a spiral pad and headed for the door, then paused, remembering that Gatlin had taken her off the case.

  She had no delusions as to the most appropriate action—tell Gatlin about Isom’s call and stay out of the way. But it was so unfair after all the work she had already done. And there was her promise to Leslie. To let Gatlin handle this by himself would be like abandoning her again. She decided to forge ahead and let Gatlin respond as he saw fit. Since official sanction of any activities related to this case had been withdrawn, there was something she felt obliged to do before going out.

  *

  * *

  The autopsy on Arthur Jordan had been done early that morning and it confirmed Broussard’s impressions of what had taken place at the scene. Still perplexed about the dumbbell-shaped inclusions in Paul Jarrell’s pyramidal cells, and too curious to wait for time-consuming paraffin processing, Broussard had sent some small pieces of Arthur Jordan’s brain to the lab for frozen sections. Now, as he studied them through his microscope, he was disappointed but not surprised. Jordan’s pyramidal cells were entirely normal.

  There was a knock on the door. He called out a welcome and reached for his glasses. Kit entered, closed the door behind her, and remained close to it, her manner uncharacteristically timid.

  “I need some personal time this morning,” she said.

  “Anything you need help with?”

  “No, I can handle it. It’s no big deal.”

  “Take whatever time is necessary.”

  “Thanks. I’ll probably be back in an hour or so.”

  Reflecting on her behavior after she was gone, Broussard hoped she wasn’t doing what he thought she was doing.

  Isom shared a renovated redbrick Victorian town house with a realtor and a beauty shop. Below his name on the door to his suite was the ghost of a second set of lettering that had been scraped off but had left enough glue behind to still spell Loscovitz. His secretary, a dewlap-cursed lady wearing so much pancake makeup that it could have been tilled and planted, presented Kit to Isom without even checking to see whether he was ready. They found him looking for a book among the ponderous volumes on the shelves behind his desk.

  Of average height, Isom had more hair than many men his age and wore a small mustache. He was not more than a few pounds overweight and had good color—except for the bags under his sunken eyes, which almost looked as if they’d been blackened with charcoal.

  “You planning on standing the entire time?” Isom said.

  As Kit sat in one of the chairs that formed
a semicircle in front of Isom’s desk, a voice from behind her said, “Siddown.”

  She looked over her shoulder and saw a mynah in a domed black cage.

  “Siddown,” the bird repeated, then added, “Objection.… You’re in contempt…. All rise…. Siddown…. Bailiff, take him away.”

  “That’s Litigious,” Isom said, putting himself in his desk chair. “He always gets mouthy when someone new is around. Ignore him. He’ll calm down.”

  “So you’re a bird lover,” Kit said.

  “Lover? I hate him. He belonged to my partner, Sid Loscovitz. Sid died in January. Take my advice, never go to the bedside of a dying friend, at least not one who still has enough strength left to recognize you. Sid’s eyes fluttered open, he touched my hand, and pleaded for me to take care of his bird when he passed. What could I do? So there he sits, a bigger pain even than Sid was. You wouldn’t happen to know the life span of a bird like that, would you?”

  Kit shook her head. “Sorry.”

  “Siddown…. All rise….”

  “Shaddup over there,” Isom said. He looked at Kit. “You were going to show me some identification?”

  When he was satisfied that Kit had proper credentials, Isom said, “Shirley Guillot is dead, too. Died about seven years ago.”

  Kit moved to the front of her chair. “Why on earth did you bring me over here and demand my ID just to tell me that?”

  “Because I do not believe that my obligation to a client ends when they die. In fact, if anything, death strengthens it, because they are then in no position to defend themselves against slander.”

  “Slander and libel,” Litigious said. “All rise….”

  “How well did you know Shirley Guillot?”

  “Enough to know that she was a good woman, hardworking, sensible, knew the value of money.”

  “Was she married?”

  “Widow… husband died in an industrial accident a few years after they were married. She earned her living by buying houses and operating them as rental property. I handled the paperwork for all her real estate transactions.”

  “If I gave you an address, could you tell me if it was one of her rental properties, as opposed to a house that she personally lived in?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me.”

  Kit recited her own address and Isom opened a file folder in front of him and began going through it. In a minute or so, he looked up. “Rental… from the time she bought it until she sold it to get enough cash to leverage a deal on a small apartment building.”

  “Did you handle her operation on a day-to-day basis?”

  “Just acquisition and disposition. She liked to do all the other herself, and rightly so.”

  “Any idea what happened to her possessions after she died?”

  “Could be. Sid was the one who drew up her will and acted as executor.” He left his chair and went to a bank of file cabinets against the wall. After a short search, he pulled out a file and opened it on top of the cabinets. A few seconds later, he said, “Everything went to her sister, Eugenie Sonnier.”

  “Do you have her address?”

  Isom scanned the file some more and gave her an address in Lafitte, a tiny community about twenty-five miles south, then said, “Sid made a note here that she has no telephone.”

  “But that was seven years ago.”

  “If you like, I’ll have my secretary check the book for you.”

  “I’d appreciate it. Does the file mention her husband’s name?”

  Isom checked the file again and said, “No, but how many Sonniers can there be in such a small place?”

  Actually, his secretary found none. So if Eugenie was still there, she hadn’t used her inheritance to join the twentieth century.

  Kit stood up and expressed her thanks. Isom said something appropriate and Litigious said, “Siddown.” As Kit left, Litigious added, “You’re in contempt.” Over the sound of the closing door, she heard Isom say, “Shaddup.”

  From the telephone in Isom’s outer office, Kit called Broussard to say that she would be gone for another few hours. Informed by Broussard’s secretary that both he and Charlie Franks had gone to a scene, she was unable to deliver the message personally. Though her thoughts were primarily on Eugenie Sonnier, she did wonder what kind of case would require two pathologists.

  *

  * *

  In a fashionable section of the city near Lake Pontchartrain, Broussard was in a bookcase-lined study, standing next to a tufted leather chair containing a body slumped over a large mahogany partner desk. The corpse lay facedown on the desk’s tan leather writing surface, its right arm in its lap, the left dangling so that the fingers pointed at a disposable syringe lying on the plastic floor mat under the chair. On the desk, a few inches from the top of the corpse’s head, was an open screw-top bottle half full of a clear liquid.

  Broussard was reading a typed letter lying beside the corpse’s right ear.

  To Whom It May Concern,

  I have taken my life because it has become of no further value to me. Years ago, when Arthur Jordan and I roomed together as students, we picked up a girl in the French Quarter and took her back to our rooms, where something terrible occurred. We were both so drunk that neither of us knew exactly what happened, but we woke and found the girl strangled. Afraid to let this be known, we buried her in the backyard and said nothing. For more than twenty years, we have lived with the fear that one day the body would be found. Then it was found, by Kit Franklyn. After meeting with Franklyn at the Gourmet Society dinner, Jordan lost his nerve and wanted to confess. But I disagreed.

  Eventually, Jordan’s persistence wore me down and we agreed to reveal to Franklyn and Andy Broussard what had taken place. Jordan arranged a meeting at his apartment for eight o’clock this evening (Tue.). I arrived shortly after seven fully expecting to do what I had agreed to do. But I suddenly saw what confession would mean. The humiliation… prison… or worse.

  I had always believed the events of that awful night so long ago were an aberration, that I was incapable of such a heinous act as murder and that it must have been Jordan who did it. I know now I was wrong, because a few minutes after my arrival I panicked and when Jordan went into the bathroom, I cut a section from the telephone cord and waited for him to come out. When he did, I strangled him. After using a towel to wipe everything I might have touched, I left by the stairs.

  Driving home, the realization of what I had done… of what I really am hit me. This is knowledge I cannot live with. I am truly sorry for everything and hope that the good I have done as a physician somehow mitigates the other….

  Kurt Halliday.

  Broussard stepped back to give Charlie Franks a look at the letter.

  “What do you think?” Gatlin said to Broussard. “Everything look right?”

  “Too soon to tell,” Broussard replied. “But he’s in full rigor, so that fits.”

  “What do you think’s in the bottle?”

  “We’ll need the lab for that. The poolin’ of blood in his fingers and his face, except where his forehead and nose are touchin’ the desk, indicate he died where he sits. We’ll know more about that when we get his clothes off. Who found him?”

  “The uniforms outside. When he didn’t show at eight o’clock this morning for rounds, somebody got worried and started looking for him. When they couldn’t turn him up, they asked the department to send a car over here. They saw him through the window.”

  “He live alone?” Franks asked.

  Gatlin nodded.

  The room was flooded with light from Ray Jamison’s Polaroid as he took an orienting shot from across the room. Behind Broussard, Louie Bordelon, a blond fellow with a complexion the color and texture of a newborn mouse, pulled Halliday’s computer keyboard to the end of the table beside the desk and began dusting it for prints.

  Broussard made a hitchhiking gesture at Bordelon and said to Gatlin, “Since you brought Louie out, I guess it’s occurred to you that this is a mig
hty convenient death.”

  “The thought crossed my mind,” Gatlin replied.

  Satisfied that his last picture was a keeper, Jamison slipped it into his shoulder bag and stepped up to the desk. He took an angled overhead shot and said, “That’s everything, if you want to move him. I’d give you a hand, but I pulled a muscle last week trying to lift the kid’s swing set.”

  “I didn’t know they let people with your genes reproduce,” Franks said, grinning. He motioned at Gatlin. “Come on, I’ll help.”

  Gatlin took up a position on the other side of the body. “Let’s just leave him in his chair.”

  They slid the chair well away from the desk and hovered close by to see whether Halliday was going to stay put without help. When it became clear that he wouldn’t topple, Gatlin said, “Louie, got anything there?”

  “About what I expected,” Bordelon said. “Nothin’ but smears.”

  Gatlin looked at Franks. “Can you get that printer to do something? I want to compare its typeface with the letter.”

  “If Louie hasn’t gummed up the keyboard, I can.”

  Bordelon wiped the fingerprint powder off the keyboard and slid the board over to Franks, who positioned it in front of him and turned on the printer and the computer. A message in a flashing box appeared on the monitor: PROGRAM CRASH. DO YOU WISH TO RESURRECT?

  Franks’s fingers darted over the keyboard. The screen changed and he gloated. “Ha. Halliday must have simply shut the computer off after printing the file. There it is, back in its entirety. You still want a copy?”

  “Forget it. That answers my question.”

  Franks’s fingers jigged again over the keyboard and he beamed. “Care to know when the letter was written?”