My Juliet: A Novel

by John Ed Bradley

  “Are you telling me not to, Miss Beauvais?”

  “Lieutenant, I don’t mean to be rude but you leave me no choice. First you tell me my mother’s been murdered then you want to go through my personal effects.” Juliet picks her clothes off the floor and starts putting them on. “It isn’t right. You’re welcome to look all you want, but play by the rules and get a search warrant.”

  Past his whiskers Peroux’s mouth turns up in a grin. “You’re right, of course. How insensitive of me.”

  “Do you think I killed her? Is that what you think?”

  “I haven’t formed any opinion yet. Settle down, please, Miss Beauvais.”

  Leonard moves over to a window, quietly so as to avoid attention. He stands staring into a block of hazy morning light, blood drained from his face.

  “Where have I seen you before?” Peroux says to Juliet.

  She’s sitting on the bed, fussing with a shoe. She can’t believe she’s being asked that again. “Ever use the men’s room at the Napoleon House?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “They’ve got a picture of me naked hanging in there.” After a moment she adds, “By Sonny LaMott. Have you interviewed Sonny yet, Lieutenant? Have you searched his room?”

  Peroux seems to be thinking about it. But when he answers, it’s to an earlier question. “No, I believe it was someplace else.” From the pocket of his jacket he removes a stick of Wrigley’s. He lets the wrappers fall to the floor then he folds the gum in half and sticks it deep in the back of his mouth. “You ever do any pornography, Miss Beauvais?”

  Juliet just keeps fooling with that shoe. “When you sign the release,” she says, “nobody bothers to tell you it’s a death certificate. But yes, Lieutenant, I have.”

  Peroux finds this funny. He laughs, anyway. “Miss Beauvais, we’ll need to be asking you some questions later today.” Then to Leonard: “You, too, podna.”

  When the sound of their car doors comes again, Leonard retreats from the window and stands in the middle of the room. “Why would that man think Sonny LaMott was your boyfriend?”

  “Shit if I know. And all I really wanted last night was some goddamned étouffée.”

  “Did you and Sonny get back together?”

  “Me get back with Sonny? Come on, Leonard. Use your head.”

  “That’s why you were asking all those questions at the club the other night, wasn’t it?”

  “Leonard, stop it. My mother is finally dead and the Beauvais is mine and what do you care anyway who I get back with or don’t get back with? You’re in your man mood these days.”

  “I’ll show you my man mood.”

  Leonard has a much easier time taking his clothes off than putting them on, and the same is true of Juliet. Having no detectives at the door is the difference.

  “Don’t forget my period,” she says.

  “Just be quiet and watch for a minute.”

  He lies on his back and she watches him and even helps toward the end, her favorite part. She figures it’s the least she can do. He finishes on her chest and she goes to the bathroom and gets a hand towel and wets it with hot water and wipes herself off.

  “You think you’re gonna miss your mama any?” Leonard asks through the open door.

  That, as it happens, is the very same question she’s been asking herself since checking to make sure her mother was dead a few hours earlier. “No,” she says, “I don’t.”

  “Hey, podna, you got a minute to help me out with something?” It’s Lieutenant Peroux, walking over to join him at the fence.

  Sonny can feel his guts rebelling at the prospect of more questions. Didn’t he do his part at the house earlier? Short of his confessing, he wonders what more they could possibly need.

  He and Peroux stand beneath the canopy of a giant magnolia, last night’s rainwater still dripping from the blossoms and large, glossy leaves.

  “LaMott?”

  “Go ahead, Lieutenant.”

  “Now tell me if I got this right. For a long time you’ve been coming here to visit. You sit in the living room and you and the lady have tea or coffee or whatever?”

  “I’m an artist, and sometimes when I’m in the neighborhood painting a particular house or garden or street corner I stop by to see how she’s doing, that’s correct.”

  “She was so fascinating, an old woman, you made a point to do that?”

  “I’ve known her since 1971, my senior year in high school. And I’ve always liked Miss Marcelle. And her age—the fact that she was older than me—didn’t matter.”

  “But I still don’t see why you kept coming here. What did you have in common besides the daughter neither of you’d seen in fifteen years?”

  “Nothing. Juliet was all we had in common.”

  “Nothing but Juliet. Now, Sonny, some time yesterday you stopped by and asked for money.”

  “Yes, I did. Well, it was a check actually. But the maid met me at the door and refused to give me one. She seemed to think it was inappropriate. Since it was Juliet’s money, she thought Juliet should be the one who came and got the check.”

  “The maid, LaMott? Do you mean Mrs. Huey?”

  Sonny nods.

  “So she didn’t give you the check?”

  “No.”

  “You never got it?”

  “No. Well, not from Mrs. Huey.”

  Peroux waits and so does Sonny.

  “What do you mean? ‘Not from Mrs. Huey.’ Did Mrs. Beauvais give you a check later on?”

  “Late last night I returned to the house a second time and she gave me one then.”

  “How late was this?”

  “Midnight maybe. I don’t know exactly. Somewhere like that.”

  Peroux takes his time, the activity in his mind bringing a slight wobble to his eyes. “So it’s midnight—late like you say—and you come here and knock on the door or ring the bell or what?”

  “I had Juliet’s key.”

  “So you just go right straight in the house?”

  “I know how bad that must sound, but it’s the way it happened, Lieutenant Peroux.”

  “I could arrest you for that. I could take you in.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Did you kill that woman, LaMott?”

  “No, Lieutenant. I swear on my mother’s grave I didn’t.”

  A long silence. Peroux trying to decide how to proceed. He searches the grounds for Lentini, then finally: “So you just let yourself in. Let’s get back to that.”

  “Well, as I told you, Lieutenant, I went in through the front door. First I wanted to get some clothes for Juliet from her closet—she’d asked for this—but after I went in her room I realized what a crazy thing I was doing and I started to leave. I was passing Miss Marcelle’s room when she said something through the door. She thought I was Juliet.”

  “You remember what she said?”

  “That she regretted things in the past and that she hoped the two of them could start over in the morning. She said she wanted to be Juliet’s mother again.”

  “Go on.”

  “I went downstairs and at some point I decided that while I was there I’d just as well go get Juliet’s check and be done with it. Obviously I wasn’t thinking rationally, but I believed it would somehow keep the peace between them. So I walked back up and knocked on Miss Marcelle’s door and when she answered I could see immediately her shock at finding who it was. Her face, anyway, went from an expression of absolute joy to one of surprise then to one of anger. I stood there fumbling for words and eventually managed to express my embarrassment for letting myself in without her permission. I started to leave again but she said no, to wait a minute, so I stood at the door and watched as she wrote out the check at a table by the bed. Even more than my being in the house she seemed upset that I wasn’t Juliet. She kept saying they needed to talk. As I was leaving she told me I was never welcome in the Beauvais again, and never to come back. I told her I was sorry I’d compromised our friendship. And
she said . . .”

  The detective nods for Sonny to continue.

  “She said I’d done more than that. ‘You’ve killed it,’ is how she put it.”

  “And the two of you had this big conversation and Mrs. Huey didn’t leave her room to see what the commotion was all about?”

  “There wasn’t any commotion. We were just talking, Lieutenant.”

  Peroux seems to be trying to decide what to ask next. Once again he looks around for his partner. “That’s a helluva story, son. A helluva damn story.”

  Sonny shrugs. “It’s the truth.”

  The detective is smiling. Shaking his head. “And where was Juliet all this time you were prowling around uninvited in her mama’s house?”

  “Waiting for me back at my place.”

  “Okay, podna.” Peroux is writing in his notebook, the effort pulling his mouth down in a frown. “LaMott, listen. I want you to come see me later this afternoon. That’s police headquarters on Broad Street. Say about five o’clock.”

  “Down by the old Falstaff Brewery?”

  “That’s right, down by the brewery. Come up to the Criminal Investigation Division on the third floor and we’ll find us an empty room and sit and have some coffee and go over all this again. Between now and then I want you to think about anything you might’ve left out.”

  Sonny nods. “Okay. So am I free to go?”

  “Free for now, anyway,” the detective says, then flashes a smile before walking away.

  In the French Quarter a miracle: Juliet has found a parking spot less than a mile away from her destination, her mother’s bank on Chartres Street.

  She dunks a couple of coins in the meter. The bank opened less than an hour earlier and inside the floor, though pocked with gum droppings, shines from last night’s mopping. Still undecided whether to take the cash in big or small denominations, Juliet joins five or six others in the queue corral and waits her turn. She’s jumpy from too much coffee and too little sleep. Menstrual cramps add to her torment.

  She wonders if Lentini is a mute or if with a partner like that high yellow it’s impossible to get a word in edgewise.

  “Give it to me in hundreds,” she tells the teller when it’s her turn.

  The teller is wearing a tan suit identical to those worn by all the others behind the counter. A tasteful, teal-colored ascot finishes the outfit. “Do you have a current ID?”

  Juliet pulls out her California driver’s license and slides it across the faux marble surface. “No, why don’t you make it tens and twenties. Give me a big wad.”

  The woman types something at her computer terminal, eyes colored with beads of amber from the screen. When she can’t seem to find what she’s looking for, she glances up at Juliet with a nervous smile. “Excuse me a moment, Ms. Beauvais,” then she walks over to a man seated at a desk.

  The man takes the check and inspects it at length and the two of them talk briefly. He looks at Juliet, then down at the check, then up at Juliet again.

  “Ms. Beauvais?” the teller says upon returning. “Mr. Patout would like a word with you, please.”

  Something is wrong, but for Juliet to fixate on the negative would all but guarantee a lousy result. She tells herself this, anyway, and she flashes a smile intended to display an inner wealth of optimism, when all she really feels inside is hugely pissed off.

  “Ms. Beauvais?” The man extends a hand for her to shake. He has a florid face shaped like a teardrop, a configuration that repeats itself in the general form of his body. “My name is Jay Patout. Please have a seat.”

  Juliet sits.

  “Ms. Beauvais, I’m afraid this account is inactive.”

  “What do you mean, inactive?”

  “It was closed five years ago, in May 1981.”

  “No, that check’s good.” Juliet grips the arms of her chair. “That’s my mother’s signature. And my mother is a wealthy woman, Mr. Patout. You know the Beauvais over on Esplanade?” Juliet nods before the banker is able to proffer a like response. “How could she live in a house like that writing bad checks? No, I’m afraid it’s impossible.”

  Patout studies the check as if for a clue to one of the world’s great mysteries. “Your mother may have made a mistake. This happens. People write checks on inactive accounts, forgetting they’ve moved their money to other accounts or to other banks. I’m sure there’s an easy explanation.”

  Juliet feels nerves pushing up close to the surface of her skin. “Let’s say Mama did put her money in another bank, could you tell me which one from the information on your screen there?”

  “No, I couldn’t. I mean, I wouldn’t be able to tell. All I know is that your mother left us years ago. She had two accounts here and she closed them both.”

  Juliet sighs. She wants to scream, but the sigh is adequate for now. “If I find the bank she moved her money to, would they cash that check?”

  “You’d have to get your mother to write a check from the bank where she now has her money. This one isn’t good.” Patout holds it up as if to give her one more look, then he stamps it hard and slips it in a drawer.

  On her way out Juliet manages to keep her composure. She doesn’t turn back around and curse the building or its occupants, and she doesn’t punch or kick any of the bank’s customers who seem to look at her with suspicion. She doesn’t shoot a middle finger or raise a fist or spit on the floor. She displays no hitches in her stride.

  Mama is having a gigantic laugh at this moment, watching from wherever the dead daughters of Opelousas yam farmers end up.

  Juliet might end up in the same place one day, and that is when she’ll exact her revenge. She’ll whip her mother’s ghostly ass. She’ll pull her hair and smash a heel in her face.

  Juliet reaches the Mustang, leans back against the hood and removes her shoe. She wants to add today’s incident at the bank to her list, but “The Proof” is not in its usual place. And only now does she remember where she and Leonard deposited the document last night. She feels renewed suddenly. Maybe revenge won’t be necessary, after all.

  And now Juliet, remembering something else, is further mollified. As an heiress, and the only survivor in the family, she stands to inherit the entire Beauvais legacy. How soon that succession becomes official is a concern. But Juliet is rich.

  And it strikes her, there now on the sidewalk, that her mother really is bound for the grave. Juliet’s anger washes away in a single, pulsing tide. She screws her shoe back on and she begins to laugh with such feeling that her laughter takes on a musical aspect. From nearby a man clothed in rags comes shuffling toward her on the bricks. He holds out a palsied hand, as if for payment.

  Juliet pushes past the hand and presses up against him.

  She inhales his stench and feels his cold wine breath. He is the most hideous and repulsive thing she’s ever encountered in her whole, entire life, and yet she does not yield.

  Beneath her gaze the man’s eyes grow small and pale, and his nostrils flare as he struggles for air. Juliet brings her mouth to the side of his face, her inner tubes brushing the mangled comb of flesh that is his ear. “Wanna do it?” she says.

  The man shakes his head.

  Juliet gets in her rental car and calmly starts for Esplanade.

  In the rear garden the two detectives come back into view. They roll up their pant legs and cross the lawn splashing through puddles and join a clutch of investigators by the privet along the back fence. After a brief discussion a man in sunglasses separates himself from the group and points at something. Peroux crouches next to him to get a better look. They exchange more words, then the man in sunglasses duckwalks into the hedges and carefully picks up a shattered length of PVC. He seals it in a plastic evidence bag.

  The knot of men grows tighter as each strains for a closer look. Standing alone on the shadowy lawn, Sonny experiences a jolt of fear that won’t be reasoned with.

  They have the club, he tells himself. Soon, bubba, they’ll have you too.


  A wave of nausea cuts through him, leaving him weak and dizzy. He needs to vomit again. He walks into a copse of crape myrtles by the fence, looking for a place to unburden himself, when a voice seems to speak to him. “Well well well. Look at what we have here.”

  It’s a newsman, standing on the sidewalk. Past the iron bars, the tangle of shrubs, he wears a laminated press pass clipped to a khaki-colored fishing vest, a tortured smile confusing his otherwise relaxed demeanor. He raises a camera and starts shooting the police with their discovery. The man, rotating the instrument from the horizontal to the vertical, clicks off half a dozen frames before he speaks again. “They say she was a hermit. Came out only at certain times of the year to smell the morning glory. And only at night. She’d carry a flashlight. Can you imagine that?”