by Herren, Greg
“But Jonny didn’t know about Barney and Mona?”
“You heard him.” She fixed her eyes on me. “The other day. He thinks Mona’s the fucking Virgin Mary, doesn’t he? He don’t have a clue about Barney and Mona, not a damned clue. I guess Mona never brought Barney back to her place—Jonny was living with her, you know, right up till the day we got married and got this place.” A faint smile played at the corner of her lips. “That first night he came in, he started flirting with me right off, you know. He was cute, and I went along with it even though I knew he was too young for me.” She rolled her eyes. “Just goes to show, doesn’t it. If I’d known then…but he wanted to come back when I got off work and…” Her voice trailed off. “You don’t know how many times I’ve regretted saying yes.”
“You’re sorry you married him?”
“I—” She shook her head. “I sometimes think we’d both be better off, yeah.” Her hands went to her stomach. “Jonny ain’t old enough to be a father—he’s just a kid himself.” She sighed. “In a lot of ways, he’s just a kid. If I didn’t make him give me all his money and put it in the bank, he’d just blow it on crap—you know, video games, getting drunk with his friends, that kind of stuff. Kid shit. Or give it away. But I give him credit—he don’t ever act like he’s sorry we got married.” She rubbed her stomach. “And he’s crazy about this kid.”
“So, why did you marry him?”
“Hello?” She looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “I’m pregnant, dumbass.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to get married anymore—it hasn’t for a long time.”
“My parents weren’t married,” she replied, looking away from me. “I was raised by a single mom, okay, with a dad who couldn’t be bothered to make his support payments and sure as hell couldn’t be bothered with the daughter he didn’t want. I haven’t seen my father since I was a baby. My mother’s worked her ass off her whole life, and where did it get her? Nowhere, that’s where. I didn’t want that for me, and I didn’t want my kid to go through what I had to, okay?” She looked around the dingy, dirty room. “Though I can’t say this is a whole hell of a lot better, is it? Be careful what you wish for.” She made a face. “But one day Jonny’s gonna make it big in the octagon, and we’ll be set for the rest of our lives.” She rolled her eyes.
“And Mona was against it? You two getting married?” I remembered the photo of Mona and Jonny on her wall from his wedding day, and the conspicuous absence of any pictures of Heather.
“You could say that.” She gave me a sour smile. “Can you believe it? A cocktail waitress wasn’t good enough for her high school dropout son. She fucking hit the roof.” Heather ran a hand through her hair. “You know, all that shit about us being too young and Jonny throwing his life away.” She glared at me. “You know she tried to buy me off? Yeah, Miss Catholic offered to pay for me to get an abortion and give me another ten thousand dollars to blow town and never come back. I told her to stick it up her ass.”
“Where did Mona get ten thousand dollars from?”
“There was a settlement when her husband got killed—she set up trusts for the kids.” She waved her hand. “That’s how we got this palace.”
“What about your other in-laws? Did they agree with her?”
“We didn’t see Robby much,” she replied, covering her mouth to belch. “Him and that wife of his—Celia—thought they were way too good for us, don’t you know? They didn’t bother to come to the wedding—I guess it wasn’t a posh enough affair for that bitch. Just a little ceremony at St. Anselm’s, of course—although a justice of the peace would have been good enough for me.” She laughed. “But it wasn’t just me and Jonny, you know—Robby and Celia thought they were too good for Mona, which really chapped her ass, you know? You’d think the way Celia looked down her nose at Mona, she’d be a little nicer to me, but no, not Miss Christian Charity.” She snorted. “All that business with her going to Mass all the time, and trying to save that stupid church? You’d think she’d be more of a Christian, but no.” She gnawed on a finger for a moment or two. “Lorelle, though—she’s a nice lady, she is—you’d never know she was Mona’s kid, you know? She’s always been real nice to me. She came to the wedding, with her husband and her kids, they call me Aunt Heather, and she gave me a real nice wedding gift—the nicest one we got—and she’s always real nice, calls me once or twice a week to see how I’m doing. She gave me all kinds of baby stuff, so we wouldn’t have to buy anything—a crib and a high chair and all that kind of stuff. I like her. I mean, I know I won’t be going to lunch with her and her friends any time, but she’s nice to me. She don’t treat me like trash.” Her chin went up. “I ain’t trash, even if I didn’t go to Sacred Heart.”
“You don’t know if Robby was having money trouble?”
“They don’t confide in us—but I can’t imagine they would. That Celia has money, you know—her dad left her a lot of money when he died a few years back. Jonny told me that was when they bought that big house on Napoleon.” Her face grew sly. “Though the way they went through money, it wouldn’t surprise me none if they were broke—you think maybe that’s why someone killed Robby?”
I shrugged. “It’s a possibility.”
“I know he was arguing with Mona about money last week.” Her pinkie finger went back into her mouth. “I walked over there, to see if Mona had some sugar—Jonny was at training and I wanted to make some cupcakes but I didn’t have no sugar, so I walked down to Mona’s. Robby’s big SUV was parked out front, and I could hear them yelling at each other from the street.” She chewed on a cuticle. “So I went up on the porch where I could hear better. Robby needed some money, bad—he kept saying he was going to be in deep shit if he didn’t come up with the money and Mona kept saying she didn’t have that kind of money laying around, and he said she could take it out of Jonny’s trust and that made me pretty mad, you know, that money’s for the baby, and I was about to go inside and give them both a piece of my mind—”
“Jonny’s trust?” I prompted her.
She nodded. “His dad was killed on the docks, you know. Verlaine Shipping paid Mona a shitload of money, and she put some of it into trusts for the kids. Jonny’s is the only trust left, Robby and Lorelle got theirs cashed out years ago. Anyway, Mona won’t cash out Jonny’s, because she don’t trust us with the money.” She made a face. “She’s right about that. Jonny would spend every cent of that money if he got his hands on it. She’s holding on to it for our kids. She probably doesn’t want me getting my grubby hands on it, but I ain’t stupid. Anyway, before I could go in there, Mona let him have it with both barrels, about how she wasn’t going to steal from Jonny, and he should have thought about that before he blew through his money like it was on fire, and let me tell you, that woman could cuss up a blue streak when she put her mind to it. And then he said something, quiet so I couldn’t hear what it was.” She sighed. “And then out of the clear blue she said there might be another way to get the money, if he would let her have a couple of days. He said he didn’t have much choice and he stormed out of there. He didn’t even say hello when he went past me on the porch, you know—acted like I wasn’t even there.” Her jaw tightened. “Looks like he got what he deserved, doesn’t it?”
“How did Mona seem?”
“She acted like nothing had happened, you know, but I could tell she was upset. She gave me the sugar and I got the hell out of there.”
So, Robby was having money problems. “Did you talk to the police about this?”
She stared at me like I’d lost my mind. “Why would I? I haven’t talked to the police at all.”
“I’m going to have to tell them about the argument you overheard,” I replied. “And they’re probably going to want to talk to you.”
“Whatever.” She pushed herself to her feet, not without difficulty. “I’m kind of tired, you mind? I need to go lay down.”
I stood up. “Thanks, Heather.”
She waved her hand w
earily. “Whatever.”
Chapter Nine
“You’ve thought she was dead from the very beginning, haven’t you?” Abby said matter-of-factly as she slathered cream cheese on her toasted bagel. She took a bite, washing it down with coffee.
We were sitting in Mojo’s Coffee Shop the next morning. I’d already finished my first bagel and had moved on to my second by the time Abby showed up. She’d woken me from a deep, dreamless sleep at three in the morning, her voice bubbling over with excitement. The moment I somehow managed to gather myself enough to say “MacLeod,” she’d started babbling a hundred miles per hour, the loud hip-hop music blaring in the background tipped me off that she was at the Catbox Club. Between the music and the rapid-fire staccato of words shooting out of her mouth into the phone—and to be fair, I wasn’t even fifty percent awake and conscious—I couldn’t understand a thing she was saying. Finally, I managed to cut her off, and asked—pleaded, actually—to let it keep until the next morning. Resentfully, she’d agreed it could wait until morning. It was nine now, and given the fact she’d been wide awake six hours earlier, I found her alertness more than a little annoying.
She was also taking her time telling me what she’d learned—punishing me for “harshing her buzz” at three in the morning.
She wasn’t wearing any makeup and wasn’t wearing a wig. She could have passed for a teenager in her baggy madras shorts and an enormous, shapeless Saints jersey that hid the size of her breasts. Her brown hair was pulled back into a perky ponytail mounted high on the back right side of her head.
“Well, yeah, I did.” I popped the last bite of my second bagel into my mouth and watched her face. “That doesn’t mean she is, though. But no activity on her credit cards? No bank withdrawals? Doesn’t look good that she’s hiding out somewhere. And why would she be hiding out in the first place?”
“Maybe she killed her son.” Abby frowned at her bagel before smearing more cream cheese on it. She took a bite and melted cream cheese ran down her fingers. She licked it off expertly. “And she’s on the run.”
“Without her car and without any money.” I shook my head. “And leaving behind a fifty-thousand-dollar check in her desk drawer. People don’t go on the run and leave that kind of money behind—especially when all she had to do was cash it. Then she’d have a shitload of cash—she could hide for a long time with that kind of nest egg. So, no, it’s not likely.”
Abby nodded. “Most people wouldn’t think about not using their cards, either.” She sighed. “I mean, if she killed Robby, she probably wouldn’t be thinking that clearly anyway—clearly enough to cover her tracks so thoroughly.”
“I don’t know—she doesn’t strike me as the kind of mother who could kill her child, even if he was kind of an asshole—and he seems to have been a major asshole.” I got up and walked back to the counter to get a refill. The guy behind the counter put down the book he was reading—The Stranger by Albert Camus—and refilled my cup. He was wearing a pair of what had once been dressy brown polyester dress pants, scuffed-up black shoes, and a white T-shirt that didn’t cover the tattoos on his neck and arms. His black hair was gelled so it stood up in a faux Mohawk in the center of his head, and there was a blue streak on the left side. His left eyebrow and nose were pierced.
Apparently, he also wasn’t a big fan of deodorant.
I put a dollar in the tip jar and sat back down at my table. Abby had finished devouring her bagel and was now using her index finger to scoop the rest of the cream cheese out of the little tin before licking her finger clean.
“I’ve just been trying to figure out how the blood got in the car,” she said as she crumpled up the little tin and placed it on her plate. “Maybe she was shot or cut or whatever when the door was open. The killer took her body out and dumped the car on St. Andrew. But why the need to hide her body? That’s what I don’t get.” Her eyebrows came together just over her nose.
“Well, we still don’t even know for sure that it was Mona’s blood,” I replied, stifling a yawn and taking another swig of coffee. Even though I’d slept well, I was still sleepy. If given my preference, I would have gone back home, crawled into my bed, and slept the rest of the day away. Since that wasn’t possible, I promised myself I’d give myself a day in the near future to just sleep. “Venus said there was a lot of it—she wouldn’t let me go near the car, of course.” I raised the cup to my lips again. The coffee wasn’t helping me wake up, and I’d had so much that my stomach was starting to churn. I put the cup back down.
She shook her head, the ponytail swinging. “Do you think Robby O’Neill’s money problems are at the bottom of this whole mess? Why Mona’s disappeared and why he was killed?”
“Frankly, I can’t think of anything else right now. Can you?” She shook her head again. “I wish I knew why Mona O’Neill suddenly changed her testimony in the Marino lawsuit—that’s another piece that doesn’t fit. It doesn’t sound like her. She was close to the Marinos, from all accounts, and this change came from left field.”
“Unless someone paid her to—if she was trying to come up with the money to help Robby out…”
“But there was a cashier’s check in her desk drawer, courtesy of our carpetbagger billionaire.” I watched her face. Her expression didn’t change. “Why didn’t she just cash it and give the money to Robby? Wouldn’t that have solved their problems?”
“You’re right, it doesn’t make any sense. Nothing about this stupid case makes any goddamned sense—which means we just haven’t dug deep enough, right?” Abby replied with a sigh. “And we don’t even know why Robby needed money in the first place.” She held up her hand. “I know, I’m going to work on that today, and see if there’s a connection between Barras and Global Insurance. It’s on my to-do list, okay?”
“I’m going to see if I can talk to the widow—she came back to town yesterday.” I sighed. “I was going to try to talk to her yesterday, but got distracted.”
“It’s a puzzle wrapped in an enigma inside of a mystery.” She scratched her forehead thoughtfully. “An interesting conundrum.”
“Yes.” I resisted the urge to pound my head against the wall. “Are you going to tell me what happened at the Catbox last night, or are we just going to talk around it all morning?”
“I didn’t think you’d ever ask.” She grinned at me, her eyes glinting. “For one thing, I made over five hundred bucks—and for another, Morgan Barras is one cheap-ass son of a bitch.” She laughed. “That prick is worth how many billions? But he won’t give a working girl more than a five-dollar bill. What a cheap douchebag. Of course, he tried to screw every one of his ex-wives when he divorced them. Every one of them had to take him to court and get a judge involved. What an asshole.”
“That’s interesting, but is any of it relevant to the case at hand?” It came out sharper than I’d intended, so I smiled to try to take the edge off.
It didn’t work. Her eyes narrowed. “The character of a suspect is always relevant, isn’t it? You always say so—or has something changed?”
“Sorry, didn’t mean to be so harsh.” I suppressed a grin and waved my hand. “Go on, then. Tell me everything.”
“The girls said he generally comes in around ten, so I got there about nine and hung out backstage, watching to see when he got there.” She grinned. I’d never seen her perform—but she had to be good at it. The manager of the Catbox Club pretty much let her do whatever she wanted. “Big Man Billionaire came in right on schedule, about quarter after ten, so I went to work.” She smiled. “All of his wives were eastern Europeans, so I put on one of my best platinum blond wigs, and of course I can do an Eastern European accent in my sleep. I put on a pair of Daisy Dukes and a bikini top, and just walked around the club asking men to buy a poor immigrant girl a drink—and he couldn’t take his eyes off me.” She mimed patting herself on the back. “I have to say, I think Katinka is a good role for me, she might have to come back.” She said it in a thick accent that sounded vaguel
y Eastern European. The way she held herself changed, as did her facial expression. In a blond wig, she would be convincing.
“Impressive,” I replied. “Just don’t become Wife Number Five or whatever number he’s on.”
Her face twisted. “Oh, as if.” She shuddered. “I would never marry a pig like that, I don’t care how much money he has. Blech.”
“Okay, I was just kidding.”
“I eventually made it around to his table. He came in with a group—a couple of them were obviously bodyguards. I didn’t know who the other guys were—Merrily told me one of them is on the city council, some important muckety-muck who has a lot to do with zoning and stuff, I don’t know. I wrote his name down.” She started reaching into her purse.
“It can wait—just put it in the report when you write it up,” I instructed her.
“Cool.” She smiled at me. “So, of course he wanted me to sit with him, tell him all about myself, so I asked him to buy me a glass of that shitty champagne they make us hustle. He thought we should get to know each other better.” She rolled her eyes. “The current Mrs. Barras is in Europe, shopping and doing some charity thing—I verified it online, so it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see Mr. Billion Dollar Barras was looking for a little company, and he certainly was.” She opened her eyes wide. “He definitely wanted more than just talk, but I told him I might work as a dancer but I wasn’t a whore. He told me I misunderstood—he was looking for companionship, not sex.”
“You didn’t go back to his place?” I stared at her. “Abby, that wasn’t—”