by Herren, Greg
I could feel my face coloring. She was right. Maybe Mona’s conscience had gotten the better of her. Was it so hard for me to believe that Luke Marino might be a con artist?
Well, if I was going to be completely honest, I didn’t want to believe he might be a con artist—which didn’t mean he wasn’t one.
Our waitress asked us if we wanted anything else, and I asked for the check.
“You know, I never really bought the story that Mona was so dedicated to her job that she rode the storm out at Cypress Gardens and sent Jonny out of town with Lorelle.” Abby stretched. “And it’s not very likely Lorelle or Jonny would get up on the stand and call their mother a liar, is it?”
She was right again. “I’ll talk to Jonny about it.” I kicked myself mentally.
Abby smiled at me. “You going to go interview the widow? Or would you rather I do it? She might be more likely to open up to another woman—you know, the whole ‘we’re sisters, men are such idiots’ approach.”
I thought about it for a moment and shook my head. “No, I think it’s best if I go. I wonder what she told Venus and Blaine.”
“Who knows?” she replied. “Want me to ask them?”
I shook my head and slipped a twenty into the leather case containing our bill. I stood up. “I’ll cruise by Mona’s, see if she’s there. If she isn’t, well, I do have some other questions for Jonny.”
“Anything for me to do?”
“Just keep going over the financials. Something’s got to be there.”
Dark clouds were moving in from over the West Bank as I started my car, and as I turned onto Magazine Street, fat drops of rain were starting to hit my windshield. By the time I pulled up in front of Mona O’Neill’s house, it was a full-fledged downpour. Constance Street was already under a couple of inches of water, and the drainage ditch alongside the road was filling up. I opened my umbrella and got out of the car. There was a big black Lexus SUV parked in Mona’s driveway; I assumed it belonged to her daughter-in-law.
The rain pounded down on top of my umbrella, and a blast of wind almost ripped it out of my hands. I almost lost it again as I struggled to get the gate open with one hand. By the time I made it to the porch I was soaked from the knees down.
The front door opened as I climbed onto the porch and shut the umbrella, shaking it free of the beads of water. “You must be Jonny’s detective,” a woman said from inside the screen door. The dark clouds had made the day as dark as night, and I couldn’t get a good look at her. She was simply a backlit silhouette. “He said you might come by at some point, and he said you were a big man. He wasn’t exaggerating.” Her voice sounded slightly amused.
“Yes, ma’am, I’m Chanse MacLeod,” I replied, giving her my most reassuring smile. “I’m sorry to bother you, but—”
She interrupted me with a sigh. “You just missed the police detectives, a black woman and a white man.” She opened the screen door. “Come on in out of the storm. Might as well get it all over with—putting this off isn’t going to make it any easier, and I’m already raw from the cops. You want some coffee? I’ve got a fresh pot brewing.”
“That would be nice, thank you. Cream and Sweet’n Low, if it’s not too much trouble, ma’am.” I stepped inside and got a good look at her in the light from the chandelier in the living room.
“Please don’t ma’am me—my name is Celia.” She was of average height, maybe about five-six or so. She was wider in the hips than she was in the shoulders, but she kept herself fit. She was wearing a pair of black fleece sweatpants and a black T-shirt. Her breasts were small and sat high on her chest. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and her dark hair was cut short. There were some telltale strands of gray scattered throughout it. There were lines around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth, but she was still a handsome woman. She had oval-shaped dark eyes, framed with long lashes, and a pert little nose. They were a little swollen, and red from crying. She’d been a knockout when she was a young woman.
She padded off to the kitchen to get the coffee, and I looked around the living room. It wasn’t nearly as neat as it had been on Sunday, when Jonny showed me around. The magazines on the coffee table had been moved, and one lay open. The television was on—some court show with a black female judge, but the sound was muted. The table next to one of the reclining chairs had a McDonald’s bag sitting on it, and a burger wrapper was sticking out of the top. There was also a stack of mail on the coffee table, and an open purse on the floor.
She gave me a weak smile as she handed me the cup, gesturing for me to have a seat. I sat down on the couch, and she took a seat in the reclining chair, folding her legs underneath her. She grimaced at the McDonald’s bag, crumpling it up and putting it on the floor next to her purse. “I really can’t help you with Mona—I really don’t know anything about that.” She shifted awkwardly in the chair. “We were never really close, and I haven’t spoken to her for over a month.” She shrugged halfheartedly. “Robby didn’t encourage it. He never encouraged me to get close to anyone in his family. Lorelle and Jonny have been absolutely lovely since—” Her voice broke, and she took a moment to gather herself. “Since this all started. Lorelle’s watching my kids now—said I probably needed some time to gather myself. She’s very kind.”
“Did Robby ever give you a reason why he avoided his family?”
She sighed. “Robby never really appreciated his mother, you know. I used to tell him he should be grateful at the very least that she was still alive—mine died when I was a little girl—but all they ever did was argue and fight. He was ashamed of her, and she knew it.”
“Ashamed?”
She gestured around the room. “He didn’t like having blue-collar roots—he thought growing up in the Irish Channel was some kind of disgrace, if you can believe that.” She rolled her eyes. “Like that really matters to anyone anymore? Better to have honest parents who work hard and love you, isn’t it?”
“I suppose,” I replied, remembering my own roots in the Cottonwood Wells trailer park. I’d done a pretty good job of distancing myself from there, and from my family.
“I always wondered if he married me because he loved me or because of who I am—who I was.” She put her coffee cup down on the table.
“I don’t know your maiden name, ma’am, but Lorelle mentioned you’d been Queen of Rex.”
She started laughing. “Good Lord, not that idiocy again!” She put her coffee cup down on the table. “Mr. MacLeod, I was never Queen of Rex. I was a maid the one year my parents could afford it—just the one year, and I thought it was a terrible waste of money. I certainly was never Queen—not of Rex, not of any krewe.” She rolled her eyes again. “Robby liked to tell people that, which I always told him was really stupid—what if someone checked? Then he’d just look stupid, and like a liar, to boot. But he always said the only people who would check wouldn’t have to check.” She sighed. “It’s all so stupid, isn’t it? But he cared about things like that—like he thought people cared. But he said it helped him get clients, and keep them. He said people like to invest money with people who had connections to society.”
“He was an investment counselor?”
She nodded. “Yes, and he was a good one, too. But it was never enough for him. He always wanted to make it big, you know? Make a lot of money.” Her face twisted. “He had this crazy idea that it mattered to me. But it didn’t.” She got a faraway look on her face. “I come from an old-line New Orleans society family, Mr. MacLeod. I grew up in the Garden District, I went to McGehee, all of that idiocy that really doesn’t matter anymore. But we didn’t have any money—we were name rich, money poor. My father had to scrimp and save to send my sisters and me to the right schools so we could marry money.” She shook her head. “I always thought it was a waste, you know? The house—” She laughed. “The first floor of our house was a showplace, and we never let anyone upstairs—because the upstairs was a wreck. All the money went into the first floor, so we could keep up appearances
. Stupid, really. But Robby never understood I didn’t care about that stuff. I’d rather have had a smaller house and sent my kids to public school than for him to steal.”
“So you knew about the embezzlement?”
“I found out.” She sighed. “That’s why I took the kids and went to Sandestin for the summer—one of my sisters has a beach house there. I needed some space, some distance from him. I didn’t know if I could stay married to a thief.” She bit her lip. “Guess I don’t have to worry about that anymore, do I?”
“I thought Robby drove over on the weekends?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t seen him since I left him—we just talked on the phone.” She ran a hand through her hair. “That sounds like something Robby would have told someone who asked where me and the kids were. He was all about the appearances, you know.”
“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted him dead?”
She sighed. “I’ll tell you what I told the cops—I have no idea, none at all.” She crossed her legs. “Robby didn’t talk to me about his work—every once in a while, when he’d come up with one of his great ideas—what he called his ‘million-dollar ideas’—he would tell me about it.”
“Do you know what his latest idea was?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t.” She thought about it for a moment, looking away from me. “He had a big argument with Mona—that was how I found out about the embezzlement, you know? I heard them, in his office, where his body was—found.” She swallowed, closed her eyes, and took a moment before continuing. “I heard enough to know he needed money, and quite a bit of it, and fast. After Mona left, I confronted him.” She sighed. “I was horrified, absolutely horrified—especially at the thought he’d stolen money because he thought he needed to maintain a lifestyle I wanted.” She shook her head and looked away from me. “It was like he had no idea of who I was—after being married for almost fifteen years, he knew nothing about me, who I was as a person—and even if I cared about that stuff, Mr. MacLeod, I never in a million years would have condoned stealing to maintain it. My sister had always offered to let us stay at her place over there, and so I took her up on it. I took the kids and left. Maybe if I hadn’t—”
“Then you and your kids might have been in danger, too, Mrs. O’Neill. Leaving here was the smartest thing you could have done.”
“Celia, please, and thank you for saying that. Hopefully someday I can believe it.”
“Were you aware of the money problems before you overheard him arguing with his mother?”
She nodded. “Robby handled our money, and I knew we were having trouble. The economy, you know—people lost a lot of money in the markets, and I know we did, too. Robby wouldn’t tell me how much we lost, but I know it was a lot. I noticed—” She bit her lip. “He took my debit card a couple of months ago and told me to use a credit card to pay for things—groceries and so on. I know he closed the household account. I also knew that wasn’t a good sign, you know. He was having trouble sleeping, and I think…oh, hell, he’s dead, right?” She gave me a crooked smile. “I still can’t believe he was stealing from his clients. They trusted him.”
“But none of them knew?”
“Oh, no, the company certainly kept that all on the hush-hush—his boss called to offer his condolences—but he sounded like he was more concerned about finding out what I knew about what Robby’d been doing. I suppose that’s only fair, but I’m afraid I was a little rude to him.” Her eyes filled with tears. “It breaks my heart that Robby thought he had to embezzle to keep me happy…” She shook her head. “My family—yeah, we were old New Orleans society. But our money ran out a long time ago, Mr. MacLeod. A long time ago. Like I said, I know what it’s like going to the best schools and then going home and eating macaroni and cheese because you can’t afford anything else. My father so desperately wanted to keep up appearances, so I know firsthand how pointless and stupid that is. Both of my sisters married money, you know—they didn’t want to have to worry about paying their bills and putting food on the table. Me? I loved Robby.” She sighed. “I didn’t need that big house. I didn’t care if my daughter went to McGehee or if my son went to Jesuit. None of that matters. I told Robby that over and over, but he never listened. I would have been just as happy in a small house in River Ridge.” She wiped at her eyes. “And where did it get him? Dead. And his mother’s missing.” Her voice shook. “The cops were pretty open about it. Do you think she’s dead, too?”
“I—”
“You can be honest with me. I have no use for platitudes.”
“When people disappear, Mrs. O’Neill, they usually disappear because they don’t want to be found. From everything I’ve found out about your mother-in-law, there was no reason for her to walk away from her life and her family. So it stands to reason that she’s dead. And all the blood in her car—”
“But it wasn’t her blood.”
I paused. “I beg your pardon?”
“Those cops—they said the blood in her car wasn’t hers. It was the wrong blood type.”
I didn’t know what to say. I stared at her for a few moments while scenarios ran through my head—none of which made a lot of sense.
“So it’s possible she’s still alive.” Celia O’Neill went on like I wasn’t goggling at her like a simple-minded fool. “But I can’t think why she’d just disappear.”
“You said Robby had an argument with her?”
She nodded. “They used to fight all the time. Every once in a while he’d find some great investment opportunity and would try to convince her to invest. Mona controlled Jonny’s trust fund, and she had her own investments. She always said no, and Robby would always get mad. He felt like she babied Jonny too much.” She shook her head. “He really didn’t like Jonny. He never told me what he had against his brother, but he literally hated him.” She shuddered. “I never could understand how someone could feel that way about a family member. I mean, my oldest sister’s a bitch from hell, but I don’t hate her. Not the way Robby hated Jonny.”
“Could it have just been sibling rivalry?”
“Maybe, I don’t know.” She covered her face with her hands. “I know it sounds like my marriage was a complete failure—but it wasn’t. We were really happy. I loved him. I didn’t care if we lost the house, filed bankruptcy, had to put the kids in public school. But he wouldn’t—” Her voice choked off in a sob. “I guess that’s all in my future now, isn’t it? But we’ll be fine.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
She got control of herself and gave me a weak smile. “It’s okay. I have to get used to the idea that he’s gone.”
“What are you going to do?”
She shrugged. “There’s a life insurance policy—we both had one. And I know he had another one through the office.” She looked away from me. “I probably should apologize to Ross—that’s his boss.”
“Can I ask you one last question, and then I’ll get out of your hair?”
She bit her lower lip and nodded.
“I’d been told that Robby was really interested in Jonny’s fighting career?” I made it a question, and raised my eyebrows.
She nodded. “Yeah, that’s true. He didn’t like Jonny, but when he thought his brother had a chance to make it big…” She shook her head. “He thought Jonny should sign with the casino where he fought, and that Mona was holding him back.”
I stood up. “Thank you for talking to me, Mrs. O’Neill. I’m really sorry for your loss.”
She walked me to the door, and opened it. “You sure you don’t want to have some more coffee, wait out this storm?”
“Thanks, but I need to get going.” I shook her hand. “A little rain never hurt anyone.”
Constance Street was now under about a foot of water. I opened the umbrella and splashed down the walk. The water in the drainage ditch was washing over the walk, and my feet were soaked as I sloshed through the fast-moving dirty water to the driver’s side of my ca
r. I unlocked the car and closed the umbrella, getting drenched again before getting my door closed. I drove down a block.
Jonny’s car was sitting out in front of the ramshackle shotgun house.
Jonny himself opened the door. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and his basketball shorts hung from his narrow waist. “Dude, get in out of the rain.” He flicked on the light switch and I stepped into the house, shivering.
“How you doing?” I asked as Heather gave me a look. She pushed herself to her feet.
“I’ll leave you two to your business.” She shuffled out of the room, both hands pressed against the small of her back.
“I’m sorry about your brother,” I said.
Jonny nodded. “Thanks, man.” His eyes were red. “I can’t get over it, you know? Thanks for helping me out the other night.” He closed his eyes and his lower lip trembled. “I hope I don’t ever have to identify another body, man. I can’t get the image of his face out of my head.”
“I just talked to your sister-in-law. She mentioned you and Robby didn’t get along?”
“I wouldn’t go that far.” He didn’t look at me, just kept staring at his hands. “I mean, we were like sixteen years apart in age. We just didn’t have a lot in common.”
“Celia seemed to think that he really didn’t like you.”
A tear rolled down his cheek. “He did.”
“Jonny.” I softened my voice. “He’s dead now, and your mom is still missing. You need to be completely honest with me, okay, or I can’t do my job.”