by Greg Herren
She was wrong. I knew it as surely as I knew I was still alive. “He could be holed up in a hotel somewhere.”
“No activity on his credit cards for the last couple of days, other than a dinner on Sunday night.”
We’d gone out to Bravo on St. Charles that night. He’d been tired, a long day of delays and cancelled flights at the airport, and I wasn’t in the mood to cook either.
That couldn’t be our last night together.
No.
“Are you OK?” Venus asked.
“I’m fine, really.”
“Do you want me to call someone?” She gave me a half-smile. “You don’t look so good.”
“No, really, I’m fine. I’m OK.” I sat there, unable to move. All I could hear was the sound echoing through my head, over and over again. He’s dead, dead, dead…. I was vaguely aware of Venus getting up, excusing herself, asking me again if I was OK. I waved her off, and sat there, the ice in my Coke melting.
Paul couldn’t be dead. Venus was wrong.
No body, no death.
“It’s just a theory.” I said aloud. “She doesn’t have any proof.”
My mind didn’t seem to be functioning. It just felt right to keep sitting there, with the sound of the cars going by below me. Despite the sun, I felt cold, like my blood wasn’t flowing anymore. I heard the music coming from the bar and knew someone was playing the piano on the second floor. Someone came out and sat on the stoop of the house across the street. I dimly was aware of a ringing sound.
My cell phone. I answered. “MacLeod.” My voice came out as a hoarse gasp.
“Chanse?” It was Paige. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah.” The spell was sort of broken, but my mind was numb, not capable of making connections and thought. “I made it back OK. I’m in the Quarter. At Goodfriends.”
“So this lead turned out to be nothing??”
“Yeah. I guess.” I shook my head, trying to jump-start my brain.
“Are you sure you’re fine? You sound funny.”
“No, I’m fine.” I stood up. My head swam a little bit at first, then everything seemed to come into focus. “Really. What’s up?”
“I just wanted to let you know I found some interesting stuff. I’m going to be leaving here in about an hour. Want me to come by your place and bring dinner?”
Food of any kind sounded disgusting. I couldn’t possibly eat anything. “Sure.”
“OK, I’ll be there around five.” She hung up.
I walked out of Goodfriends and headed up St. Ann. Zane, Zane had seen Ricky going back there. It couldn’t be mob related—it couldn’t be. It didn’t make sense. A lover’s quarrel of some sort had gone wrong and Ricky had fled. The Feds were trying to cover it all up for the Judge’s sake. That made more sense…I had to talk to Zane, find out more about Mark and Ricky.
I looked through the gate. The Attitude office looked deserted. The lights were off. The shutters were closed and latched. Several boxes full of crumpled paper and garbage were sitting on the porch. I rang the buzzer. No one answered. I pressed again. “come on, come on…” He had to be there. “Come on, Zane, damn it, answer!”
“Hey Chanse.” I looked up and saw Ghentry. I plastered a phony smile on my face. He’d just stepped out of the Hit Parade, the little gay boutique on the corner. He had a bag in his hand and a bottle of diet Pepsi in the other. He had a sad look on his face as he walked up to me.
“’fraid nobody’s home, not now, not ever.” He shrugged, his dilapidated glasses sliding down on his nose. He lit a cigarette.
“Why? What happened?”
“Zane called me last night and said he was shutting the business down. He dropped off my last paycheck at my house last night.” He sighed. “I knew that job was too good to last.”
“Did Zane say why he was closing it down?”
“Apparently, Monday afternoon Mark emptied the accounts.”
“Really?” Interesting.
He nodded. “There’s no money left. Mark cleaned the business out…” He raised his eyebrows. “Zane said he couldn’t handle it without Mark, anyway. The only money coming in would be from the pr stuff, and that was Mark’s gig. He sounded pretty upset. Can’t say as I blame him.” Ghentry took a long pull on his cigarette and shrugged. “I took that check straight to the bank this morning and cashed it.” He held up the bag. “Since I’m unemployed again, I thought I’d treat myself to something new. Who knows when I’ll be able to buy anything ever again.”
“Mark stole the money?” Why not? He’d been convicted of credit card fraud. Why wouldn’t he steal money from his business partner? “Do you know how much it was?”
“Zane said it was about 20 grand, give or take.”
So, Monday afternoon, Mark embezzled $20,000. I stared at the office door for a moment. It sounded like he’d been getting ready to skip town the day he was killed.
And it also gave Zane a motive—one that didn’t involve the mob. A surge of energy shot through my body. Venus was wrong. Paul was alive.
I turned back to Ghentry. “Does your code still work on the gate?”
“I imagine it does. I could try it.” He stepped up to the keypad and punched in four numbers. There was a buzz, and he pulled the gate open. “Why do you want to go in there? It’s all locked up. Zane even brought all my stuff from my desk with him. I wasn’t really happy about that, you know—I don’t like people going through my stuff—some of it was personal, you know, but I kind of got the impression he wanted everything out of there, like he was skipping out on the rent or something.” He frowned. “That didn’t seem like him, but—“ he shrugged. “I never would have thought Mark would have stolen money either. Just goes to show ya, you know? You can’t trust anyone.”
“Yeah.” I gave him a smile. “Do you mind coming in with me?” I didn’t want to be accused later of planting evidence.
“Got nothing else to do.” He gave a half-laugh. “Besides find another job…not that I want to deal with that. Christ, I hate looking for work.”
I stepped through the gate, and climbed the steps. I knelt down beside one of the boxes and started digging through the crumpled paper. There was a computer keyboard buried in there, and old copies of the magazine. I found myself looking down into the fce of the guy Zane said he’d had the date with the night of the murder. I pulled out my notepad and flipped through it. Danny DeMarco. I turned to Ghentry. “You know this guy?”
“Danny? Sure.” He grinned. “It was really sad the way Zane mooned over that guy. I mean, anyone could see he was straight.”
“But didn’t Zane have a date with him that night?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it a date.” Ghentry winked at me. “Zane might have considered it a date, but it wasn’t—not by a long shot. I mean, Julian knew Danny’s girlfriend, and she was always telling Zane Danny was straight, but he just kept insisting….”
“Uh huh.” I flipped back a couple of pages. “This Ed Smith person who kept calling for Mark Monday—he’d called before?”
“Not that I know of.” Ghentry sat down on the steps. “I never talked to him before.”
I wondered if Venus had pulled the phone records for the office. I dug through the box some more, but without knowing exactly what to look for, none of it seemed useful. I stood up and walked over to the corner of the house, looking down the path to the slave quarter where Mark was murdered. It was two stories, with a gallery running along the upper level. And to the right, on the other side of the brick wall, was another slave quarter with an adjacent balcony. It would be easy enough to cross from one to the other…but surely the police had thought of that.
But they’d had a suspect with powder residue, holding on to the murder weapon. They’d had no reason to think someone might have gone over the balconies into the next yard. It would have been easy enough for Ricky to shoot Mark and climb over.
It would be equally easy for a hitman to carry Ricky’s body off that way as well.
/>
Don’t even think about that.
“Who lives next door?”
Ghentry shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“Where does Zane live?”
“Somewhere around here, I never knew for sure. It’s not like he ever invited anyone over or anything.”
“You said when we talked last you didn’t like Ricky Dahlgren.” An idea was struggling to form in my head.
“No, like I said, he was a gay geek.”
“Because he didn’t know things gays would know, right?”
“Yeah.” His face was puzzled. “What is all this about?”
“Why did you think he was dating Mark?”
“Well, because—“ He stopped. “Come to think of it, Mark never really talked much about Ricky.”
“Did you ever see them kiss? Be affectionate to each other?”
He shook his head. “No. I mean, they would hug and kiss each other on the cheek to say hello, but other than that…” his voice trailed off.
“So why did you think they were lovers?”
“Because Zane said so, Zane talked about them all the time.” He scratched his head. “It was always Zane saying something. But he never said anything in front of Mark. That’s weird, isn’t it?”
And Zane was the only person who saw Ricky the day of the murder.
Ghentry followed me as I walked around the house to the back courtyard. There was a door with steps in the rear of the house. “Where does that door lead?”
“Mark’s office.” I thought back to my interview with him that afternoon. I hadn’t paid much attention at the time, but yes, there was a door.
My head was spinning. “Do you have Zane’s phone number?”
“Yeah.” He got out his cell phone, and scrolled through his stored numbers. “Here it is. You want me to call him?”
I got out my notebook and wrote the number down. “Was that a cell or apartment number?”
“Home number. Let me find his cell.”
I wrote that number down and grinned at Ghentry. “Thanks, man, you’ve been a huge help.” I started to walk away, then stopped. “Do you remember exactly what it was Zane said when he saw Ricky on his way back?”
“He made a face.” Ghentry closed his eyes, thinking. “And a noise, you know, like pfui. Julian asked him what was wrong, and he said, ‘I just hate that Ricky.’ I said something like ‘what brought that on?’ and Zane said, ‘he’s on his way back there—I saw him in the window’ and went back to work.”
I walked back to the street before I dialed Zane’s home number. I got the voicemail there and on his cell phone. I left a message on both, asking him to call me. Zane was the only witness that could place Ricky at the murder site—if Ricky was the killer—that didn’t bode well for Zane.
I glanced at my watch. 20 till five. There were no cabs to be seen. Fuck, it figures. I walked on down to Dauphine. Finally I hailed an oncoming United cab. Luckily, the cabbie wasn’t talkative. He was older and listening to a country station. Martina McBride’s “Independence Day.” I hummed along in my head.
I was onto something, I could feel it. But who to tell? Venus was off the case. I couldn’t go to the Feds without letting them know Venus had talked to me. Fuck. There had to be some way around this. Of course, Venus and I could always pretend like she’d never told me anything, so it would make sense for me to call her.
I can be a good liar, but lying to the cops always makes me nervous. I’d talk to Paige…she had a really devious mind. I could trust her not to fuck over Venus—they were friends.
I closed my eyes. Venus.
I heard her voice saying again, “He’s probably dead, Chanse. They don’t leave loose ends.”
She was wrong. I knew it. Mark’s murder had nothing to do with the Santini trial. Yes, there were some coincidences—Dominique’s ex, the Judge—but I was sure. Ricky had killed Mark, which meant Paul had to be alive somewhere.
Paige was sitting on my front steps with a greasy brown paper bag when I got out of the cab. I gave her a quick hug and kiss. I could smell the fried shrimp. “Po’boys?”
“Of course.” I held the door open for her before I followed her in, and quickly shut, locked and chained the door.
She stared at me. “What are you doing?”
I sat down. “You wouldn’t believe what I found out.”
She handed me my sandwich and a bottle of Dr. Pepper. “I found out some things too. You want me to go first?”
“Yeah.” I took a bite of my sandwich. I decided not to tell her Venus’ theory that Paul was dead. No sense in upsetting her. No body, no death.
“The Dahlgren family has been getting death threats. Not just the judge, but the whole family’s been threatened.” She smiled at me. “I got that straight from the woman herself, Lois Dahlgren. That’s why Ricky was carrying the judge’s gun.”
Death threats? “Why didn’t they have protection?” The po’boy was heavenly.
“Judge Dahlgren refused it, said it would be giving into fear.”
“Pretty ballsy to risk your family like that.”
“That’s Judge Dahlgren for you. Your turn.”
The great thing about Paige is she can be trusted. I swore her to secrecy, then filled her in on everything Venus told me, watching her eyes grow wider and her face get paler. “Chanse, then that means that Paul’s—“ she broke off, putting her sandwich down.
“Don’t say it. It’s not possible.”
“Chanse, you have to—“
“No, I don’t.” My voice shook. “I’m convinced Ricky killed Mark. Venus is wrong. We’ll find him, Paige. He’s alive, I know it.”
She bit her lip. “OK.” She wiped at her eyes, and before my eyes pulled herself together. She sat up straighter. I smiled to myself. I could always count on Paige to show her steel backbone. “So, you think there might be more to this Zane than you thought?”
“If he found out Mark cleaned out the accounts on Monday, it sure gives him a hell of a motive, doesn’t it? It can’t hurt to do some research.” I crumpled up my sandwich wrapper and put it back in the bag. Paige pulled out a baggie of pot from her purse and got my pipe from under the couch. As she loaded, I went over to my computer and woke it up.
I had left Jude’s pictures up. I tried to close them before she saw them, to no avail.
She whistled from behind me, pot smoke drifting around my head. “Who’s that?”
“One of Paul’s wrestling buddies—the one who turned me onto Chris Fowler.” I finished closing the pictures and logged onto the Internet.
“Nice.”
“Yeah.”
Paige’s phone rang, and she answered. She walked away out of earshot while I finished saving and closing Jude’s pictures. I was vaguely aware of murmuring, then the sound of her snapping her phone closed. “Chanse?”
“Yeah?”
She put her hand on my shoulder. “That was Paul’s mom. Um, they are on their way over here.”
Chapter Sixteen
This wasn’t exactly how I’d envisioned meeting Paul’s parents.
We’d talked about it a few times. I’d even talked to his mother about it on the phone—either Paul and I going out there or them coming to New Orleans. Something always managed to come up, though. We’d been invited out there for Thanksgiving and I’d already bought the plane tickets, but that was still a few weeks away. I’d liked Mrs. Maxwell from talking to her on the phone. She seemed like a really sweet woman, and Paul adored his dad. I’d been a little nervous about meeting them, but Paul was sure they’d like me. “How could they not?” he’d say with that big grin of his. “What’s not to love?”
However I’d imagined it, it hadn’t been like this.
“Um, this place reeks of pot.” Paige said, walking over to a window and sliding it up.
I walked into the kitchen and got out a can of room deodorizer, spraying it liberally throughout the living room. I got out a couple of sticks of strawberry incense, lighting them and
sticking them into holders I’d scattered around the apartment. The heavy thick scent filled the room.
“That’s better.” Paige nodded.
“What are we going to tell them? Why are they here, anyway?”
“I called them.” Paige wouldn’t look at me. “Look, it was possible he’d gone home to them, wasn’t it? And if he’s missing, they have a right to know. If it were my kid, I’d want to know.” She swallowed. “Besides, they already knew—Venus had called them. When I talked to them they were getting ready to head for the airport.”
A car door slammed outside. I sat back down in my chair and took some deep breaths. I heard footsteps coming up the walk. My doorbell rang; and Paige answered it. “Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell?”
“You must be Paige.” A woman’s voice said, and I could see Paige being hugged. Paige stepped back after a moment, and the couple walked into my living room. The woman was short, a little over five foot tall. She was wearing a worn looking pair of jeans underneath a red cable knit sweater. Her hair was curly like Paul’s, thick and wavy but sprinkled with gray. She was a little overweight, but it suited her. Her face was round and full and free of wrinkles. Her eyes were brown. He got his eyes from his father.
Ian Maxwell was almost as tall as me, with a strong heavy build that could easily be mistaken for fat—but the size was deceptive. I got the sense of coiled strength in reserve. Paul looked more like his father with the same blue eyes, the same cleft in the chin, and the same dimples in his tanned worn cheeks. Ian’s hair was reddish and thinning on the top. He strode across the room with his hand out. “Chanse! We meet at last!” He grabbed my hand in a death grip.
I swear I felt bones crack.
“Hello, Mr. Maxwell.” I managed to get out, shaking my hand a bit when he let go.
“Call me Ian.” He said as his wife grabbed me into a stranglehold of a hug. She smelled faintly of Chanel. “And this is Fee.”
“Oh, Chanse.” Fee Maxwell smiled up at me with Paul’s smile. It was uncanny. “You’re everything Paul said, everything I imagined.”