Mean Woman Blues

by Smith, Julie

  Her face wasn’t looking quite so blank. “Like that movie with Jack Nicholson?”

  “As Good As It Gets. Yeah, like that.”

  “But you don’t have OCD.”

  “I did. I used to. I got it under control with meds.”

  “And now it’s coming back?”

  “Seems to be.”

  “Why?”

  Yes. That was the question. Why indeed? He thought it was because he was having a crisis of faith in human nature. He had started life among dangerous humans. That he knew intellectually, and, unfortunately, he could remember a great deal as well.

  But he’d paid his dues. He’d gotten away from all that. He had been a monk; he had meditated hours and hours a day… oh, the things he’d done! He hadn’t spoken for weeks at a time.

  Now he’d made a new life, a completely new life as an art student with a girlfriend and a family (in the form of Lovelace). And suddenly this thing had happened to Terri. The arrest and then the falling apart. The cigarettes, the overeating, the whining, the worrying. She was suddenly a different person. He was shocked that this could happen to a person, that it could be done to a person. He wondered if he could say this to her. He decided he had to give it a try.

  “Why is my OCD coming back? It’s complicated, Terri. And it has a lot to do with you.”

  “Me?” she interrupted him, furious. “You’re accusing me?”

  “No, of course not. It’s just that the stress…”

  “The stress. You think I should plead out, don’t you? To something I didn’t do.”

  He wasn’t sure whether he did or not. “This thing is so hard on you, Terri…”

  “It’s unjust. It isn’t right. It’s something that only happens to poor people. The question just doesn’t come up if you never have to worry about covering a check.”

  The thought in the back of his head surged to the forefront: Did she mean to defraud the bank? How can I be sure she didn’t?

  It was a completely unworthy thought. She was really a good person. But he couldn’t help thinking it. She looked at his face, and she read it there; he knew this because of what he saw on hers. The comprehension, the disappointment, the betrayal.

  He needed to wash his hands again, but he couldn’t move. Couldn’t move and couldn’t speak, either. He was frozen and might have remained so for a long time if the silence hadn’t been ruptured by a ringing telephone.

  Terri answered her cell phone as if nothing had happened, and in a moment she squealed with delight. “You’re from the Mr. Right show? You’re kidding! You really want me to? I can’t believe it!”

  Nothing made her happy these days. He couldn’t imagine what the call could be.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Because New Orleans is below sea level, its early citizens quickly learned that normal burials were impractical, as their dead relatives tended to float back up. Hence, they learned to build elaborate tombs above ground, miniature buildings in rows like streets, which earned the cemeteries the nickname “Cities of the Dead.” At the end of a year, the bones of the latest body could be swept to the back to make room for someone else; thus, once a family had its tomb, there was no need to keep buying cemetery plots.

  The older tombs tend to be ornate and decorated with gorgeous statues and urns— or at least they used to be. The day the task force took its field trip, it was sad to see the outlines of those that had been removed, and there were lots.

  On the whole, the field trip was a great success, like a perfect operation in which the patient dies.

  It gave the three officers more than ever a sense of the enormity of territory the thieves had to work from. It was easy to see how they’d been so successful and even how they’d come up with the idea in the first place. New Orleans had acres and acres of unprotected artworks, just there for the taking. There was no way on Earth you could patrol this much property.

  But if the trip was daunting, a couple of good things came out of it. It afforded a sense of where the good stuff was (in the older sections, naturally) and how a thief would likely operate in each one. In some, he could simply drive his SUV down the little streets between the rows of tombs, stop whenever he saw something he wanted, pry it up with a crowbar, and load it in full daylight. Because the cemeteries were so vast it would be easy enough to operate unobserved.

  All that could be helpful if they ever got a suspect. They could probably see a crime in progress from the end of a row without being seen, maybe even photograph or tape it. The catch was, they’d have to know about it to be there.

  The sting itself wasn’t exactly coming together with Germanic precision. However, Hagerty and LeDoux, out on their pavement-pounding missions, were beginning to get a feel for which shopkeepers were honest and which ones could be tempted with a little illicit action. One or two had actually called to report LeDoux when he came in showing pictures of “family heirlooms” he was selling. These were then questioned as to whether they’d gotten other such offers. So far none had, but they said they’d sure keep their ears open.

  Whoopee-do.

  Some of them went all righteous on Hagerty, in her decorator role, saying they’d be the last to traffic in that kind of stuff. But several had taken her cell phone number, saying they’d call if they got anything that looked like what she wanted. These— who had to be either bent or out of it— were a lot more interesting. If one of them did call, the task force could get the kind of break that would solve the case.

  Skip trudged through the days, wishing she could match the other officers’ enthusiasm. She called all the out-of-town antiques dealers on her list, including the ones who’d first been involved— the ones in Los Angeles who claimed they had no idea the merchandise had been stolen. Who they bought it from was a matter of record, but none of the names had rap sheets attached. (Nor true addresses or phone numbers.)

  Then she got a brainstorm about a possible information gold mine— real decorators. If ever there was a group that loved to gossip, this was it. And this was her territory, a place she could go as high-profile as she pleased, and it could only help. Raised as an Uptown, private-school girl, she was the daughter of a social-climbing family that had never quite made it to “socially prominent.” But she still had plenty of contacts from McGehee’s, Valencia, Icebreakers, the Tulane chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma, and her parents’ old neighborhood, most notably her old Kappa sister, Alison Gaillard. If Alison didn’t know every decorator in town (or where to find him), no one would. Skip’s fingers tingled as she reached for the phone. She was going to rise to this occasion after all.

  “Alison? Skip Langdon.”

  “Why, Detective Langdon. We thought you’d forgotten us here at Rumors-R-Us.” Her old gossip-buddy sounded a little hurt.

  “Never! You’ll always be my favorite Deep Throat.”

  Alison chortled. “Skippy, you watch your language, now.”

  “It’s just that I’ve had my hands kind of full with lowlife lowlifes. Last I heard your specialty was high-life lowlifes.”

  Alison’s silvery laugh trilled out. Skip had forgotten how beautiful it was— probably the most attractive thing about the woman, who’d never been Skip’s type back in college. Not that she wasn’t a real knockout in her own way, but she was just a bit too coiffed and manicured and fabulously turned out to resemble a real person. That was how they did things Uptown, which was more or less no-man’s-land to someone whose own father refused to speak to her when she became a cop.

  A strange thing about Alison, though. She’d come through for Skip every time she’d been asked. She did it as selflessly as if they’d always been best friends, when in fact they’d almost been enemies, owing to a few little things like Skip’s “inappropriate attire” (jeans, as a matter of fact) at rush parties.

  “Skippy, you are the craziest thing,” Alison said now. “I’m just an old stay-at-home mom anymore.” She paused. “On the other hand, the invention of the cell phone makes gossip-mongering easier, faster
, and more efficient than ever before, and I was always the queen. Why, now I can gossip in the shower if I want to. And I do, Skippy. I do.”

  This time Skip was the one who laughed. “You aren’t kidding, you’re the queen. You could probably solve my case on the phone.”

  “You must mean that cemetery art thing. I’m just so proud of you, Miss Head of the Task Force.”

  “Matter of fact, I do mean that. You wouldn’t happen to have seen any art around someone’s pool, would you?’

  “Oh, no.” Alison’s voice was shocked. “I know a lot of people who’re missing some, though.”

  “Good. So it’s a big Uptown issue. Here’s what I was thinking: If I were a thief, I might offer this stuff to decorators and see if I got any takers.”

  Alison let out a little squeal. “Omigod. Patrick! Patrick Delacroix. I think he did get an offer like that. He told Susu Reynoir about it.”

  Skip let out her breath in a satisfied little hiss. “Ah. Maybe I should give Patrick a call.”

  Alison said, “I’m thinking here. I’m thinking. If Patrick got an offer, maybe some of the others did too. Ash Lanasa did our breakfast room. You should see it, Skippy. We have all these great metal chairs. I mean, real sculptures, like Mario Villa does. Only Mario didn’t do them; a student of one of his students—”

  Skip was sure it was the most fabulous breakfast room in Orleans Parish, but right now she had other things on her mind. “Could you ask Ash if he’s heard anything?’

  “She.”

  “Hmm?’

  “Ash is a woman. Sure I’ll ask her. Get right back to you.”

  This was the way they’d worked in the past: Alison called to pave the way; Uptown, it made everything smoother.

  Without much hope, she called Patrick herself. He hadn’t even met the person who made the offer, just received some pictures through the mail with a note saying the sender would phone. He never had.

  Which might be good, Skip thought, making a stab at optimism. “Call me if he does, will you?” she said.

  Her phone rang as soon as she put it down.

  “Skip. It’s Dee-Dee.”

  Jimmy Dee almost never called her at work and he sounded deadly serious. “Skip,” he had called her, not “Venus” or “my dainty darling” or even “Margaret.” Her heart started to pound.

  “Listen, I’m in a bind, and Kenny’s at a friend’s house. Can you pick him up on his way home?”

  “Sure,” she squeaked, hoping her voice didn’t give her away. Ringing off, she thought that this was no way to live: terrified to hear the voice of her best friend, sure he could only be calling to report disaster, reading danger into haste and distraction.

  She thought, I’m going to find that bastard Jacomine if I have to spend twenty-four hours a day on it.

  She started immediately, scribbling on the nearest yellow pad. She was putting together her game plan when Alison called back. “Bingo. Ash has a friend who has a friend who actually saw a cemetery angel in a shop. This was before anything came out in the media, of course. A client took Ash’s friend to see it. Kenny Gilbert is the friend’s name. Anyway, Kenny thought it was too Gothic for the look he was going for, so it might still be there. Ash just called him, and he remembers the store.” She gave Skip Gilbert’s number. “Happy hunting, Kappa girl.” Skip had to laugh; that was a nickname that hadn’t even applied in college. Kappa she might be but pretty much in name only.

  The store was neither on Magazine nor in the French Quarter. It was a fairly new shop in the Warehouse District, also known, because of its copious galleries, as the Arts District. Skip went herself rather than send Hagerty, and there was the statue, big as life, in a prominent place on the floor. The proprietor, a Middle Eastern man, seemed barely able to speak English. What the hell, she thought, and played Hagerty’s role. “Hi, I’m Margaret Langdon. From Texas? I’m a decorator, and I was just thinking that angel would be perfect for this job I’m doing in Dallas. The only thing is, I really need about six of ’em. Is there any way you could get more like that one? Or even similar. They don’t have to match or anything.”

  He shook his head vigorously. “No, ma’am. This one of a kind. French— come from chateau. You not find one like it anywhere.”

  Ostentatiously, Skip looked at the price tag. “Fifteen thousand dollars,” she murmured and stepped back, as if assessing. “Not bad. Not a bad price at all. Are you sure you can’t get any more? My client has a huge estate— obscene, really— and I want to set six guardian angels at strategic spots around the perimeter. One just isn’t going to make it.”

  The shopkeeper looked unhappy, a man who badly wanted the money but couldn’t deliver the goods. “I try. You come back tomorrow. I call dealer.” He shrugged. “Maybe. You never know.” Like he wanted the sale so much he’d stay up all night making angels himself.

  Skip looked at her watch. “I’m sorry. I have to go back to Dallas in an hour. Can’t you call him now?”

  “Sure, sure, I call now.” He got out his Rolodex and picked a card.

  Bingo, Skip thought and chose that moment to pull out her badge.

  She took him down to the station, calling in Hagerty and LeDoux. The three of them spent an unlovely couple of hours terrifying the poor man, who maintained that he’d bought the angel from a friend of his brother’s known only as “Joe.” Sure enough, the Rolodex card said simply “Joe.” But it did provide a phone number, and that was enough to get an address. A Joseph D’Amico lived there.

  Hagerty went out to tackle the brother, while Skip and LeDoux checked out Joe’s house. No one was home.

  They decided to wait for him, and as they waited, cramped in the car, Skip thought of the people she needed to talk to: Jacomine’s sons, the currently incarcerated Daniel and the newly reinvented Isaac, whom she had once known as The White Monk; Daniel’s daughter, Lovelace; his wife, Irene (formerly known as Tourmaline), who was a missionary and probably not available; people who’d been close to him in the past. Particularly, she thought, Jacomine’s ex-wife, Rosemarie.

  During Skip’s last encounter with Jacomine, he’d actually had Rosemarie kidnapped and tried to force her to charter a plane for him. It occurred to Skip she might still be mad about that.

  * * *

  Dressing for dinner on a random Thursday night, Karen Wright was hearing things she couldn’t believe, things that excited and terrified her, made her go wet between the legs. Her husband’s words, the plan he was unfolding, the daring idea he was sharing with her for the first time, actually excited her sexually, made her dizzy, head all muzzy. She’d never in her life felt such a sensation as she felt now, just kind of standing in her walk-in closet, trying to pick out something to wear.

  “David.” She felt as if she were going to faint. “David, come here.” She took his hand and held it to her crotch, so he could feel the impression he was having on her. She wanted him to understand how deeply moved she was, how completely, one hundred percent behind him she was. To her surprise, he snapped at her. “For God’s sake, Karen, not now.”

  He hadn’t gotten it. “No, I didn’t want to… I just wanted you to…” She couldn’t think of a way to express it. He selected a tie and left the closet. She had an inkling of what was going on here: He thought she was trying to seduce him for some ulterior purpose; he was slightly suspicious of her lately.

  They were going to dinner at the home of her Uncle Guy, known to most of his fellow citizens as State Senator Guy McLean. He and David wanted to get to know each other. Just a family thing, Karen had thought, until a few minutes ago, when David unveiled his plan, a plan to change the world in a far, far bigger way than Karen would ever have dared dream. He’d told her her role, what he expected from her tonight and why, and what it could lead to. She was still dizzy from it as she stood there trying to figure out what to wear. For Uncle Guy, and especially for Aunt Carol Ann, nothing too sexy or young or hip. A white linen pantsuit should do it, with a long white scarf. And the di
amond earrings David had given her for her birthday.

  Hair up or down? She usually wore it down for relatives, thinking it made her look more innocent, less a target of derision. But in view of what she knew now, up. Definitely. Sophisticated. In command. That was who she was from now on.

  Guy and Carol Ann lived in Turtle Creek, the fanciest section of Dallas. Before her disgrace, Karen had been there many times, but David never had. It would be her job to be his guide.

  Knowing Uncle Guy, she’d told her husband to wear a suit, but knowing David, there was really no need. It was the sort of thing he’d do anyway. Her husband was very formal, very much of the old school, much like her father and uncles.

  Carol Ann met them in a black silk flowing pantsuit— a lot fancier than even Karen had counted on. She was wearing her hair up as well. Power do of the evening, Karen thought.

  “Karen, sweetie, how nice to see you.” Her aunt gave her a cursory kiss. “And David. We’re so pleased to finally get a chance to sit down and really get to know you. We’ve been so looking forward to it, ever since the wedding.”

  “I have as well, Carol Ann. I sure have. It’s an honor for me.” He was handsome in his well-cut suit and well-cut hair. Karen felt a burst of wifely pride.

  The men poured themselves some bourbon, while the ladies indulged in a little white wine. Karen had to talk to Carol Ann the whole cocktail hour, which pretty much bored her, but it was good practice. If things turned out as David dared to hope, she’d be spending a lot of time talking to the wives of powerful men.

  She asked politely after Carol Ann’s children— her own cousins, Dennis, Kevin, and Beth— and Carol Ann asked about Karen’s life, which so far in her marriage had consisted mostly of working with contractors and decorators, and one other thing— something close to her heart— the foundation she and David had planned out together. She had an office already and a phone number, but that was about it. She hadn’t yet told more than a handful of people about it. “I’m ready to move on,” she heard herself saying.