by Smith, Julie
Well, hell. She’d done what A.A. wanted. If there was ever a good time for a leave of absence, this was it. She went to find him.
“Hey, Skip. Good news. None of the prisoners ever saw the Billy statue— they all drew a blank— and the rest of the stuff’s generic. And Mary hasn’t come in to claim her little treasure— no surprises there. We’re trying to get some reward money, see if we can find her through the tip line. When’s Steve coming in?”
She looked at her watch. “One o’clock. I’m leaving for the airport in a few minutes. Listen, A.A., I’ve got an idea.”
“You do? Shoot.” He looked like he expected something good.
“No matter what happens, we’re dirty and we’re gonna get dirtier. The evening news tonight’s gonna say something like ‘This just in: The head of the cemetery theft task force has been linked to a new cache of stolen art. Police deny wrongdoing.’ See what I’m saying? There’s no way to get out of this semi-gracefully. Hell, they’re probably going to call it Angelgate.”
The sergeant winced.
“What if you could throw them a bone?”
“I’m listening.”
“Tell them I’ve taken a voluntary leave of absence.”
“Are you crazy? That practically convicts you.”
“Yeah, but it takes some of the heat off the department. Look, I’ll even go on TV if you like. Steve and I both will.” She crossed her fingers, hoping she was right. “We can do a great big press conference. The chief’ll say we can’t find Mary; the department’s doing a thorough investigation and also an internal investigation. Steve and I will say we couldn’t be more surprised, and I’ll say I think it’s only right to remove myself from the scene till my name’s cleared.” She could see he was considering it. “Come on, A.A. I’ll look real sincere.”
“I’ll think about it.”
* * *
Steve was a basket case when he got off the plane. “Skip, what’s happening?”
At heart, he was a cowboy who’d always kind of wished he was the one chasing bad guys, never content to be a mere observer. But he wasn’t half as street smart as he thought he was.
She said, “Someone broke into your backyard and brought you a band of angels. Simple as that. You check any bags?”
“No, I’m good to go.” They started walking. “My neighbors must have seen something.”
“They did. Some guys unloading a truck. Needless to say, they didn’t think to get a plate number.”
“But they’d know I wasn’t home.”
“Maybe.”
They reached the car and loaded the baggage. They were nearly out of the parking garage before Steve spoke again. “Who would do something like that?”
She decided to confront the issue directly. “Probably the same person who poisoned your dog.”
He went white. “That’s why they killed Napoleon?”
“I can’t tell you the specifics. I think they did it because Jimmy Dee’s house is practically a fortress. If anyone wanted to get me, your house is better, except for that one little thing.”
He was sweating, and his color showed no sign of returning. “You really think it was Jacomine, don’t you?”
“Either him or Neil Gibson.”
“Neil? Are you kidding? He’s got those two cute little pugs. And Evangeline the cat. Remember her?’
“You don’t forget a cat like Vangy.” She was a twenty-pound long-haired Siamese, with azure eyes that looked like the marbles named after kitty orbs.
“Neil loves animals. He’d never hurt an animal.”
Skip stifled a small feeling of triumph. Maybe this meant he’d be more open to her Jacomine fears. Playing the devil’s advocate, she said, “You’ve got to consider the idea that it might have been him, Steve. Even before this statue thing, half the French Quarter hated me for arresting him; they just can’t believe he’d do something like this.”
“He had angels in his shop, right?”
“Lots of ’em. And the thieves were the ones that tipped us.”
“Well, I guess I can go with the phrase ‘caught red-handed.’ But Neil would never, ever harm an animal— of that I’m sure. It could have been one of the other Mr. Bigs, but it wasn’t Neil.” That was the way the whole city was: sure, one way or another, of Gibson’s guilt or innocence. She wondered if people felt the same about her.
Skip left Steve to give his statement to Abasolo, and when it was over, Steve joined her again. “How’d it go?” she asked.
“He watched me like a hawk. Made me nervous.”
“Could have been ’cause you’ve got a yardful of stolen goods. Ever think of that?”
“You mean… I’m a suspect?”
Skip was speechless, realizing the seriousness of the find hadn’t sunk in yet.
At the end of the day, Abasolo approached her desk. “Interesting development. Extremely interesting. We’re due in half an hour for a meeting with McGuire, Hingle, and Fuzzy Begue— at headquarters. I think maybe somebody got their ear bent by Shellmire.” He left her to chew on it. “Let me go get McGuire. Hingle’s meeting us there.”
She was so astounded she couldn’t even sputter. Kelly McGuire was their lieutenant— Abasolo’s immediate superior— and Rondell Hingle was captain of the Third District. A conference with those two would have been a little unusual in itself, but Fuzzy was the big surprise here. And the big gun— he was Deputy Chief of Operations.
Abasolo came back to get her, McGuire in tow. “You ready?”
“Sure.”
Herbert “Fuzzy” Begue greeted them in his office. He was a big, old-fashioned beer-gut kind of cop, with a shaved head left over from the days when the style was military rather than fashionable. Shellmire and Hingle, a tall, taciturn African-American, were already there.
Begue seemed excited. “Y’all come in. Detective Langdon, we got some trouble for ya.”
Skip picked up his mood. “Thanks, Chief. I’ve been thinking I needed some.”
Everybody laughed but Hingle. He was a by-the-book kind of cop without a lot of sense of humor. Whatever was going down, she sensed he didn’t really approve. Or maybe he was just angry. The cemetery fiasco made him look almost as bad as Skip. She resolved to do a little politicking.
When they were all seated, Begue said, “Agent Shellmire has been talking to me and Captain Hingle about something. Wanted to run it by you three and see what you think.”
She and Abasolo and McGuire nodded, like kids in a classroom.
He kept talking. “We’ve been talking about this Mary Jones thing. We think somebody’s out to get ya, Langdon, and we think we know who. Captain Hingle’s been having talks with Sergeant LeDoux and Officer Hagerty, who’re kind of thinking along the same lines. Now, we’ve turned this thing over to PID.” He meant the Public Integrity Division, New Orleans’ version of internal affairs. “Got to cross our t’s and dot our i’s. You aren’t off the hook yet, and of course we’ve got to reassign you. But Agent Shellmire’s got a real interestin’ idea about that.
“Look, we don’t think Gibson did this thing. First off, we don’t think he’d have screwed up by sending an African-American gal. Second, the rest of the gang couldn’t wait to rat him out on everything else, but they say they never saw the stuff in Steinman’s yard. Bottom line, we think Errol Jacomine’s back— we’ve always known he wasn’t done with ya. And the fact that somebody took a shot at you a while back kind of bolsters that theory.”
“Yessir,” Skip said. “That was my thought.”
“Here’s the long and short of it, then. Agent Shellmire wants to go after him big-time, wants you to help him. Truth is, that might be the best thing for the department right now; it gets you out of our hair, and I don’t have to tell you, if you get him, we’ll all rest easier.”
Plus, Skip thought, it’ll be a big feather in the department’s cap. But she couldn’t feel too cynical about it; the plan could hardly be more to her liking.
“There’s so
mething big we have to talk about, though. There’s a real big ‘if’ here. You’ve got to agree to some things.”
Uh-oh, she thought.
“First off, this is top secret multiplied by ten. You can’t even tell ya mother.”
Skip nodded. Not likely, she thought.
Begue paused and sat up straighter, getting down to business at last. “Here’s what we’re gon’ do. We’re gon’ announce that an internal investigation’s in progress and you’ve been reassigned. Just like we would if we thought you were guilty.” He paused. “Ya’ just gon’ have to be in disgrace for a while as far as the rest of the world’s concerned. Won’t make anybody else look good either— not Sergeant Abasolo, not Lieutenant McGuire, and, most especially, not Captain Hingle. But he’s agreed anyway.” Skip glanced at Hingle. He looked pretty grim.
“What about the rest of y’all?” Begue asked.
Abasolo said, “Sounds good to me.”
McGuire nodded. “What have we got to lose?”
Skip wanted this. She wanted it badly. But there was a problem. “What about Steve Steinman? He’s going to be tarnished.”
Begue nodded. He’d been expecting that. “Look, whatever happens, there’s no way out of that right now. Main thing is, you can’t tell him what’s really going on.”
He’d called it: There was no way out. She didn’t have to like it, but she had no choice about accepting it. “All right. I agree.”
“It’s a done deal then. Just so you know, we’ve got to hold a press conference first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Oh.” She tried smiling. “Gonna be a tough day tomorrow.”
“You bet it is. Prepare for a shitstorm.”
After the meeting, she and Shellmire got together and plotted strategy. First thing on the agenda, they decided, was a trip to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. This was where the best sources were: Jacomine’s son, Daniel, who’d been one of his father’s top lieutenants for a while; a man named Potter Menard, a “campaign aide” during Jacomine’s catastrophic run for mayor; and a couple of lesser followers. If anybody could help them, these guys topped the list. “Who knows?” Shellmire said. “Maybe one of them found Jesus.”
“They all did,” Skip retorted. “Problem is, they think his first name’s Errol.”
It would take a day to set up, so it was decided that the next day, Skip would go to the office as usual to retrieve her Jacomine files and tie up any loose ends she had.
She regretted that decision by mid-morning; even she hadn’t expected the strength and pain of the predicted avalanche. By noon, she was buried in sympathy calls and press inquiries (which she fielded back to Abasolo). By six p.m., the word Angelgate had entered the language.
That night after the news, she discovered the part she hated worst was watching Sheila and Kenny’s attempts to digest the concept of Auntie in disgrace. Steve wasn’t much better, and, what was worse, he was angry, not at her, especially, just at having been caught in a trap.
She’d gotten her fondest wish, and she’d rarely been so miserable.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Mr. Right, the television show, paid Terri’s plane fare to Dallas but didn’t send a limousine. Tracie, the producer, picked her up and drove her to her motel, an older one near the studio, in an iffy section of town. All of which served to remind her that this was only a cable station she was going to be on, not exactly Oprah.
But the minute she was in David Wright’s presence, her misgivings melted. Tracie took her to his office so they could get acquainted before the show. When he stood to shake her hand, she felt an electricity radiating from him, a force field around him. She wanted to step into it and did, when she took his hand. It was dizzying. It was warmth and sexuality and… genuine love. She could feel it. Not love just for her— she wasn’t stupid enough to think that; it was love for his fellow human beings.
She thought it possible she was in the presence of greatness. She looked at Tracie to see if she felt it too and saw that the other woman seemed transformed; she was softer and gentler, somehow, the way men are when their sweethearts enter a room.
He said, “You’re a brave lady, Terri Whittaker. I’d give you a hug, but I don’t know you well enough.”
She wished he would hug her. She was attracted to him. At the same time, she felt safe with him. It wasn’t something she could explain. She just felt he wouldn’t let any harm come to her. He wasn’t extraordinary looking; in fact, he was quite a bit shorter than she thought he’d be. And his eyes were small. But he had thick, curly gray hair worn combed back to show off a widow’s peak. It was sprayed down— she knew you had to do that for television— but it was still his best feature. It sure wasn’t his looks that attracted her. But whatever it was, she was suddenly overcome with shyness.
“Thank you, sir,” she said, uncharacteristically respectful.
“Oh, forget that ‘sir’ stuff, even if we are in Texas. Call me David.” He leaned over to her. “I can call you Terri, can’t I?”
“Sure.”
“Sit down and we’ll have a nice little chat before the show. Coffee or Coke or anything? Tracie can bring you anything you want.”
A cigarette, Terri thought, but she asked only for water.
“I always like to meet my guests before the show. This isn’t like other shows, you know. Everyone who goes on my show has been through something bad, real bad. I feel I owe them the respect of getting to know them before I put them in front of those harsh lights.” He paused to give her a little smile. “But those lights’ll be kind to you, Miss Terri. Yes, ma’am, you’re going to look just beautiful on television.”
With my Tri-Delt haircut and my soccer mom dress, she thought, and knew her choices were perfect.
David might have been flirting or not— Terri really couldn’t tell— but one way or another he was certainly seducing her. She felt safe and warm, wrapped in a soft fluff of something pink and cottony.
“Now, all our guests have gone through something that could happen to anybody, but wouldn’t happen to anyone with enough money to dig out of their hole. You follow?’
Terri nodded. “That’s sure true in my case.”
“Tracie tells me you’re an artist and a student. That’s kind of a double whammy, isn’t it?”
She smiled, happy to be understood. “They didn’t invent the phrase ‘starving artist’ for nothing. Art isn’t a calling that’s even recognized as a real job by most people; they think it’s some sort of self-indulgent hobby, usually. And since it’s not particularly valued by our society, there aren’t many grants for art students; hence, the concept of the day job.”
“You have your own business, I hear. ‘Aunt Terri’s Rent-a-Wife’.”
“Umm-hmm. I run errands for the people whose jobs are actually respected by society. They work twelve hours a day and can’t do their own grocery shopping. But I don’t have twelve hours a day for my chosen profession, or even six or four, because I’m so busy trying to make ends meet with my day job.” She glanced at him nervously, hoping she wasn’t losing him.
He clicked his tongue and shook his head in utter sympathy. “Mmm. Mmm. A real vicious cycle you’ve got there.” He smiled, as if to take her mind off her troubles. “Well, I sure hope someone nice takes you out to dinner now and then.”
“Oh, my boyfriend’s an artist too. We don’t actually go out much, but Isaac’s a great vegetarian cook. You’d be amazed, the things he can do with rice and beans.”
“Well, I’m so glad you’ve got a boyfriend.” For the first time, Terri detected a false note; the temperature in the room seemed to have dropped. Had Mr. Right been hitting on her, she wondered? Maybe the mention of a boyfriend had turned him off. “What kind of art does your boyfriend do?”
She laughed. “He’s kind of having an identity crisis. He used to be quite well-known as an outsider artist. Do you know what that is?”
“I believe I do; my wife Karen’s kind of got a weakness for
’em. They’re those people who paint angels and aliens, aren’t they?”
Terri had to laugh. “A lot of them do. Isaac never was into close encounters, but he painted nothing but angels for a while.”
“Was he good? Karen’s kind of a collector.”
“I don’t know. He never shows me anything from that period. See, the term outsider is usually used to describe artists with no formal training. When he decided to go to art school, he even changed his name.”
“I guess I should have known. Isaac’s kind of an unusual name.”
“Oh, he was always Isaac. But he used to be— are you ready for this?— the White Monk.”
She had expected Mr. Right to share a big old laugh with her, but he didn’t even bother to smile. Simply glanced at his watch and said, “Well, we’re running out of time here. Excuse me while I do a few last-minute things.” He called Tracie to take her to the Green Room.
The producer came in looking disconcerted. “Is— uh— is everything all right?”
Mr. Right flashed a splashy television smile; he had beautiful teeth, Terri noticed. “Everything’s wonderful. Miss Whittaker’s going to be just spectacular. You mind running down the format for her?”
On the way to the Green Room, Tracie kept glancing over her shoulder, as if looking for something. She was sneaking peeks at her watch too. She seemed distinctly ill at ease.
Finally, when they’d arrived at their destination, Tracie said, “Usually he… um— he didn’t tell you how the show’s going to go?”
“No. We just gabbed. He’s very easy to talk to, isn’t he?”
“It’s funny he… well, listen, I’ve got to be quick. I guess he really must be pressed for time, or he’d have gone over it with you. Because this is one of our biggest shows ever. Usually we have two guests, one who’s had their wrong righted and the new one— the one with a problem. You follow?”
Terri nodded, though she was slightly confused. She understood the format, but there was some kind of strange vibe in the air.
“This time we cancelled the other, because your problem is too important; it affects too many people.”