Murder in the Rue Chartres

by Greg Herren

  I wound up having to change my plans for the Mississippi trip. Jolene McConnell returned my call that night and agreed to see me in Jackson; the problem was she was a nurse and she worked the morning shift. So, I decided to make the long trek to Cortez first and meet her on my way back to New Orleans. I called Joshua—who again sounded a little drunk, and he advised me that since he hadn’t known when exactly I’d get to Cortez, he’d called St. Isabelle’s and instructed them to let me see Catherine whenever I could make it up there.

  I didn’t go to the gym either. I spent the rest of the evening smoking pot and drinking.

  *

  The next morning I woke up early, drank as much coffee as I could handle without my bladder exploding, and then hit the road heading north. I went back out of the city the same way I’d come home—I-10 West, then caught I-55 north in the swamp. It was a beautiful day, and as I headed toward the Mississippi state line I couldn’t help but marvel at the normality of it all—once you got outside the city limits, other than the occasional tree down, snapped in half by the wind, you’d never know a major storm had passed through the area so recently. It was so different when I’d come back to New Orleans. But this time I didn’t have a knot of anxiety in my stomach as I drove along I-55, wondering what I was going to find. I crossed the Mississippi state line, stopped in Macomb for gas and to use the bathroom, and kept heading north.

  After dealing with traffic and highway construction in Jackson, I found myself in the forests of Mississippi. The sun shone through the pine trees, and the highway was pretty much empty. Every once in a while I had to pass a slow-moving rusted pickup truck, or another car doing about ninety would fly past me on the left, but other than that, there was no one. Mississippi is a beautiful state, with its red dirt and towering primeval pine trees that lined the highway. Most people—myself included—think of Mississippi as a wasteland of ignorance, inbreeding, and intolerance. I always obey speed limits whenever driving through there—I can imagine no worse fate than being pulled over by some rural redneck sheriff on a power trip with mirrored sunglasses and a potbelly, who decides to make an example of the faggot from New Orleans he’s pulled over. But it is truly a beautiful drive, and I always wonder at the stunning natural beauty of the state. I found myself singing along with the radio—I’d found a good country station from Jackson whose play-list was heavy with Kenny Chesney, Toby Keith, and Gretchen Wilson. I hate driving in the city—every time I get in the car to drive around New Orleans I’m a bundle of nerves, never sure when some idiot on a cell phone is going to miss a stop sign or run a red light and kill me—but I love highway driving. There’s something almost Zen about the broken white line down the center of the pavement, the unbroken yellow one on the right, the smooth pavement passing under the tires as the car’s odometer clicks off mile after mile. I found myself lost in my thoughts, and wondering what I would find when I finally met Cathy Hollis face to face.

  *

  I pulled into the driveway of St. Isabelle’s around noon. I showed my ID to the guard at the gate, and he opened it for me and waved me through. St. Isabelle’s had to have been a plantation at some point in its past. As I pulled into the parking lot in front of the big mansion and parked in a visitor’s spot, it wasn’t hard to imagine hoop-skirted girls flirting with gentlemen callers on the verandah while slaves toiled in the sun, the overseer’s whip cracking from time to time. The power and phone lines, as well as the parking lot, were the only anachronisms in a scene that could have been right out of the 1870s. I got out of the car and lit a cigarette while stretching my legs and cracking my back. There was a line of trees on the right side of the building, and I could see cottages back behind them. The lawn was well-manicured and a fountain bubbled in front of the main structure. I tried to figure out how much money it cost to maintain the place while I smoked my cigarette. I stepped on the butt and strolled up the walk past rose gardens to the house.

  A man of about fifty in a long white coat over a navy blue suit was waiting for me at the top of the verandah stairs. He was stocky, red-faced, and balding. A veritable forest of hair protruded from his nostrils and ears. “Mr. MacLeod?” His eyebrows were thick and shot through with gray.

  I took the hand he reached out and said, “Thank you for allowing me to see Ms. Hollis.”

  “I’m Dr. Bright.” He gave me a weird smile, showing off tobacco-stained teeth. “I’ve been Miss Hollis’s attending doctor for nearly ten years. She doesn’t get many visitors. I’m sure she will be delighted to have a guest.”

  “Doesn’t the family come up for visits?”

  “About a week before Hurricane Katrina, I don’t remember exactly what day, her cousin Iris came to see her. It was quite a surprise; I mean, I periodically make reports to the family, of course, but she was the first member of the family I’d ever met.”

  “Did she say why she wanted to see Ms. Hollis?”

  He shook his head. “No. She only stayed a brief while, and left without speaking to me again.”

  He opened the front door and we stepped into a grand hallway. The floor was gleaming black-and-white marble; a glittering chandelier hung from the ceiling. There was a bronze plaque on the wall; which I scanned quickly: This historic plantation home had been completely renovated in 1974 thanks to the generosity of Percy Verlaine. I let out a low whistle and pointed at the plaque. “That must have cost a pretty penny.”

  He gave me that strange smile again as he led me into an office that opened off the inner hallway. He gestured me into a seat, which I took, declining his offer of coffee. He sat down behind the desk. “Percy Verlaine has been very generous with St. Isabelle’s over the years, quite generous indeed. Did you notice the cottages outside?” I nodded. “He funded those as well. We are able to take many guests who cannot otherwise afford to stay here, thanks to his generosity.”

  So, Percy throws his money around up here, where a relative he despises has been locked up for thirty years. Interesting, I thought to myself—almost as interesting as the fact that Iris Verlaine had come all the way up here before hiring me. What kind of game had Iris been playing? “What exactly is wrong with Ms. Hollis?” I asked.

  He removed his glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief. “I am not at liberty to discuss her medical condition with you. I was instructed to allow you to see her, but he did not give me permission to discuss anything else with you.” He drummed his fingers on his desktop. “I can tell you she is not dangerous. She’s very docile, and spends most of her time reading. I’ve been reducing her medications over the past few years, with no ill effect.”

  “And when can I see her?”

  “She’s in her room.” He buzzed the intercom next to his phone. “Amanda, you can take Mr. MacLeod to Cathy’s room now.”

  *

  A woman in a nurse’s uniform was waiting for me when I left his office. She was young, probably in her late fifties, with thick red hair shot through with gray and a tall, slender figure. As soon as the door shut behind us, she gestured to me, and I followed her up the stairs. The room was on the second floor, and while it looked comfortable, it was also sparsely furnished. There were bars on the window, and there was a woman sitting at a vanity table brushing bluish black hair that hung halfway to her waist. “Cathy, there’s a gentleman to see you.”

  She didn’t stop brushing her hair. “Thank you, nurse,” she said in a husky voice.

  “If you need anything, let me know.” Amanda shut the door softly behind her as she left us alone.

  “Hi, Ms. Hollis. My name is Chanse MacLeod.”

  She turned around and smiled at me. She was still quite beautiful; her heart-shaped face unlined, her gray-blue eyes clear and quite lucid. There was no gray in her thick hair. She extended a hand to me, and I kissed it. She gave a gurgling, girlish laugh. “I can’t remember the last time a young man kissed my hand. Thank you for giving an old lady a thrill.”

  “The pleasure is mine.” I pulled up a chair and sat down beside he
r. “You’re a very beautiful woman.”

  She turned back to the mirror and resumed brushing her hair. “I brush my hair a minimum of a hundred strokes three times a day. When I get up, once in the afternoon, and before I go to bed. I think that’s why it hasn’t gone gray on me yet.” She laughed again; it was an infectious sound and it made me smile. “Either that or the medication they give me. I’m quite insane, you know.”

  “You don’t seem to be to me,” I replied.

  “That’s because you’re not a doctor—or one of my relatives.” She gave her hair a final run-through, and set the brush down. “There. Finished. Now we can have a little chat.” She turned around on the bench, crossing one leg over the other. “So, what brings you here to see me, Mr. MacLeod?”

  “Chanse, please.”

  “Chanse? Like Paul Newman in Sweet Bird of Youth?” She gave another laugh. “I used to love Tennessee Williams’s work, until my life became one of his plays.”

  I smiled at her. “I understand your cousin Iris came to see you about a month or so ago.”

  A shadow crossed her face. “I don’t remember that.” A hand went to her throat. “You have to bear in mind, Chanse, they give me drugs that fuck up my memory.” She laughed again. “Oops, sorry, pardon moi!”

  I gave her a big smile. “Actually, I’m here to ask you about Michael, Iris’s father.”

  “Michael.” The shadow crossed her face again, and she looked down at the floor. “Michael is why I’m here, you know.” She looked back up at me, and smiled. “They locked me up in here after he went away. They said I had a breakdown, and I had to be put away for my own good because I was a danger to myself and to the children, and of course, Margot’s children were more precious than gold to Uncle Percy…but they also said I’d be able to come home eventually. That was a hundred years ago.” She picked up the brush and began plucking hairs from it. “And here I sit…no closer to home than I was thirty years ago, or however long it’s been…I don’t really pay much attention to time or dates anymore, there isn’t any point…one day is much like another…I wake up and eat, they give me my pills and I brush my hair…” She broke off and stared at me. “I know better than to talk about Michael. I talked about Michael before and wound up in here. And here I sit, like Mary Queen of Scots waiting for the execution.” She leaned forward and whispered, “I wish they would just behead me and get it over with.”

  “What happened to Michael, Cathy? Where did he go?” I leaned forward and took her hands. “Why did he leave? You can trust me, Cathy. I just want to find him.”

  She gave me another brilliant smile. “You aren’t going to trick me, however handsome you are, young man!” She winked at me. “The days when I can be fooled by a handsome face are far behind me…”

  “You know something?” I winked back at her. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you at all. You seem perfectly fine to me.”

  “Are you a doctor?” She raised her eyebrows.

  “No.”

  “Then you’re wrong. Sweet, but wrong. They locked me up in here a million years ago because I was a menace to myself. I didn’t used to think I belonged here, either, but after so many years I had to start believing them, you know. I mean, why would they lock me up in here if I didn’t belong? I must be crazy…you know they say crazy people don’t know they’re crazy, so that’s what I tell myself, and besides…” She held her hands out to me and turned them palm up. “See? Scars. I tried to kill myself.” She pulled her hands back and tilted her head. “I don’t remember why, though…and I don’t remember doing it.” Her eyebrows came together. “I can’t trust you. You work for Uncle Percy.”

  “Actually, I work for his grandson, Joshua. He hired me to find his father.”

  “Joshua was such a sweet little boy. We used to play cowboys and Indians in the back yard.” She looked at me, and suddenly her face changed. When she spoke again, her voice was not in the least bit childlike. “You don’t work for Percy? You aren’t on his payroll? You really work for Joshua, and are trying to find Michael?”

  I nodded. “Iris hired me, but—” I didn’t think it was necessarily a good idea to be the one to tell her that Iris was dead. “Now I work for Joshua.”

  “I won’t tell you about Michael.” She shook her head. “You’ll never find him, no matter how hard you look, so you might as well give up. No one will ever find Michael…”

  “Why did he leave? Was he unhappy?”

  “He was a bird in a golden cage.” She gestured around the room. “Like me. He sold his soul when he married Margot. He didn’t love her, you know. He wanted to paint and he married her for her money so he could paint. But he wanted to go, he wanted to escape that house of horror. Like me.”

  She sighed. “But once you’ve sold your soul, it’s very hard to buy it back, you know. The devil doesn’t like to let you go.”

  “Tell me about Margot.”

  “Margot.” She grinned impishly. “Have you seen The Wizard of Oz? She was like the tin woodsman. She didn’t have a heart. She was born without one. No, that’s not true. She had a heart. After her brother Arthur died, her father stomped her heart right out of her. I grew up with them, you know. Arthur was everything, Margot was nothing. And then Matthew died, and Margot became everything. Sometimes I think Arthur was the lucky one. He escaped his father into the grave and left us behind to pick up the pieces and deal with Uncle Percy.” She grimaced.

  “And what about you? What did you become?”

  “Oh, that didn’t change. I was less than nothing when Arthur was alive. After he died, I didn’t even move up to nothing.” Her laugh this time was brittle. “I was a poor relation, a charity case who was supposed to be grateful for the crumbs from the table. Nobody paid the least bit of attention to me, other than what I cost them to keep me. And then of course, I was wild, you know. I ran after boys and I drank and got into trouble. And they yelled and screamed at me, and told me I was nothing but a whore, a disgrace to the family name…” her voice trailed off. She squared her shoulders and her chin jutted out. “I didn’t care. I still don’t care. And after Margot married Michael—you know he was just Lower Ninth Ward gutter trash, as Uncle Percy used to say all the time—Michael…he was kind to me.”

  “Were you in love with him?”

  “Michael was my friend.”

  “Friends can be lovers.”

  She drew herself up. “Michael and I were never lovers. Never. He protected me from them.”

  “From who?”

  “Uncle Percy. Margot. And then he was gone…” her eyes glistened with tears, “…and here I am.”

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “I won’t talk to you about that.” She gave me a smile. “But I will tell you the day he left, the day he went away. I bet nobody’s been able to tell you that, have they? Uncle Percy certainly wouldn’t, and the only one else who knew is Margot, and she’s dead.” She sat back and smiled. “It was a beautiful day. June 23rd. A Sunday. That was the day Michael went away.”

  And then her face changed, became completely blank. Her eyes looked at me without recognition. “I’m sorry, young man, what did you say your name was?”

  I stared at her. Amanda said from behind me, “Mr. MacLeod? I’m afraid your time is up.”

  I stood up, and knelt, kissing her on the cheek. “Thank you for seeing me, Cathy.”

  She opened her eyes wide. “Will you come see me again?” she asked, in that childish voice she’d used when I first arrived.

  “I’d like to.”

  Amanda crossed over to her, and handed her a cup of water and a small cup with a pill in it. “Time to take your pill, Cathy.”

  Cathy smiled at her. “Thank you.” She placed the pill in her mouth and washed it down with the water.

  “That’s a good girl.” Amanda smiled, patting her on the shoulder. She turned to me. “If you’ll come this way, Mr. MacLeod…”

  But as soon she turned her back, I glanced at Ca
thy. The wide-eyed look was gone. She was smiling, and her right eyelid came down in a slow, knowing wink.

  Chapter Twelve

  I held onto the banister as we walked down the wide hanging stair. The place, I thought as I looked around at the gleaming floors and the seemingly antique furniture, does not look like a mental hospital. But then again, since I’d pulled into the parking lot, I hadn’t really seen any other patients, for that matter. I asked Amanda, “How long have you been working with Ms. Hollis?” I didn’t figure she’d answer, but it was worth a try.

  She pushed a stray wisp of hair out of her face and exhaled, screwing up her face a bit as she remembered back. “Let me think…Miss Hollis arrived here about a year or two after I came to work here at St. Isabelle’s.” She shrugged. “She’s been here a long time.” She gave a bitter laugh. “So have I, for that matter. I’ve grown old in this place.” She scratched her forehead. “It was two years after I started here. My husband was wounded in Vietnam in 1971, and she was admitted almost two years to the day after I started work here.”

  “And how does she seem to you?” We’d reached the bottom of the staircase.

  She stopped and looked at me. Her eyes narrowed. “I can’t discuss—”

  “You can’t discuss her medical history or her medications or her diagnosis, I know that,” I interrupted her. “But you can discuss your personal impressions of her, can’t you? Or is that a breach of ethics? Surely you have your own opinions.”