City of the Dead

by Eileen Dreyer

  “So you made it,” he greeted her, coffeepot in hand.

  She nudged his cup out of the way so she could get first pour. “I’ll let you know.”

  Chastity had put on her professional slacks and a silk shirt. She had to interview police today, and shorts and a tank top didn’t convey the correct message. She did wish she could have chanced it, though. She already felt as if she were trapped in a sauna. And then there was James standing there in his ratty jeans and Jazz Festival T-shirt like something out of a romance novel, and the temperature ratcheted up another few degrees. It was just not going to be an easy day all-round.

  At least she had her treasure, safely tucked away in her pants pocket, its reassurance immediate.

  “Kareena’s gonna meet us at Charity Hospital,” James said.

  Chastity just nodded.

  “She’s got a name for us at the Eighth. Also the Fourth, which originally took the missing persons call.”

  “Fourth District? You mean that pretentious architectural nightmare of a subdivision is in the City of New Orleans?”

  “The subdivision and all its pigs. Kareena says you’d rather talk to the guy in the Eighth. He’s kinder and he doesn’t chew tobacco…although what that has to do with good police work I don’t know.”

  “It has to do with good hygiene. Kareena’s a legend about good hygiene.”

  James lifted that eyebrow. “If you’re a legend, it should be for something better than clean hands.”

  Chastity had just about managed to ease her butt back down on a kitchen chair when her cell phone began to trill. “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” It only reminded her of what else she was missing in St. Louis while she was spinning her wheels down here.

  “Mmmm-hmmm?” she answered, rubbing at the headache that had taken up residence behind her eyes.

  “Is this Chastity?”

  Ah, the dulcet tones of her brother-in-law. Sounding much more like a doctor than a butler this morning. Chastity had some ’splainin’ to do.

  “Good morning, Max. Did the surgery go all right?”

  The surgery that should have lasted no more than four hours. She’d actually expected this call anytime the evening before.

  “I was caught on two more cases. I thought I’d find you at the house this morning.”

  Now a layer of betrayal and hurt. Chastity thought of facing that on top of bleach, lavender, and those damn white couches, and she shuddered. “I met up with an old friend who’s putting me up, Max. I didn’t think you’d mind, since you’re so busy. I’ll be back sometime today after I talk to the police.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, you don’t know anybody down here. I thought…”

  “A friend of mine works at Charity. By the way, she calls you Miracle Max. You seem to have quite a reputation down here.”

  There was a brief pause, as if he were trying to refocus.

  “Tell her thank you. Where is she putting you up? You know, this isn’t the safest city in the world. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if any harm came to you.”

  “I’m down off Magazine,” she said, not bothering to mention which side. Even she could tell the property values differed from the Garden District side to the Irish Channel side. “I’ll have my cell phone on all the time so you can reach me. And, like I said, I’ll be back over sometime today.”

  Please let him say he’d be gone.

  “Well, I’m catching a few hours’ sleep before going back into the office,” he said, and Chastity almost sighed out loud.

  She did not need the grieving husband lurking like regret over her shoulder while she pawed through his wife’s personal property.

  “If nothing else,” she said instead, “call me when you’re free. We’ll get something to eat while I explain what I’ve found.”

  While she grilled him on what his home life was like.

  Odd how her headache suddenly got worse.

  Chastity didn’t want to look into her own home life, much less anybody else’s. She wanted to walk right back up the Mississippi until she reached her flat and her dog and her baseball tickets. The way this thing was going, by the time she got home, Lilly would think she belonged to Moshika, and baseball season would be over.

  Instead, Chastity let Max offer a few more platitudes on safety and sign off. Then she sucked at her coffee as if it were the last form of sustenance on earth and stumbled to her feet so she could get on with the rest of the day.

  Kareena was waiting for them outside the emergency entrance of Charity Hospital. Not an inspiring place, Chastity thought as she assessed it from behind her vampire-rated sunglasses. Familiar, though, in the way all old, state-run hospitals are. Brick and concrete, aged and weary. No frills or state-of-the-art anything, not enough room for ambulances to pull into the outdated drive that was cluttered with homeless trying to decide where else to go.

  The whole neighborhood was lousy with hospitals, with University and the VA and Hotel Dieux down the block, and Tulane right across the street and about a hundred million dollars away from Charity. Charity’s flip side, the private side of medicine, where Chastity’s brother-in-law saved wealthy lives while the poor ones sought asylum across the street.

  “You really into this chauffeur thing, aren’t you, girl?” Kareena demanded as she yanked open the front door of the cab, her bright purple lab coat flapping a bit in the breeze.

  Chastity just smiled. “An old fantasy of mine.”

  Kareena snorted and climbed in. “I know all about your fantasies. If they involve a backseat, it comes with flashing lights and handcuffs.”

  “That wasn’t a fantasy,” Chastity retorted. “That was a date. Now, you got anything for me?”

  “Hi, James.” Kareena greeted her cousin with a quick kiss and the click of a seat belt. “And who you think I am, girl? O’ course I got somethin’ for you. We headin’ down to the Eighth. Meetin’ Detective Gilchrist. You’ll like him.”

  James nodded and eased the cab into traffic.

  “From what I hear, the only person you worked well with was a guy named Thibideaux,” Chastity said with a grin. “You know, like Boudreaux and Thibideaux go gator huntin’ together?”

  “You want me to help, you stay away from Boudreaux jokes, you hear me?”

  “I’ll listen,” James offered.

  “You’re related to her,” Chastity objected. “You don’t mind Cajun jokes?”

  “Not on the Boudreaux side, I’m not. My family has class.”

  “Your family has three felons, a rodeo clown, and half a dozen barflies,” Kareena informed him.

  “Like I said,” James told Chastity, “I always know where to find them.”

  Chastity reached for the paper Kareena was handing over the backseat.

  “I didn’t find anybody matchin’ your sister’s description so far in any of the hospital systems,” Kareena said. “Coroner’s office, either. Most o’ their Jane Does look a lot like our Jane Does. Needle marks, tattoos, and gunshot wounds.”

  Chastity read the missing persons bulletin in silence. It said one Faith Marie Byrnes Stanton had been reported missing on May 23 by her husband. White female, 5 feet 4, 130 pounds, blond hair, blue eyes, DOB 5/15/1971, last seen at Gallatoire’s Restaurant on Bourbon Street at 1 p.m. on May 21, wearing a blue dress. No identifying tattoos or birthmarks.

  Chastity chuckled to herself.

  “What’s up?” Kareena asked.

  Chastity shook her head. “She’s been shaving years off her age.”

  “Sound pretty normal to me.”

  “I wouldn’t have expected it of Faith. She always had a kind of ‘live with it’ attitude about stuff like that.”

  Kareena gave her a look. “Well, she’s the second wife of a pretty powerful surgeon. Plenty competition for that kind of position, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah.” Chastity nodded. “I do. You get any whispers on the grapevine?”

  “Yeah. He’s brilliant, a perfectionist, arrogant in that ki
nd of way that top docs are, and worth every penny he gets. No dangling for Mrs. Doctor Three as far as anybody knows, hasn’t been caught committing acts of sexual harassment in the back halls. Real man for the cameras, remembers the staff with cookies and shit.”

  “So, pretty typical high-profile CV surgeon.”

  “Yeah, girl, that’s what it sounds like.”

  “No difference in behavior lately?”

  “Takin’ everybody’s consolation kindly. Work’s more sporadic since he’s hunting for his wife and all. Threw an instrument tray at one of the girls right after his wife went missin’, but nobody blames him. Say they understand. Besides, the girl, she deserved it.”

  “But he’s not usually into tray tossing.”

  “Nah. Listens to Mozart when he cuts, shit like that.”

  Chastity grinned. “Pretty fuckin’ boring, you ask me.”

  Kareena grinned right back. “Eighteen-carat snooze.”

  Just about that time, James slowed the cab to a crawl in the French Quarter traffic, which even before noon was pretty stacked up.

  “Why don’t you hop out and I’ll meet you at the Napoleon House when you’re finished?” he asked.

  Kareena didn’t need a second invitation. She was already out in the street before Chastity managed to get her purse and herself out the door. James moved off, and Chastity realized they were standing before yet another of those ubiquitous wrought-iron fences, behind which rose an ochre neoclassical building surrounded by magnolia trees and police cars.

  “Good lord,” Chastity said, following Kareena through the gate. “It looks like a bank.”

  “It was a bank,” she said, charging past a bicycle cop and a couple of uniforms heading for cars. “Among other things.”

  It even looked like a bank inside, with pastel walls, antique globe chandeliers, and uniformed officers standing where the tellers used to.

  “Hey, Travis,” Kareena called out as they neared the desk. “Is that handsome Anthony Gilchrist here for Kareena, cher?”

  The officer, on the phone, just pointed them back toward a row of offices to the right. Kareena sailed through the gate like a frigate into harbor. Chastity, thinking how long it would have taken her to get this far without Kareena, gave her own little wave to the young uniform and followed right behind.

  Detective Gilchrist was young, tall, and ugly. Cursed with nondescript hair and premature jowls, he looked kind of like an underfed hound dog in wire-rims. Deputy Dawg in a tie. He greeted Kareena with a gentle smile and held his hand out to Chastity.

  “I called your brother-in-law,” he said. “Asked his permission to talk to you. He’s a good doctor. Saved my daddy last year.”

  Chastity couldn’t think of anything to do but nod.

  “He asked you to come down and look into this?”

  They all settled at one of those endemic metal and veneer public office desks, which looked anachronistic amid the nineteenth-century splendor. The detective fingered the razor-thin file that sat on his cluttered desk.

  Setting her purse in her lap, Chastity shrugged. “I think Dr. Stanton just feels helpless. He can’t walk out of the operating theater to go looking for his wife, and he knows I’m trained in forensics. I kind of equate it with having your nurse friend by your bed in the hospital. Comfort more than anything.”

  “You’re active?”

  “In forensics? Yeah. I’m forensic nurse liaison at St. Michael’s Med Center in St. Louis city. Masters in forensic nursing, eight years working trauma. I’m real familiar with Missouri law, but not Louisiana. So I have Kareena here to interpret.”

  Detective Gilchrist nodded, fiddling with a pen. “People go missing here all the time,” he said, just as he probably always did when discussing a missing person.

  “I know. It’s where I’d go missing if I could.” She tested a smile on him and was met by a moue of bemusement. Oh, well. Looked like they’d walked into the “Just the facts, ma’am” school of investigation. She heard Kareena cough next to her and refused to look.

  “Our mother died recently,” Chastity said instead. “I really think that it might have affected Faith more then she knew. Faith has always been very close to our mother. But I figured it couldn’t hurt to do a little leg-work for Max while he’s stuck saving lives.”

  Only now did Detective Gilchrist think it appropriate to open the file. “Well,” he said, scanning it, “I’m afraid I don’t have much. She was last seen at Gallatoire’s, where she lunches every Friday. People did mention that they thought she hadn’t recovered from her mother’s death, but she didn’t seem more depressed or upset than normal. Her husband can’t remember any other changes besides that, but he said he thought she was feeling better.”

  “Max said you checked her cards and cell phone and came up empty.”

  “Yes, ma’am. We did. Wherever she is, she isn’t using any plastic I know about.”

  “Could it be foul play?” Chastity had to ask.

  He considered that for a full minute. “We haven’t found any indication of it.”

  “But Max says that she didn’t take anything with her.”

  He was fiddling with the pen again. “I know. We have alerts out everywhere, believe me. But she wasn’t in a high-risk category of any kind, she hadn’t been threatened for any reason, and she disappeared off a public street….”

  “Not from home in the dead of night.”

  He seemed insulted. “I would never jump to that conclusion.”

  Chastity couldn’t help frowning. “You didn’t even ask?”

  He pulled himself up to glare at her, jowls wobbling a bit. “I may respect Dr. Stanton, but it doesn’t get in the way of the job. It was the first thing I did. He was in surgery the entire day. He made a lot of calls in between cases, both to his house and to his wife’s friends, all from the doctors’ lounge at Tulane Medical Center, to see if they knew where she was. Then he called us.”

  Chastity nodded. “Thank you. I’m going to go now and see if there’s anything I can find at my sister’s house. I can contact you if I have any further questions?”

  “Of course. Please do.”

  He climbed to his feet, obviously finished. Chastity followed.

  “Faith was at Gallatoire’s and then she was just gone?” she asked. “Nothing else?”

  “Pardon?”

  Chastity motioned to the missing persons report. “You said she was last seen at Gallatoire’s. Nobody saw her leave? Nobody offered her a ride or called a cab since she didn’t have her car?”

  He looked down at the file. “She hailed her own cab.”

  That brought everybody to a halt.

  “And?” Chastity asked.

  “She never got there.”

  The hairs stood up on the back of Chastity’s neck. “She never got where?”

  He checked his file again. “Well, there was some argument about that. Ms. Susan Reeves claims your sister asked to go to her home. But Mrs. Eleanor Webster, who was leaving at the same time, insisted that she really said she wanted to go…well, uh, to…”

  Chastity all but gaped. The detective was blushing. Good Lord, she thought, suddenly wide-eyed. This was New Orleans. What on earth could make a cop blush in New Orleans?

  “She wanted to go to, uh, what?” she asked.

  He couldn’t even make eye contact. “A fertility clinic.”

  “A what?” Chastity demanded.

  Suddenly awkward, the detective didn’t take his eyes from the file, still flushing. “A, uh, fertility clinic.”

  Chastity wasn’t sure whether he felt embarrassed about the whole business of procreation, or just discomfited that the great surgeon who had saved his daddy might not have been able to fulfill his side of the equation.

  “Which one?”

  He shook his head. “Mrs. Webster didn’t hear. We checked all the ones in town, and nobody saw your sister.”

  “Did you ask the cabdriver?” Chastity asked.

  “We haven�
��t been able to locate him.”

  “But she did get in a cab.”

  “According to witnesses, yes.”

  “James’ll find out who that cabbie is,” Kareena promised.

  Chastity nodded. “But why would she go to a fertility clinic? Did you ask her husband, Detective?”

  “He said she’d had dealings with the Arlen Clinic a while back, but that she hadn’t been back in the last year or so. We checked there, too, of course. Nobody remembers seeing her.”

  “Oh,” Kareena said. “That Arlen Clinic. No wonder I didn’t recognize it.”

  “But what would they have to do with a fertility clinic?” Chastity demanded. “Dr. Stanton told me himself that he didn’t want any more kids.”

  Detective Gilchrist looked affronted. “Since she didn’t go there, I didn’t think it my business to ask, ma’am.”

  Chastity rolled that whole concept around in her mouth a minute and couldn’t come up with a comfortable taste. Instead of putting questions to rest, she’d added more.

  “I think I have some phone calls to make,” she mused.

  And after exchanging cards with Detective Gilchrist, she escaped from the police station.

  “You got a look on your face,” Kareena said as they stepped back into the heat.

  Chastity shook her head, her attention more on the information she hadn’t gotten than on what she had. “I got a feelin’, Kareena.”

  “Oh, Kareena loves feelin’s like that. You think this fertility thing mean something?”

  “I don’t know. But the first thing we learned in school was to look for the thing that didn’t seem to belong. And that doesn’t. If Faith hasn’t seen anybody at the Arlen Clinic for so long, why would she suddenly go there? It just doesn’t fit.”

  “Maybe she didn’t.”

  Chastity lifted an eyebrow. “Just how much do the words fertility clinic sound like anything else?”

  Besides, she could smell it again, somewhere beneath all that thick foliage.