Chapter Nineteen

Eventually my churning brain relaxed into sleep enough for me to wake to the smell of coffee and bright sunlight streaming through the window. I could hear three voices out in the kitchen, informing me that I was the only sluggard still in bed.

I have an excuse, I thought as I tried to get up. My muscles were screaming. In the last few days, I’d dragged a heavy chest out of an attic, jumped off a roof, then been pushed into a swimming pool on a brisk evening. When I was in my twenties all the above would have been a walk in the park. Forties? A day in bed before I was human again.

The promise of caffeine got me up—on the second try—and into the kitchen.

Torbin, Andy, and Liz were there, ringing the kitchen table, with full mugs and plates a hint that once upon a time there had been French toast.

“That’s okay, just coffee for me,” I said as I poured a mug.

“Woeful, woeful, woeful,” Torbin said as he got up and walked to the stove. Without even asking he uncovered what he was saving for me and started making me my very own French toast.

“You are the best cousin ever,” I said as I took his seat. It was already warm and I didn’t intend to waste any warmth.

“Andy is about to take me to retrieve my car,” Liz said. “Much as I’d like to hang around, I’m supposed to be a working girl and weekends mean nothing when you’re out in the field.”

“We did enlist her in our resistance movement,” Torbin said as he dropped a dripping piece of bread into the skillet.

“What are we resisting?” I asked.

“Evil pool-pushing lesbians.”

“I agreed to help insert Penaeus aztecus into her hubcaps.”

Torbin translated. “AKA common old brown Gulf shrimp.”

“Too many years hanging with scientists,” Liz explained.

“So we’ve already made plans for a seafood boil. We’ll mix in shells with actual shrimp. It’s just a waste of good shrimp otherwise.”

“Shrimp and crawfish only, right?” I asked.

“Maybe oysters,” Andy said.

Liz cocked an eyebrow.

“No crabs,” Torbin explained. “We all agreed that we will not eat crabs for the next year or so.”

Liz nodded. The look on her face made it clear that she understood. Crabs eat carrion, and right now some of what was in the water could well be human.

“Living in New Orleans,” I said, “even a seafood boil has echoes of Katrina.”

“No crabs,” she agreed. With that she got up. Torbin and Andy had clearly done laundry as Liz was wearing what she’d had on last night and her clothes didn’t look like they’d been left in a sodden heap. “Time to be a productive member of society.” To me she said, “I still need to get in contact with your young friend.”

“I’ll give her a call.”

Liz gave all of us a quick hug, me an extra smile, and then she and Andy were out the door.

Torbin plopped a plate of French toast in front of me.

“She’s a nice woman,” he said as he refilled his coffee cup.

“Yes, she is. And if I were single…” I started to say.

Torbin finished the obvious for me, “But you’re not.”

“Goddamn it! I never cheated on her!” Just say it and get it out, I told myself, this anger that had been brimming so close to the surface.

Torbin joined me at the table. “So dump her ass and go after Liz.”

Of course I fell for it. “That’s easy for you to say. What if it were you and Andy?”

“If it were me and Andy, I’d grab him by the scruff of the neck and sit down and talk and talk and talk until we came to some resolution.” He took a sip of coffee. “But as you’re not willing to do that—”

“Damn it. I’m not not willing to do that. It’s just that—”

“Just that in three months and counting you haven’t managed it yet.”

“That little old windstorm Katrina has something to do with that.”

“True. I’ll give you a break there. But Micky, you’re tearing yourself up—and you’ve got a lot of other people involved here as well. You and Cordelia have a lot of friends in common—myself included—and we’re also caught up in this.”

I started crying. Torbin put his arm around my shoulder, but didn’t say anything, just let me cry myself out.

When I’d finished, he handed me a paper towel and simply said, “You need to eat. Let me give that French toast a spin in the microwave.”

I didn’t have an answer as to what I would do about Cordelia, although Torbin was right. I needed to do something.

I changed the subject. “Do you think I might be able to talk to Brooke Overhill?”

“Why?”

I gave him a brief overview of Alma Groome and her murder.

“You think Brooke might have murdered her?” he asked.

“I think someone in the Overhill family had the most to gain,” I said. “What she found out could have destroyed their wealth.” Torbin looked skeptical. “Or they could have nothing to do with it, but it’s hard to know if I can’t talk to some of them.”

“As it just so happens, Brooke is supposed to call me in a little bit so we can arrange a time to eat, drink, and be merry and recall the good old days. Hang around, eat a decent breakfast, and I’ll see what I can do.”

He got three other calls and I finished eating before Brooke called.

I finished another cup of coffee before he and she finally caught up, made plans, gossiped about people I didn’t know, and gnashed teeth about our political leadership, or lack thereof, and the recovery efforts in New Orleans.

Torbin finally said, “Oh, my cousin Micky, the private eye, wants to talk to you.”

He handed me the phone.

“Hi, Brooke, I know this will sound really flaky—I promise I’m not trying to weasel my way into being a backup singer or anything like that—but I’ve been working on a case, and in a convoluted way, your family’s name is connected to it. You might be interested as it involves another singer. Would it be possible for me to come talk to you about this? Whatever works for you, of course.”

Torbin looked relieved that I hadn’t blurted out that I suspected her family of foul play.

I was relieved that she didn’t immediately blow me off. Instead I listened to her as she ran through her schedule—packed, as one might expect for a celebrity in her hometown.

“Could you do five this evening?” she asked.

“That’s great. Tell me where to meet you.”

“My house. Well, my parents’ house. Is that okay?”

“That’s fine.” It was more than fine. It’d give me a chance to get a better sense of the family, not just Brooke. She gave me directions and that was it.

“See,” I said as I handed the phone back to Torbin, “I don’t intend to give her the third degree.”

“I’m happy to hear that. Brooke is a friend, even if she lives in another world now.”

“People reveal so much more when they think you agree with them.”

Torbin shook his head in disapproval.

“Okay, how about this. I won’t take advantage of your friendship with her. But I won’t help conceal a crime either.”

“Fair enough. Now get on with your life and let me get on with mine.”

His phone was ringing again, so after changing into my clean clothes, I let myself out. Torbin waved good-bye as he was talking to someone about an upcoming show.

We live fairly close to each other. It would have been a quick walk to my house, but I headed for my office instead. Cordelia would be at the house. I had to face her soon, but wasn’t up to it just yet. I was still too humiliated from my tumble into the swimming pool at a posh Uptown party. The distance to my office was about twice as long, but still easy enough, especially as the day was bright and clear.

Alma Groome had been murdered. The goons that I’d run into during my breaking-and-entering expedition made it seem like someone was interested in the family history and its tainted flow of money.

I owed her a little more poking around. At least to see if I could find something I might be able to turn over to the police. Without incriminating myself.

I also had to follow up with Nathalie and contact her for Liz. That worried me. I didn’t want to worry about Nathalie. She needed so many things, mostly to grow up and get away from that family, but I couldn’t give her that. There was little I could give her and I didn’t want to walk into that failure, even if it was the right thing to do.

When I got to my office, one of the first things I did—besides going to the bathroom and realizing that I would need more toilet paper soon or I was going to regret it—was to create a family tree for the Benoits to show the different family lines. It would be hard to explain without a visual. I would take it with me when I went to talk to Brooke.

I wanted to have as much information as I could before seeing her. Especially to have a better i.e. of who Alma Groome was, why she shouldn’t have been murdered.

First I had to re-establish connections to all the various Web sites I’d used in the past. My new computer didn’t have anything bookmarked or set up to connect automatically. That only took twice as long as it should have. Luckily for me one of the things I carried with me on my mad flight was a briefcase of most of my important papers, including the little notebook where I kept the myriad of passwords I needed to access the Internet.

Once those were in place, I started my search for Alma Groome.

She was born on April 23, 1972. That meant she was thirty-three when she died. Far too young. She’d gotten a BA in music from UNO, then a master’s in music from the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, although she hadn’t gone directly into graduate school. Her BA was in 1995 and the MM in 2004. I could just see that New Orleans girl shivering the entire time she was up there. Maybe she could take her coat off in June.

No announcements of weddings or births, so presumably she was not married and had no children.

From what records I could find, she seemed to have grown up in New Orleans, lived in the house where she was found, and stayed there while getting her undergraduate degree. After that it was harder to track her. A few addresses came up, most in New Orleans, but the one that seemed the most current was in Wisconsin. Maybe she’d stayed there? Or only recently come back? If she still lived up north, how had she come down here to be killed? But she had only recently gotten her master’s degree, so maybe any new address didn’t show up. She might have moved in with someone.

Did she have a lover? Someone who didn’t know what had happened to her?

That thought haunted me.

She had been a performer, using her skills to recreate the career of her foremother. I found notices of shows she did and, as I got a better i.e. of what to look for, was able to create a chronology of her performances. She started while she was getting her graduate degree, only a few performances during that time. Once she had graduated, the pace picked up. She seemed to travel mostly in the Midwest and Northeast, often performing at colleges, but also a number of other venues. Some of them were advertised in the gay papers, but not always.

At first there were gaps of months between shows, but she seemed to have performed pretty steadily during the last six months, with no more than a week or two between dates. The last two dates I could find were a week or so ago, both in Illinois, one at the University at Champaign-Urbana and one in Chicago.

Then she disappeared.

I looked at the timeline. Her last performance was about three days before her body was discovered here.

Had someone reported her missing? I could at least call my law-enforcement friends and have them check that out.

I needed to call Danny anyway. As a lawyer, she’d probably punt this one on to Joanne, but it was way past time to connect with her.

Pointing my cell phone in the right direction, I dialed her number. An unfamiliar voice answered. Then I recognized it. “Elly?” Elly was Danny’s partner. “Danny stuck outside?”

“Micky, hi. No, she’s in the hospital.”

“What?” How the hell had I missed that?

“Pneumonia. You know the courthouse flooded, and she’s been helping sort through the muck in the evidence room. I think the mold—and stress and overwork—got to her. She picked up a bacterial infection. You know how she is. She blew it off as a cold as long as she could. Until the fever hit 102 and I insisted she see a doctor.”

“Hell, Elly, I’m sorry. Yeah, I can see Danny being stubborn about being sick. Can I do anything? Is she up to visitors?”

“She should be soon, but we’re in Alexandria. The hospitals around New Orleans are overwhelmed. This was the closest place we could find that could keep her for as long as I think she needs to be observed and on IV antibiotics.”

Alexandria was about four hours from New Orleans in the center of the state.

Elly sounded tired, like she could use a few days of bed rest as well.

“If you need me, let me know. You know I’d drive to Texas for either you or Danny. Alexandria isn’t half that far.”

“Save the gas. Maybe come help me get her home. I’ll keep you posted.”

“Please.”

I put the phone down, then just stared at it. Danny in the hospital, Alex falling apart—I needed to call her, too—me drinking again, and falling, if not apart, certainly not holding it together all that well. What had Liz said about Cordelia? That she seemed lost? Elly was exhausted. With so many of us stumbling and falling, could anyone remain standing? Torbin seemed okay, but I knew him well enough to know that he also seemed to be chasing normalcy by going to parties, seeing friends, as if he needed those talismans of the time before to get through. Andy was never a chatterbox, but even he seemed quieter, more introspective.

I called Joanne on her official line, but she wasn’t in. I could have left the message with someone else, but Hutch wasn’t around either—someone else falling apart—and I didn’t want to just let Alma Groome disappear into a bureaucracy. I left a message for her to call me.

Next on my list was Nathalie. Again, all I got was voice mail. I didn’t leave a message, worried that Nathan would get it and that would only cause her more problems.

I went back for one final search on Alma Groome, to see if I’d missed anything.

This time I stumbled onto a recent video, filmed within the last month. It was both a performance and a talk about the historical background of what she was doing.

The video wasn’t high quality, but Alma had stage presence, a way of taking over the space that made you want to watch her. She had a rich alto voice and the ability to not just sing, but act her songs.

Between songs, she talked about them, gave the history of the performers who sang them. Annie Hindle, who published love poetry to women in the newspapers and married a woman, not once but twice. As Alma told it, the marriage was quite possibly legal, as marriage at the time was only illegal if falsehood was involved. Because the woman was Annie’s dresser, it wasn’t possible that she thought she was marrying a biological man. Ella Wesner was part of a family of dancers and she supported many of them with what she earned as a woman performing as a man. She was also part of a scandal, running off to Europe with Josephine Mansfield, who was the mistress of Colonel James Fisk, murdered by his business partner in the Grand Central Hotel—the murder of that century.

Then Alma sang a song that was her ancestor’s signature. It was a ballad of love lost, about someone who knew that she would always look back even as she was looking forward. After the song, Alma told her story: “Octavia Alma Despaux was probably raised to be someone’s mistress—she was what was called an octoroon at the time. Or a very light-skinned black woman. That wasn’t what she wanted to do with her life, however, and once she saw a variety performance, she recognized a way out. It’s been hard to reconstruct her life, mostly from playbills and newspapers hidden in archives. She probably started on the black circuit up around Atlanta, or at least disappeared long enough from New Orleans that when she reappeared in a talent show, she could pass herself off as an amateur and, more importantly for the bottom line, as white. She claimed to be from southern France to account for her dark looks and French-sounding name. New Orleans had a special affinity for anything French as long as it spoke English, so Octavia did quite well there. Once she had gained a reputation, she was able to get bookings elsewhere, even doing a European tour. Although over there, she probably billed herself as from New Orleans, as that would be more exotic on that side of the Atlantic—plus explain why she spoke very little actual French. After a scandal—she was caught in a compromising position with her dresser, another woman—she and the woman fled to Europe permanently. Then she disappeared, could be sitting on the beach in the south of France right now smoking cigars and telling wild tales that are true. Family lore has it that she still sent money and that at least one female of every generation has to have one of her names, as her sister Maria-Josephina vowed that she would never forget Octavia’s generosity and kindness when she had no one else to turn to.

“It has taken years of digging—and luck—to find out this bare outline of her life. Like many performers of her time, she wasn’t considered important enough for anyone to keep records, so what we’ve found has been by the happenstance of what was saved. The papers that advertised the performances, some newspaper articles, diaries, and letters. No one thought these people were valuable enough to record who they were or what happened to them.”

Then Alma sang a final song, one about good-bye and the chance of meeting again.

The applause was long and loud and well-deserved.

Her performance seared me. The forgotten history she had found would be left moldering in archives again; her voice, her knowledge and passion had been stolen from us. The acts, and the women who created them, had been lost to history; now her voice and her reclaiming of them was also lost. I copied the performance on a flash drive. If I got the chance, I would show it to Brooke. It didn’t seem fair. The two branches of the family both produced talented performers, but Alma would be as lost to history as Octavia Alma Despaux was. Brooke would have the spotlight.

My phone rang. I grabbed it, then had to jump up from my desk to get it pointed in the right direction so I could actually talk.

“Micky Knight,” I answered.

“Joanne. I have some news for you.”

“I know about Danny.”

“Danny?” Clearly her news wasn’t about Danny.

“Pneumonia. In the hospital in Alexandria,” I summed up for her. “Elly says she’ll be okay, just needs some drugs and some rest.”

“Don’t we all?” Joanne commented sardonically. “Damn, I hadn’t heard that. I’ll give her a call later.”

“If that wasn’t it, what is your news?”

“Bad, I’m afraid. The Jane Doe you reported was murdered. Looks like she put up a fight—lot of bruises, broken fingernails. She had contusions on her head, but what killed her was being strangled. She’d been dead about two days when you found her. Cold weather slowed decomposition.”

“Guess I was expecting something like this. I knew she was dead. I have a name and a possible address.”

“You’ve been busy.”

“Yeah, the PI business hasn’t exactly been booming post-Katrina. Might have to learn to hang drywall.”

“Look, Micky, if you’re tight—”

“I’m okay. It’s not like I have a flooded house to replace.”

“Not a picnic by any stretch, but we had insurance, and flood insurance, so we’ll be okay. How the hell do we always end up talking about this?”

“It’s always in our lives. What do you go home to every night?”

“Let’s talk about something else. Can you give me her name and address?”

I did, then asked, “Do you think someone is looking for her? Missing her?”

“I sure as hell hope so. It’s hard for the people left behind, but what kind of life did you have if there’s no one to miss you when you’re gone?”

Then Joanne was off the phone and I was left wondering who would miss me if I disappeared? Dead, but that was morbid. Who would miss me if I moved away from here and started over again? I could call Shannon Wild—e-mail her in Eastern Europe where she was doing a story on Kosovo—and tell her I was willing to give it a try with her. We had been thrown together by Katrina; she said she was in love with me. Maybe I loved her, maybe I didn’t. Maybe I’d just wanted someone to hold me in the night. The truth was that I didn’t love her enough to turn away from everything here and go with her. Liz? No, too new, just hints of possibilities. She didn’t know me well enough to miss me. Why did it even have to be with someone? I could just go where I wanted to go—no strings, a new beginning.

I wanted to go home, to the home I used to have, to quiet evenings with me chopping vegetables in the kitchen while Cordelia told me about her day. I wanted to be able to walk in the door and have her put her arms around me.

Forgive her and tell her you want her back. You can have that home again.

If it were only that simple. Did she even care if I forgave her? What sins had I committed that I wasn’t aware of? Had I taken her for granted over the years? What if what was broken couldn’t be mended? If there was no way to have that home again?

I got up and crossed the room to look out the window, chastising myself for this wallow in self-pity. There were bodies in the morgue up in St. Gabrielle that no one would claim, heartbreaking that no one was left to claim them, no one knew to claim there, or no one cared to claim them.

Torbin and Andy, Joanne and Alex, Danny and Elly, my mother, all my friends and family. Maybe Cordelia. I wouldn’t be left unclaimed.

I picked up the phone, one more call to make. I dialed Nathalie’s cell-phone number.

“Hello?” a male voice answered. Nathan.

I pinched my nose and pitched my voice high and did my best yat accent—from the catch phrase, ‘where y’at, dawlin’?’ “Hey, I’m callin’ for Nat’lie. This her friend Bernice.”

“Who?”

“Bernice, ‘nother volunteer, down chere. Nats said to give her a call ‘bout seeing some ‘gators.”

“Just a second.” He dropped the phone and I heard voices in the background. I couldn’t make out the words, but it seemed that a discussion was taking place. It took so long I was beginning to wonder if my subconscious had skimmed a story about Bernice, the serial killer who fed Midwestern volunteers to alligators, and I had inadvertently picked the wrong cover.

Finally the phone was picked up. “Who’s calling?” a female voice asked. It wasn’t Nathalie. High-pitched, nasal. Carmen?

“Who’s askin’?” I stayed in the character of Bernice. “I’m a friend of Nat’lie’s, trying to get ‘holt of her.”

“She’s not available right now. Can I take a message?” she said coolly.

I doubted that any message I’d leave would get to Nathalie. Carmen was probably only asking to find out whatever she could.

“Naw, I’ll call her later.” I quickly hung up. That was weird. Why was Carmen, the bitch, intervening in a phone call to Nathalie? It sounded like Carmen still had Nathan wound around her fingers and they had teamed up to make Nathalie’s life miserable.

Another thing on my to-do list—drive out there and actually talk to her.

I glanced at my watch. Time to be heading out for my meeting with Brooke O. I gathered the family tree, the recording of Alma’s performance and the rest of my notes, and was out the door.

The sun was setting; it would be dark before I got there. These were the short days of late fall.

As I turned onto her street, I noticed a large house, ablaze with light as if that could keep the dark and cold out. It was larger than the others on the block, with an imposing wrought-iron fence topped with menacing spears surrounding it. I started to pull up in front, then realized it wasn’t the right address. I had just assumed that the Overhills had the most ostentatious house on the block.

Their house was farther down, a rambling Uptown house, but not one that said “The richest people in the neighborhood live here.” Only a low brick wall separated the property from the street. The yard was well maintained, but it didn’t have the neatness and precision that said a garden service took care of it. The house was off-white with green trim, a scattering of plants in pots on the veranda that surrounded it. A few lights were on, enough to indicate that people were here. One light on the porch was all the welcome offered.

I parked my car, looked at the house for a moment as I gathered my thoughts, then headed up the walkway to the door.

The brass door knocker was shaped like an alligator head. I lifted the jaws then realized that to knock I had to bring the faux teeth down onto a nutria in its mouth. I chuckled as I made it chomp.

Brooke herself opened the door.

“So were you horrified or amused?” she asked with a nod toward the brass alligator.

“Do I get demerits for a sick sense of humor if I said I found it funny?”

“In my nonscientific survey, the ones who are amused fit in here, the horrified ones not so much.” She ushered me in.

She was in jeans and a T-shirt, covered by a well-worn navy hooded sweatshirt, and bright purple and gold LSU Tiger socks. Little or no makeup.

“Would you like some tea or coffee?” she asked. “Or it’s officially five o’clock, we can move on to the cocktail hour.”

“I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

“Wheatgrass and bitterroot tea? Being too polite can get you in trouble.”

“Can I do just wheatgrass and hold the bitterroot?”

“All made up. How about cinnamon stick? I’m trying to take care of my throat. I’m doing two benefit concerts in the next few days, so it’s mostly tea these days.”

“Cinnamon sounds lovely.” I followed her to the kitchen.

It was a comfortable room, stained pine cabinets, a cheery yellow color, pots hung on the walls with blackened bottoms that proved they’d cooked a lot of food. There was just enough clutter—a stack of mail, dishes in a drainer—to indicate that people lived in this kitchen. The refrigerator, a stainless-steel one, was the exact same one that Cordelia and I had in our kitchen before the storm.

Brooke put the kettle on to boil.

“Thanks for agreeing to see me. Feel free to kick me out when you need to move on to other things.”

“Torbin did me a lot of favors in the past, so lots of debt to repay.” She added with a grin, “Have you recovered from last night’s swim?”

“I was pushed,” I said too quickly.

“Pushed?” she said as she took tea bags from one of the cabinets. “Now it gets intriguing? Who pushed you?”

“A woman whose name I can never remember. Patty something.”

“Why’d she push you?”

“She’s never forgiven me for my charm, brains, and good looks.”

Brooke let out a whoop of laughter.

“The pool called to her with its siren song of revenge,” I said.

“You are as crazy as Torbin. Which I love about him.”

“Torbin’s a good person. So I have to warn you that whatever I do or say here should not in any way reflect on him.”

“Oh? Why?” She dropped the tea bags into two pottery mugs.

“Because he was worried I might accuse you of murder.”

Brooke turned from the mugs to look at me. “This is a joke?”

“I wish it were.” I pulled out a picture of Alma Groome, a still from one of her performances, and showed it to Brooke. “Her body was found in the destroyed house she grew up in. She wasn’t killed by the storm. She was murdered—strangled to death and left there. Maybe the killers were hoping she wouldn’t be found and if enough time passed, it would be assumed that she was just another victim of Katrina.”

“Why would I want to murder her?” Brooke asked. She seemed genuinely puzzled.

“She’s your cousin. Long lost, a branch of the forebearers that divided about a century ago.” I pulled out the family tree to show her.

Brooke studied it intently, her finger tracing the family lines.

The screech of the tea kettle interrupted her. She quickly snatched it off the stove, hovering indecisively as if torn between making the tea or following the lines. The hot water won; she poured it into the mugs, then came back to the paper.

Finally she looked up and said, “Okay, so we’re related. Why would I want to kill her?”

“She’s black. It seems that Josiah Benoit crossed the color line and passed as white to marry your great, etc. grandmother.”

“You think I care about that?”

“Some people might, but no, I doubt that matters to you. What might matter is that Josiah never divorced his first wife, so his second marriage wasn’t valid.” It wasn’t that cut and dried—there was no record of the divorce, so his second marriage might not be legal—but that would take a team of lawyers to wrangle through.”

“Meaning?”

She was beginning to understand, but I got the sense she wanted to hear what I’d say.

“Josiah left the Perdido Street properties to his second wife and her children, with nothing for his first wife and her children.”

“And that’s the property my family sold to make a lot of money.” Brooke finished making the tea as she said, “That’s a lot of history.”

She handed me a mug and I took a sip to let her mull things over.

“It’s poisoned, by the way,” she said.

I almost spit it out, but caught the impish quirk of her eyes. She was doing a very good job of not smiling.

“Oh, well, gotta go sometime.” I took another sip.

“So what does this all mean? I don’t have all the family finances in my head, but I’d bet we could easily part with whatever we sold those properties for back then. If that’s what someone wanted.”

“It’s hard to know without a gaggle of lawyers going through it. If Josiah was ‘legally’ white, maybe his first marriage didn’t count. I’d guess that lawyers could argue it multiple ways. Probably the bottom line is that Alma and her family could have sued for, and gotten, a pretty significant settlement from your family.”

“Would someone really murder another person over that?” Brooke seemed so wide-eyed and innocent when she asked that, either she had nothing to do with this or she was some mean-ass psychopath who could do or say anything and get away with it. My money was on the former, though. I found myself liking her and didn’t want her to have anything to do with this.

“People kill for just about any reason—to steal a jacket or because they had too much to drink and weren’t thinking. Greed is a big one.”

“Look, I don’t think I’m part of a family of murderers,” Brooke said, as if testing the waters to see if that was really what I was accusing her of.

“I know someone did kill Alma Groome. Who or why, I don’t know and may never know. It seems she discovered information about your two families that indicated that your side got all the goods and her side was left with nothing. Did that lead to her death? I don’t know. Maybe she was trying blackmail—had some less-than-nice people in on it and it got messy and she was killed.”

Brooke nodded as if thinking about this. Then she put down her tea cup and went to a door to an inner hallway. “Hey, Dad,” she called. “You might be interested in this.”

Well, I had wanted to meet the whole family.

A man in his late fifties or early sixties entered the kitchen. He was tall and had a full head of silver hair that he wore a little long, either flaunting his lack of hair loss or too busy for regular haircuts. He wore a blue striped button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up and gray chinos. Both the shirt and pants were rumpled, as if he’d been in them all day and finally at the end of the day come home and taken off his tie, loosened his collar, and rolled up his sleeves. Behind him was a woman about his age, I assumed his wife. She was more casual than her husband, a nice pair of jeans and a lavender cotton sweater. Like her daughter, she wore little makeup.

Brooke introduced us. “This is Micky Knight, a friend of my friend Torbin. She’s a private investigator and has uncovered some very interesting family history.” She paused as if done, then remembered to say, “This is my mom and dad, John and Marilyn Overhill.”

I quickly oriented myself. John was the son of Jameson and Jessica Stern. Jessica brought the Perdido Street properties into the family; Jameson sold them for a lot of money.

I decided to leave out the word “murder” other than to say that Alma Groome had been killed. As I had for Brooke, I narrated what I’d uncovered about their family history.

When I was done, John Overhill said, “Wow, fascinating,” as if he were a history buff and had been shown something truly interesting. In response to what was probably the look on my face—I try to keep it neutral, but I’m not always perfect—he said, “I can see how it might be a mess for us personally, if someone were to sue. But at this point most of our holdings have been acquired in the last two decades or so. This claim has to predate that by a long time. If we lost half of what we own, we’d still be more than comfortable, so I’m almost more fascinated by how this would play out—what are the laws, how do you decide these things when so much time has passed.”

His wife, Marilyn, asked, “Do you think the woman being killed had something to do with this?”

That was the question. I answered carefully. “It’s hard to know. She was murdered, that’s not in doubt. This could possibly be a motive, but there could be other things in her life that I don’t know about that caused her to be killed.”

Unlike her husband, she seemed less interested in the history and more concerned about the here and now. She continued. “It’s odd because just recently I got a phone call from someone I didn’t know, but who seemed to know me. She said something about there being information that we wouldn’t want anyone else to discover and if we paid her a million dollars she’d keep quiet. I didn’t take it seriously, told her I thought this wasn’t a very funny joke. That seemed to make her angry. She said it was no joke, that my family didn’t deserve any of the money we had and that if we didn’t pay up, we’d lose everything.”

“When was this?” John asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Oh, honey, with everything else going on, it seemed so minor. I mentioned it to Jared. He had just come home. He said if she ever called again, we could trace the line.”

“She never called back?” I asked.

“Not that I know of. I hung up on her with the first call. It just sounded so outlandish and…we came through Katrina okay. So many of our friends, the people that work for us, have lost everything. It seemed a waste of time to worry about some bizarre threat.”

“We’ve had our share of hangers-on. Long-lost cousins or old college buddies—who can’t remember where we went to college,” John said. If you have money, people want it. Some with very good reason—a sick child, help for a needy school. But a number of people will try any scam to get it.”

Brooke said, “We have the Jessica Stern foundation to try and help those who truly need money. It gives individual grants for things like medical bills and also grants to local organizations for projects like a new school playground.”

“It’s not possible for us to examine the legitimacy of every request. That’s why we set up the foundation and route most requests through that,” John said.

“Even then some people worm their way in,” Marilyn said. “Remember last summer, just before Katrina? That young man who said his father had been killed while working at one of our hotels.”

“Yes,” her husband said. “He didn’t need anything for himself, but his mother had just been diagnosed with cancer and he needed something immediately to help his sister stay in school.”

“You gave him a couple of hundred,” Marilyn narrated. “And we saw him in a French Quarter bar about a week later. He claimed that his sister had just been killed in a car wreck and he was drinking away his sorrows.” The arch of her eyebrow indicated how much she believed his story. “And that woman who claimed to be related to your Midwestern branch of the family? She showed up, claimed that she’d been raped and robbed. So of course you took her in. She said she didn’t want the police, just needed a thousand dollars to get home.”

“And I gave it to her,” John said. These had the feeling of well-worn stories.

“Once she got the money and discovered where we kept the kitchen money, she left in the middle of the night. I go away for two days—John is just too kind.”

“Sad thing is, she really was a cousin, about ten times removed,” John said. “I had one of our security guys check her out.”

“Did you press charges?” I asked.

“No, it didn’t seem worth it. She was young, maybe nineteen or twenty, the age people do foolish things that can cost them forever. I didn’t think jail would help her.”

“And then there was that time when another young woman came by with a pack of what she claimed were rescued dogs,” Marilyn said. “Turns out she’d gone to the animal pound the day before and—”

She was interrupted by the entrance of someone I guessed to be Jared, the oldest son,

I had to repeat the story one more time.

“Hey, I always wanted to be the suspect in a murder,” he said. “I am a suspect, right?” He shot me a sardonic grin, as if daring me to say it.

“Where were you on the night on November 22nd?” I asked, deadpan.

“Out wandering the streets of New Orleans. I had no witnesses.”

“Jared,” his mother admonished him. “This is perhaps not the best time for your sense of humor.”

“Damn, and I was looking forward to some interrogation,” he said, winking at me in an exaggeratedly flirtatious manner.

“We can arrange that. I leave all the interrogating to my assistant, Guido. He likes making men talk.”

“In that case, I was home here in the bosom of my family.”

“Then I’m sure you’re innocent,” I said. I was tired of his banter. He was either trying to hide something or just liked the attention. I turned to his mother. “On the phone call, are you sure it was a woman?”

“I never really thought about it. She just sounded like a woman to me.”

“I have a video of Alma performing her act. Could you listen to part of it and see if the voice is familiar?”

“You think she may have tried to blackmail us?”

“If it’s her voice that might answer some questions.” If Alma had attempted blackmail, she might have skimmed other legal lines, and any of those could have led to her murder.

“Yes, of course.”

Brooke ran to her room and retrieved her laptop, a brand-new Mac with a big screen. I gave her the flash drive with Alma’s performance saved on it.

It took less than a minute for Marilyn to say, “No, that’s not her.”

“Close your eyes,” I instructed. “Picture yourself holding the phone.”

She did so, but after another minute, again shook her head. She opened her eyes and looked at me. “No, definitely not. The voice I heard was not a pretty voice at all, harsh and flat. And…it sounded like a white person. Or I just assumed that it was.”

“Could you detect any accent?” I asked.

“I didn’t notice one, but I wasn’t really paying attention. It wasn’t a long conversation.”

“If you were to picture this person, what would she look like?” I asked.

“Um, I guess, well, female. Maybe twenties or thirties. Not big, she seemed to have a small voice. And Caucasian. Maybe an accent, but not from the South. Maybe the Northeast. And…and that’s all.”

“Thanks, that’s very helpful. Sometimes we know more than we think we know,” I told her.

“Time to go,” Jared said.

Marilyn explained. “We’re helping with a big red-beans-and-rice cookout for the soldiers and rescue workers who’ve been helping in the area where a lot of our employees lived.”

“We never decided, did you want me to go?” Brooke asked.

“We have decided,” her mother said firmly, “that you’re doing enough. You need to stay here and not be out talking all night in the cold air. You have a concert tomorrow night and you can’t get sick.”

“Yes, Mother,” Brooke said affectionately. To me she asked, “Can I watch all of this?” referring to Alma’s video.

“Yeah, sure. I can come by later and get it.”

“If it’s not too long, why don’t you stay? I could even offer you another cup of tea, since the first one has to be cold by now.”

I accepted. The rest of the Overhills quickly bundled up and were out the door with Jared, carrying several huge pots from the kitchen. Brooke finished making the tea, gave me a mug, then sat in front of her computer.

She watched the entire video without a word. When it was done, she turned to me and said, “She was very talented. I could feel the energy and focus in her performance, feel the history in what she was doing, like all those voices were singing through her for us.” She took a sip of her tea, then said, “I can’t do that. I can’t make all those layers resonate. I can sing a song, sing what I write and what I know. But I can’t do what she did.” The catch in her voice told me she knew something special had been lost.

I thanked her for the tea and for answering my questions. I let her keep the flash drive and Alma’s last performance.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14