Murder in the Irish Channel (Chanse MacLeod Mysteries) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Synopsis

  By The Author

  Acknowledgments

  Synopsis

  It begins as a simple missing persons case—a young MMA fighter's mother has mysteriously disappeared. But as New Orleans private eye Chanse MacLeod starts digging around, he discovers that she is the leader of a group fighting the powerful Archdiocese of New Orleans over the closing of two churches. As the trail leads from corrupt church officials to powerful real estate developers to the world of cage fighting, Chanse soon realizes there are a lot of powerful people who want to make sure she stays gone—and don't have a problem with getting rid of a pesky gay private eye.

  Murder in the Irish Channel

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  eBooks from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com

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  Murder in the Irish Channel

  © 2011 By Greg Herren. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-620-5

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Edition: December 2011

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editor: Stacia Seaman

  Production Design: Stacia Seaman

  Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

  By The Author

  The Scott Bradley Adventures

  Bourbon Street Blues

  Jackson Square Jazz

  Mardi Gras Mambo

  Vieux Carré Voodoo

  Who Dat Whodunnit

  The Chanse MacLeod Mysteries

  Murder in the Rue Dauphine

  Murder in the Rue St. Ann

  Murder in the Rue Chartres

  Murder in the Rue Ursulines

  Murder in the Garden District

  Murder in the Irish Channel

  Sleeping Angel

  Women of the Mean Streets

  Men of the Mean Streets

  (edited with J.M. Redmann)

  Acknowledgments

  Over the course of my life, I’ve been incredibly blessed to call the most extraordinary people my friends.

  First of all, I would really like to thank everyone at Bold Strokes Books—Radclyffe, Sandy Lowe, Stacia Seaman, Shelley Thrasher, Connie Ward, Cindy Cresap, and I apologize to anyone I’m forgetting. What I like to call the league of extraordinary women welcomed me into the Bold Strokes family, and they have been an absolute joy to work with from the very first day. Bold Strokes has given me an opportunity to stretch and grow as a writer, and I cannot thank everyone there enough.

  Here in New Orleans, I have yet another league of extraordinary women I can always depend upon for moral support, love, and laughter. Julie Smith, Patricia Brady, Susan Larson, J. M. Redmann, Gillian Rodger, Bev Marshall, Chris Wiltz, Nevada Barr, Laura Lippman, and Janet Dailey Duval are beyond exceptional, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for always being there whenever I need any of you.

  My coworkers at the Community Awareness Network office of the NO/AIDS Task Force are some pretty amazing people as well—their dedication to making the world a better place and working to improve the quality of people’s lives blows me away on a daily basis: Josh Fegley, Martin Strickland, Mark Drake, Nick Parr, Brandon Benson, Matt Valletta, Robin Pearce, Allison Vertovec, Larry Stillings, and Sarah Ramteke.

  I would also be remiss in not singling out my very dear friend Victoria A. Brownworth for recognition.

  I finished writing this book at the Bold Strokes Writer’s Retreat at Garnet Hill Lodge in the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York. I had the most amazing time there, and that is entirely all the fault of yet another group of extraordinary women: Carsen Taite, Nell Stark, Trinity Tam, Anne Laughlin, Linda Braasch, Ali Vali, Lisa Girolami, Lynda Sandoval, Rachel Spangler, Karis Walsh, and Ruth Sternglantz. Also worthy of mention is the delightful Niner Baxter—his sense of humor and gentle spirit was a joy to be around.

  And of course, Paul Willis makes my life worth getting out of bed for every morning.

  This book is for

  LADY HERMIONE

  “Come about!”

  “I’m sure I don’t have to tell a man as experienced as you that everything has its shadowy side?”

  —Tennessee Williams, The Night of the Iguana

  Chapter One

  The house was a tired-looking single shotgun, badly in need of paint and slightly listing to one side. It was in the middle of a block on Constance Street in the Irish Channel, and the other houses on the block were just as sad and forlorn. The house next door had a For Sale sign planted in the front yard; still others had damaged cars parked in front of them on the street. This particular stretch of street was cracked and pitted with deep potholes, with gravel running between the asphalt and the drainage ditches. The lawns had scars of bare dirt exposed and many of them needed to be mown. The flowerbeds were choked with weeds. Massive live oak trees shaded the houses and yards, creating a green canopy over the street that blocked out the hot June sun. A black, white, and tan cat paused as it crossed the street to stare at me for a moment before continuing on its way.

  Hoping I was wrong, I double-checked the address. The house I was looking for was indeed this sad wreck of a place.

  I put my car into park and sat there for a moment, wondering why it hadn’t been condemned. There was a rusted chain-link fence around the front yard, on the other side of the drainage ditch. In several places, it had pulled away from the posts. The shutters were closed on the front windows, and the front door was behind a black wrought iron security gate. There was no sign of life from the house. The patchy grass was choked with weeds. A statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary sat inside a sand-filled circle of stone to the left of the walk leading to the front gallery. The statue itself was chipped in places, and stained with dog urine. Her blue robes had faded in the sun, and some weeds were insolently poking up through the sand. The enormous live oak tree’s roots had grown underneath the sidewalk from the other side, causing the cement to crack, buckle, and shift. Some flowering vine had completely covered the fence on the left side of the house, where a narrow path of dirt ran around to the back. I closed my eyes and resisted the urge to pound my head on the steering wheel.

  In my line of work, it’s never a good idea to make a decision when you’re tired.

  The guy I was seeing had asked me to come by and talk to Jonny O’Neill just as I was dropping off to sleep the night before. I’d been so tired I would have agreed to almost anything. Rory hadn’t really told me anything about the kid’s problem—well, he may have, but after agreeing I’d rolled over and gone into a deep sleep. Rory had gone home by the time I woke up this morning, and when I called his cell phone I’d gone straight to voicemail. Rory had thoughtfully left the kid’s phone number propped up against the coffeemaker—and the coffee was ready to be brewed, according to the note he’d signed with a heart and a smiley face. I’d called after a couple of cups of strong coffee had swept the dust out of my mind, and made an appointment to come h
ear his tale of woe—which he didn’t want to tell over the phone.

  This Jonny O’Neill had sounded really young on the phone—almost like his voice had changed only recently.

  That didn’t bode well.

  I hadn’t promised I’d take the job—if there even was a job. Nine times out of ten people who think they need a private eye really don’t, they just want someone to listen to whatever their problem is.

  In fact, most of the time I wind up just saying either sorry, there’s nothing anyone can do or this is a job for the police.

  And besides, if this dump was the only place he could afford to live, he sure as hell couldn’t afford my expenses, let alone my daily rate.

  I shut off the engine and got out of the car. It was already over eighty degrees, and it wasn’t even noon yet. Beads of sweat popped out on my forehead. It was the hottest June I could remember, and I’d lived through some pretty hellish Junes in New Orleans. If this was a sign of things to come, July and August would be even more unbearable than usual. It was unnaturally quiet—other than the sound of traffic on Louisiana Avenue, a few blocks away, there was nothing but stillness.

  I sighed. This was going to be a colossal waste of my time.

  Granted, it was Sunday. If I weren’t here, I’d be sitting on my sofa in my underwear channel-surfing and complaining about paying a ridiculous amount of money for three hundred or so channels of nothing to watch.

  I pushed the gate open. I winced as it gave off a loud, piercing squeak. It only opened about six inches before it caught on the buckled pavement of the walk and stopped moving. I stepped through, catching my jeans on the fence with a slight ripping sound. I swore under my breath and examined the tear. The hole was jagged and maybe about an inch long, right by my knee. I swore again. The jeans weren’t new, but it was still annoying.

  This was off to a great start.

  A dog in the next yard starting barking, trying to stick his head through the fence. He was a terrier of some kind, with black and white markings. He was wagging his tail, so the bark was just for show. I whistled and he stopped barking, his ears perking up expectantly. There was a well-chewed tennis ball sitting in the dirt underneath the massive live oak, so I picked it up and tossed it over the dog’s head. In one movement, he turned and took off after it.

  The sidewalk in the shade of the live oak was covered with stinging caterpillars, which I kicked aside as I made my way to the front steps.

  I fucking hate those things. Their sting hurts like a son of a bitch. The live oak in front of my house was covered with them—and so was my front porch.

  The stairs leading up to the front porch were brick. The mortar was crumbling away—one of the bricks had fallen off and lay broken into pieces in what had been a flowerbed in years past. The once-blue paint on the front porch was cracked and peeling, exposing weathered gray wood. The shutters were also flaking, and I could see they’d been latched from the inside. The glass between the black iron bars on the gate outside the front door was grimy and covered in dust. A Post-it Note had been taped over the doorbell with the words Doorbell Doesn’t Work Please Knock scrawled on it in grease pencil in a childlike hand.

  Every board I stepped on while crossing to the door groaned and gave a little under my weight. The front door was weathered and warped-looking behind the gate. The lock and the knob both showed signs of rust. I debated with myself as I raised my hand to knock whether I should actually go through with it.

  I hesitated.

  It would be so easy to just turn around, walk back to the car, get in, and drive away from this derelict place and whatever problem the people who lived here needed help resolving.

  The whole place reeked of decay.

  Every instinct in my body was telling me to get the hell out of there.

  But I’d promised Rory, so I ignored the little voice in my head and rapped my knuckles against the door frame.

  And hoped I wouldn’t regret it.

  The girl who opened the door looked like she couldn’t be much older than seventeen. Her light brown hair was greasy and pulled back into a severe ponytail. Her face was bare and pale. She was wearing a white cotton dress that exposed her bony, freckled shoulders. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and there was a coffee stain on the front of her housedress between her heavy breasts. Dark smudges formed half-moons under her swollen, bloodshot eyes. Her face was bare of makeup, and her lips were dry and cracked. Her eyebrows had been drawn on with a pencil, and a cluster of pimples had formed in the center of her forehead. She was barefoot, and her feet were dirty.

  She also looked to be about seven or eight months pregnant.

  I couldn’t believe how much boredom she managed to squeeze into the word “Yeah?”

  “Hi, I’m Chanse MacLeod—”

  “The detective guy, right.” She let out a long-suffering sigh, her shoulders slumping. Her entire body seemed to shrink an inch or two. She rolled her eyes and stepped away from the door so I could go inside. “Come on in. Jonny’s in the shower. Sorry about that—just have a seat and he’ll be right out.” She forced what was probably supposed to be a gracious smile onto her face. “He’ll be late to his own damned funeral.” She closed the door behind me and screamed, “Hurry the fuck up, asshole! He’s here!” She slipped around me. “Wait here, okay?”

  It was dark inside the house—all the shutters were closed on both sides of the house. It smelled musty and slightly sour. She didn’t turn on any lights as she disappeared into the next room, leaving me in the dark. I took a deep breath and looked around, squinting through the gloom. I couldn’t see if there was a place to sit down, which was just as well.

  From the looks of things, I wouldn’t be staying long.

  “Sorry!” a young male voice said from the other side of the room, and the room suddenly filled with light, temporarily blinding me.

  I was almost sorry I could see.

  The overhead light came from a dusty chandelier with cobwebs hanging between the grimy globes. Three of the five lightbulbs were burned out. The room was sparsely furnished. There was a sagging sofa covered with piles of clothes and magazines. One leg was missing and several magazines had been shoved underneath that corner to prop it up. One of the cushions was significantly lower than the others, which meant the springs were ruined on that end. I could see footprints in the thick dust on the hardwood floor. A tired chair sat at about a seventy-five-degree angle to the couch, and there were damp-looking workout clothes piled on it: shorts, a tank top, a yellowed jockstrap. An open black and gold Saints duffel bag was perched on one of its arms, exposing more workout clothes. A coffee table was buried in food wrappers, empty plastic soda bottles, and crumpled chip bags. In the far corner, a new-looking flat screen television perched on top of several plastic boxes with 12:00 flashing in green numbers in the center.

  The young man shoved the clothes in the chair onto the floor, exposing several more sour-looking jockstraps. He didn’t look at me as he used his foot to push them behind the chair. He made a grand gesture at the now-empty chair. “Sit, please!” His eyes met mine, and he gave me a smile so dazzling I almost had to take a step back.

  He was short—maybe about five-six, if he stretched a bit and stood up on tiptoe. His hair was wet and clinging to his head, but given how fair his skin was, I assumed it would dry to some shade of blond. He had a long nose and a bit of an overbite. He had blue eyes, but the right one was blackened and swollen half-shut. His bottom lip was cut and bruised. Another bruise extended from his chin about halfway down his throat. He was wearing a pair of navy blue nylon shorts with a white stripe down the legs, and a gray tank top with Everlast written across the front in black. His pale arms were scraped in places, red in others—but his biceps looked strong and well-defined. Blue veins crisscrossed his forearms. His shoulders were broad, his stomach appeared to be flat, and his exposed legs were dusted with blond hairs and also looked strong. There was a tattoo on his right bicep—a bleeding heart with several swords thr
ust through it. He was barefoot.

  He wasn’t handsome, or even cute—but there was something appealing about him—something fresh, wholesome, and likable. His grin was infectious and good-natured, lighting up his entire face. I couldn’t help but smile back at him.

  “Your face—” I started to say, but he cut me off.

  “Oh.” He laughed, clearing a space on the sofa. He smiled at me again as he sat down. “Yeah. That’s right, Rory said he couldn’t say anything about me to you. Confidentiality and all that kind of stuff.” He bobbed his head back and forth, blushing a little.

  Rory worked at the NO / AIDS Task Force, doing counseling and HIV testing. I nodded. “You went in yesterday to get tested.” I’d assumed that was where Rory had met him, but it never hurts to get the facts.

  He nodded. “I had a fight last night, and I gotta get cleared for HIV before they’ll let me in the cage. It’s not because I fuck around on my wife or nothing.” He smiled again. “I won my fight, if you’re wondering.” His smile widened. “Still undefeated, you know.” He bobbed his head up and down. “Eighteen and oh.”

  “In the cage?” I wasn’t following him, and for a moment wondered if it was some weird kind of fight club.

  “I’m an MMA fighter—mixed martial arts. We fight in a cage. You know—the octagon?” He punched the air with both fists and grinned again. “It’s awesome, man. I love it. Such an adrenaline rush—nothing quite like it. I wrestled in high school and it was nothing like getting in the cage.” The grin slowly faded as he remembered why I was there. He took a deep breath and changed the subject. “Dude, my mom’s missing. Rory said you might be able to find her. Can you do that? I’m really worried, man.”