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

  Chapter Eight

  I walked out of the bar into the heat of the early evening. The sun was setting in the west, and darkness was starting to fall over the city. Gravel and shells crunched under my feet as I walked across the parking lot to where I parked my car. I pulled the keys out of my pocket just as a couple of cars pulled into the lot and parked on the other side. My phone rang as I was unlocking my car. With a sigh I pulled it out of my pocket and glanced at the screen. Venus’s face scowled at me, and I smothered a grin the way I always did when I saw the picture. I’d taken it one night when we were at the Avenue Pub, and her expression clearly was take the picture and I’ll cut you, asshole.

  I answered it as I slid my key into the ignition lock. “MacLeod. What’s up?”

  “Chanse, it’s Venus.” She sounded tired. “We found your missing person’s car. You might want to get over here—I’ve got the lab working the car. No sign of your missing person, though—but like I said, you probably want to get over here.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Annunciation and St. Andrew.” She disconnected the call.

  I had to wait for a few more cars to get situated in the parking lot before I could get out of there. I swung right on Napoleon and headed up to Magazine. The corner of Annunciation and St. Andrew was my neighborhood—the lower Garden District. St. Andrew and Magazine was the bizarre intersection that confused the hell out of tourists. If you were heading uptown on Magazine Street, that was the light where Magazine became a two-way street for the rest of the way through Uptown to where it ended at Leake Street in Riverbend. If you were heading downtown on Magazine, that corner was where you had to swing to the left to get onto Camp Street—because Magazine was a one-way going the other direction on the other side of St. Andrew. Annunciation was about a block or so on the river side of Magazine Street. That part of the neighborhood had been dangerous before the St. Thomas Projects had been torn down shortly after the turn of the century and a Wal-Mart erected in their place. Another mixed-housing complex, River Gardens, had been built over where the rest of the projects had been.

  St. Thomas was probably best known as the place where Sister Helen Prejean had lived and worked—but the reality looked a lot worse than how it appeared in the movie Dead Man Walking.

  I tried to remember the layout of the neighborhood, but wasn’t familiar enough with it to say for sure. I turned right when I got to Jackson Avenue and tried to remember the direction of the one-way streets. Annunciation ran uptown, and St. Andrew ran to the river. I turned on Laurel and turned right again on St. Andrew—and saw the flashing lights at the next corner. There was a spot open halfway down the block, so I pulled over and turned off the car.

  Several black women were standing on the sidewalk, and I nodded to them as I started walking toward the police lights.

  “Oooh, you don’t wanna go down there.” One of them, her hair covered in a plastic bag, shook her head. There was a cigarette in one hand, and she had a gold tooth.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Looks like they found someone’s car who’s been killed,” another woman said. She was massive, wearing an incredibly tight pair of jeans and a baggy Saints football jersey. Her hair hung in long braids past her shoulders. “A nice car, too.”

  I nodded my thanks and kept walking. As I got closer to the corner, I could see the crime lab van was parked diagonally across Annunciation Street. Down at the next corner, a cop was standing, prepared to direct traffic to turn up St. Mary Street at the next corner. There were three squad cars parked, their blue lights flashing. I saw Venus’s SUV, parked on the other side of the lab van. Crime scene tape had been strung from streetlights, blocking off access to the green four-door Mercury Marquis. Crime scene technicians were swarming all over the car, searching, dusting for fingerprints, taking photographs, gathering whatever evidence there was in the car and placing it into bags, which they labeled for processing later. Blaine was on the other side of the Marquis from me, looking through the glove compartment.

  Venus was standing just inside the crime scene tape, her arms folded, talking to two patrol officers. She was dressed in her standard gray slacks, red blouse, and gray jacket. Her stiletto heels added a few extra inches to her height, so she was actually looking down on the patrol officers.

  Venus noticed me and gave me a barely perceptible nod, which meant I’ll be with you in a second, okay?

  I leaned against a streetlight and looked at the car.

  It was a beauty, Jonny hadn’t been kidding about that. The emerald green paint sparkled in the light from the street lamps, and the tires looked new. It didn’t have a key lock on the driver’s door, but buttons for a combination lock. The driver’s side window had apparently been broken out—I could see a few shards of what was left of the glass sticking up in the frame of the door.

  Not good, I thought, not good at all.

  Venus patted one of the patrol officers on the arm, said something that made all three of them laugh, and ducked underneath the tape to walk over to me.

  “Sorry to interrupt your evening,” she said with a slight shake of her head. “Thought you’d want to know.”

  “It’s her car?” I asked.

  “Yeah, we ran the plate. Registered to Mona O’Neill. Pity—it’s a nice car. Maybe I’ll trade in the SUV for one of those.” She nodded at it. “Driver’s side window is broken out—as you can see, and there’s glass all over the inside front seat and on the floorboards. The front seat’s covered in blood.” She shook her head. “That amount of blood—Mona O’Neill’s not going to turn up alive.” She qualified her statement, “If it’s her blood.”

  “I never thought she would turn up alive, to be honest.” I wished again that I hadn’t quit smoking. “Any of the people who live around here see or hear anything?”

  “The woman who lives in the corner house here,” she gestured to a fuchsia double shotgun house, which had a crowd of people standing on the porch, “reported the car today, says she didn’t notice it until Sunday morning—it could have been there longer and she didn’t notice it. She didn’t think anything about it, until one of her kids told her about the blood on the front seat. We canvassed the whole area, and nobody else in the neighborhood can say if it was parked here longer than that.” She sighed. “How can you not notice a car like that?” She turned and looked back at the car.

  “It does kind of stand out,” I replied. I’d long ago lost my ability to be shocked at how unobservant my fellow citizens were—and I knew she was speaking rhetorically.

  “The weird thing is, Chanse,” she turned back to me, “the way the broken glass is—no one was sitting in that car when the window was broken.”

  “What?” I wanted to go take a look, but knew she wouldn’t let me anywhere near the car. Then I got it. “There’s glass all over the driver’s seat.”

  “If someone was sitting there, sure, glass would have gotten on the seat—but a lot of it would have been on the person sitting there—and when they got out of the car, however they got out, most of the glass would have spilled out onto the street.” She pointed at the ground around the driver’s side door. “And there’s very little glass there.” She sighed. “I think the blood got there before the window was broken—I think someone just broke out the window to steal something from it, and it isn’t related to the blood at all.” She made a face.

  I sympathized. If someone had broken into the car, the crime scene was contaminated.

  “But at least now I can take over the investigation from Delvecchio—who, I might add, hasn’t done a goddamned thing. He didn’t even put out the APB on the car. Who knows how long it would have been before we found the car if Lucy Carter’s kid hadn’t checked out the damned thing?”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “My best guess right now—and it’s a guess, mind you, don’t be trying to hold me to it later—is whoever—and I’m not sure it was Mona O’Neill—left all that blood there, ho
wever that happened, it happened somewhere else, and the body was dumped somewhere we may never find, and then the killer dumped the car here.” She tapped her pen against her chin. “We’re far enough away from where she lives—and where her son lives—so the odds of someone seeing the car and recognizing it were pretty low. Not great news for the son and daughter—first the brother, now their mother.” She made a tutting sound.

  “Do you think—” I broke off.

  “What?” she asked. “Don’t be withholding evidence, Chanse. Friend or no friend, I’ll run your ass in.”

  “I don’t know, Venus. I don’t have anything, but there was a lot going on in her life, and she was playing with some serious fire.” I quickly filled her in on the check I’d found, and the issues with the Marino trial.

  Her face was expressionless. “Sounds like quite a few people had some serious reasons for wanting to get rid of our Mona O’Neill. And you found the check in her desk?”

  I nodded. “I made a copy and took the original. It’s in my safe.”

  “All right. I’ll have to get over there later, take a look around the house.” She arched an eyebrow at me. “I’m not going to have to worry about you interfering with my investigation, am I?”

  “Until a body’s found, I have to operate on the assumption she’s still alive—even though I think she’s not.” I gestured to the car. “That may or may not be her blood. And if it’s not, well—some people definitely want to see her dead. She might just be hiding out somewhere.”

  “No activity on her credit cards since last week.”

  “Plenty of places in New Orleans that take cash.”

  “But no activity on her bank accounts, either.”

  “She could be hiding out at a friend’s place.”

  She sighed. “Yeah, that occurred to me, too. I guess I better get back over there.” She took a few steps away from me before stopping and turning back. “You’re going over to the kid’s, I take it?”

  I nodded. She kept walking. I got back into my car and drove over to Jonny’s house. My mind was racing. There was something trying to form in my mind, a theory, but it was just not coming together. I pulled up in front of Jonny’s house. The lights were on, but there wasn’t a car in front. I turned off the car and walked up to the front door. I knocked and heard someone shuffling across the living room.

  “Oh, it’s you,” Heather said unpleasantly when she opened the door. “What now? Someone kill Lorelle?”

  “Where’s Jonny?”

  “Training.” She moved away from the door, her house shoes barely leaving the floor as she walked across the living room with both hands pressed to the small of her back. She plopped down on the couch and scowled at me. “I’d offer to get you something to drink but I’m a little bit pregnant. Sorry—I’m sure you’re used to much better hostesses than me.”

  I sat down in the chair I’d used on Sunday morning, which fortunately hadn’t been recovered in clothes since then. “The police found Mona’s car.”

  “The green Mercury?” She made a face. “Was it in front of a motel out on Airline Drive?”

  “Actually, over in the lower Garden District, at the corner of Annunciation and St. Andrew.” I watched her face. Her expression remained bored. “The driver’s seat is covered in blood, and the driver’s side window is broken out. Doesn’t look good for your mother-in-law, I’m afraid.”

  She shrugged. “What do you want me to say?”

  “You don’t seem too concerned.”

  “Mona’s a bitch, and she’s always treated me like shit.” She flashed a brittle smile at me. “I’m supposed to be sorry something might have happened to her?” She gave a halfhearted shrug. “Okay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for Jonny—he’ll be crushed if something’s happened to her. I’m sorry she’s always been a bitch to me. I’m sorry she doesn’t think I’m good enough for her precious son.” Her face twisted. “Like he’s some great fucking prize, which makes the whole thing crazier, you know.” She rolled her eyes. “He doesn’t even have a fucking high school diploma, you know. De la Salle kicked him out.” She placed her hands on her swollen belly. “I at least graduated from fucking high school. And my kid’s not going to end up like his father, or like me for that matter.” Her eyes narrowed. “I won’t allow it. My kid’s going to work hard in school and go to college, or I will kill him myself.”

  “Why Jonny?” I asked. I was frankly curious. “Why a high school dropout so much younger than you?”

  “You wouldn’t ask that question if I was younger than him, would you?” She laughed bitterly. “Don’t give me that shit. He’s a charmer, isn’t he? Don’t pretend like little Jonny didn’t sucker you in, too.” She sneered at me. “He gave you a hundred bucks, you didn’t even sign a contract with him, and you start looking for Mona? I looked up your website, you know—you always make your clients sign a contract and pay money up front. And I saw what your rates are. Why’d you make all those exceptions for Jonny?” Her eyes glittered. “He charmed you, didn’t he? He turned on the big smile and his eyes lit up and you fell for his line of bull hook, line, and sinker, didn’t you?”

  I was jolted. “What?”

  “Don’t feel bad—everyone does.” She waved her hand tiredly. “Jonny is a charmer—he could sell ice to Eskimos. He just gets that earnest face and opens his eyes wide and gets them to twinkle, and people will do whatever the fuck he wants them to. I’ve seen him work people, you know. It’s a sight to see. If he had a brain he could be seriously dangerous.” She patted her stomach again. “Me, I spread my legs for him, and look where it got me. You think I would have married him if I hadn’t gotten pregnant?” She looked off in another direction. “Yeah, I would have—but he wouldn’t have married me, you see what I mean? That’s the difference. I fell for it, too. He only married me because he’s Catholic and he was afraid I’d get an abortion.” She barked out a laugh. “And don’t think his pro-life Catholic mother wouldn’t have hauled me down to Planned Parenthood and whipped out her own checkbook and paid for the whole thing herself, if I would have gone along with it.”

  “You were working at the Riverside? That’s where you met him, right?”

  “Yeah—you’ve talked to Barney, haven’t you? That lecherous old fuck. Bet he talked some serious shit about me. I’ll tell you a secret.” She leaned toward me, and winced. “That asshole tried to get in my pants from day one—and I wouldn’t let him. Why do you think Mona hates me so damned much? She knew Barney wanted me, and she didn’t like that one damned bit.” She laughed again. “I actually met Mona first—she was a regular there, you know, because she was fucking Barney—she’d come in there every damned night and have a sloe gin fizz.” She rolled her eyes again. “She’d just sit there and sip her stupid drink until he was done for the night—waiting for Barney to get done in the office so they could go back to his place and fuck, you know. We all knew about it—Barney’s not exactly one for keeping his trap shut, you know?” She shuddered. “And until she came in, he would brush up against me when he didn’t need to, groping and copping a feel, the dirty old fuck.”

  “How long were they seeing each other?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know—and I didn’t really care much. I was just glad, you know, when she’d come in because then he’d be on his best behavior. But she knew what he was up to.” She whistled. “But whatever they had, it was already going on when I started working there, and that was a year and a half ago—Serena, she tended bar, she was the one who told me about it and pointed Mona out to me.” She sighed. “I thought she was nice at first, if you can believe that. She always tipped well, a couple of bucks for just the one damned drink, and she was friendly, you know? Never a problem, always wanted to chitchat if it was slow, you know, wanting to know all about me and everything. I really thought she was a nice lady. And then it all changed.” Her face clouded. “Someone told her that Barney was trying to get it on with me. I think it was Jermaine, that damned cook, to tell you the truth
. He was always a pain in my ass.”

  “Actually, when I was in there earlier, Jermaine took up for you when Barney was talking smack about you.” I smiled at her.

  She widened her eyes. “I’ll send him a card.”

  “So, how did you meet Jonny?” I asked, ignoring the sarcastic tone.

  “He came in one night—him and bunch of the other guys he trains with. After a fight, over at the Harrah’s, when they used to have fights there.” She shrugged. “They still might, for all I know. All I know is he has to drive over to Biloxi to fight at the Chateau Barras place. He fights for a different promoter now—it’s better money. He keeps telling me they think he’s going to make it big. Whatever. I’ll believe it when I see it, you know?” She exhaled heavily. “I used to go over there with him, you know, before I got too big.” She sighed. “You ever see that? It’s weird, I don’t know that I care for it too much. Brutal, you know. I don’t know that I like watching people beating the shit out of each other too much.” She made a face. “And for money.” She shuddered. “It’s barbaric, I think. And the crowd—those people, you should see them, how worked up they get—especially when someone starts bleeding. It gives me the creeps. I don’t know why he wants to do it, but what else is he going to do? Wash dishes or work at McDonald’s? He don’t have no skills.”

  “So he came in one night?” I prompted, trying to get her back on the subject.

  “Yeah.” She smiled at the memory. “He had a black eye and a swollen lip, and they all came in to celebrate. He wasn’t old enough to drink—he still isn’t, and Barney knew it, so he just would order Cokes, but he had those little airplane liquor bottles and would spike his own. I told Barney—you’re not supposed to bring in your own, you know, but Barney said it was fine, as long as we didn’t serve him we’d be okay.” She shrugged. “That ain’t the way it works, but it wasn’t my bar, you know—and then when I figured out that Jonny was Mona’s kid, then I understood better, you know? Barney was always trying to make up to Jonny, whenever he came in.”