Murder in the Irish Channel (Chanse MacLeod Mysteries) Page 3

  Still, I was well aware that a skilled and well-trained fighter always has the ability to inflict some serious damage on a far larger opponent—and he obviously took his sport very seriously.

  So I managed to politely nod or make appropriate noises whenever it seemed to be called for—which fortunately didn’t seem to be very often. I began wondering if he was just trying to impress me, or if he didn’t have anyone else he felt comfortable talking to about his fighting.

  Then again, his wife seemed to be the kind of woman who wouldn’t want her husband to keep his friends—especially since she was pregnant.

  You’re being judgmental and misogynist, I scolded myself. You don’t know her well enough to make those kinds of judgments, and she may be completely different when she’s not pregnant. How would you feel if you were eight months pregnant in this heat, living in a dump, and your hormones were raging out of control? You’d be kind of abrupt and bitchy, too, at the very least.

  We had almost reached the end of the block when Jonny stopped and said, “Here we are.”

  Mona O’Neill’s house was on the same side of the street as Jonny’s, but was so completely different it could have been on the moon. It was a beautiful double camelback-style shotgun house painted a rich, dark purple with black trim. Unlike her son’s house, hers appeared to be in perfect repair. Her front porch didn’t sag, and the house looked level and solid. There was a porch swing on the opposite end of the porch from the front door. The shutters were latched open, and the curtains were also open. The windows looked clean. There was a paved driveway to the right, behind an electric gate. The black wrought iron fence was in perfect repair. Red, white, and pink roses bloomed in the flowerbeds that ran along the front of the porch, and a few bees were buzzing around the open faces. The lawn was a dark emerald green, perfectly manicured but getting close to needing to be mowed. Her statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary was in perfect repair, and looked brand-new. It stood on top of smoothed-out white sand, in the center of a circle of polished stones. The entire front yard was shaded by the massive live oak next door, its long, heavy branches protecting Mona’s place from direct sunlight.

  Where Jonny and Heather’s house was uninviting and looked to be in danger of being declared blighted at any moment, Mona’s was warm, friendly, looked cared for and lived in. It was easy to imagine family gatherings and holidays being held there, children laughing and playing in the front yard.

  “It used to be a double, but when Ma and Dad bought it they turned it into a single,” Jonny said as he opened the wrought iron gate, which didn’t catch on the sidewalk and swung all the way open. He smiled at me and started up the walk. “They did most of the work themselves. My dad was really good at that kind of stuff.” He hesitated for a moment. “Looks like I need to mow the grass.” He gave me a self-deprecating look. “Heather says I’m a mama’s boy, but I don’t mind mowing Ma’s lawn for her. She’s getting too old to be pushing a mower around in this heat.”

  You should think more about your own lawn than your mother’s, I thought rather cynically as I pulled the gate closed behind me.

  “What kind of car does your mother drive?” I asked, climbing up the steps onto the porch behind him.

  Jonny bent over and picked up a couple of newspapers, tucking them under his arm. “She just got a new green Mercury Marquis last year,” he replied as he unlocked the gate in front of the door. “One of those luxury cars. It’s like riding in a couch.” He winked at me. “Ma always had medium cars, said she always wanted one of them big expensive ones.”

  I walked down to the end of the porch and looked at the driveway. “You said you talked to her on Thursday. What time was that?”

  Jonny frowned. “It was about nine o’clock, maybe? She was getting ready to head down to the church, for the vigil.”

  “When was the last time you actually saw her?”

  “She stopped by on Wednesday morning on her way home from church.” He remembered. “Heather had called and asked her to pick up a gallon of milk for us on her way home, for my cereal. I’d just gotten up when she came by.”

  “How did she seem?”

  He shrugged. “Normal, I guess. No different than usual.”

  I walked back to the front door. The roof of the front porch was painted sky blue, and two ceiling fans spun lazily. There were several wicker chairs spray-painted white placed at various intervals along the porch. Jonny unlocked the front door and went inside. I stepped over the threshold just as he punched code numbers into the alarm system. I closed the door behind me. I could see why Mona kept her curtains open. The room was filled with natural sunlight, and the windows themselves were spotless. It was very cool inside—borderline cold. He flipped on a light switch, and a pair of chandeliers filled the double parlor with an almost blinding white light. The ceiling fans also began turning.

  Jonny made a noise and turned the dimmer switch until the light wasn’t quite so obnoxious. “That’s weird,” he commented. “Ma never has the lights turned up so bright. And it’s pretty cold in here.” He walked across the room to a thermostat mounted on the wall and whistled. “It’s set on sixty degrees—that’s not like Ma, either.” He slid a lever to the right, and the air-conditioning system turned off. He frowned at me. “Ma’s big on not wasting energy—she gets mad about the power bill all the time. I can’t believe she’d walk out of the house and leave the a / c turned down so low.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe she’d ever have it that low to begin with. She’s always yelling at me for running my air so much.” He gave me a look. “Heather likes it cold, and you know, she’s pregnant…”

  I didn’t answer him at first. I glanced around the big room. A huge emerald green Oriental rug with gold accents covered most of the hardwood floor. An entertainment center filled with an enormous flat screen television, a DVD player, a stereo, and stacks of DVD boxes took up almost an entire wall. A sofa and two reclining chairs faced the entertainment center. On either end of the sofa sat an end table with matching lamps centered on each. Three remote controls were lined up perfectly on the coffee table, which had a light coating of dust dulling its sheen. There was a stack of magazines neatly staggered so their names were exposed next to the remotes—Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan, and Crescent City.

  “Does anything look out of place to you?” I asked, impressed with how organized and orderly the living room looked. Mona O’Neill certainly ran a tight ship.

  “No.” Jonny glanced around again. “This is how it always looks. Nothing’s ever out of place.” He grinned at me. “Ma always said everything has its place and that’s where it goes—if you always put it where it goes you’ll always be able to find it.” He grinned. “Heather and me—we’re a little different.”

  A little, I thought.

  To the left, the double parlor opened through pocket doors into a dining room with an enormous table surrounded by chairs, set up underneath yet another chandelier. There was a stack of mail on one end of the table, next to some rolled-up newspapers still rubber-banded closed. The outside wall had two large windows with heavy green velvet curtains pulled closed on each. The wall between the windows was covered with photographs in cheap-looking frames. I walked into the dining room and looked at the pictures.

  “Is this your mother?” I asked, pointing to a photograph of an older woman standing with her arm around a beaming Jonny. The resemblance between them was remarkable. The shape of their faces, noses, mouths, and eyes—there was no question they were related in some way. She didn’t look nearly as happy as he did—her smile looked phony, and didn’t quite reach her narrowed eyes. He was wearing a three-piece navy blue suit over a pale yellow shirt. She was also dressed nicely, in a matching red jacket and long skirt over a white silk blouse. An enormous gardenia was pinned to her left lapel. Her hair was dyed that unnatural shade of black older women sometimes use to cover gray, and she was also wearing a pair of tortoiseshell glasses. She looked to be in her late fifti
es, a little thick in the waist and the hip, and the forced smile didn’t extend to the rest of her face.

  “Yeah, that’s from my wedding,” Jonny replied.

  I scanned the other pictures quickly, but Heather’s face was conspicuously absent. There wasn’t even a photograph of the bride and groom together.

  Apparently, the only picture Mona O’Neill could abide hanging on her dining room wall from her son’s wedding didn’t include his wife.

  “This is my brother, Robby,” Jonny said, pointing to an old, fading graduation picture just below the wedding shot.

  Robby looked like Jonny in some ways—the overbite, the blue eyes, the long nose were the same—but the sparkle in Jonny’s eyes was missing from his brother’s. The photography studio had tried to airbrush out some acne scars but hadn’t quite succeeded. Robby’s hair was the same color as Jonny’s, but the style in the picture at least twenty years out of date.

  “And this is my sister, Lorelle.” Jonny pointed to another senior picture, hung to the left of his brother’s.

  Lorelle had the same nose and eyes as her brothers, but her face was softer and rounder. She was smiling in her senior picture, braces glinting on her teeth. She had enormous hair, teased and feathered and shellacked to the point where it almost completely filled the picture. She had the same sparkle in her big brown eyes that Jonny had in his. She looked like she was the kind of person who enjoyed life—while Robby looked a little sour.

  “Like I said, I was a change-of-life baby,” Jonny said, in answer to my questioning glance. “Robby and Lorelle are a lot older than me—they were in high school when I was born.” He flashed his smile at me again. “The doctors thought I might be a tumor at first.” He shrugged. “Robby always says they were right—I am a tumor. He’s kind of an asshole.” His face darkened. “I mean, Ma doesn’t like Heather, but she makes an effort. Robby—” He stopped himself.

  “Have you talked to your sister about your mother’s disappearance?” I asked, changing the subject. I turned away from the wall and began idly sifting through the stack of mail. It was all bills and junk, nothing personal.

  No one writes letters anymore.

  Jonny’s face flushed and his eyes narrowed. “She thinks I’m making a mountain out of a molehill,” he replied angrily. “And Robby can’t even be bothered to call me back, you know? They never take me serious. Never. They’re worse than Ma about treating me like a baby. Lorelle’s not so bad—I mean, she doesn’t treat me like I’m stupid, but I know she thinks I’m overreacting and it’s all nothing. Robby’s an asshole, like I said.” A vein bulged in his forehead. “Robby can go fuck himself. Ma would never just take off without saying nothing to me, ’specially not with Heather so close to her time and all. They might not get along, but Ma’s excited about the baby.” He pulled out a chair and sat down, hanging his head a bit. “She just wouldn’t do it,” he insisted. “I don’t care what anyone says. She wouldn’t do that.”

  “So, what happened to your father? You said he died when you were young?” I walked over to a door off the dining room. I flicked on a light switch. The small room was a small office. An aging computer and printer sat on top of a cheap-looking desk that was bowing slightly under their weight. There were several bookcases against the far wall, filled with worn paperbacks neatly stacked on the shelves. There was a thin layer of dust on everything. The wall next to the door was covered with three framed MMA promotional posters mounted under glass. I stepped closer and took a look at them. Each featured a photo of Jonny to the right, with his name in big red letters beneath. All the fights were held at the Chateau Barras Casino, just over the state line in Biloxi. Jonny wasn’t smiling in the pictures—rather, he was scowling at the camera, his expression clearly stating I am going to fuck you up. He held up his fists in a fighter’s stance. His torso was lean, the muscles deeply defined, and his forearms were crisscrossed with bulging blue veins.

  He looked menacing. I’d had some trouble seeing him as a brutal fighter, but these pictures convinced me.

  “He died when I was a baby—I was maybe a year old, I think.” Jonny got up from the table. “He worked down on the docks, got killed in some kind of work-related accident. Ma got a nice settlement from the company he worked for and the union—the money put both Robby and Lorelle through college, and there was some for me, too—trusts, the company set up trusts for all of us, with Ma in charge of ’em. That’s where the money for my house came from—when Heather and me got married, Ma picked out the house for us and paid for it with my trust.” He leaned on the door frame, giving me the lazy grin again. “I mean, college was just gonna be a big waste of time and money for me, right? I flunked out of high school—well, I didn’t really flunk out, they just wanted me to repeat my senior year, but that just seemed like a big waste of time to me, you know? And what’s the point of going to college? I’m not smart enough for that.”

  “Do you make enough fighting to live on?” I asked, walking over to the desk.

  “I do okay,” Jonny replied. “The promoter thinks I have a big future, you know, I could be a champion, and champions do pretty well.” He gave me the grin again. “Ma’s kind of my business manager—I let her deal with the contracts and all that, manage my money, you know? She’s not sure the promoter’s offer is good enough, you know?”

  I was about to ask what he was going to do when he was through fighting, but decided against it. It had nothing to do with the investigation. I liked the kid, but needed to keep a professional distance.

  The desk had a narrow drawer over the opening for the chair, and two more down the right side. I opened the top drawer—all it contained was neatly organized paper clips, rubber bands, envelopes, rolls of stamps, and several boxes of pens. The bigger drawer below it contained file folders, neatly labeled with red ink: Bank Statements, Car Insurance, Entergy, Bell South, Taxes. I slid the drawer shut and sat down in the rolling chair. I opened the narrow drawer in the center. The only things in it were a box of checks and a blue checkbook. I shut the drawer but heard the sound of crunching paper. I pulled it open and slid it shut again—hearing the strange noise again. I knew that sound—I’d heard it myself plenty of times while sitting at my own desk.

  Something was behind the drawer.

  I pulled it out again, lifted, and the drawer came loose. A piece of paper fluttered down on top of the file folders in the drawer below.

  I picked it up and let out a low whistle.

  It was a check made out to Mona O’Neill for fifty thousand dollars.

  The payer was the New Orleans Property Development Corporation. The name was familiar—and then I noticed the signature: In a flowing scrawl, it read Morgan Barras.

  “What’s that you got there?” Jonny asked from the doorway.

  I looked at him. “Why would your mother have a check for fifty thousand dollars from Morgan Barras?” I asked. “That’s kind of strange, don’t you think?”

  Morgan Barras was almost universally reviled in New Orleans—I’d never heard anyone say anything positive about him. A real estate mogul who liked getting his picture in the tabloids almost as much as he liked making money, he’d swooped down on the Gulf Coast after Katrina like a vulture, buying up property for a fraction of its actual worth from heartbroken owners who were sick of fighting with FEMA and their insurance companies. Almost every issue of the Times-Picayune included a column, an editorial, or a letter to the editor roundly denouncing him as an opportunistic monster and begging New Orleanians not to sell to him. He’d built a massive condo complex in the Central Business District called Poydras Tower that almost everyone in the city considered an eyesore.

  There were a lot of rumors about Barras bribing people at City Hall, and it was also rumored the former mayor who’d welcomed him and his money with open arms was in his hip pocket.

  The nicest thing anyone had to say about him was to call him a “carpetbagger.”

  Jonny stared at the check, and shrugged. “Mr. Barras owns t
he casino where I fight, and I know he’s a partner in the promotion I fight for,” he replied. “Like I said, they think I have a big future in MMA, and I know Mr. Barras wants me to sign a contract with him—you know, pay for my training and my living expenses for a piece of my take from my fights, you know? I don’t have a manager, so I just had Ma deal with Mr. Barras. Maybe she made a deal with him she didn’t have time to tell me about yet—before, you know.” His eyebrows came together. “You think maybe this has something to do with what happened to her?”

  “It might. It might not.” I took the check back from him. “You mind if I make a copy of this?”

  “Yeah, sure, okay.” He frowned. “Maybe you should take it with you, you know, for safekeeping?”

  “You think that’s a good idea?” I checked the printer attached to the computer. It was also a copier, so I placed the check face-down on the glass and put the lid back down, pressing the Copy button.

  “I don’t have no place to keep it safe at my place, and I don’t like the idea of it just sitting here waiting for someone to steal it.”

  The printer spat out a copy of the check. I folded the copy and slipped it into my wallet. I put the check in with it and wrote out a quick receipt for him. “I have a safe in my apartment, I’ll keep it there until your mom turns up.” I stood up. “Show me the rest of the house.”

  The rest of the house was no different from the front rooms—neat and tidy, everything covered in a thin layer of dust. There were three bedrooms downstairs, and a huge kitchen. Mona O’Neill’s design ethic wasn’t exactly what I would have chosen, but it was simple and neat. There were plaster saints placed here and there, and the occasional religious painting, but it wasn’t overdone and in-your-face the way some working-class Catholic homes were. There was a slightly stale feel to the air, like no one had been in the house in a while.