Murder in the Irish Channel (Chanse MacLeod Mysteries) Page 6

  “Mona always took the overnight shift here. We always keep vigil in pairs, you know. Sometimes there are more than two—usually in the evening, when people get off work—but overnight sometimes it was just Mona. She was here every night, no matter what.”

  “Since she disappeared, we’ve had trouble getting people here overnight,” Ed added.

  “Ed and I usually get here around seven, to relieve Mona and whoever was keeping vigil with her,” Belle went on, frowning at Ed. “But Friday morning when we got here, there was no one here. I know she’d had to sit by herself on Thursday night, but we didn’t think anything about it, did we, Ed?”

  “So you didn’t see her Friday morning?”

  “No, she was here Thursday morning when we arrived—and everything seemed fine—she seemed her usual self. We just figured Friday morning she’d left early—she did that sometimes, you know, but not usually unless she had someone here with her.” Mona scratched her head. “She didn’t come that night, either. We didn’t really start worrying until we got here Saturday morning and there wasn’t anyone here. That wasn’t like Mona, you see. If she couldn’t make it she always got someone to fill in for her. She didn’t ever want the church to be left empty, and you know she was in charge. So I called her boy, Jonny. He hadn’t seen her since Thursday night himself, and he called the police.” She snorted. “Fat lot of good that did, though. Do you know not a single policemen has come by to talk to us?”

  Ed laughed nastily. “Like the cops aren’t owned lock, stock, and barrel by the archdiocese.” He snorted. “You saw them acting like storm troopers on Wednesday! Kicking in the doors of a church! Arresting us like we were some kind of criminals—how many crimes were committed in the city that day while the damned cops were wasting their time here doing the Archdemon’s bidding?”

  Something occurred to me. “Didn’t the raid take place in the middle of the afternoon?”

  “Yes, in broad daylight!”

  “But Mona was here for the raid, right? I thought she always took the overnight shift?”

  They exchanged a look, and Belle bit her lower lip. “Mona had a source inside the archdiocese,” Belle whispered. “We knew the raid was coming, and so we got as many people here as we could. She let the newspapers and the TV stations know, too.”

  “Do you know who her source was?”

  Belle shook her head. “No, she thought the fewer people who knew, the better.”

  I asked them a few more questions, but they didn’t know anything helpful.

  I excused myself and made my way out of the church.

  Chapter Four

  To have a bad meal in New Orleans, you really have to work at it. The general rule of thumb for locals is to avoid places that cater to tourists—and be willing to take a chance every once in a while.

  The Please You Café certainly doesn’t look like much from the outside—just another hole-in-the-wall greasy-spoon dive with a faded linoleum floor, bad overhead lighting, and water served in thick, red plastic cups. It was sandwiched between a dive bar and a Sherwin-Williams paint store on the block of St. Charles Avenue just before the light at Felicity Street. There’s also a quick oil change place and a ridiculously overpriced chain restaurant on that same block. The Please You was a throwback to the days when there wasn’t a fast food place on pretty much every corner; when customers preferred to sit in a booth and be waited on by a gum-chewing waitress with a carefully coiffed bouffant and an apron, and an order pad in her hand. The place was immaculately clean on the inside, even though the big front windows were kind of grimy. There was always a dry-erase board in one of the windows with the day’s specials in barely legible handwriting scrawled on it, sandwiched in between some Jazz Fest posters from the early 1990s. The inside walls were covered with old Saints schedules and Mardi Gras posters thumbtacked haphazardly here and there. The faux wood paneling had probably been the height of style in the 1970s, but now it just looked dated and tacky. There was a counter with old-fashioned swivel-top stools amd an ancient cash register, and the menu probably hadn’t changed since the Eisenhower administration.

  It looked like the kind of place you should avoid at all costs if ptomaine poisoning wasn’t in your plans, but in this instance, looks were definitely deceiving. The Please You was one of my favorite places to eat. And not only was the food better than pretty much anywhere else in the neighborhood, but it was also ridiculously cheap. The waitresses were friendly and always called customers “hon,” and remembered what good service was supposed to be. They acted like they actually enjoyed working there, were glad you’d come in, and wanted you to enjoy your experience.

  I’d been hungry when I walked out of St. Anselm’s, so when Abby called me to tell me she had some information she thought might be important, I suggested she meet me at the Please You. Abby prefers to meet in restaurants, and I was in the mood for a shrimp po’boy.

  After all, I’d been doing a good job of eating healthy lately and was entitled to a treat—and the Please You’s shrimp po’boy and onion rings definitely qualified as a reward.

  I parked at my apartment and walked—it wasn’t far from my place. It was still hot, but the temperature was starting to cool a bit. Some dark clouds were on the horizon, and the wind had picked up some. The wind was cool and felt damp, and my sinuses were starting to bother me—which definitely meant rain was on the way.

  Abby was already there when I walked in the Please You front door, waiting for me at the first booth. A red plastic glass of ice water was sweating in front of her on the table. She grinned at me and gave me a mock salute with her left hand. Her hair was different than the last time I’d seen her—but she rarely kept her hair the same way for more than a few days at a time. Her years dancing at the Catbox Club on Bourbon Street (which she still did from time to time, to “keep her hand in,” was how she explained it) had turned her into a self-styled master of disguise. “You have to keep it fresh for the spenders,” she told me once, “or they get bored with you and move on to some other dancer. Changing my hair, my makeup, and my costumes from week to week always kept them coming back for more—and I don’t want no stinking dollar bills, thank you very much. I want twenties.” Her stage moves had been perfected during her years on her high school cheerleading squad—the Catbox Club didn’t have stripper poles, which, in Abby’s words, “would cheapen the place. We’re strippers, not whores.”

  She had an entire room devoted to her wigs and costumes in the shotgun house she shared with Jephtha. She had racks and racks of clothes, acquired at the secondhand shops that proliferated all over town. Her ability to effortlessly lose herself in a role was a skill most movie stars would kill for. She could do any accent, sometimes added facial tics, and had even taken several classes in stage makeup. Her ability to transform herself completely into another person was remarkable—there were times when I didn’t recognize her, would even speak to her without knowing I was talking to Abby. I sometimes wondered that she didn’t try to get work with all the movie and television productions in town, but never suggested it. She was too valuable to me—the last thing I wanted was for her to decide she didn’t want to be a private eye anymore. She was just too damned good at her job. I worried sometimes that I was becoming a little too dependent on her. She was, after all, going to go to law school one day once she saved up enough money—and then what the hell was I going to do?

  She was wearing a red wig cut in a pageboy style, and tinted contact lenses had changed her eyes from their natural gray to green. She was wearing a pink Polo pullover that stretched tightly over her full breasts, and a pair of khaki shorts, with sandals on her feet. Her toenails were painted the same shade of pink as her shirt.

  “Let me guess—you’re going for sorority princess?” I asked as I slid into the booth across from her.

  She made a face and a gagging noise. “Spoiled Uptown princess, thank you very much—destined to make five future ex-husbands very unhappy. I drove over here in my white Lexu
s convertible, stopped and got a latte on the way, and was texting the whole time! So I ran a few red lights and didn’t notice those pesky stop signs and didn’t bother to use my turn signal. I’m an Uptown girl!” she replied, giving me a vapid smile and widening her eyes.

  As always, she was incredibly convincing.

  The waitress put a glass of water down in front of me along with a menu. Abby smiled at her. “We’re both going to have shrimp po’boys with onion rings, and I’ll have sweet tea. What do you want to drink, boss?”

  “Sweet tea for me, too.” I smiled at the waitress as she scribbled on her pad, picked up the menus, and walked away. “So, what did you dig up that was so important that it’s costing me lunch?”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s that important—I was hungry and Jephtha’s spending the day with his mom up in Baton Rouge.” She smiled at me. “But I’ll tell you what—that fuckwad Barras sure has got his fingers in a lot of pies in New Orleans.” The smile faded into a frown. “I had no idea how bad it was.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She waved a hand. “I mean, I knew about the Poydras Tower—who doesn’t, you can’t miss that monstrosity—and that he was trying to buy up land from people around town and all, but man oh man.” She shook her head. “But I think…” She sighed. “I really didn’t find any definite connection between Barras and Mona O’Neill, outside of Jonny’s fight career—but there’s some things that look really suspicious, if you have a twisted and devious mind like me.”

  My stomach growled. “What did you find?”

  “Like I said, I don’t have anything concrete.” The waitress placed our glasses of iced tea in front of us, and Abby squeezed a slice of lemon in hers. “But like I said, I do have some suspicions—weird stuff.” She fiddled with her straw wrapper for a moment. She hesitated. Abby had a rather creative mind, but she never liked to play “what if”—she only liked to report facts to me. Her hunches and wild guesses had paid off enough times in the past for me to respect anything she might say, no matter how far-fetched it might sound. But she never liked to theorize in front of me.

  “Abby—”

  She lowered her voice and leaned across the table. She checked to see where our waitress was before she continued. “There’s talk that Barras wants to buy the St. Anselm’s property, but not to develop it into condos or anything like that. You know he lives in the penthouse of Poydras Tower, right? Well, supposedly he wants a house in Uptown—and he wants to turn the church into a house.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  She rolled her eyes. “On a message board about the church closings.” She immediately held up her hand before I could say anything. “I know you think those are just places for bored crazy people with Cheetos-stained fingers who live with their moms to gossip and say crazy shit, but you’d be surprised at what you can find out on there.” She shook her head.

  “But that doesn’t make a lot of sense, Ab. Why would he want a church, of all places? I would think that would cost a mint to convert into a home. And it’s not like there aren’t any properties for sale in Uptown—or in the Garden District, for that matter. And he’s got the kind of money where he could just knock on someone’s door and make an offer they couldn’t refuse.”

  “He’s notoriously cheap, Chanse. If he can get a nice piece of property like that for next to nothing from the archdiocese, why wouldn’t he? And St. Anselm’s is a beautiful structure, and sound architecturally.” She gave me a look over the top of her glass.

  “I don’t know, Abby,” I replied dubiously. “It sounds like one of those Internet rumors people like to start and spread.”

  “Well, we can always just ask him.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, because it’s just that easy to get in to see him. I don’t think so.”

  She gave me a sly look. “Apparently, whenever he’s in town he likes to frequent the Catbox Club. And he tips with ones and fives.” She scowled. “I told you he was a cheap bastard.”

  “Seriously?”

  She nodded. “Yeah—I mean, he’s never come in when I’ve been working, but I haven’t pulled a shift in a couple of months. I had lunch with my friend Dixie yesterday—he gave her three whole dollars on Friday night—and tried to monopolize her for most of the night. Three bucks. What a douche—he’s lucky she didn’t slug him.” She shook her head. “But my source inside the archdiocese—who won’t talk on the record, which goes without saying, right—says Barras definitely is interested in the St. Anselm property. And the person running Save Our Churches just happens to have a check from him for fifty grand in her desk?”

  “It could just be a coincidence—Mona also had a source inside the archdiocese, I wonder if it’s the same one you have?” Now it was my turn to play with my straw wrapper. “But—” I swallowed. I didn’t like the direction my mind was taking. “Suppose Barras and Mona came into contact because of Jonny and the fighting—and he decides he wants to buy St. Anselm’s—and the protests are just a cover to drive the price down?”

  She looked down into her glass. “I think the easiest thing to do would be to just ask Barras why he gave her that check.” She smiled at me. “He drops into the Catbox Club with some regularity—and I saw on one of those gossip sites that his wife left for Paris to do some shopping this morning…I can pick up a couple of shifts.”

  “And you think you can get him to talk?”

  She looked at me. “It’ll be a lot easier than you think.” She took another drink of the tea. “All of his ex-wives are blondes who look like they’re from Eastern Europe—so is my friend Dixie. All I have to do is transform myself into his type—and I’ve certainly got the boobs for it.” She winked at me. “I have plenty of blond wigs.” She started speaking in what could easily pass as an Eastern European accent. “And the day I can’t convince a man I am from Eastern Europe, I will eat my wigs, dah-link.” She smiled. “And it’ll give me a chance to use my new recording device.” She grinned. “It fits inside a pasty.”

  “As in a nipple cover?” I stared at her. “Can you get a pasty camera, too?” I shook my head. She was really into gadgets. “Don’t tell me, I don’t think I want to know.”

  “Great, I’m so on it.” She smiled at me. “Someone who’s such a shitty tipper deserves to get screwed over, and then some.” She held up a hand to stop me as I started to say something. “Maybe the money was a payoff, or an attempt at one. But there’s something else really weird about it.” She pulled her phone out and touched the screen several times. “Okay, here’s the copy of the check you sent me.” She turned the phone toward me. I squinted at it.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  She used her fingers to make the picture bigger and adjusted it so that I could see the date. “That check was made out two weeks ago, Chanse. Why would anyone hold on to a check of that size for that long? Does that make sense to you? Wouldn’t someone like Mona O’Neill have run straight to the bank with that kind of money?” She scowled. “I think Mona was hanging on to it for a reason—maybe as evidence.”

  “Evidence?” I nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense. Suppose she wasn’t trying to drive the price down for Barras—but wanted to prove the whole deal was crooked.” The more I thought about it, the more I liked it. “That’s the kind of scandal that could make the archbishop back down for sure.”

  “Which would mean St. Anselm’s would get to stay open.” She smiled and nodded. “And she gets to be the big hero who saved the church. I like it, boss, I like it a lot. Who wouldn’t want to be a hero in front of the whole congregation?”

  “And that’s a really good reason for both Barras and the archdiocese to want her to just disappear,” I mused. “But why pay her off in the first place?” I shrugged. “That’s the piece that really doesn’t fit. Wouldn’t it make more sense to threaten to keep Jonny from fighting?”

  The waitress placed our food on the table and refilled our glasses.

  I took a bite of my po’boy and almost moaned in pleasu
re. The Please You’s homemade onion rings were far and away the best in New Orleans. I made a puddle of ketchup on my plate and dragged an onion ring through it. “The only person who can explain why she didn’t cash it, though, is Mona.”

  “You don’t really think she’s still alive, do you?”

  I shook my head. “She’s been missing for three days, Abby. There’s no reason I can think of why anyone would kidnap her. It’s not like she’s got money for a ransom, or her family. And kidnapping her didn’t stop the protests at St. Anselm’s, either—if anything, it would mean more negative publicity for the church.” I chewed another bite of my po’boy.

  Abby nodded. “Leader of church protest disappears.”

  “And Ed Browning—he’s one of the protesters I just met with at the church—he’s convinced the archbishop is behind it.” I went on, “And I’m sure a lot of people would believe it.”

  “He’s not exactly a popular man in town. And it’s not like Archbishop Pugh hasn’t been involved in a massive cover-up before.”

  I stared at her for a moment and closed my eyes. “Let me guess—kids molested by priests?”

  “It’s almost a cliché, isn’t it?” She shook her head, muffling a burp behind her hand. “But yes. Archbishop Pugh was heavily involved in one of those scandals when he was in Baltimore. Two of the priests he covered for were eventually arrested years later, that’s why Pugh was moved out of Baltimore and brought here…Pugh paid out a lot of money covering up for those bastards in Baltimore, and they molested God only knows how many other kids after they were reassigned from there.” She scowled. “I just don’t understand that mentality. Why would the Church cover up for child molesters? I mean, it’s disgusting.”

  “Well, I’m sure they thought they were protecting the Church, and that’s the most important thing to them.” I frowned. “It’s good to know the archbishop has no problem with circumventing the law,” I said. “But kidnapping someone?”