Murder in the Rue Chartres (17 page)

“Isn’t he too ill to be involved in the company? I thought Joshua was president.”

He looked me in the eyes. “Make no mistake, buddy, as long as he can breathe he will run that company. Joshua was president, Darrin was executive vice president—but Percy owns the company. Nothing can be done without his okay—and he thought all three of them were incompetent. You wouldn’t believe the way he talked to them. You’d think they were hired flunkies or something. Man, if my grandfather talked to me the way he talked to them, I wouldn’t have anything to do with him.” He rubbed his eyes. “I told her, over and over again; with her degree she could get a job anywhere.” He got up and refilled his glass. “But no, she couldn’t do that. It was the family business and she wouldn’t walk away from that. She wanted to run the place—no matter how many times Percy slammed the door in her face, she thought she could prove herself and he’d come around— hope springs eternal.”

“How did her brothers feel about that?”

“I think they were all for it, to tell you the truth.” He sat back down and stared at the glass. “Josh hated working there. So did Darrin. I always had the impression that once the old man died they’d be more than happy to let her take over. But it was the will, you know. That was the problem.”

“Oh?”

“The old man was leaving the majority of the company in the hands of the brothers. I think they were going to wind up with forty percent each with Iris getting twenty percent, so they would always have control, no matter who was actually sitting in the president’s chair. Iris wanted…” he sighed and looked out the window. “Does any of this really matter anymore?”

“I’m afraid it does.”

He took another deep breath. “She told me that without a controlling interest, she would just be a figurehead, a puppet with her brothers pulling the strings. She wanted actual control. I told her Josh and Darrin would probably give it to her—they wanted out as soon as the old man passed, and would be glad to leave that all to her—but she didn’t want it that way. She told me she was going to force the old man to change the will.”

“Did she say how?”

He shook his head. “No, and I told her she was out of her mind. For God’s sake, she grew up in Percy’s house. She of all people should know that Percy won’t do anything he doesn’t want to. You can’t force him to do anything.” He laughed bitterly. “No, that wasn’t good enough for Iris. He’d treated her like crap her whole life—so did her mother—and she was determined to prove herself to him, to show that she was just as tough and driven as he was. No, I don’t know what she was going to do. She wouldn’t tell me. But there was something—something she found out about the company. She was worried, but she said she knew what she was doing and if everything went the way she thought it was going to, she’d get control of the company even before the old man died.”

“When did she tell you all of this?”

He shrugged. “That week before the storm? It was around then, I guess. It was around when she started talking about finding her father. I don’t really remember. Everything before then is kind of a blur to me now, you know what I mean?”

I knew exactly what he meant. “Had she ever talked about her father before?”

He shook his head. “No, and we’d been engaged for over a year. The wedding—” he hesitated, “was supposed to be this coming June. And then suddenly, it’s all, ‘I want to find my father.’ It didn’t make any sense to me, but she never would explain herself to me—and she’d get mad when I questioned her about it. ‘He’s my father and I think I should know him. I want to know him.’ And then she would change the subject.”

“How was she the night before she died?”

He thought for a moment. “She got here late. She spent a lot of time here with me—I rarely went out to Lakeview. She was in a good mood, a little tired, but she was pretty excited about something—I hadn’t seen her like that in a long time, you know? She’d taken a trip that day—but wouldn’t tell me anything about it. That’s when she told me she was going to hire you to find her father. I tried to reason with her—I mean, it’s pretty obvious Percy hated her father and so tracking him down was hardly going to please the old man, you know? It didn’t make any sense to me, but she was up to something—she’d found out something that day that got her all amped, you know, like she’d snorted a big line of cocaine or something. We were supposed to meet some people for dinner, but she wanted to cancel and stay in. We opened a bottle of champagne and ordered food in.” He blinked, and a tear ran down his face. “We made love…for the last time.” He wiped at his face. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” I said, “I understand. I lost my lover last year.”

“So, you know what it’s like.” He took a deep breath. “I keep wondering why, you know? Maybe if I’d insisted she stay here that night rather than going out to Lakeview, maybe if I’d done this or that—”

“It gets easier. I know that doesn’t really help, but it does. And you can’t blame yourself.” Which was easier said than done, I knew. How many nights had I laid in bed, staring at the ceiling, missing Paul, and going over it all again in my head? If I’d just done this, if I’d just done that, if I hadn’t done this, he’d still be here. I swallowed. Survivor’s guilt, Paige had called it once when we’d drunk a bottle of wine and smoked a ton of pot and I’d gotten all weepy about Paul.

I gave him a moment to collect himself before I went on. “What about the night she died? If she spent most of her nights here, why was she in Lakeview that night?”

“I left town.” He shrugged. “My cousin was getting married in Memphis on Saturday night, and I drove up there Friday morning. She was supposed to fly up on Saturday morning and meet me there. If I’d just decided to stay and fly up with her that morning—” He covered his face in his hands.

“You can’t do this to yourself,” I said. “Trust me on this, Phillip. You can’t beat yourself up over things like this. Yeah, in hindsight it’s easy to blame yourself, but you didn’t do anything wrong. And she wouldn’t want you to blame yourself, would she?”
Yeah, listen to yourself. All you’re doing is
parroting to him what people said to you—and it’s not like you ever listened to them, either. Take
your own advice, idiot.

“I know.” He wiped his eyes again. “I’m sorry.”

“Were your plans for the weekend pretty well known?”

He stared at me. “It’s not like we kept it all a secret. And she was taking that Monday off from work so we could drive back down together. We were going to have like a little mini-vacation, you know?”

So, it wasn’t a secret or a surprise that she was going to spend the night in Lakeview. Everyone in her family undoubtedly knew Phillip was going to be gone and she would be spending the night in her home out there alone.

“So, you have no idea what was going on at the company?”

He pulled himself together. “No. Iris didn’t like to talk about work, frankly, other than to complain about her grandfather and how unfair he was being, you know? It was one of our rules—we didn’t talk about work to each other at night.” He thought for a minute. “If you want to know anything about what was going on at the company, the only person who would know would be her assistant, Valerie. Valerie Stratton.”

“Were they close?”

He shrugged. “As close as Iris was to anyone. They went to school together—you know, not college, but McGehee. I think Valerie wound up going to UNO. Her family didn’t have a lot of money—they did at one time, but they went broke when Valerie was a kid.” He laughed. “Valerie knew everything that was going on at the company; she was like a ferret, Iris said once, and that she’d be lost without Valerie there. Valerie could find out anything, she told me.”

“Did you know her well?”

“Valerie? We didn’t socialize, but I talked to her every once in a while, when Iris wasn’t in her office or on another call or in a meeting when I called her. I’ve met her a few times.” He made a face. “To be honest, I didn’t care much for her. I didn’t really trust her.”

“But Iris did?”

“Iris swore she would be lost at the office without her.” He yawned and stretched his arms up over his head again.

“Well, I should probably get going.” I stood up and offered him my hand. “Thank you for your time, and again, my condolences on your loss.”

He stood up and shook my hand. “If there’s anything I can do, just let me know.” He let go of my hand and stretched, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror. “Christ, I look like hell.” He ran a hand over his stubble. “Guess it’s time for me to get cleaned up, huh?”

I just smiled. “It might make you feel better.” I took a business card out of my wallet, and placed it on the coffee table. “That’s my card—it has all of my numbers and my e-mail address on it. If you can think of anything—anything at all, no matter how unimportant it might seem, please give me a call.”

“There’s going to be a memorial service for Iris this weekend, finally.” He walked me to the door. “It’s going to be at St. Ann’s Church on Prytania Street. You’re more than welcome to come, if you’d like.” He shook his head. “The coroner apparently finally found her body.” His eyes got wet again. “I mean, it’s bad enough that she was killed, but then we didn’t even know where her body was…”

I put a hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be okay, man. Just hang in there.”

“Time heals, right?” He gave me a weak smile. “I keep telling myself that, you know?”

I shook his hand at the door again. “You take care of yourself, okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do that.”

The door shut.

*

I walked down to the car. I got in, and sat there for a moment, smoking a cigarette.

Something going on at the company had had Iris worried. She was ambitious and wanted to run Verlaine Shipping, and her grandfather wouldn’t let her. She decided to look for her father around the same time she told her fiancé that she had found a way to force Percy to give her the president’s chair and maybe even change his will.

I decided it would be a good idea to meet Valerie Stratton in person—when you just show up out of the blue, people aren’t prepared and let things slip. I decided to stop by the house and change into something more professional before getting up there to see her.

But my plans for the rest of the day changed when I got home to see Paige sitting on my front steps. I parked the car and sat down on the steps next to her.

She looked terrible. Her hair, although she’d dragged a brush through it, was dull and lusterless. The bags under her eyes were thicker and heavier than the last time I’d seen her, and she wasn’t wearing makeup. She had on a pair of jeans and a dirty white T-shirt with a blot of mustard just below her right breast. She flicked her cigarette out into the street. “Hey,” she said, after giving me a hug.

“How you doing?” I asked, lighting another one of my own.

“Not good.” She shrugged. “I just wanted to come by and apologize for my breakdown the other night.” She sighed. “I think I need to get away for a while.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I gave her a slight smile. “What are friends for?”

“I’m finding it harder and harder to hold it all together,” she went on. “I have some vacation time coming, so I’m going to take a couple of weeks and just get in the car and drive—see where I end up.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Get away from all of this…stay somewhere I don’t have to eat with plastic utensils and use paper napkins in a restaurant. Get in the shower and have real water pressure. Walk around where there’s no blue tarps hanging on roofs and no refrigerators parked at the curb.” She gave me a ghost of a smile. “Have you noticed the refrigerator art?”

“Yeah.” I returned her smile. On my way back from Barbara’s, I’d seen a refrigerator taped shut on Magazine Street, wrapped in white linen with a tiara on the top; a sign hung on it proclaimed to the world it was POPE FRIDGE II. There had been another covered completely in red and green Christmas foil, with a large card taped to the front: MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. PRESIDENT. Both had made me smile. It was such a New Orleans thing to do. I told her about the ones I’d seen, and she laughed.

“I love this city so much,” she said, wiping her eyes. “But I need to get away for a while. I’m drinking way too much, and if I don’t stop eating Xanax by the handful I’m going to wind up in rehab.”

“Thanks for the ones you gave me, by the way,” I replied, and told her about the dream I’d had. “It was amazing—one minute my mind was just racing out of control and then it was like this curtain of calm peace dropped over me and I didn’t care about any of it any more.”

“Whoever invented Xanax should be given the Nobel Prize.” She lit another cigarette. “I mean, really. Solve the Middle East crisis? Make them all take Xanax. That’d take care of it all in just two seconds.”

I laughed. “When are you going to go on your trip?”

“Next week. I got the vacation time approved.” She took my hand. “You going to be okay if I’m gone for a while? I don’t want to have to worry about you…although I’ll have my cell with me, obviously; you can call me if you need to any time.”

“Thanks.”

“And thanks for the other night.” She shook her head. “Chanse, please, I know I don’t have to tell you this, but please don’t tell anyone the things I told you. No one knows about any of that, besides me and my mother. And I’d kinda prefer it stayed that way, you know?”