Murder in a Minor Key (2 page)

Laveau’s tomb is a popular attraction in this Mississippi River city, where swamp conditions forced citizens to “bury” their dead in above-ground vaults for over two centuries. The cemeteries, known as Cities of the Dead, are regular stops on sightseeing tours, but the two St. Louis cemeteries are located in what are now considered dangerous
neighborhoods
, and visitors are warned not to wander from the safety of their tour groups.

Mayor Maurice Amadour reassured the public there was no cause to be alarmed, and announced that a special security detail would be assigned to the cemetery for the next month. However, merchants in the French Quarter complained that the mayor’s office was not doing enough to safeguard the tourism industry.

Police said Williams, whose age was not known, was at one time a guide in the bayous. He disappeared fifteen years ago on a fishing trip during which a prominent politician died. The politician’s badly mauled body had been recovered from the alligator-infested waters. An NOPD spokesman said Williams had been presumed dead as well, and the discovery of his body on Saturday was a surprise. An investigation is under way to uncover Williams’s whereabouts for the last decade and a half, the spokesman said, and the NOPD was calling on local residents to come forward with any information pertinent to the case.

“Hmmm,
interesting story.”

“Now, Mrs. F., you be careful down there. I hear that New Orleans is a dangerous city.”

“You have to take the same precautions you would in any large city, Mort, and I always do. I had no problems when I was there last year, and I’m looking forward to seeing all the things I missed on the first visit. And yes, I’ll be careful.”

He harrumphed.

A slight tug on my line returned my attention to fishing.

“I think I may have caught something,” I said gleefully.

Mort eyed the slight curve at the top of my pole.

“More likely you’ve hooked a weed,” he said. “Whatever it is isn’t giving you much of a fight.”

I quickly reeled in the slack in my line and pulled back on the rod. When the end of the fishing line cleared the water, hanging from the hook was a tiny fish, no more than five inches long.

“Got a dab there. Definitely not a keeper,” Mort said, deftly netting my catch.

Apologizing to the little flounder, I gently extracted the hook from its mouth and leaned over the edge of the dock to release it back into the water. The fish hesitated a moment and then flapped away, back down to the bottom of the bay. I wondered if the experience would change the life of that little fish. Would it shun temptation from now on? Would it approach an easy meal with suspicion? Or would it forget to be cautious, only to be caught another day?

Chapter Two

A young man with a scruffy beard tugged on the neckline of his T-shirt, rose from the audience, and leaned into the microphone. “You’re an investigative reporter, Mr. Broadbent, but I hear you moonlight as a sax player on the weekends.”

“You’d make a good investigative reporter yourself,” Broadbent replied. “You’ve discovered my passion. I’m a closet saxophonist.”

“Are you any good?” the young man asked.

A ripple of uncomfortable laughter ran through the audience, but Julian Broadbent grinned at the young man, who held a notebook and pencil.

“Well, I’m better than Bill Clinton, but not as good as Branford Marsalis.”

This time the laughter was louder, and the audience burst into applause.

Julian Broadbent was a handsome man with blond hair and light-blue eyes, who knew how to use his Southern charm. It was part of what made him such a successful investigative reporter. That charm, coupled with tenacity and writing skill, had helped him write a popular book on a recently retired Louisiana senator, whose departure from Washington just barely preceded the publication of Broadbent’s exposé of him.

“He can sweet-talk the politicians right out of their trees,” our host and moderator Charlie Gable had said in his introduction of Broadbent, “or right out of their Senate seats in this case.”

Broadbent was one of four authors with new books out. I was among them. We’d spent this Thursday morning discussing writing in general, and our latest works in particular, as guests of Gable and the New Orleans
Times-Picayune.

“Seriously, folks, you’ll have to be the judge.” Broadbent bobbed his head toward the dapper man to his left, and his Louisiana accent deepened. “My colleague on the panel, heah, once tole me ‘Keep yo’ day job.’ But my mama was a stubborn Cajun, and I guess I inherited that trait. I’m still practicin’. So y’all come on uptown to Tipitina’s next Tuesday and see if I’ve improved since my review.”

As the audience laughed and clapped again, Wayne Copely, the man to Broadbent’s left and to my right, covered his mouth with his fist and leaned in my direction. “Stubbornness never was a substitute for talent,” he muttered.

I smothered a smile. Wayne, another author on the panel, was a music critic with a nationally syndicated column, and a friend of recent acquaintance. He’d been particularly helpful to me during the writing of my latest mystery,
Murder in a Minor Key,
which I’d set in New Orleans. At the recommendation of a mutual friend, I’d gone to Wayne for information on the city’s love affair with jazz.

“You cannot write about New Orleans if you don’t know about her musical roots,” he had told me solemnly. “I will guide you.”

Keeping his promise, he had given me a quick education in the range of local musical offerings, while squiring me from one jazz venue to another. We went to concert halls, sophisticated clubs, rollicking bars, down-and-dirty dives, and it seemed to me, nearly every impromptu street performance. When we parted more than a year ago, Wayne had urged me to come back for the Jazz and Heritage Festival that takes place in New Orleans each spring, although it was hard to believe that there could be even more to hear in a city already overflowing with music.

Fate had been kind and my publisher even kinder. Now that
Murder
in
a Minor Key
was climbing the best-seller list, I was back in “The Big Easy” for the last days of a successful, if whirlwind, promotional tour, just in time for the festival. This morning’s panel of authors, which also included a historian, Doris Burns, along with Wayne, Julian Broadbent, and me, was one of a regular series, hosted monthly by Charlie Gable, book editor of
Lagniappe,
the weekend entertainment section of the
Times-Picayune,
the city’s only daily newspaper. Charlie had always been complimentary in his reviews of my work, and when he’d invited me to participate in one of his Book Club Breakfasts, I’d been flattered to accept. My publisher had arranged several interviews to coincide with my visit to New Orleans, and I was looking forward to revisiting a city that had so intrigued me before.

Turning in my direction, the bearded young man asked, “Mrs. Fletcher, are you a secret musician, too?”

“I took music lessons as a child,” I answered. “Perhaps many of you did, too.”

I looked around the audience; heads were nodding.

“My mother used to say, there must be a special place in heaven for music teachers; they have such an abundance of patience,” I said with a chuckle. “I sometimes suspected mine wore earplugs. I grew up to love all kinds of music, but I’m afraid my best musical skills are as a listener.”

“Miz Fletcher, why did you choose New Orleans for your latest mystery?”

The speaker was an elderly lady in a bright, multicolored dress with a floral pattern. She held a large straw hat, an even larger straw handbag, and a red umbrella hung from her arm.

“Many writers find inspiration in particular locations, most often those that are initially unfamiliar,” I responded. “If I’m walking in a crowded city, or on a desolate stretch of road, all of a sudden I’ll find myself composing plots, and characters who seem to fit the scene. Perhaps there’s something odd in the sight of a particular building, or a strange smell assails me, or the eerie sound of the wind makes me shiver. All my senses are sharpened when I encounter someplace new. Those experiences end up on the page.”

“We got lots of eerie things in New Orleans,” the woman said.

“Probably more here than other big cities do,” I agreed. “New Orleans has many qualities to stimulate the imagination. It’s friendly, dangerous, exotic, accessible, foreign, and thoroughly American. You have a wonderful mix of cultures, religions, and philosophies. You have appreciation for the past, and exuberance for the present. Your food is spicy, and so is the air, perfumed with the mingled aromas of the cooking, the rich vegetation, the swamps, and the Mississippi River. Your weather is, by turns, sultry and refreshing. And everywhere you go, and in everything you do, music accompanies you. The whole city is a mystery, and I love to unravel mysteries.”

The ovation from the New Orleanians that greeted my description of their city made me blush. I hadn’t intended to wax so poetic, but I wouldn’t take back a word. Visiting New Orleans was an adventure, and as different from my hometown of Cabot Cove, Maine, as it could possibly be. I was eager to explore it again on this visit.

When the applause died down, Charlie spoke up.

“Mrs. Fletcher, thank you. You make us see our own city with fresh eyes.”

He checked his watch.

“We’re coming to the end of this session of Book Club Breakfasts, but we still have time for a few more questions.”

The lady in the flowered dress waved her straw hat at Charlie. “I have a question for Doris Bums, too,” she said.

“Go ahead, ma’am.”

“Ms. Bums, do you have another project you’re working on?”

“I’m so glad you asked me,” she said, beaming.

Doris Bums was a historian, the youngest woman ever to be made full professor at Princeton. She was striking, tall and narrow with an angular face, lively brown eyes, and short brown hair that curved softly toward her delicate chin, not precisely what you’d expect a historian to look like, but just right somehow.

“Mrs. Fletcher is right about the wonderful possibilities in New Orleans. I’m currently researching a book on the history of cult religions. Since a sizable percentage of the population practices voodoo, this is a great place to start. As long as I have the floor, I’ll add that I’m staying at the Royal Hotel for the next two weeks, and would appreciate hearing from any of you in the voodoo community. I’m making tape recordings of what voodoo means to those who practice it, and how their traditions may differ from their neighbor’s. If you can give me a half hour or so, I’d love to get you on tape.”

There was a rustle of papers around the auditorium as people noted the name of the hotel. Wayne leaned forward and pulled the table microphone to him. “Speaking of recordings,” he said, “as long as we’re asking for research assistance here—this okay with you, Charlie?”

Gable nodded. “We’ll let you have the final word, Wayne, in this question-and-answer session.”

Wayne fingered the floppy yellow paisley bow tie that rested on his royal-blue shirt. He took his time pulling a large white handkerchief from the jacket pocket of his cream-colored suit and dabbing it across his shaved head. The spotlights pointed at the stage were hot; it was nearly noon and the air conditioning in the large room was struggling to counter the heat wave outside.

Finally, he spoke.

“As my good friend Jessica Fletcher noted, we have an appreciation for our past. And like my colleague Ms. Burns, I’m also interested in recordings, but old ones, not new ones. In fact, I’m looking for original cylinder recordings made in Thomas Edison’s day.”

He paused.

“You can help.”

He fell silent again to let his suggestion sink in.

“As many of you know,” he continued, “I’ve been hunting details on the life of Alphonse LeCoeur, known as Little Red. He played trumpet ’round about the same time as Buddy Bolden. They may even have known each other, perhaps played together. No surviving recordings of either of these talented gentlemen have ever come to light, but rumors about Little Red’s recordings have persisted, and I believe he did, indeed, put down some tracks on wax cylinders.”

I listened as Wayne mesmerized the audience with tales of a moody, cerebral horn player, an introspective man who lived his life in the bayous, and rarely played in public, but one who deserved a place in the pantheon of jazz greats. He described how the celebrated musicians of the day found their way to Little Red’s shack, to coax him to perform with them, or just to listen in wonder to a talent shared with so few. Wayne’s voice rose and fell like a preacher exhorting his congregation.

“He drew the other musicians of his day like ants following a trail of honey,” he intoned. “They were hungry for his sound, in awe of his skill, his ‘chops’ if you will, and jealous of his talent. Some claimed Little Red was possessed by a voodoo spirit, a
loa.
When under its spell, the notes that poured from his horn were magic—sweet, melodic, inventive music, in sharp contrast to the boisterous style of Buddy Bolden that was so popular in the frenzied days that followed the turn of the last century.”

Wayne peered over the half glasses perched on his nose. His eyes roamed up and down the rows of occupied seats.

“For years, I’ve tracked rumors that claim the existence of those cylinders. So far, they still elude me. But if those recordings exist, I aim to uncover them. They represent an important link between Little Red and those who came after him.”

“I’ll bet they’re worth some money, too, aren’t they?” Broadbent put in.

Wayne looked momentarily taken aback before replying, “They will have tremendous worth as a historical treasure, Mr. Broadbent, linking the traditions of Ragtime, Dixieland, and more modern jazz. Every jazz musician today owes a debt to Little Red. Oh yes, his influence isn’t as obvious as that of others—Bolden and King Oliver, Louis, then Roy Eldridge, who bridged the gap between the older style of trumpet playing in New Orleans and Chicago with the modem giants—Dizzy and Sweets Edison, Fats Navarro and Miles Davis. But even though today’s artists never heard Little Red play—which I hope to rectify by finding those cylinders—his legend, which has been passed down by word-of-mouth, has had a profound impact on the way our current jazz stars
think
about the music they create.”