Murder in the Garden District (Chanse MacLeod Mysteries) (14 page)

“Ginevra? It’s coming here?”

Janna stared at me as though I were insane.

“Have you not been following it? We’re almost directly in the center of the projected path. The governor declared a state of emergency on Wednesday. They’re going to call for mandatory evacuation as early as Saturday.”

Just as Paige had predicted. I hadn’t wanted to think about it. It was too soon. I pushed down the rising panic. We had to find Alais, and fast.

“So, please continue,” I said.

“After I spoke to Cordelia I went upstairs to tell the kids about it. Alais wasn’t in her room. Her bed hadn’t been slept in. There was no note, nothing. I called Cordelia back. She told me to call you.”

Interesting that she didn’t tell you to call the police and report Alais missing.

“Is anything missing from her room? Clothes, toothbrush, the kind of things she’d take with her?”

“Her toothbrush is gone. So are her laptop and cell phone. She has a lot of clothes. I can’t tell if any of it is missing.”

“Did she take a suitcase?”

“I didn’t think to check.”

I wrote that off to natural panic. “You’ve tried her cell?”

“She isn’t answering it. Or she just isn’t taking my calls.”

“Does she have a car?”

“She didn’t take it. It’s still here.”

Either someone picked her up or she’d called a cab.

“Then most likely she’s in the city. Credit cards?”

She looked at me like I was crazy.

“She has a wallet full of them. American Express, department stores, Visa, several MasterCards. Wendell and Cordelia got them for her. I didn’t think she needed more than one. Not that anyone cared for my opinion.”

“Do you have a list of them?”

Credit card companies wouldn’t give the information to me, but Jephtha might be able to get it online.

“Wendell had a list of all our cards in his computer. I’ll print it out for you.”

“You need to call the police.”

“I can’t do that.” She looked away. “Cordelia said not to.”

I knew it was pointless, but I had to at least try to talk her into it.

“The police have resources I don’t have. They can get her cell phone service to pinpoint her location, pull her credit card records and track her down in a matter of hours.”

“Cordelia made it clear that the police are not to be contacted.”

“Why is that? If finding Alais is the most important thing—”

She met my gaze, lifting her chin defiantly.

“Cordelia doesn’t want them involved. That’s all you need to know.”

Just as I suspected—you’ll work with Cordelia when you need to.

“All right,” I said. “Tell me, what exactly was going on with Alais? You said she was depressed. Why?”

“Her boyfriend was murdered. Before she went away to school, we were close. I was more like an older sister than a stepmother. After the murder she changed.”

“It’s no wonder she was depressed.”

“The police said it was a robbery gone wrong, but it was a hate crime. What else can you expect from Mississippi cops?”

“Are you saying her boyfriend was black?” I kept my voice neutral, feigning ignorance.

She bristled. “Do you have a problem with that? I don’t tol’rate racism, Mr. MacLeod.”

“It just surprised me.” I gave her a reassuring smile. “Wendell and Cordelia didn’t have a problem with it?”

“Don’t be absurd. Wendell’s father fought for civil rights in this state, and Cordelia was right there by his side. That’s public record.”

I decided not to point out how frequently public positions contradicted private beliefs when it came to race, especially in the South.

“I tried to get Alais to talk to me, but she wouldn’t. We hired a therapist to treat her. He came here three times a week. And of course, he wouldn’t tell us a goddamn thing. His answer for everything was writing prescriptions. I don’t think it’s good for a girl her age to be taking so many pills. But no one listened to me.”

Once again, she was playing the Sheehan martyr. She was good at it, but it wasn’t going to help me find Alais.

“Did she take her prescriptions with her?”

“I didn’t think to check her medicine cabinet.”

I was tired of games. It was time to play hardball.

“She’s been depressed all summer, she had a lot of medication handy, she turns up missing and it didn’t occur to you she might try to kill herself?”

Her face drained of color. “Oh, God, no. I don’t believe that. Alais would never…no.”

“You searched the house and the grounds, right?”

“Of course we searched!” she snapped, her eyes flashing. “Carey and Vernita helped.”

“Vernita?”

“The housekeeper.”

“I’ll need to speak to her. Where is she, by the way?”

“I sent her home. It wouldn’t have been right to make her stay here. The hurricane? She has her own family, and she needed to get her house ready.”

That was why Janna had answered the door herself.

“I’ll need her address.”

Janna nodded.

“You searched the grounds thoroughly? The pool house? The carriage house?”

“There was no sign of her anywhere. I wouldn’t have called you if we’d found her.”

“You said she isn’t answering her cell phone?”

“I’ve called it every half hour. It goes straight to voice mail. I leave messages.”

“But she took it with her?”

“I didn’t see it in her room.”

“I’ll need to search it.”

“Follow me.”

Janna swept out of the library. At the bottom of the hanging staircase, she glanced at the closed door to the drawing room and turned to me as if to say something, then started up the stairs, holding on to the railing.

“Is this the staircase where Grace fell?” I asked.

“Yes it is,” she said tonelessly, not breaking stride. “She tripped.”

Just like Roger Palmer.

We reached the top.

“And that’s your room, right?” I indicated a closed door to the immediate right.

“Yes.”

“How did Cordelia manage to get downstairs before you did the night your husband died?”

She stopped and looked at me, obviously confused.

“I have no idea. I never thought about it. All I know is she was in the drawing room when I got there.” She looked at her door, then at the hallway. If this was an act, she was good. “But that doesn’t make sense.”

She proceeded along the hallway.

“The police never brought that up? Or Loren McKeithen?”

“Not to me.”

I followed her past several closed doors to an open one.

“This is Alais’s room. I’ll be down in the library if you need anything more.”

“About the night your husband was killed—”

She took another few steps before looking back at me, her face expressionless.

“I have nothing else to say to you about that night, Mr. MacLeod. I’ll tell you anything you want to know about Alais, but as far as that night is concerned, I’ve already told you everything.”

Does anyone in the house ever tell the truth? I wondered as I watched her walk away.

I don’t have a lot of experience with teenagers, so I couldn’t say whether Alais’s room was typical. It was painted pale blue, and everything in the room matched—the pillows, the comforter on the sleigh bed, the rugs. The big wrought iron bed was centered against the wall to my right, with a nightstand on either side. The table to the left had an iPod docking station on it, but the iPod itself was gone. The table to the right had a phone and a couple of romance novels with covers of bare-chested men clutching large-breasted women with long flowing hair and peasant blouses exposing their shoulders. The spines of both books were intact. I flipped through the pages. Nothing. I put them down. An open door led to a walk-in closet. I poked my head inside. Janna was right—there was no way to tell what Alais might have taken. The clothes were crammed together on three rods running parallel to each wall, and there wasn’t room for another hanger anywhere. Each rod had a shelf above it, running the full length of the wall. Boxes of shoes were neatly stacked along the right-hand shelf, with a description of each box’s contents neatly lettered in black on the front:
red open-toe pumps, black stiletto closed-toe
, etc. The shelf on the left held a complete set of Nancy Drew hardcovers, their shiny yellow spines facing out. They, too, looked like they’d never been read. Alongside the Nancy Drews were enough exercise shoes to stock a Foot Locker display. None of them looked worn. Some of them weren’t completely laced up.

The shelf along the back wall was covered in hatboxes, all neatly lettered with the same black Sharpie. Alais was very organized.
Do girls still wear hats?
I wondered. I tried to remember the last time I’d seen a teenager in a hat other than a baseball cap, and couldn’t. I pulled down a box and removed the lid. The hat inside was wide-brimmed and yellow, with the price tag still on it. I replaced the box and took down another. This hat was red, with a veil in the front, and also had the price tag. Alais’s bureau probably had a drawer filled with brand-new, unworn gloves.

If Alais hadn’t left the house all summer, where did all this new stuff come from? I suspected Cordelia had bought it for her granddaughter.

Nothing in the bedroom seemed out of place. My sister Daphne had kept her room neat when we were growing up, but not like this. Of course, we hadn’t had a housekeeper. Daphne had covered her walls with posters of her heartthrobs—the New Kids on the Block, Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise. Cordelia probably didn’t allow posters of heartthrobs. Alais’s walls were pristine. No framed photographs, no posters, no artwork of any kind. The room had nothing personal in it. No stuffed animals, no trophies, no magazines or books that had actually been read. It was like a movie set. Maybe her room at the sorority house was different.

This room would depress anyone. No wonder she ran away. But there had to be other reasons.

I checked the bathroom. It, too, was pristine. The gold fixtures gleamed. The porcelain tub glistened. Everything on the counter was lined up and organized. There was no toothbrush, and no hairbrush, either. Apparently she had left behind all of her makeup, but, like the clothes, there was so much that it was hard to be sure. I opened the drawers and found more—mascara, eyeliner, lipstick, nail polish, nail files, polish remover—all unopened, in the original packaging. Every shelf in the linen closet was packed with towels, washcloths, and rolls of toilet paper. I opened the medicine cabinet, pulled out my notebook and wrote down the medications, wondering what Alais’s therapist had been thinking. Every conceivable antidepressant, antianxiety medication, and mood stabilizer I’d ever heard of was there—and some I’d never heard of before—enough pills for ten people to commit suicide with. The same psychiatrist was listed on every label: DR. ROBERT ENGLESE. I made a note of his name and phone number. He wouldn’t tell me anything, but talking to him might turn up something useful. Someone should report him to the AMA. Again, there were no empty spaces, so it was safe to assume Alais had not taken any pill bottles with her. Unfortunately, there was no way of knowing how many pills were missing from the bottles.

I returned to the bedroom and went through her bureau. I’d been right. The top drawer was filled with pairs of gloves that still had their price tags attached. There were separate drawers for underwear, socks, shorts, and T-shirts, and everything was sorted by color.

I rifled through the drawers of her desk. Everything was meticulously organized, with nothing out of the ordinary and nothing that would be helpful, not even an address book.

A diary would have been too much to hope for.

I sat down and turned on her Apple computer. The screen asked for a password.

“Her password is
princess
,” a voice behind me said softly.

I spun around in the chair.

Carey Sheehan stood leaning against the doorframe, his slender arms crossed. He was wearing an LSU baseball cap, a sleeveless LSU T-shirt, and a ratty pair of jeans shorts about three sizes too big for him. His feet were bare.

“Thanks,” I said. “You an LSU fan?”

He came into the room and plopped onto the bed.

“Yup.”

“I played ball for LSU.” I typed in the password. The computer’s desktop appeared. “I lettered three years.”

“Cool. When did you play?”

I told him. His face lit up with a smile.

“Two SEC championships and two Sugar Bowl wins,” he said.

“That’s right. You want to go to LSU? It’s a great school.”

He shrugged. His face went blank again.

“If I go to college. I haven’t decided yet.”

Like you’ll have a choice in this house, I thought.

“So, where do you think your sister went?”

“If she’s smart, she got as far away from here as she could.”

“Why would you say that?”