Murder in the Garden District (Chanse MacLeod Mysteries) (24 page)

“I suspected something.” Cordelia said finally. “But I didn’t want to know.”

“How many of Wendell’s murders did you cover up for him? Or just look away from?” I asked casually. I was enjoying watching the old woman squirm. “I know about three of them. How many more were there?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I ticked them off on my fingers. “The first was Roger Palmer. Then your daughter-in-law, Grace. Then Jerrell Perrilloux. Alais thinks Jerrell was killed because he was related to your housekeeper. I don’t buy that. I think it was because he was black, and Wendell didn’t like the idea of mixed-race grandkids any more than you did.”

Cordelia glared at me, her posture remaining rigid.

“Grace, too?” Janna said, bewildered. “I guess I
was
lucky Monday night.” She gave Cordelia a malicious smile. “Answer him, Cordelia. I’d like to know myself.”

Cordelia poured herself a Scotch from the decanter on a sideboard, then raised her glass to the portrait of her husband on the wall, took a drink and turned to the two of us.

“Roger Palmer was an accident. It wasn’t my idea to cover it up. Bobby was afraid of the scandal. When Wendell called that night…Sure, there would have been a scandal and it might have hurt Bobby’s administration, but I thought covering it up was a mistake. The truth has a way of coming out.”

She sat down across from me.

“He was my only child, Mr. MacLeod. I don’t expect you to understand.”

“What’s to understand? You made yourself an accessory after the fact. I doubt any jury would convict you. I doubt you’d even be prosecuted. It’s amazing how the rich and powerful can get away with murder.”

“Roger Palmer was an accident,” she insisted.

“Grace wasn’t an accident,” I countered. “Why else would Wendell release the trust she left for Musgrave? Why would Wendell have paid him over half a million dollars in ten years, if not as payment for murder?”

“I’d like to know that myself,” Janna said.

Cordelia emptied the Scotch. “I had my suspicions, of course. It was almost an exact reenactment of the story we came up with for Roger. But Wendell always insisted it
had
happened that way—that she tripped on the stairs. And Grace left no trust for Kenny Musgrave.”

“I guess we’ll never know for sure,” I said. “Wendell certainly felt the need to pay him off. Given that Wendell paid Musgrave to kill Jerrell—”

Cordelia interrupted me. “Why did Wendell have that boy killed? Because he was involved with Alais? I don’t believe it. We weren’t racists. Having his daughter involved with a black boy might have lost him the racist vote, but—”

I raised my hand to stop her.

The funny thing about rich people is that, no matter how liberal they may be in their hearts, the people who work for them only exist when they choose to notice them—especially the people who work in their homes. I’d heard the front door open, heard footsteps in the hall, heard them stop. She’d been out there listening for a good ten to fifteen minutes.

“Vernita? Will you come in here?”

She entered the library with her head held high.

“What does Vernita have to do with any of this?” Cordelia demanded.

I had a theory about that.

“What was the
real
problem, Vernita?” I asked gently. “Why did Wendell have such a problem with Jerrell and Alais dating that he had the boy killed?”

“Because they were brother and sister,” she said defiantly.

The last piece of the puzzle fell into place.

The next few moments were chaotic. Cordelia crumpled to the floor. Janna exclaimed and rushed to her side, massaging Cordelia’s wrists and talking to her in a gentle murmur.

Vernita gave me a sad little smile. She was beautiful, I realized, and not much younger than Cordelia. Her shoulders were bowed and her hands red and cracked from a lifetime of hard work, yet she held herself with dignity. She was slight, her skin dark, her graying hair pulled back into a tight bun.

It hadn’t been about class, as I’d believed. I remembered looking at Jerrell’s picture and thinking he looked familiar.

I was vaguely aware of Cordelia sitting up with Janna’s help, Janna getting her a glass of water, then helping her to her feet and into a chair.

“Are you okay?” I asked, not taking my eyes from Vernita.

“Fine,” Cordelia croaked. “Vernita, I know I didn’t hear you right.”

Vernita turned her head slowly to look at her longtime employer.

“Yes, ma’am, you heard me right. Mr. Wendell was Jerrell’s daddy.”

“But how— How is that possible?”

Cordelia was struggling to regain her composure.

“He had sex with my niece, ma’am. More than once. Don’t you remember? Dinah worked here that summer I wasn’t well. She came around to help out. Mr. Wendell was engaged to Miss Grace then. If I’d had any idea what was going on, I would a put a stop to it. I didn’t know till she got pregnant.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Cordelia’s face was pale. The glass of water shook in her hand.

“So you could do what? Buy her off, make her give her baby away?”

Vernita didn’t even try to mask her contempt.

“Oh, no, Mr. Wendell couldn’t keep his pants on but I worked here long enough by then to know what the deal would a been. You’d a said she was just some gold-diggin’ tramp after money. It would all be her fault.”

She turned to me.

“Dinah was a stupid girl. She thought Mr. Wendell would marry her. I tol’ her she might as well just slit her own throat if she tol’ him. I used to bring the boy around just to see if any of you folks
noticed
how much he looked like his daddy. But none of you did. To you he was just another nigger boy.

“Then Jerrell got sick,” Vernita went on, “and she didn’t have no insurance. So Dinah tol’ Miss Grace. I was so mad at that girl. I tol’ her no good would come of it. Miss Grace gave her the money, all right, and that next day she died. I tol’ Dinah, ‘That could happen to you if you don’t keep your damn fool mouth shut.’ I don’t know if Miss Grace tol’ Mr. Wendell or not. I don’t think she did cuz Mr. Wendell wouldn’t a let it rest.”

“And then Jerrell started seeing Alais,” I said.

“I thought they was just friends.” Her voice shook for the first time. “Jerrell didn’t tell me the truth. If he did, I would a tol’ him. When I saw those pictures Mr. Carey took…I knew I had to
stop
them afore it went too far.”

Tears streamed from her eyes, but her body remained still.

“I didn’t know what to do. So I got his birth certificate and showed it to Mr. Wendell. I tol’ him we had to stop them afore they did something against God. Mr. Wendell, he thank me. He tol’ me he’d go talk to Jerrell. But he kept the birth certificate. He put it in the safe. And then Jerrell got killed.” Her shoulders shook. “I thought Mr. Wendell—but he was here all that weekend. He even put up a reward.”

“But you still suspected him, didn’t you?”

“Well, Miss Grace died after she found out, didn’t she? But I wasn’t sure. I went down to the hospital to get a copy of the birth certificate…and it was gone. No one had it anywhere. The only thing to prove my Jerrell was Mr. Wendell’s son was locked up in that safe. That convinced me Mr. Wendell had my boy killed. He didn’t want no one to know. That Monday I decide I gonna get the birth certificate back. I take Miss Janna’s gun. I come back to the house and let myself in through the kitchen like I always do. I leave my car out on the street. I heard him and Miss Janna fighting in the drawing room. I heard what she said about him having that Musgrave man do his dirty work—killing my Jerrell—for him. I wait until she go back upstairs. I walk in the drawing room and point the gun at him. I tol’ him I want Jerrell’s birth certificate and I’d kill him just as soon as look at him. He open the safe, and then come back at me. He say I never shoot him.” Her jaw set. “I pull the trigger. When he go down, I go to the safe. There was a folder with Jerrell’s name on it. I take it and run out the front door. When I get home, all that was in the folder was the birth certificate and them canceled check copies. I put them through your mail slot.”

“And last night you killed Kenny Musgrave.”

“I wait until that tall woman leave, and then I knock on the door. He know who I am, so he let me in. I pulled out the gun and said, ‘This for Jerrell’—and I shot him.”

Except for Cordelia’s labored breathing, the room was silent.

“What are you doing?” she asked as I took my phone from my pocket.

“Calling the police.”

“You
can’t!
”

Vernita smiled at me sadly. “You go right ahead, Mr. MacLeod. I’m ready to face judgment and make my peace.”

“You can’t,” Cordelia insisted. “I’ll pay you. Alais can never know the truth! Remember what happened when she just thought the boy died and her father was responsible. If she finds out he was her brother—what if they—You can’t.”

She looked pleadingly at me.

“I don’t have to tell the police
why
I killed Mr. Wendell, do I, Mr. MacLeod?” Vernita asked.

I wavered for a moment. I’ve always believed the truth was more important than lies. I couldn’t think of a better example than the Sheehan family. Maybe Roger Palmer’s death had been an accident. But by covering up the truth, Cordelia had taught her son that when you have money and position and power, you can get away with murder. He’d learned the lesson well, and as a result, Grace and Jerrell were murdered when they became problems for him. Everything had come full circle with the deaths of Wendell and Kenny Musgrave. I understood why Vernita had killed them. It wasn’t only because they’d killed her grandnephew. It was because she knew they’d never pay for their crimes. There would be no justice for her Jerrell.

The law took a dim view of vigilante justice, no matter how well deserved it was. No matter what her motivations, Vernita had broken the law and would have to pay for it. She had neither the money nor the connections to get away with it. A lawyer like Loren McKeithen could sway a jury with sympathy for an old woman of color who’d killed the white men who killed her grandnephew. The fact that Jerrell had been Wendell’s son would only work in her favor. What kind of man hired someone to kill his own blood? And Kenny Musgrave was a despicable man as well. He’d killed his own sister for money. A black jury just might let Vernita off. Yet she was willing not only to confess to what she’d done, but to protect Alais by not telling the whole truth to the police.

It wasn’t fair. The entire thing made me sick to my stomach. Just standing in the house made me feel corrupt.

“I’m not a lawyer, Vernita,” I said finally. “But I’m calling the police.”

“Please. Mr. MacLeod,” Cordelia pleaded. “We have to protect Alais.”

“With all due respect, Mrs. Sheehan, I feel badly for your granddaughter, but if I don’t call the police I’m no better than you are. And I don’t think I could live with myself knowing that.”

As I walked out onto the porch into the sunlight, I had no doubt that the moment I’d left the room Cordelia began hatching another scheme. I suppose I couldn’t blame her. It was who she was, how she did things. I sat down on the steps and dialed Venus’s cell phone.

Miracle of miracles, the call went through.

I filled Venus and Blaine in on everything, including Jerrell’s parentage. Before they arrived, I wasn’t sure I would. But I realized that Alais was stronger than either her stepmother or her grandmother had given her credit for. Her depression after Jerrell’s murder had been normal. Instead of letting her deal with her grief, they’d put her in the care of some psychiatrist who thought the answer was to keep her in a drugged stupor. The Alais Sheehan I’d spoken to that morning was a survivor. Her world would be rocked when she learned the truth, especially if she’d slept with Jerrell, but I was certain she could handle it. In the future, Janna and Cordelia would have their hands full with that one.

I texted Abby that the police were at the Sheehans’ and to bring Alais home, then waited for her response:
Roger, boss
. I got into my car hoping I’d heard the last of this family.

*

There was no traffic to be seen on the way back to Paige’s, no signs of life anywhere, other than the occasional dive bar with its neon sign broadcasting OPEN as an enticement to whoever might have stayed behind to face down the storm less than twenty-four hours away. Even the side streets were empty. Apart from that, it could have been a normal summer day. The sun was shining, there were no clouds in the brilliant azure sky and it was hotter than hell.

I switched on the radio. Ginevra had been downgraded to Category 3 but it looked as though New Orleans was going to take a direct hit, with the eye wall now projected to hit landfall at the mouth of Lake Borgne. I turned it off. Lake Borgne wasn’t really a lake. It was a wide-mouthed bay. New Orleans East sat on a low-lying peninsula with Lake Borgne to the south and Lake Pontchartrain to the north. A narrow channel called the Rigolets connected the two brackish lakes. That was the path the destructive storm surge from Katrina had followed—from the Gulf into Lake Borgne through the Rigolets into Lake Pontchartrain and into the canals penetrating the heart of the city. If that happened again, the levees would be overtopped and some would collapse. Once again, ninety percent of the city would be underwater. Those who hadn’t evacuated would be trapped on roofs. Power and communications would shut down. Hopefully, the lessons learned from the last time would prevent a repeat of the horrible week that followed. But it looked like the deathblow for New Orleans.