Murder in the Irish Channel (Chanse MacLeod Mysteries)

• Synopsis
  
• By The Author
  
• Acknowledgments
  

It begins as a simple missing persons case—a young MMA fighter's mother has mysteriously disappeared. But as New Orleans private eye Chanse MacLeod starts digging around, he discovers that she is the leader of a group fighting the powerful Archdiocese of New Orleans over the closing of two churches. As the trail leads from corrupt church officials to powerful real estate developers to the world of cage fighting, Chanse soon realizes there are a lot of powerful people who want to make sure she stays gone—and don't have a problem with getting rid of a pesky gay private eye.

Murder in the Irish Channel

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Murder in the Irish Channel

© 2011 By Greg Herren. All Rights Reserved.

ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-620-5

This Electronic Book is published by

Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

P.O. Box 249

Valley Falls, New York 12185

First Edition: December 2011

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Credits

Editor: Stacia Seaman

Production Design: Stacia Seaman

Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

The Scott Bradley Adventures

Bourbon Street Blues
Jackson Square Jazz
Mardi Gras Mambo
Vieux Carré Voodoo
Who Dat Whodunnit

The Chanse MacLeod Mysteries

Murder in the Rue Dauphine
Murder in the Rue St. Ann
Murder in the Rue Chartres
Murder in the Rue Ursulines
Murder in the Garden District
Murder in the Irish Channel

Sleeping Angel

Women of the Mean Streets
Men of the Mean Streets
(edited with J.M. Redmann)

Over the course of my life, I’ve been incredibly blessed to call the most extraordinary people my friends.

First of all, I would really like to thank everyone at Bold Strokes Books—Radclyffe, Sandy Lowe, Stacia Seaman, Shelley Thrasher, Connie Ward, Cindy Cresap, and I apologize to anyone I’m forgetting. What I like to call the league of extraordinary women welcomed me into the Bold Strokes family, and they have been an absolute joy to work with from the very first day. Bold Strokes has given me an opportunity to stretch and grow as a writer, and I cannot thank everyone there enough.

Here in New Orleans, I have yet another league of extraordinary women I can always depend upon for moral support, love, and laughter. Julie Smith, Patricia Brady, Susan Larson, J. M. Redmann, Gillian Rodger, Bev Marshall, Chris Wiltz, Nevada Barr, Laura Lippman, and Janet Dailey Duval are beyond exceptional, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for always being there whenever I need any of you.

My coworkers at the Community Awareness Network office of the NO/AIDS Task Force are some pretty amazing people as well—their dedication to making the world a better place and working to improve the quality of people’s lives blows me away on a daily basis: Josh Fegley, Martin Strickland, Mark Drake, Nick Parr, Brandon Benson, Matt Valletta, Robin Pearce, Allison Vertovec, Larry Stillings, and Sarah Ramteke.

I would also be remiss in not singling out my very dear friend Victoria A. Brownworth for recognition.

I finished writing this book at the Bold Strokes Writer’s Retreat at Garnet Hill Lodge in the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York. I had the most amazing time there, and that is entirely all the fault of yet another group of extraordinary women: Carsen Taite, Nell Stark, Trinity Tam, Anne Laughlin, Linda Braasch, Ali Vali, Lisa Girolami, Lynda Sandoval, Rachel Spangler, Karis Walsh, and Ruth Sternglantz. Also worthy of mention is the delightful Niner Baxter—his sense of humor and gentle spirit was a joy to be around.

And of course, Paul Willis makes my life worth getting out of bed for every morning.

This book is for
LADY HERMIONE
“Come about!”

“I’m sure I don’t have to tell a man as experienced as you that everything has its shadowy side?”

—Tennessee Williams,
The Night of the Iguana

The house was a tired-looking single shotgun, badly in need of paint and slightly listing to one side. It was in the middle of a block on Constance Street in the Irish Channel, and the other houses on the block were just as sad and forlorn. The house next door had a For Sale sign planted in the front yard; still others had damaged cars parked in front of them on the street. This particular stretch of street was cracked and pitted with deep potholes, with gravel running between the asphalt and the drainage ditches. The lawns had scars of bare dirt exposed and many of them needed to be mown. The flowerbeds were choked with weeds. Massive live oak trees shaded the houses and yards, creating a green canopy over the street that blocked out the hot June sun. A black, white, and tan cat paused as it crossed the street to stare at me for a moment before continuing on its way.

Hoping I was wrong, I double-checked the address. The house I was looking for was indeed this sad wreck of a place.

I put my car into park and sat there for a moment, wondering why it hadn’t been condemned. There was a rusted chain-link fence around the front yard, on the other side of the drainage ditch. In several places, it had pulled away from the posts. The shutters were closed on the front windows, and the front door was behind a black wrought iron security gate. There was no sign of life from the house. The patchy grass was choked with weeds. A statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary sat inside a sand-filled circle of stone to the left of the walk leading to the front gallery. The statue itself was chipped in places, and stained with dog urine. Her blue robes had faded in the sun, and some weeds were insolently poking up through the sand. The enormous live oak tree’s roots had grown underneath the sidewalk from the other side, causing the cement to crack, buckle, and shift. Some flowering vine had completely covered the fence on the left side of the house, where a narrow path of dirt ran around to the back. I closed my eyes and resisted the urge to pound my head on the steering wheel.

In my line of work, it’s never a good idea to make a decision when you’re tired.

The guy I was seeing had asked me to come by and talk to Jonny O’Neill just as I was dropping off to sleep the night before. I’d been so tired I would have agreed to almost anything. Rory hadn’t really told me anything about the kid’s problem—well, he may have, but after agreeing I’d rolled over and gone into a deep sleep. Rory had gone home by the time I woke up this morning, and when I called his cell phone I’d gone straight to voicemail. Rory had thoughtfully left the kid’s phone number propped up against the coffeemaker—and the coffee was ready to be brewed, according to the note he’d signed with a heart and a smiley face. I’d called after a couple of cups of strong coffee had swept the dust out of my mind, and made an appointment to come hear his tale of woe—which he didn’t want to tell over the phone.

This Jonny O’Neill had sounded really young on the phone—almost like his voice had changed only recently.

That didn’t bode well.

I hadn’t promised I’d take the job—if there even
was
a job. Nine times out of ten people who think they need a private eye really don’t, they just want someone to listen to whatever their problem is.

In fact, most of the time I wind up just saying either
sorry, there’s nothing anyone can do
or
this is a job for the police.

And besides, if this dump was the only place he could afford to live, he sure as hell couldn’t afford my expenses, let alone my daily rate.

I shut off the engine and got out of the car. It was already over eighty degrees, and it wasn’t even noon yet. Beads of sweat popped out on my forehead. It was the hottest June I could remember, and I’d lived through some pretty hellish Junes in New Orleans. If this was a sign of things to come, July and August would be even more unbearable than usual. It was unnaturally quiet—other than the sound of traffic on Louisiana Avenue, a few blocks away, there was nothing but stillness.

I sighed. This was going to be a colossal waste of my time.

Granted, it was Sunday. If I weren’t here, I’d be sitting on my sofa in my underwear channel-surfing and complaining about paying a ridiculous amount of money for three hundred or so channels of nothing to watch.

I pushed the gate open. I winced as it gave off a loud, piercing squeak. It only opened about six inches before it caught on the buckled pavement of the walk and stopped moving. I stepped through, catching my jeans on the fence with a slight ripping sound. I swore under my breath and examined the tear. The hole was jagged and maybe about an inch long, right by my knee. I swore again. The jeans weren’t new, but it was still annoying.

This was off to a
great
start.

A dog in the next yard starting barking, trying to stick his head through the fence. He was a terrier of some kind, with black and white markings. He was wagging his tail, so the bark was just for show. I whistled and he stopped barking, his ears perking up expectantly. There was a well-chewed tennis ball sitting in the dirt underneath the massive live oak, so I picked it up and tossed it over the dog’s head. In one movement, he turned and took off after it.

The sidewalk in the shade of the live oak was covered with stinging caterpillars, which I kicked aside as I made my way to the front steps.

I fucking hate those things. Their sting hurts like a son of a bitch. The live oak in front of my house was covered with them—and so was my front porch.

The stairs leading up to the front porch were brick. The mortar was crumbling away—one of the bricks had fallen off and lay broken into pieces in what had been a flowerbed in years past. The once-blue paint on the front porch was cracked and peeling, exposing weathered gray wood. The shutters were also flaking, and I could see they’d been latched from the inside. The glass between the black iron bars on the gate outside the front door was grimy and covered in dust. A Post-it Note had been taped over the doorbell with the words
Doorbell Doesn’t Work Please Knock
scrawled on it in grease pencil in a childlike hand.