Murder in the Irish Channel (Chanse MacLeod Mysteries) (10 page)

The constant reassurances that he was “available” for me if I ever needed to “process” my feelings or just needed a shoulder to cry on got on my nerves, frankly.

It’s not that I didn’t appreciate it—I just didn’t think it was necessary for him to remind me all the time.

As I’d yelled at him once during an argument, “If I need you to shrink my goddamned head,
I’ll fucking tell you!
”

He started to say something, but finished eating the muffin instead and smiled at me. He stood up, brushing the crumbs off his jean shorts. “Okay, well, I’m off to the office.” He leaned over and kissed the top of my head. “I’ve got that work party tonight, remember—you’re more than welcome to come if you want.”

“Thanks, but I’ll probably be working.”

“If you change your mind, we’re all meeting at the Bridge Lounge at seven. It would be great if you could make it—everyone would love to see you.” Unspoken were the words
since you didn’t go to my supervisor’s birthday celebration two weeks ago.

I turned back to my computer. “Bridge Lounge at seven. Got it.”

I heard the front door shut behind him. I sighed and stretched in my chair. I finished drinking the coffee and went back into the kitchen for a refill.
He does make good coffee
,
I thought, taking another sip. It wouldn’t kill me, I reflected, to stop by the Bridge Lounge for a drink or two with his coworkers. I’d already met most of them, and they all seemed like pretty decent people. They certainly did good work for low pay.

Unless something comes up, I’ll do it.

Congratulating myself for being such a good boyfriend, I sat back down at my computer. My mind was still foggy, so I paid my bills while I waited for the caffeine to push the cobwebs aside and jump-start my mind. Once I was finished with that, I checked my e-mail—nothing new or interesting there.

I opened my notepad and opened a new document, and copied all the notes I’d taken so far into it, hoping that doing this mindless task might trigger something in my mind. I saved it under the file name O’NEILL and reread it all one more time.

Nothing jumped to mind, so I got another cup of coffee and sat down on the sofa.

Okay, Chanse, think.

Robby O’Neill had been dead for at least forty-eight hours, give or take, when I’d found him. So he’d been killed sometime on Friday, maybe late Thursday night. The last time anyone had seen his mother was late Thursday night. There was no doubt in my mind that if Mona O’Neill was still alive, she’d disappeared on purpose. But why would she disappear, with her daughter-in-law so close to giving birth? If Mona had voluntarily gone into hiding, the reason had to be pretty extreme—she had to be afraid either for her own life or that of someone who was really important to her. Maybe she’d seen who killed her son?

Maybe she’d killed Robby and gone on the run.

It was possible, but I discarded that option. Mothers don’t, as a rule, kill their adult children.

One thing was for sure—I was pretty sure none of this had anything to do with the archdiocese, other than peripherally. This wasn’t the Middle Ages—I seriously doubted the Catholic Church was killing people because they were opposed to closing a couple of churches down.

No, I was pretty sure the O’Neill situations were one and the same. It was the only thing that made sense.

One of the reasons I’d decided to head down to the police station and give my statement last night was because I’d given Venus Jonny’s number. She’d called and arranged to have Jonny come down to the morgue and identify the body, and I’d wanted to talk to him myself.

Jonny was clearly shaken up. His eyes were red, his face pale, and his hands were shaking when he came out of the morgue. “Come on, let’s head down to the Carousel Bar for a drink,” I’d suggested, even though I knew he wasn’t yet old enough to drink. “You don’t look like you’re ready to head home yet anyway.”

“I got a fake ID,” he replied in a monotone as I led him out of the police station and turned left on Royal Street.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” I replied with a smile. He hadn’t said another word until we walked up the steps into the Monteleone Hotel and sat down in a dark booth in the Carousel Bar.

The cocktail waitress barely glanced at his fake ID, and I figured it wasn’t my problem. We both ordered beers, and Jonny started talking in a low voice.

He didn’t really tell me a whole lot. He and Robby hadn’t been close—they barely spoke or saw each other outside of family get-togethers and holidays, “and Robby didn’t really come to those if he could help it. Ma says since he married Celia he thinks he’s too good for the rest of us. She was a Queen of Rex or something.” Jonny had shrugged. “Whatever.”

Jonny did know that his brother’s wife and kids were at a beach house in Sandestin, Florida, which belonged to her sister. “Ma wasn’t real happy about that, because the kids were gone for the summer, and of course Robby would never invite any of us over to the beach—he never does.” Robby had been in the habit of driving over to Florida Fridays after work, and driving back to New Orleans late on Sunday nights. Jonny had called his sister Lorelle before coming to the police station and asked her to get a hold of his sister-in-law. “I don’t have her cell or nothing.” Lorelle had called him back and told him Robby had called his wife on Thursday morning and told her that he wasn’t able to make it over this particular weekend, that something business-related had come up, “but he would definitely drive over on Monday and stay the week. Lorelle said Celia said it sounded like it was something important, and he was all excited about it. Celia said she was going to let the kids sleep and head back over here tomorrow. I told Lorelle to tell her if she wanted to stay at Ma’s it was fine with me.” Jonny had shrugged and finished his beer. “Lorelle asked if you could come out and talk to her tomorrow. She said she really wants to talk to you about all this. She’s pretty upset.”

I’d said sure, and he’d given me her address and phone number.

That was all he knew, but he was still upset, and not really in the mood to head back home yet. I hung out with him and kept him company over another beer before putting him in a cab and sending him home.

I hadn’t come up with anything, and finally had come home around one in the morning to find Rory sound asleep.

I glanced at my watch. Sandestin was about a four- or five-hour drive—and it was just now ten o’clock. I doubted she’d gotten up early with the kids—Jonny said they’d had three and the youngest was around four—and packed everything up to head back to New Orleans. I decided to check around noon to see if they’d arrived back in town.

I printed out the notes from the computer and reread them several times, but still nothing really jumped out at me.

It
was
possible that the whole thing was simply a coincidence, but I wasn’t a big believer in coincidence.

Mona O’Neill was last seen on Thursday night around ten o’clock; her eldest son was shot to death either that night or the next day.

No—I shook my head—there had to be a connection.

I walked into the kitchen and turned off the coffeemaker. I wasn’t getting anywhere, so maybe a visit to Lorelle O’Neill Nesbitt was in order.

I took a shower and got dressed.

The sister, Lorelle, lived just over the parish line in Old Metairie, just off Metairie Road. I took I-10 out there and exited at City Park / Metairie Road, turning left and driving under the highway. Old Metairie was the only part of Jefferson Parish where New Orleans snobs would consider living, and it was easy to see why. With the massive trees, graceful houses, and lush green lawns, it looked as though Uptown had somehow been magically transported over the parish line. I found the street the Nesbitts lived on and turned left. Their big house was about halfway down the block—a graceful two-story plantation style house built out of red brick with large white columns. The large lawn was immaculate, almost completely shaded by the massive trees. There was a beige Volvo parked in the driveway. I parked at the curb, walked up the driveway, and rang the doorbell.

Lorelle O’Neill Nesbitt had, unlike her late brother, aged rather gracefully. There were some lines around her eyes and the corners of her mouth, but her chestnut brown hair was free of gray and was cut short in a pageboy style that framed her round face, giving it depth. She was wearing a pair of purple LSU sweatpants and a white T-shirt. Her eyes were red from crying or lack of sleep (or maybe both) and she was wearing very little makeup. She looked a little harried. “Yes?” She gave me a weak smile. “May I help you?”

“I’m sorry for not calling first, Mrs. Nesbitt, but my name is Chanse MacLeod—”

“You’re the detective Jonny hired,” she cut me off, nodding. She stepped aside and gestured with her left hand. “Do come in, I’m having some coffee in the kitchen, and you’re certainly more than welcome to join me if you like.”

The living room the front door opened into was tastefully furnished and enormous. A huge television set dominated one side of the room—two boys were lying in front of it playing some kind of video game that apparently required shooting people and blowing things up. There were large lamps, a long couch, and several reclining chairs scattered about the room with end tables arranged around them. The walls were devoid of any kind of artwork or even family photographs. The boys didn’t look up as I followed her through the room into a large, well-lit chef’s kitchen Rory would have cheerfully killed for. She poured me a cup of coffee and directed me to sit at the island. I sat on a large bar stool and sipped the coffee. It was really good. “I’m really sorry to bother you at a time like this,” I said, putting the coffee down. “Do you mind answering some questions?”

She made a small, defeated gesture. “Now’s as good a time as any,” she said. “My mother’s disappeared and my brother’s been murdered—when would be a good time to talk about it?” She gave me an ironic smile, slightly amused, and I liked her better for it. “Besides, my husband’s at his office. I kept the boys home—they were supposed to go over to a friend’s for the day, but as you can see”—she gestured back toward the living room—“it’s not like they’re taking their uncle’s death particularly hard.” She glanced over at the clock. “And one of the other moms is taking them to baseball practice later on. I wasn’t going to let them go—but what’s the point? I might as well get them out of here and let them have some exercise—at least that’s something.” She looked at me. “It’s not like they were close to their uncle or anything. Hell, he was my brother and we weren’t particularly close, for that matter. We’ve barely spoken in years.” She rubbed her eyes. “I guess I’ll have to get used to talking about him in the past tense.” She looked at me. “We were close when we were kids, but we drifted apart after Dad died.” She shrugged. “I guess it’s normal—we had our own lives to lead, but I wish we could have stayed close, you know?”

“What exactly happened to your father? Jonny mentioned he was killed on the job, but didn’t really go into a lot of detail about it.” I took out my notepad and uncapped a pen.

“Well, he was barely a year old when it happened, so he never really knew much about it. It wasn’t something Mom liked to talk about, understandably.” She stared into her coffee cup. “Dad worked at the docks, for Verlaine Shipping. He was a longshoreman—he’d worked there since he was a teenager. He was helping load some really heavy machinery when one of the cables broke and he was crushed to death. It was a closed casket funeral.” She looked out the window. “I was in my junior year at Sacred Heart. Mom pulled me out of class that day. I’ll never forget it. She was crushed, just crushed. But the Verlaines were very good to us.”

I was all too familiar with the Verlaine family of Verlaine Shipping. I’d done some work for them around the time of Hurricane Katrina, and it wasn’t a fond memory for me. They had believed their money put them above the law—and for the most part, they’d been right. Percy Verlaine, the family patriarch, had been rotten through and through—and while I’d never been able to prove it, I believed he’d had his own son-in-law murdered. He’d certainly had his niece locked away in a mental hospital for over thirty years. But he’d died—heart failure—and the only surviving Verlaine was his youngest son, Darrin. I’d heard somewhere he’d sold the company and left New Orleans.

Good riddance.

“It was like the whole world had turned upside down,” she went on. “There was life insurance, of course, and there was some other kind of insurance—I don’t know what all, but the company also gave Mom an awful lot of money. I don’t know how much it all came out to, but I know she paid off the house, set up college accounts for all of us—we might not have been able to go to college if not for Percy Verlaine. Well, we would have, but it would have been a lot harder. I would have had to work my way through, and thanks to them, I could just focus on my schoolwork.” She got up and refilled our cups. “Jonny didn’t go to college, of course. He flunked out of de la Salle, and Mom gave him the money to buy that terrible little house for him and that awful girl he married.”

I hadn’t exactly been a big fan of Heather myself, but I was getting a little tired of everyone running her down. “What exactly is the problem with her? Jonny mentioned that your mother had an issue with her, too.”

“Jonny’s not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, Mr. MacLeod. He’s a very sweet boy, but he’s really not terribly smart. He thinks he is, of course, but some of the scrapes he’s gotten himself into—Mom had the patience of a saint. I don’t know what I’d do if one of my boys turned out like him, but I wouldn’t be as forgiving as Mom, I can tell you that.” She sat back down, stirring sugar into her coffee. “Mom spoiled him, maybe babied him a bit much, who knows? But he was her baby, and there was a big age difference between him and me and Robby, you know, and then Dad died, and so Mom had to raise him on her own…and Robby and I were both out of the house in a couple of years, so it was just the two of them. He was never much of a student, was always on the edge of flunking out. Then he got into this fighting thing.” She shook her head. “I went once, you know—it was horrible. I didn’t want to, but Mom said I needed to support Jonny.” She closed her eyes. “I’ll never go again—and I don’t care how much money Jonny can make doing it, or if he becomes a world champion or whatever. I won’t go, and I won’t watch it on television. It was so—animalistic and brutal.” She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. “Why would anyone want to do that? Get paid to be violent? I don’t understand it—it was like something out of ancient Rome. The crowd was screaming for blood, it was horrible.” She said the last in a whisper.