Murder in the Irish Channel (Chanse MacLeod Mysteries) (15 page)

“How often did you see her? Talk to her?”

“We talked pretty much every day—of course, I got more tied up around here at the bar after Serena wrecked her stupid motorbike.” He gestured around the place. “I thought owning my own business was the way to go after I retired, you know? But it’s a hell of a lot of headaches.”

“Then sell the place and quit your bitching,” the man in the kitchen said, coming through the saloon doors with a steaming plate of fried mushrooms. He set them down on the bar between us. There was a little bowl of sauce in one corner. He wiped his hands on his apron and held his right one out to me. “I’m Jermaine. What a nice lady like Miz O’Neill ever saw in a jackass white man like this one is a mystery to us all.”

“Chanse.” I shook his hand. “Were you here on Thursday night?”

Jermaine nodded. “Yeah, the bar was busy but I didn’t have no food orders, so I was out here refilling ice and shit. She was real agitated, not that this one ever noticed nothing unless it punched him in the face.” He grinned, and his bottom teeth were all gold. “Something had been bothering Miz O’Neill for about a week or so, I’d say—she hadn’t been acting like herself for a while. Not that this damned redneck ever noticed.”

I dipped one of the mushrooms into the sauce and popped it into my mouth. It was hot, but the batter was delicious.

“Fuck you, Jermaine,” Barney said pleasantly. “And get back to work. I’m not paying you to come out here and bother the customers. And who’s paying for these mushrooms?”

“Ain’t nothing to do in that damned kitchen right now except sweat, and you know it, so fuck you, and if I want to give the detective man a taste of what comes out of my kitchen I guess you can dock my pay for it if it means your sorry ass is gonna go broke.” Jermaine smiled back at him. “Unless you got a problem with me talking to this detective man about what a shitty man you were to Miz O’Neill, who could have done better than your sorry ass if she just would put a little bit of effort into it.” He turned back to me. “I never could figure it out, you know, unless it was just pure laziness on her part, you know?”

I gathered this was a regular sideshow act the two of them put on. Their words were insulting, but their tone was friendly. “You said something was bothering her—do you remember exactly when you noticed that?”

“Something was bothering her—he’s right about that.” Barney popped a mushroom in his mouth and chewed on it thoughtfully. “You need to put more beer in the batter, Jermaine. I’d say she started acting funny about a week or so ago.” He scratched his forehead. “Let me think on it. Yeah, it was about a week ago last Thursday, right, Jermaine?”

Jermaine nodded. “Yeah, it was a Thursday night, because I’d been off the day before.” He winked at me. “I generally have Tuesdays and Wednesdays off. She came in about seven, ordered a catfish po’boy and onion rings and a beer.”

“Serena hadn’t wrecked her damned bike yet, so I was in the office,” Barney remembered. “I didn’t even know she was here until I came out to get a Coke. Yeah, she was drinking a beer—which I thought was weird. That wasn’t like Mona—she had to sit vigil that night and she never drank when she was going to the church.” He ate another mushroom. “Not that Mona was a big drinker anyway—she’d sometimes have a beer, or a glass of wine, but that was about it. She never was big on drinking—even when we were kids. Me and Danny tied on some good ones, but not Mona. I asked her about it, and she said she’d had a bad day—but that’s all she would say about it. It was still bothering her when she came over that Saturday, you know, she always comes to my place, she was always afraid Jonny might catch us if we were at her place—but she didn’t want to talk about it—and that was that. She’s stubborn, you know—there was no point in pressing her about it—she’d tell me about it when she was ready to tell me about it, or she never would. That’s just how she is.” He looked at me. “I mean, we’re casual, like I said. We don’t press each other about stuff. If she wanted me to know, she’d tell me. Asking her would just piss her off, and I had other things on my mind, if you know what I mean.”

I put that image out of my mind. “So, you had no idea what the problem was?”

“Well, I just assumed it was Jonny. I mean, it usually was.” He made a face. “If it was something to do with the church, she would have told me, since I was part of Save Our Churches. It usually always was Jonny, anyway—and that piece of trash he married. Mona worries about the two of them all the time.”

“You didn’t think she was trash when she worked here,” Jermaine observed.

“That was before she got knocked up by a kid five years younger than her,” Barney snapped.

“Heather’s five years older than Jonny?” I couldn’t have heard that right.

Jermaine laughed. “Oh, yeah. They met here, you know.”

“Jonny was always more trouble to Mona than he was worth,” Barney added.

“Jonny was a problem for her?”

“Butter wouldn’t melt in that kid’s mouth, you know, but he’s a real piece of work, that one is.” Barney rolled his eyes. “Kicked out of de la Salle his senior year, never graduated—I don’t think he even bothered to ever get his GED, either. He’s always been a problem for Mona. He was a change-of-life baby for her, you know—and she always spoiled him. She wasn’t that way with Robby and Lorelle, uh-uh, they toed the line and she disciplined those two. Jonny’s always been wild and out of control—he’s had some run-ins with the police, you know—and then he knocked up that trashy girl. Mona is always making excuses for him, not having a daddy, blah blah blah. And I told Mona buying him and Heather that house was a mistake, but she thought it might make him grow up.” He shook his head again. “You see that place? What a fucking dump. It’s a wonder the city ain’t blighted it right out from under them. He can’t be bothered to take care of it, doesn’t mow the damned grass—Mona hired a neighborhood kid to do it, you know—and Jonny got mad because the kid tried mowing it in the morning before it gets too damned hot! Woke him up, and he needs his sleep, don’t you know, because he’s going to be a big champion fighter.” He shook his head. “He needs to be spanked, is what he needs, the spoiled brat.”

Jermaine exhaled. “The kid ain’t that bad, Barney, and you know it. You’re just mad because the girl—” He cut himself off.

“How long did she work here?” I looked from one to the other.

Barney shot daggers out his eyes at Jermaine before turning back to me. “She worked here about a year—behind the bar and sometimes waitressed. She was a good worker, I’ll give her that.” He said it grudgingly.

“How old is she, exactly?”

“Twenty-five.” Barney laughed at the look on my face. “Yeah, that’s right, she’s at least five years older than Jonny. Now, what would a girl that age want with a boy his age? It ain’t right—there’s something wrong with that girl. And she’s a thief.”

“You don’t know that,” Jermaine cautioned.

“The hell I don’t,” Barney roared. “Every night that little bitch worked the registers came up short, didn’t they? Only on the nights she worked. I never caught her with her hand in the till—but I was sure enough going to fire her thieving ass when she quit.” He gave me a sour look. “She quit because she’d married Jonny, and she hasn’t turned her hand to do a goddamned thing ever since.” He blew out a long breath. “If something’s happened to Mona—I’ll bet you free drinks for the rest of your life, Mr. MacLeod, that little bitch had something to do with it.”

I walked out of the bar into the heat of the early evening. The sun was setting in the west, and darkness was starting to fall over the city. Gravel and shells crunched under my feet as I walked across the parking lot to where I parked my car. I pulled the keys out of my pocket just as a couple of cars pulled into the lot and parked on the other side. My phone rang as I was unlocking my car. With a sigh I pulled it out of my pocket and glanced at the screen. Venus’s face scowled at me, and I smothered a grin the way I always did when I saw the picture. I’d taken it one night when we were at the Avenue Pub, and her expression clearly was
take the picture and I’ll cut you, asshole.

I answered it as I slid my key into the ignition lock. “MacLeod. What’s up?”

“Chanse, it’s Venus.” She sounded tired. “We found your missing person’s car. You might want to get over here—I’ve got the lab working the car. No sign of your missing person, though—but like I said, you probably want to get over here.”

“Where are you?”

“Annunciation and St. Andrew.” She disconnected the call.

I had to wait for a few more cars to get situated in the parking lot before I could get out of there. I swung right on Napoleon and headed up to Magazine. The corner of Annunciation and St. Andrew was my neighborhood—the lower Garden District. St. Andrew and Magazine was the bizarre intersection that confused the hell out of tourists. If you were heading uptown on Magazine Street, that was the light where Magazine became a two-way street for the rest of the way through Uptown to where it ended at Leake Street in Riverbend. If you were heading downtown on Magazine, that corner was where you had to swing to the left to get onto Camp Street—because Magazine was a one-way going the other direction on the other side of St. Andrew. Annunciation was about a block or so on the river side of Magazine Street. That part of the neighborhood had been dangerous before the St. Thomas Projects had been torn down shortly after the turn of the century and a Wal-Mart erected in their place. Another mixed-housing complex, River Gardens, had been built over where the rest of the projects had been.

St. Thomas was probably best known as the place where Sister Helen Prejean had lived and worked—but the reality looked a lot worse than how it appeared in the movie
Dead Man Walking.

I tried to remember the layout of the neighborhood, but wasn’t familiar enough with it to say for sure. I turned right when I got to Jackson Avenue and tried to remember the direction of the one-way streets. Annunciation ran uptown, and St. Andrew ran to the river. I turned on Laurel and turned right again on St. Andrew—and saw the flashing lights at the next corner. There was a spot open halfway down the block, so I pulled over and turned off the car.

Several black women were standing on the sidewalk, and I nodded to them as I started walking toward the police lights.

“Oooh, you don’t wanna go down there.” One of them, her hair covered in a plastic bag, shook her head. There was a cigarette in one hand, and she had a gold tooth.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Looks like they found someone’s car who’s been killed,” another woman said. She was massive, wearing an incredibly tight pair of jeans and a baggy Saints football jersey. Her hair hung in long braids past her shoulders. “A nice car, too.”

I nodded my thanks and kept walking. As I got closer to the corner, I could see the crime lab van was parked diagonally across Annunciation Street. Down at the next corner, a cop was standing, prepared to direct traffic to turn up St. Mary Street at the next corner. There were three squad cars parked, their blue lights flashing. I saw Venus’s SUV, parked on the other side of the lab van. Crime scene tape had been strung from streetlights, blocking off access to the green four-door Mercury Marquis. Crime scene technicians were swarming all over the car, searching, dusting for fingerprints, taking photographs, gathering whatever evidence there was in the car and placing it into bags, which they labeled for processing later. Blaine was on the other side of the Marquis from me, looking through the glove compartment.

Venus was standing just inside the crime scene tape, her arms folded, talking to two patrol officers. She was dressed in her standard gray slacks, red blouse, and gray jacket. Her stiletto heels added a few extra inches to her height, so she was actually looking down on the patrol officers.

Venus noticed me and gave me a barely perceptible nod, which meant
I’ll be with you in a second, okay?

I leaned against a streetlight and looked at the car.

It was a beauty, Jonny hadn’t been kidding about that. The emerald green paint sparkled in the light from the street lamps, and the tires looked new. It didn’t have a key lock on the driver’s door, but buttons for a combination lock. The driver’s side window had apparently been broken out—I could see a few shards of what was left of the glass sticking up in the frame of the door.

Not good
,
I thought,
not good at all.

Venus patted one of the patrol officers on the arm, said something that made all three of them laugh, and ducked underneath the tape to walk over to me.

“Sorry to interrupt your evening,” she said with a slight shake of her head. “Thought you’d want to know.”

“It’s her car?” I asked.

“Yeah, we ran the plate. Registered to Mona O’Neill. Pity—it’s a nice car. Maybe I’ll trade in the SUV for one of those.” She nodded at it. “Driver’s side window is broken out—as you can see, and there’s glass all over the inside front seat and on the floorboards. The front seat’s covered in blood.” She shook her head. “That amount of blood—Mona O’Neill’s not going to turn up alive.” She qualified her statement, “If it’s her blood.”

“I never thought she would turn up alive, to be honest.” I wished again that I hadn’t quit smoking. “Any of the people who live around here see or hear anything?”

“The woman who lives in the corner house here,” she gestured to a fuchsia double shotgun house, which had a crowd of people standing on the porch, “reported the car today, says she didn’t notice it until Sunday morning—it could have been there longer and she didn’t notice it. She didn’t think anything about it, until one of her kids told her about the blood on the front seat. We canvassed the whole area, and nobody else in the neighborhood can say if it was parked here longer than that.” She sighed. “How can you not notice a car like that?” She turned and looked back at the car.