Murder in the Irish Channel (Chanse MacLeod Mysteries) (27 page)

He didn’t offer me his hand, his beady little eyes narrowing as he got closer. “Have a seat, Mr. MacLeod.” He gestured to the couch.

I sat down and crossed my right leg over my left knee. The couch was as uncomfortable as it was ugly. The whole room was full of ugly furniture and art—like it had been decorated by someone with more money than taste. He sat down in a chair on the other side of the coffee table from me. There were several magazines on the coffee table—
Fortune
,
GQ
,
Time
,
and
People.

Each cover featured his smiling face.

“You’re digging around in my business.” He watched my face as he spoke.

I shrugged. “Your name has come up several times in the course of my investigation. But only peripherally, which is odd, yes.”

He sipped his Scotch. “And just what are those circumstances?”

“I really am not at liberty to discuss my investigation.” I pulled a photocopy of the cashier’s check out of my pocket and put it down on the coffee table. “This was the first time your name came up. What can you tell me about this check?”

He pulled a pair of reading glasses out of an inner jacket pocket and slid them on. He reached down and picked up the photocopy. He pursed his lips as he looked at it for a few minutes before setting it back down on the coffee table. “That was a bonus I paid Mona O’Neill,” he said slowly, his face unreadable. “She manages her son, Jonny. He’s got quite a future. She signed him to my MMA promotion, and that was her reward, a signing bonus.”

“Isn’t it usual for the athlete to get the signing bonus rather than the manager?”

The left corner of his mouth rose for just a moment. “Jonny received a check for the same amount.”

“Isn’t this a little generous?” I folded the photocopy back up and slid it back into my pocket. “That’s a hundred grand, just for signing a contract. From what research I’ve done, I don’t see how such a contract could be worth it to you.”

“Mr. MacLeod, I plan on making MMA the next WWE,” he replied, taking off the glasses and replacing them. “If Vince McMahon can make millions with his live-action cartoon, it stands to reason actual fighting can make more. I have several multi-million-dollar contracts being negotiated with cable channels to air the fights. We’re going to do a reality show.” He waved his hand dismissively, as though I were just one of those moronic little people who couldn’t possibly understand how big business worked. “If you have some money lying around, you might want to invest. I guarantee you, this is going to explode.”

“Even so, this seems like small potatoes for someone of your stature.” I managed to change my tone on the word
stature
, turning it into a mildly veiled insult.

“Maybe.” His eyes narrowed briefly. “It interests me.”

“Is it true that you want to buy St. Anselm’s from the archdiocese, turn it into a home?”

This time he did smile. His forehead and cheeks didn’t move. “You really shouldn’t take comments on Internet message boards seriously, Mr. MacLeod.”

“When was the last time you spoke to Mona O’Neill?”

“When I gave her that check. It was on Wednesday afternoon, last week.” He scratched his forehead. “Yes, it was Wednesday.”

Abby was right, the check’s date wasn’t the same as the day she got it.
Aloud, I asked, “How did she seem to you?”

He gave me a startled look. “The same as she always did—like a middle-aged woman who dyed her hair and wore too much makeup. I’m really not in the habit of having personal conversations with people like that, if that’s what you’re asking.”

I bit my lip and clenched my hands into fists. It was taking a lot of my self-control to not launch myself across the table and punch the self-satisfied smirk off his face. Of course he didn’t pay any attention to Mona O’Neill—she wasn’t a twenty-year-old blonde with enormous breasts and a Slavic accent. “She was last seen the next evening—you haven’t heard from her, have you?”

He suppressed a yawn. “Why would I? You’re beginning to bore me, Mr. MacLeod.”

“I didn’t ask for this meeting,” I retorted before I could stop myself—and then it struck me.
Why
had he asked me to come?

He wanted to know what I knew, and if it was a threat to him.

“I’d heard that you were asking questions about me, Mr. MacLeod, and I usually find it much easier to answer those questions myself.” Again, the ghost of a smile appeared at the corners of his mouth. “But I now find that this is a colossal waste of my time.” He waved his hand in dismissal. “You remember the way to the elevator, don’t you?”

I rose, and walked to the door. I paused, and looked back. “You know, would you mind answering one more question for me, Mr. Barras?”

He gave me a bored look. “Yes, what is it?”

“The one thing I don’t understand is, why did you buy Cypress Gardens from Luke Marino?”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “I thought it was an excellent investment opportunity.”

“A storm-damaged apartment complex being run by a non-profit organization providing housing to low-income families.” I tilted my head to one side. “Somehow I doubt that. And you’re a stockholder in Global Insurance.”

“I own a lot of stock in a lot of different companies.”

“Maybe you instructed Global not to pay out on Luke’s claim so you could get a better price on the place?”

He took another drink of his Scotch, and was it my imagination, or was his hand trembling just a little bit? “I won’t deny that Cypress Gardens came to my attention because of the Global Insurance connection, and maybe I got a better deal on the place than I would have if Global had paid out the claim, but I am not involved in the day-to-day business of the company, Mr. MacLeod. That wouldn’t exactly be legal, now would it?” He sipped the Scotch again. “One thing that I thought was rather odd, though—it might be of interest to you.”

“And what might that be?”

He licked his thin lips. “I have been trying to get Jonny O’Neill in my promotion for months now, Mr. MacLeod. He’s been doing fights at my casino in Mississippi, but his mother was resistant. She didn’t think I had her son’s best interests at heart.”

“Did you?”

“I’m always interested in my investments, Mr. MacLeod.” He waved his hand. “Jonny has star potential, but that foolish woman didn’t see it. She thought I was going to exploit her son. I offered her the rather generous signing bonuses several weeks ago, and she practically spat in my face. You can imagine my shock last Wednesday when she called me and asked if the offer still stood. I said, of course, and she came by the next day to sign the contracts and pick up the checks.” He shrugged. “Curious, don’t you think?”

“Maybe she just changed her mind.”

“Perhaps.”

“She seemed to be doing that a lot last week,” I replied. “She changed her mind about letting Jonny sign with you, she changed her mind about testifying for Luke Marino—”

“She changed her mind about testifying?” His face didn’t change, but his tone had altered a little bit.

I nodded. “She notified his lawyer she was going to change her testimony. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

His face remained impassive. “Why would I?”

I stood up. “Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Barras.”

He stopped me as I started out the door. “Mr. MacLeod?”

“Yes?”

“That check you showed me?” He licked his lips again. “As I mentioned earlier, there were two of them—one for Mona, and one for Jonny.”

I frowned. Had Mona given Jonny his check? He hadn’t said anything about getting a windfall.

Then I remembered him saying
I got money
and handing me the hundred-dollar bill out of his pocket.

He smiled again. “Mona insisted that both checks be made out to her.”

I bowed my head and walked down the hallway back to the foyer, my heart racing.

What happened to the other check?

I stood inside the front lobby of Poydras Tower, watching the cars crawling by in the nonstop downpour.

Fifty thousand dollars was missing, and so was Mona O’Neill.

She’d cashed the check on Thursday—the same day her son was murdered and she disappeared.

“Do you need a cab, sir?” the security guard asked.

“That would be great, thank you,” I replied without turning around.

My phone started ringing, and when I pulled it out of my pocket I could see
Loren McKeithen Calling
on the screen. “MacLeod,” I said, touching the red Accept button.

“Great news, Chanse!” he blustered in my ear. “The best possible news! Global
settled
!”

“Cool.”

“So it’s over—send me an invoice for what we owe you—”

“I hadn’t deposited your check yet,” I cut him off. “I’ll e-mail the invoice and drop the check off at your office.”

“No need—just send the invoice, and I’ll bring you a replacement check by,” he enthused. “We’ll definitely need to celebrate. I should be finished here at the office today around six. Will you be home then?”

“I can be.”

“See you then,” he replied and hung up.

I put my phone back in my pocket and went out the front doors to wait for my cab under the overhang. The wind was blowing rain under it, but it only could get about halfway up the sidewalk—the half closest to the building was dry as a bone. Cars were still driving at a snail’s pace through the rain, and visibility was poor. The water in the gutters had risen up over the sidewalk, and there was at least three inches of water on Poydras Street. The wind had picked up as well. The trees on the neutral ground were bending and swaying. Leaves were being ripped away and outer edges of branches were snapping off, turning into dangerous projectiles. I watched as a woman on the other side of the street struggled to keep hold of her umbrella, which finally turned inside out, her hair getting soaked and ruined in a matter of seconds.

So, I reasoned, the check in Mona’s desk had been for Jonny. The other check had been the one she’d intended to use for herself, and she’d cashed it rather than depositing it. The only explanation for that was she intended to give the money to Robby, so he could make good his embezzlements and stay out of jail. Maybe, I reflected, all of this simply had to do with a robbery, pure and simple. The money was gone—but Robby’s body had been left behind, so where was Mona?

Robby had been desperate. His marriage was crumbling, he was about to go to jail, and he was about to lose everything. Desperate people do desperate things—and threatening to go to court to break Jonny’s trust and access the money, a move that would humiliate his mother and crush his brother, could, horrible as it was, be understood in the context that he was drowning and desperately trying to grab onto a lifeline—any lifeline—to save himself and his own family.

Mona herself had been in a terrible predicament. No matter how badly things between her and Robby had deteriorated, he was still her son—and no mother would want to see her son go to jail, even if he deserved it. She couldn’t steal from one son to help out the other, so perhaps her decision to change her testimony had been an attempt to get money out of either Global or Luke Marino. But she’d never asked Luke for the money—wouldn’t she have just asked him for a loan?

And why didn’t she just cash in some of her own CDs or sell some of her investments? Wouldn’t that have been easier and avoided compromising her own ethics?

And ultimately, she had sold Jonny out to get money from Morgan Barras—at least in her own mind.

None of this made the least bit of a sense.

A United cab sloshed through the shallow creek that Poydras Street was turning into and came to a stop in front of where I was standing. I dashed through the rising water, opened the back door, and slid into the seat, slamming the door behind me.

I still got drenched.

I gave my address to the driver, who just shook his head. “Man, I don’t know how close I can get to that, Camp Street’s under water.”

I sighed. “The corner of St. Charles and Martin Luther King is fine—I can walk from there.”

When he dropped me off, I paid him, opened the door and the umbrella. St. Charles Avenue crests in the center—the neutral ground with the streetcar tracks is higher than the road, which slants down to the sidewalk in both directions. The water was halfway up my calves, and I fought against the fast-moving dirty water to cross the street. Lightning pierced the heavy gray darkness, followed by an immediate crack of thunder that set off car alarms in every direction—and the stoplights and street lights went dark. The neutral ground was also under shallow water, and my thighs began to ache from the effort of moving my legs through the rising water. The umbrella was becoming more and more useless as I walked, as the blasts of wind drove the heavy thick drops into me, soaking my clothes through and making them cling to my skin. And I knew the closer I got to Camp Street, the deeper the water would be.

If it isn’t the lowest-lying street in my neighborhood, Camp Street has to be pretty damned close. As I waded across Prytania, I could see through the gloom that people were already pulling the cars up on the neutral ground and on the higher ground of Coliseum Square. I saw an eighteen-wheeler heading downtown throwing up huge waves of dirty water, complete with whitecaps, as it made its way through the flooding street.