Murder in the Irish Channel (Chanse MacLeod Mysteries) (3 page)

“That’s ’cuz she thinks I’m gonna harm the baby,” Heather said as she walked into the living room, carrying two steaming mugs of coffee. She gave me what was probably supposed to be a smile. “She’s always after me, like I’m some kind of idiot, you know. Like I don’t know I’m not supposed to smoke or drink coffee when I’m pregnant.” She sneered at me. “Like I’m gonna go out and do tequila shots or shoot up some heroin or something.”

I took a tentative sip of the coffee. It was bad. I set it down on top of a newspaper on the coffee table. “And you checked with her friends? The rest of your family?”

He nodded. “I called my brother Robby right away Friday morning. I left a message for him but he never called me back.” He made a face.

“Robby thinks he’s better’n we are.” Heather sneered. “He don’t never take our calls or call us back.”

“My sister Lorelle hadn’t heard from her, either.” He didn’t acknowledge what Heather had said. “I’m the youngest”—he gave me the sheepish smile again—“the baby of the family. Robby and Lorelle are a lot older than me. They’re in their thirties. I was what Ma called a change-of-life baby.” He shrugged again.

“That’s why he’s so spoiled.” Heather shoved a pile off the couch and sat down, folding her hands on her belly.

“I’m not spoiled—”

“The sun rises and shines out of your ass for Mona,” she jeered at him, and looked at me. “Mona thinks I’m not good enough for him, you know. She’s always dropping in here and making fun of the way I keep house, my cooking—she’s
awful.
”

I refrained from mentioning her housekeeping skills left a little to be desired. “So, her name is Mona?”

Jonny didn’t look at Heather. “Mona Catherine Rowland O’Neill, yeah. Rowland’s the maiden name.”

I wrote it down. “Did she work?”

“Not since Katrina.” Jonny frowned. “She used to work as a property manager for an apartment complex on the West Bank before the storm, but the place didn’t reopen right away after Katrina—too much damage, and so Ma just retired.”

“She always said she was too old to be looking for a new job, so she decided to stay home,” Heather said. She made a face. “She had a nice little nest egg she was sitting on.”

“My dad was killed when I was little,” Jonny explained. “Mom got a big settlement from the insurance and the company he worked for—he was killed on the job. She didn’t need to work, she just didn’t like sitting around doing nothing—that’s why she got the job in the first place, after I started school.”

“So, how did she fill her days after the flood?” I asked.

“She did a lot of volunteer work—you know, helping people rebuild their houses and stuff—I mean, she didn’t do construction work, but for a long time she drove around passing out supplies to people working on houses in the Ninth Ward,” Jonny went on. “She also spent a lot of time volunteering at St. Anselm’s, and you know, she got really involved in trying to save it.”

That got my attention. “She was one of the protesters at St. Anselm’s?”

St. Anselm’s had been in the local news for months. One of the side effects from the depopulation of the city after Katrina and the levee failure was a corresponding drop in attendance—and donations—to the Catholic Church. As revenues fell, the archdiocese decided it needed to tighten its belt, and part of that tightening included the closing of two churches in the city. Archbishop Pugh was stunned when the parishioners flatly refused to let their churches be closed, and St. Anselm’s had become the focal point of the battle—because of its location in Uptown New Orleans. St. Anselm’s was technically in the Irish Channel, but it was only a few blocks on the river side of the Garden District on Louisiana Avenue. Our Lady of Prompt Succor on the West Bank wasn’t as beautiful or historic, so the news coverage had focused primarily on the war over St. Anselm’s. The parishioners were fighting the archbishop with everything they could muster. Archbishop Pugh was not from New Orleans originally—which was pointed out fairly regularly by the rebellious parishioners. He also didn’t appreciate the disobedience of loyal Catholics, and imperiously refused to budge or compromise. As the struggle dragged on, it was becoming increasingly acrimonious.

The St. Anselm’s parishioners had taken to holding twenty-four-hour-a-day candlelight vigils inside the church, and the archbishop had demanded the police evict them earlier the previous week. Every news program in the city had camera crews there that day, it seemed, and public opinion had not taken kindly to the sight of good Catholics being dragged out of their church in handcuffs by the police. An ambitious local politician denounced the police raid as a violation of the separation of church and state. The switchboard at the archdiocese—and at City Hall—had lit up.

Archbishop Pugh quickly dropped the charges, but the damage was already done.

Jonny nodded. “Yeah, she was doing vigils over there all the time—”

“She was there all night every night—she was one of the ringleaders,” Heather chimed in. “She wasn’t happy she wasn’t one of the ones that got hauled off to jail, let me tell you what. She tried getting me—
me
—over there.” She sniffed. “Tells me because I’m pregnant, the police wouldn’t dare do anything to me.” She shifted in her seat. “I’m not risking my baby for your stupid church, I told her. Can you imagine the nerve?” She narrowed her eyes, and in a snotty voice, added, “She says she was spending the night there praying.” She snorted. “No telling what she got up to in the church all night with strange men.” She pushed herself up to her feet and padded off into the back of the house.

“Don’t pay her no mind,” Jonny said, his face sad. “Her and Ma don’t get along too well, as you probably figured out already.”

“Was your mother doing a vigil the night before she disappeared?”

“I don’t know.” He looked sheepish again. “I mean, that’s what I thought—she was pretty much there every night, but I don’t know none of those people…I haven’t been to church in years.” He hung his head. “Ma was good about it—I mean, I know she was disappointed I didn’t go anymore, but she never pushed me on it. Ever since I dropped out of de la Salle, I just didn’t see no point in going to church anymore, you know? I mean, it just don’t make no sense to me, never did. And I figured the cops would talk to them anyway, so I didn’t have to, you know? You know how those people are. Why don’t you come to church no more, Jonny?” He shuddered. “I mean, why deal with that if I don’t have to?”

I nodded. “Why don’t your mother and Heather get along?”

“It isn’t as bad as Heather makes it out to be, you know.” He lowered his voice. “Yeah, Ma thought Heather got pregnant on purpose, so I’d have to marry her. She didn’t think me marrying her was a good idea—she thought we were too young to get married.” He scratched his head. “The rubber broke, ya know? How did Heather do that on purpose? But Ma wouldn’t listen. She never liked Heather from the first.”

“She wouldn’t like any girl you married,” Heather shouted from the other room. “Nobody was good enough for her
baby
. I could have been the Queen of fucking Sheba and she wouldn’t have cared.”

“She bought us this house, didn’t she?” Jonny shouted back, his face turning red. “Which is more than your ma ever did for us!”

“My parents never made you feel like white trash!”

“Why you want to say stuff like that?” He got up and gave me an apologetic look. “Give me a minute, okay?” He disappeared through the doorway, and I could hear them murmuring to each other. After about a minute or two, he came walking back in. “Sorry.” He plopped back down on the sofa. “Hormones, like I said. I sure will be glad when the baby comes.”

Yes, because things will be so much easier with a screaming baby in the house
,
I thought. “Where does your mother live? Close by?” I could feel a headache coming on. I was starting to regret this already.

“Just up the street—the next block over.”

“Do you mind taking me over there so I can take a look around her place?” I stood up and stretched. I also wanted to get out of the house.

“Not at all.” He got up and stretched. “Let me get the keys and I’ll walk you over there.” He wandered back out of the room.

I walked over to the front door and prayed I would never have to set foot in the depressing little shotgun house ever again.

Once I was out of the claustrophobic atmosphere of the house Jonny shared with his wife, I felt like I could breathe again.

It had gotten hotter while I’d been inside—going back out into it felt like I had stuck my head inside an oven on its highest setting. I started sweating as soon as I stepped out onto the porch. The glare of the midday sun was blinding, so I slipped on my sunglasses. A gray cat that had been cleaning itself on the porch took off like a bolt of lightning, vaulting over the fence into the next yard. I mopped at my forehead as I headed for the front gate, and waited for Jonny on the other side of it.

“It’s just on the next block—not too far,” Jonny said, fighting with the gate. He freed it from where it had lodged against the walk and slammed it closed behind him. “Damn, it’s hotter than a motherfucker out here.”

He kept up a running patter of talk as we walked down Constance Street, away from the sounds of the cars a block or so away over on Louisiana Avenue. There was no sign of human life anywhere on Constance—the houses were all closed up. It was eerie—if not for the traffic sounds in the distance, we could have been in a post-apocalypse movie. We crossed Harmony Street, and just like in any number of neighborhoods in the city, crossing the street was like stepping into another world. The houses on Jonny’s block were in disrepair, but this block was decidedly more upscale. There were still shotgun houses and Creole cottages, but they were much better kept. The lawns were lush, green, and carefully manicured. Flowerbeds erupted in riotous colors. The scent of sweet olive hung in the air. The houses were pristine, and the cars parked in driveways or alongside the street looked newer and more expensive.

Almost every house had a security company sign planted where it could be plainly seen in the flowerbeds.

Jonny never stopped talking, not even to take a long breath or to give me a chance to respond with anything other than a monosyllabic grunt. He clearly was one of those people not comfortable with silence. But there wasn’t any way I could think of to ask him to be quiet without sounding rude—and I have found it’s never a good idea to be rude to a client.

Even if said client couldn’t afford to pay my standard rate, he was
still
my client and deserved to be treated with respect.

And there was, of course, the possibility that his nonstop chatter might have simply been a symptom of being worried about his mother, and if rambling on and on made him feel better somehow, who was I to deny him this small comfort?

Oddly enough, he was talking about everything under the sun
except
his mother.

I found my mind wandering a bit as he went on about his training regimen, his diet, his unbeaten ring record, cage fighting strategies, and how MMA was different from boxing and wrestling even though it was a combination of the two disciplines. His voice rose and fell as he became more excited about his topic, and every once in a while he would demonstrate a striking technique for me. It was a little hard for me to take him seriously, since I was almost a foot taller and almost certainly a hundred pounds heavier.

Still, I was well aware that a skilled and well-trained fighter always has the ability to inflict some serious damage on a far larger opponent—and he obviously took his sport very seriously.

So I managed to politely nod or make appropriate noises whenever it seemed to be called for—which fortunately didn’t seem to be very often. I began wondering if he was just trying to impress me, or if he didn’t have anyone else he felt comfortable talking to about his fighting.

Then again, his wife seemed to be the kind of woman who wouldn’t want her husband to keep his friends—especially since she was pregnant.

You’re being judgmental and misogynist
,
I scolded myself.
You don’t know her well enough to make those kinds of judgments, and she may be completely different when she’s not pregnant. How would you feel if you were eight months pregnant in this heat, living in a dump, and your hormones were raging out of control? You’d be kind of abrupt and bitchy, too, at the very least.

We had almost reached the end of the block when Jonny stopped and said, “Here we are.”

Mona O’Neill’s house was on the same side of the street as Jonny’s, but was so completely different it could have been on the moon. It was a beautiful double camelback-style shotgun house painted a rich, dark purple with black trim. Unlike her son’s house, hers appeared to be in perfect repair. Her front porch didn’t sag, and the house looked level and solid. There was a porch swing on the opposite end of the porch from the front door. The shutters were latched open, and the curtains were also open. The windows looked clean. There was a paved driveway to the right, behind an electric gate. The black wrought iron fence was in perfect repair. Red, white, and pink roses bloomed in the flowerbeds that ran along the front of the porch, and a few bees were buzzing around the open faces. The lawn was a dark emerald green, perfectly manicured but getting close to needing to be mowed. Her statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary was in perfect repair, and looked brand-new. It stood on top of smoothed-out white sand, in the center of a circle of polished stones. The entire front yard was shaded by the massive live oak next door, its long, heavy branches protecting Mona’s place from direct sunlight.