Head to Head (11 page)

“Nicky, darling, is something wrong?”

Uh-oh, Buxom Red at the door, oh so concerned, smelling like two hundred dollars an ounce and wearing fifty times that much jewelry on her impressive self.

“No, everything’s fine. I’ve just had some difficult news.”

The woman sashayed into the room like a cat ready to rub the heck out of somebody’s legs. She looked at me like I was a grub worm that had wriggled its way in from the deck. I stood, gentleman to the core, and Black made the introductions.

“Gillian, this is Detective Morgan. Detective, this is Gillian Coventry from my London office.”

“How do you do?” I said. “I won’t keep you from your guests any longer, Doctor Black.”

“I’ll take you back in the launch myself.”

Well, that surprised the hell out of me. “No need. I can wait for Tyler to come pick me up.”

Black looked at me for a long moment. Maybe he was offended. Maybe he wasn’t used to anyone ever turning him down. “I need to head back, anyway,” he said. Did that ever get a look out of Buxom Red!

“Oh, Nicky,” she purred. The cat analogy was still working. “The fireworks haven’t even started yet.”

Interpretation: “I want to sleep with you, Nicky poo, in the worst way. I can make you scream with pleasure all night long.” Suddenly, I wondered where Ms. Coventry had been the night of the murder. She was a little scary acting, but then I’m not used to society types. Was she jealous enough to get rid of Sylvie?

“Have you been visiting us here at the lake very long, Ms. Coventry?” I asked, watching her closely and wondering exactly what she did in London. I could think of a few things, but they weren’t kind.

“She got in this morning,” Black said sharply, obviously well aware of my suspicions. “She never even met Sylvie.”

The dim lightbulb deep in Buxom Red’s brain suddenly came on. “Do you suspect
me
, Detective?” All shrill and bent out of shape. Curls and breasts aquiver with outrage. It was a sight to behold. Dolly Parton hit by a stun gun.

“I suspect everyone, ma’am. It’s my job.” Deadpan Jack Webb.

“Gillian, I’ll try to see you later tonight or early in the morning before your flight out.”

Gillian balked, but he sweet-talked her across the stateroom, out into the hallway. Then he came back and took my arm in a tight grip and led me to the launch. No sweet-talking going on now, no talking going on at all. I stepped down into the stern of the launch and sat on a padded cushion as he manned the controls. I watched him jerk loose his black satin bow tie, then grab hold of the helm with both hands, probably pretending it was my throat. He pushed up the throttle with not a lot of finesse, and the bow rose sharply, as if the pricey craft was shocked at the mistreatment, then leveled off as we gained speed across the water.

I held on to the side, glad our little evening together was about over, and more relieved than I should have been that he didn’t appear to be guilty. Ten minutes later I was still wondering why I cared if he was or not when he suddenly cut the motor. The launch stopped on a dime and rose as the wake washed forcefully against the hull and rocked us like two babes in a cradle.

Not good. Alone in the middle of a very deep and dark lake with a possible killer who was really, really mad at me. I reached inside my shirt and unhooked my holster. Black noticed the little snap it made.

“What are you going to do now, Detective? Shoot me?” He spat the words out. Sharp. Angry. Not his usual impeccable diction.

“Maybe. Depends on you.”

“I didn’t kill her.” He was approaching me, and I wondered if Sylvie had been killed in a boat. This boat. I wondered if there was a sharp saber stowed away somewhere in the upholstery for enraged moments like this. Neither of us looked up as the fireworks started in the distance. A huge starburst exploded in the sky above us, bathing us both in pink light. Another followed quickly and painted us green.

I said, “I don’t know if you did or not, but I will soon enough.”

“You’re pretty damn sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Now, why don’t you start the motor again and let me get back to work?” Another burst of color, and we turned yellow before everything faded to black again.

“I want to read the autopsy file first. Out here on the water, where I won’t be disturbed. You got the shock out of me you wanted, just the way you planned. Now give me the goddamned file. Her father’s going to want to know how she died, and I want to tell him the truth.”

I handed over the file, without a word. He took it with him to the cockpit, sat down at the helm, and switched on a lamp above his head. I watched his jaw working as he leafed through the photographs one after another. He didn’t react visibly this time, but he read each page carefully, pulling certain pictures back out in order to check them against the written accounts. It took at least half an hour, and I sat in the rocking launch and said nothing and watched the magnificent fireworks. He never looked up at the show in the sky, not once. He’d made me feel like the aforementioned grub worm, and I deserved it. But hey, that’s why they pay me the big bucks.

When he finally finished, he handed the file back to me without comment, started the motor, and headed back to Cedar Bend. When we got there, he left the launch and stalked down the dock, and it was Tyler who came running with a big smile, eager to help me off the launch and back to where my car was parked. At least somebody liked me.

“You sayin’ you dint know Sylvie was a Montenegro?”

I was sitting in the upstairs window of a safe house overlooking the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, with two undercover guys. Both were beefy and florid, of Cajun stock, which reflected big time in their accents and mannerisms. I almost expected them to break out a fiddle and washboard at any minute and play me a foot-stomping version of “Jambalaya.” But they were all business and scary as hell, and I prayed they weren’t on the take, or I might end up as a human anchor somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico.

I’d flown to New Orleans early that morning for Sylvie Border’s funeral, had reported in at the NOPD, and had been assigned to two gorillas posing as Homo sapiens. Don’t get me wrong, but sometimes gorillas are just what you need when you’re snooping around in a strange city. Especially when your partner got all snazzied up and flew off to New York to meet a supermodel. Thinking Sylvie’s family would reside in the Garden District or in another upscale neighborhood, I was surprised when Thierry Baxter (Baxter sounds more like Indiana than a French Cajun, right?) and Jean-Claude Longet drove across the Mississippi River Bridge to Algiers. Even I knew that place’s reputation, which, by all counts, was where all the criminals in the state of Louisiana lived and prospered happily ever after. It was also where Sylvie Border grew up.

“Nope. Never heard of the Montenegro family until today.”

“Some call ’em Cajun Mafia, but Sylvie’s daddy built it up all by hisself. He be de head of de family, and he already got out feelers to see who went and whacked ’is baby girl.” That was Thierry. He did most of the talking for the dynamic duo.

“Well, fellas, that puts a whole new slant on my case. Do you think she was hit by another crime family?”

“Dunno,” said Thierry. “But Jacques Montenegro’ll fin’ out.” Thierry and I had high-powered binoculars. There were a couple of surveillance guys from the FBI operating a video camera and a Nikon in the bedroom next door. Law enforcement cooperation at its finest. The feds were too busy to sit around chatting with me, but they said I could borrow their funeral tapes if I went through the proper channels.

For at least twenty minutes, Thierry had been identifying thugs, murderers, counterfeiters, and smugglers by name as they entered the church to pay their respects to the departed soap star. Jean-Claude soon excused himself and took a circuitous route out of the building and headed for the funeral, dressed in a black suit that made him look like a night-painted German tank. “I best get me o’er dere. It’s pret’ bad ’bout dat Sylvie. She was a sweet li’l thin’, dint like paparazzi knowin’ ’bout her daddy.”

The consensus seemed to be that Sylvie didn’t deserve to die, certainly not in the way she did. But Mafia connections often ended up badly—I’d watched the
Godfather
movies a couple of times. I perked up when Nicholas Black arrived in the typical long black limousine. Ah, this high-on-the-hog living was really something. I focused my field glasses on him when he got out of the back. “What about Nicholas Black? Does he have any kind of affiliation with the Montenegro family?”

Thierry shook his head. “He don’ come ’round much. You can check dos FBI films. They on all de time.”

“The FBI’s on the family around the clock?”

Thierry nodded; then he took off when the funeral seemed about to begin. Five minutes later I watched him through the binoculars as he climbed the church steps and disappeared inside. I wanted to be late so I could stand in the back and watch the mourners without being seen, so I hung around for another ten minutes. I was not looking forward to the next hour. I had a thing about funerals—didn’t like them, didn’t go to them, and I rarely wear dresses. Okay, I never wear dresses, but out of respect for Sylvie’s family, I put on a circa-1980 sleeveless, ankle-length black dress with a broomstick skirt. I added a black short-sleeve linen blazer over it to hide my shoulder holster, because I’ll be damned if I’ll prance around Algiers without a weapon on me. Even at a funeral. Even if I melt into a puddle in this muggy, hellish Louisiana heat. Hell, everyone who’d entered the church had a gun bulge somewhere on their person. I’d even left my sneakers at home in lieu of these too tight black patent flats, but I drew the line at panty hose. No way. I’d lost a lot of weight since I’d last worn the dress, so it hung on me like I was a metal coat hanger or a scarecrow. Oh well, that’s the way the ball bounces.

Thierry had reminded me to cover my head, so I’d picked up a black silk mantilla at a Dillard’s on the way to the funeral. Draping it over my head until I looked almost female, I entered the church and nodded at the six big goons standing guard at the holy water font. They were all suitably somber, their guns respectfully tucked out of sight. Thierry was one of them. Jean-Claude was nowhere in sight.

The church was nearly full; the drone of the priest told me that the funeral mass was well under way. I crossed myself with holy water the way I’d seen on television and lurked in the back. The deceased’s family sat together in the first few pews, and it didn’t take me long to notice that Nicholas Black was seated in the row behind them. He seemed to be alone. I didn’t recognize anyone else, until I heard loud weeping and picked out Gil Serna on an outside aisle. He was taking it hard. People were beginning to turn around to see who was bawling. He had some woman with perfectly cut and highlighted hair with him, probably his press agent, and a husky, bald guy, probably his personal bodyguard. Stars didn’t go anywhere without their “people.” I had hoped he’d come. It would give me an opportunity to interview him without Charlie having to pay for a flight out to La La Land.

The casket was closed, of course. I wondered if Black had filled the father in on the gory details. Sylvie had about the same number of flower sprays that Rudolph Valentino’d had at his funeral in the 1930s. Across the altar, down every aisle, everywhere you looked. It smelled like incense and roses, and there was quite a bit of crying and shuffling in the cavernous sanctuary. The service continued, and in deference to the black patent torture devices on my feet, I took a seat in the back row, behind a pillar. I saw Jean-Claude guarding a side entrance that led to the adjoining cemetery. What did they expect? An armed assault on the coffin?

After the Mass concluded, the casket was picked up by the eight pallbearers. To my surprise, Nicholas Black was one of them. More surprising, Gil Serna was, too. He wept like a baby all the way to the grave site. Certainly appeared to be grief stricken, but then again, he was an actor. Actors did tears.

Outside, I stood back at the perimeter of the onlookers and waited for the opportunity to approach the family. Chairs for the family and pallbearers were placed around the giant Montenegro family crypt, and the mourners began to file by and offer condolences. About the time I reached Sylvie’s parents, Nicholas Black caught sight of me and tried to head me off, probably afraid I’d offend the grieving family. After all, I was that cold-hearted bitch he didn’t like much.

“Jacques, Gloria, this is Claire Morgan. She’s the detective in charge of the investigation,” he said very low and respectful instead of whisking me away. He added something in what sounded like flawless French, which, of course, I didn’t understand and which, of course, ticked me off. Whatever he said, it piqued their interest. “Have you found out the animal who did this to my baby?” Jacques Montenegro said, eyes rimmed with red from weeping and lack of sleep. He was tall, elegant-looking, and slight. Delicate, sort of. Well, he looked like a Frenchman.

“Not yet, sir. But I will. Please accept my condolences.”

“Thank you.”

Sylvie’s mother was pretty, a small woman with graying blond hair and dark eyes. She didn’t look at me or say anything, just kept wiping her tears with a white handkerchief embroidered with red roses. I started to ask if I could come by later and ask them some questions, but Jacques beat me to it. He gestured for me to lean down close.

“I have questions for you, if you please,” he said near to my ear. Couldn’t say any mafioso had ever whispered in my ear before. “Please come to my house after this is done, and we will talk.” His Cajun accent was less pronounced than that of my undercover friends, and more educated. He wasn’t going to say
gar-rawn-tee
, I guarantee it.

“Yes, sir, thank you,” I said, deciding things were moving along rather well.

Black took my arm then, which was becoming an annoying habit of his, and escorted me away from the family as if he owned me. His voice remained low and guarded. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming down here?”

“Excuse me? Since when do I have to check in with you to do my job?” I tried to pull my elbow free. He didn’t let go, holding me gently, but firmly. Now I was really getting pissed off. I started to let him have it, but then that would cause a scene. I’d save that for later.

“I flew down on the Lear. You could have come with me.”

“How thoughtful of you, Doctor Black. Is that so you could keep tabs on me?”

“You might need it around here.”

“You don’t know me very well, or you’d know I can take care of myself.”

Black examined my bruised eye for a long, significant moment; then he frowned down at my outfit. “Where’d you find this nun getup? The Salvation Army?”

I said, “Ha-ha. You slay me.” An unfortunate choice of words.

Black said, “I wouldn’t suggest pulling that gun you’re wearing under the blazer.”

“Oh, darn, and I just love to shoot up funerals.”

Black did not find me amusing. Imagine. “You can ride back to the house with me if you like.”

“I thought you weren’t close with Sylvie’s family.”

“Who said I was? Jacques wants me to come out so he can talk to me, just like he wants to talk to you. I’m not staying long. You might as well ride along.” I was about to say I had a ride, thank you very much, when he added, “Gil and his friends are coming with me.”

“Why not?” I said, all graciousness and smiles.

Gil Serna blubbered all the way to the Montenegro estate, so I didn’t get a chance to question him, even though Black introduced us all around as we left the church. I sat across from Gil’s blond, good-looking female agent named Mathias Grobe—yeah, that was really her name—who absently patted him on the knee and murmured little things that I couldn’t understand. The big, bald bodyguard guy was named Jimmy Smith. Go figure. Not Jimmy the Rat nor Jimmy the Hammer nor Jimmy the Terminator. Plain old Jimmy Smith, and I wasn’t sure there was anything inside his head, judging by the blank stare coming out of his squinty little black eyes. Maybe he should have been called Jimmy the Lobotomy. I’m unkind; I know it. Sorry.

Nicholas Black sat beside me, and I tried not to think about how handsome he was. It was irksome that I noticed the size of his hands, the way his fingers were long and tapered and tanned where he rested one on his crossed knee. He was close enough for me to pick up a hint of a clean-smelling cologne. Nothing I recognized, but I’m not into expensive fragrances. Okay, okay, I admit it. I’m attracted to him. I’ve got hormones. He rings my bell just a little bit. So what? I just could never act on it, not as long as he was a suspect. Not even if he wasn’t a suspect. Hands off. Off limits. Bad news. Possible killer. And although I was rusty with men, courtship, dating, and anything remotely connected to any of the above, I sensed he was attracted to me as well. I wasn’t that rusty. Or maybe he was just figuring out the best way to off me. Never can tell.

“Mr. Serna,” I said at length, realizing I had to broach the subject sometime, and it might as well be now, when his tears had lessened. “I’m going to have to ask you a few questions. I realize you’re upset now, and that this isn’t a good time, but I’m due back in Missouri tonight. May I have a few minutes of your time later, after we arrive at the house and you’ve had time to compose yourself?”

Mathias looked offended at my dastardly forwardness, and Jimmy the Baldy looked like nobody was at home in his head. Then he looked straight at me and left me no doubt. Gil was distraught, but he nodded and turned to stare out the window. He could’ve been acting; he did Academy Award–caliber stuff, but I didn’t think so. It’s hard to cry so long, even if you’re not putting on a show. Trust me, I know. On the other hand, he could be crying because he cut off his girlfriend’s head and now regretted it.

The Montenegro estate was the proverbial sight to behold. More like an armed camp and
Gone with the Wind
set backed up to the Mississippi River. It looked like it had once been a real antebellum plantation, but there was an eight-foot concrete wall surrounding the grounds, which had to be at least twenty acres of live oaks dripping gray Spanish moss. The guards at the front gate actually looked inside our vehicle, checked the trunk, then waved us through the iron gates. I bet they didn’t even do that at Madonna’s house. Michael Jackson’s, yes.

The house had the obligatory white columns in front, actually around all four sides, supporting long, shaded verandas on both floors. I could smell the white waxy blossoms of a giant magnolia tree beside the front porch as soon as I got out of the car. The scent of roses was even stronger in the hot, motionless air. I was having a mild and sweaty heatstroke in my black blazer but resisted the urge to fan myself with my Glock automatic.

We were ushered inside a long, wide foyer that ran the length of the house, and I greeted the air-conditioning like a long-lost lover. Through an eight-foot back door, which stood open, I could see a long green lawn that stretched to the river. A barge was moving right along, the top of it visible over the levee. Drugs and prostitution obviously paid well in New Orleans.

People, all dressed in black, all hushed voices and reverent manner, were milling around the bottom floor, which was comprised of a living room, dining room, den, office, and huge kitchen in the back, probably needed to serve all the armed henchman standing around. I know because I checked it out as soon as we got there. I like to know where the exits are when visiting godfathers. Everything was beautifully decorated in pastels, not the heavy dark wood associated with the Francis Ford Coppola movies. Of course, they were Italians. Louisiana gangsters obviously liked the Florida motif and hired interior decorators from Palm Beach.