Murder in the Rue Ursulines

Chapter Fifteen

Rosemary’s house was in the Bywater, on Desire Street between Burgundy and Dauphine.

I tried calling Venus as I ran out of the house and got into my car, but only got her voicemail. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely hit the speed-dial number. I left her a very tense message, and then debated calling 911. I got the car started, pounding my hands on the steering wheel as I waited for the gate to open. Come on, come on, come on! I glanced at my gun, which I’d tossed into the passenger seat. Finally the gate finished opening, and I flew down the driveway and out onto Camp Street. I drove as quickly as I could, stopping for red lights only when I could see cars coming the other way. I didn’t care if I got pulled over-although with the gun in the seat, it could be a very sticky situation. I made it through the CBD, and for the first time in my life, the lights were actually on my side. I flew around the curve where Rampart Street became St. Claude, and the traffic became heavier. I sped around cars, changing lanes and cutting people off, and the insane thought that I was living one of Jephtha’s video games raced through my head. My palms were sweating and I was gripping the steering wheel so tightly veins were popping out on my forearms.

And my cell phone didn’t ring.

It reminded me so much of the nightmarish drive out to Bay St. Louis, when I finally figured out the truth about Paul’s disappearance. That drive too was little more than a flash of memory, my heart pounding the entire way as we drove about 100 miles per hour with the siren on Venus’ police car screaming through the night. All those horrible memories were flashing through my head, and all I could think right now was that Paige, my Paige, was in the hands of a deranged killer. Nothing could happen to my Paige. Life just couldn’t be that cruel. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get those horrendous thoughts out of my head. Paige can’t die, that bitch can’t kill Paige, nothing can ever happen to her, I don’t even want to think about what my life would be like without her. Losing Paul was hard enough-that had been horrible. I don’t think I could ever get over losing Paige.

Memories flooded through my head, one image fading into another. The night we first met, in my room at the Beta Kappa house. My door had been unlocked and she’d let herself in to smoke a joint and listen to the Pink Floyd CD I had on, getting away from Little Sister rush. I’d walked in to find her standing in the middle of my room, the joint in her hand, grooving to Pink Floyd. And as soon as she opened her mouth, I knew I’d found someone special to be a part of my life, to make it richer and fuller. I was right. My life had been the better for knowing her. She was always there at my side, helping me by making me laugh, never bullshitting me, making me be reasonable when I wanted to be childish. She’d loved Paul too, but put her own pain aside when he’d died to help me work through mine. She seemed to people to be hard as nails, but I knew beneath that wise-cracking exterior was a soft and kind-hearted loving woman whom I’d walk through fire for.

If that crazy bitch harmed so much as one hair on her head, I would make her sorry she’d ever been born.

I screeched around the corner and parked in front of a fire hydrant. The street was deserted, and I’d been right. The address was a double shotgun once painted a vibrant purple that been faded by years of exposure to the merciless New Orleans sun. There was no yard in front of it, no fence. It had all been paved over. I sat there for a moment. There was no sign of life from the house. I saw Paige’s car parked further up the block. I checked my gun, made sure the safety was off, that it was loaded. I picked up my phone and called Venus again. This time she answered. “Casanova.”

“Didn’t you get my message?” I tried to keep my voice calm.

“I’m sorry, Chanse, what’s-“

“Right after you left, I got the fax. Karen Zorn is Rosemary Shannon-and she’s a killer. Paige called me.“ I cut her off. “She’s at Rosemary’s. I don’t know how she managed to call, but Rosemary has a gun on her.”

“Jesus fucking Christ!”

“I just pulled up outside the house. I’m going in.”

“Stay in your car-Blaine is calling for back-up and we’re on our way-“

I hung up the phone. I wasn’t about to wait for the police.

Paige was in danger, and every minute counted.

I’d learned that lesson the hard way when Paul died, and I wasn’t about to make that same mistake again.

Gun in hand, I got out of the car and crossed the street. I crept up the stairs on Rosemary’s side of the house. I peered in the window. The shutters were open, and no curtains or blinds impeded my view. The room was empty- no furniture, nothing. I couldn’t see into the next room, and the house was raised about six feet off the ground. There would be no way I’d be able to see into the next room without going around to the side of the house, and I didn’t want to take the risk of being seen. I turned the knob to the front door. The door swung open.

All the hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I stepped into the house, leaving the door open behind me. No sense in having to try to open it again if Paige and I had to make a quick escape. I slowly started making my way across the room, trying to be as silent as possible.

And then a board groaned under my feet.

“Is that you, Mr. MacLeod?” A voice called from the next room. “There’s no need to try to sneak up on us, you know. You might as well come and join us.”

“Paige are you all right?” I called out.

“Do as she says, Chanse. She has a gun on me.”

I walked through the door, and gasped.

The second room, like the first, was completely bare of furniture other than two rickety looking old kitchen chairs. Paige was tied to one of them. Her purse was open on the floor next to her. And Rosemary Shannon was seated in the other chair right next to Paige. In her hand was a gun she had pressed to Paige’s temple. Paige was very pale, and a dark purple bruise glared at me from her right cheek. In Rosemary’s other hand she held Paige’s iPhone. She smiled when she saw me, and tossed the phone back into Paige’s purse.

“The police are on their way,” I said. “You’re never going to get away with this.” I pointed my gun at her. “Karen.”

“So, you figured it all out. But it looks like we have reached an impasse.” Rosemary smiled at me. She looked terrible. Her reddish hair had frizzed and stood up in every direction, like she’d had an electrical shock. She was wearing a purple smock-type blouse over black sweat pants. “You shoot me and I pull the trigger. You might miss me, but I won’t miss. And your friend here’s brains will be splattered all over the wall.”

“If you hurt her-“ I hissed through gritted teeth. My head was roaring. In that instant, I hated Rosemary Shannon more than I’d hated anyone in my entire life. I wanted her to suffer, I wanted her to die a long, slow, painful death. I wanted to pull out her fingernails one by one. I want to rip her frizzy hair out of her head, lock by lock, slowly, to make it as painful as possible.

“The two of you are smart,” Rosemary went on. Her voice pierced through the haze in my head, shrill and not quite sane. There was a glint in her blue eyes that I had seen before. She wasn’t sane, not by a long shot, and my heart sank even further. You can reason with a sane person. But she was crazy, had gone completely around the bend. “But not smart enough, you know. You figured out it was me-but you thought I was trying to get away with something.” She laughed, and I’d never heard a more evil sound in my life. It was chilling. “I don’t care if I get away with it!”

“I don’t understand.”

“I loved him,” She went on. “I did everything for him in college. I loved him the first moment I saw him. I gave him presents, I wrote papers for him, I did everything I could to show him how much I loved him. I did everything for him!” she screamed, spittle flying from his lips. “But nothing was ever enough for him. It was always never good enough.”

“So you accused him of raping you?”

“You spoke to my bitch of a mother.” She snarled the words, and then smiled again. “Yes, I did. Maybe I did let him, maybe I did give myself to him willingly, but there are other kinds of rape, you know. He raped my soul. He raped my heart. And they let him get away with it, and he left…even though we were meant to be together. He went to Hollywood…and I knew it was because he wanted to be a star, to make a lot of money so he could make it all up to me, make up for telling me I was crazy, for acting like I wasn’t good enough, and then he married that slut Glynis Parrish.”

“So, you killed her.”

“It was fate, you know? When I saw that he and that old whore he took up with were moving to New Orleans, I decided to come down here so I’d be here when he finally tired of that old bitch. And then Fate put Glynis into my hands, as though it were meant to be. I became her assistant, and I knew somehow I would be able to get through to him because of her.” She sniffed. “What a horrible person she was! Every day when I would listen to her, I wondered what Freddy, my precious Freddy, could have seen in her. Why did he ever want that monster? She didn’t deserve to live.”

“But why frame Freddy?” Keep her talking, I told myself. Venus and the police will be here soon, keep her talking, but don’t agitate her. If that gun goes off Paige is a dead woman. I strained my ears listening for sirens. But I heard nothing.

“He came by to see her.” She pressed the gun tighter against Paige’s head. “And he didn’t know who I was. He didn’t remember me. He looked right through me like I wasn’t there.” Her crazed eyes glistened with tears. “After everything I’d done for him, he didn’t know who I was! And that’s when I knew what I had to do. He had to be punished…and so did Glynis. She didn’t deserve to live, anyway. But how? I wondered. How could I do it? And then I saw that boy one night sitting on the stoop smoking. I thought it was Freddy at first-but then I realized it was just someone who sort of resembled him. I went out and talked to him, became his friend. And then I knew. I could pay him to do errands-get him into the habit of showing up at the same time every week. It was fate, it was meant to be.”

“So you killed Glynis, and poor Joey showed up right on time.”

She smiled. “I realized, you know, that killing Freddy wasn’t the best punishment for him. What meant more to Freddy was his damned career. It didn’t matter if he actually did it or not. That was in Fate’s hands. I didn’t care if he was tried or convicted…just the suspicion would be enough to make him notorious instead of famous.”

“And you killed Joey last night?”

“That was YOUR fault…” She shrugged. “He called me. Told me all about your little visit to the Rail, and how he now knew what the truth was. He wanted money. So I met him on the neutral ground and shot him. I wasn’t ready to be betrayed just yet. And it was all a part of the plan, you see.” Her eyes glinted at me. “You see, the just punishment for Freddy is really for me, the girl he didn’t love, the one who wasn’t good enough for him, to be even more famous than he is.” She laughed. “And I will be. Our names will be forever linked from now on. No one will ever think about Freddy Bliss without remembering Rosemary Shannon, the woman he scorned and betrayed, who killed his first wife. He’ll never be written about, without my name being linked to his. We may not be married for real, but we will forever be married in notoriety.”

“But you’ve already accomplished that. There’s no need to kill Paige,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and soothing. “The police are on their way right now. Just put the gun down, and we can wait for them, and you can tell them your story. And Paige is a reporter, you know. She can write it for you.”

She looked at me as though I were the one who was insane. “I’m not going to jail, Mr. MacLeod.” She took the gun away from Paige’s head. “And now, there’s no to kill your friend anymore. I know she’s a reporter. She’s heard the entire story now, there’s no need for me to kill her. She’s the only one who knows my story. It would be stupid of me to kill her.” She shook her head. “No, that’s not the plan.” She smiled at me. “Tell Freddy I loved him.”

She put the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger.