Murder in the Rue Ursulines

Chapter Three

As I maneuvered my car into a parking spot on Burgundy Street in the Quarter, I couldn’t help but think, Paul would have been so thrilled to meet Glynis Parrish. When he was alive, we used to watch her television comedy series together every Thursday night. It was one of our favorite shows-even the episodes that weren’t quite up to its usual standard of excellence were better than every other show on the air. She’d played a young woman just out of college who’d gotten a job at a sports magazine (obviously based on Sports Illustrated) and found herself in ridiculous situations almost every week.

The show had run almost seven years before Glynis pulled the plug, deciding to try to make it on the big screen. It was odd that she’d gotten a role in a movie being filmed in New Orleans after her ex-husband and his new wife had been so public about moving here. It could, of course, just be a coincidence. After all, before the failure of the levees, New Orleans had been actively courting film and television series. With our economy in such a shambles since the disaster, the return of ‘Hollywood South’ had been a triumph for the city. I turned the car off and took a deep breath.

Paul.

It had been four years since he was killed, and while the passage of time had helped some, I wasn’t completely over it yet. I sometimes wondered if I ever would get over it. My therapist thought I was making progress, but I wasn’t quite so sure Since his death, I’d dated a couple of guys, trying to move on with my life, but one after another, the relationships fizzled out. My therapist suggested that they failed because I kept myself emotionally unavailable to anyone new. It sounded like pseudo-psycho bullshit to me, and whenever he brought that up, it never failed to piss me off. I’d made myself emotionally available to my last boyfriend, hadn’t I? And look how that had turned out. I’d started dating Allen, the guy who owned Bodytech, my gym, after the hurricane. It had gone well for a few months, but he’d eventually gotten back together with his ex. Things had been awkward at the gym for a while, but we’d somehow managed to get past it. My therapist thought that was a positive thing. I just figured it was easier to do than find a new gym.

As I locked my car, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, willing the sadness away by focusing on the job at hand. Maybe someday I’ll be able to remember without getting sad, I thought, as I firmly closed and locked that door in my mind.

Ah, progress.

I started walking towards the corner at Ursulines. The house Glynis was renting was between Burgundy and Dauphine, in the lower Quarter. This part of the Quarter was mostly residential and quiet. You’d never know that the madness of Bourbon Street was just a short walk away. I didn’t expect Glynis to confess to sending the e-mails-that would be too much to hope for-and I decided to approach the entire subject in a non-threatening way. Frillian had claimed there was no animosity there, but I wanted to see how Glynis reacted to my questions. I wasn’t even sure how my clients wanted this whole thing handled, but I needed to find out who else had access to Glynis’s computer. As I rounded the corner, I decided the best way to play this was to be on her side, to act as if I believed she hadn’t sent them.

The house she was renting was nice, but looked like nothing spectacular from the street. It was a one-story Creole cottage, painted a deep purple, with yellow shutters. There was no front yard; the house, like most in the French Quarter, was right on the sidewalk. It was a four-bay, with two sets of french doors and two sets of double-hung windows between them, their yellow shutters closed. Two large pots of trailing flowers hung on chains from the roof overhang.

I climbed up the short flight of stairs to the set of doors on the right-where the doorbell was- and stood a moment before ringing. Glynis had answered my call, and when I’d identified myself, she’d interrupted me, “Yes, yes, Freddy told me you might call. You might as well come over and let’s get this over with.” She hadn’t sounded pleased, but I could hardly blame her.

I took a deep breath and knocked. I heard footsteps moving toward the front door.

It swung open and I found myself looking down at a small, rotund woman with reddish-blonde hair. She was wearing a gray T-shirt with the Make levees not war slogan on the front, and a pair of black jeans. Her pale round face was covered with freckles, and she smiled, revealing slightly crooked teeth. Her greenish-gray eyes lit up, taking her from slightly plain to pretty. “Yes?”

“I’m Chanse MacLeod,” I replied. “Here to see Ms. Parrish?”

“Yes, yes, we’re expecting you.” She held out a small hand for me to shake. Her hand was soft, warm, and a little damp. “I’m Rosemary Shannon, Glynis’s personal assistant. Won’t you come in?” She stood aside to let me pass, and I walked into the sparsely furnished front room. A couple of wingback chairs faced a fireplace on the far wall, with a table in between them. There was a faded Oriental rug on the floor, and the walls were bare except for some Audubon reproductions. She closed the french doors and turned the key in the lock. “I’ve never met a private investigator before,” she said, looking me up and down, still smiling. “Your work must be terribly exciting.” She giggled- a surprisingly girlish sound for a woman I judged to be in her early to mid-thirties. Her voice also sounded younger than I would have expected, almost like that of a thirteen-year-old. She stared at me expectantly.

“Not really,” I replied, giving her a little smile in return. “It’s not like it is on television.Usually, it’s quite boring.”

“I don’t believe you,” she replied, the smile never wavering for a moment. “I used to want to be a private eye when I was young.” She laughed. “If you can imagine that. I wanted to be one of Charlie’s Angels.” She shrugged, a tiny movement. “Glynis is in her study. Come this way.”

I followed her down a hallway that ran the length of the house, and she knocked lightly on the second door before opening it. “Glynis? Mr. MacLeod is here.”

I walked into a beautiful room painted a dark emerald green. The fixtures were all brass, and the hardwood floors gleamed. A brass chandelier cast light into every corner of the room. The furniture looked expensive, but comfortable and lived in. Glynis Parrish was seated on a green and gold brocade sofa, the day’s newspaper spread out all around her on the cushions and the floor in front of her. She folded the section she’d been reading and let it drop to the floor. On the coffee table in front of the sofa stood a golden statue of a winged woman holding a globe-an Emmy award. Right next to it was a closed MacBook Pro laptop computer. She rose, and held out her right hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. MacLeod,” she said, giving me a warm smile.

“Call me Chanse.” I said, shaking her small hand.

She, like Freddy and Jillian, was diminutive. She couldn’t have been taller than five feet, and her figure was equally small, and almost girlish. She was wearing a very tight, low-cut tank top that emphasized her large breasts and deep cleavage. Her waist was small, her hips flaring slightly in her tight low-rise jeans. She was barefoot, her toenails painted red. Her dark brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was wearing just a hint of blush. Her eyes were slanted, almost cat-like, and they glittered green in the light from the chandelier.

She applied no pressure to the handshake, her hand limp and dry in my much bigger paw. There were dark circles under her eyes, and she looked tired. Her chin was dotted with small red pimples, and after I released her hand, she self-consciously ran her hand over her chin. Her nails looked ragged and chewed. “Please, have a seat. And call me Glynis.” Her green eyes flashed at me. She plopped back down on the couch. She folded her legs underneath her. She saw me looking at her Emmy and smiled. “You can pick it up, if you’d like. Everyone always wants to.” She shrugged. “Go ahead.”

What the hell, I thought, bending down and hefting it in my right hand, grasping the winged woman around the waist. It was surprisingly heavy. On a gold band around the base were engraved the words Outstanding Achievement by A Lead Actress in a Comedy Series: Glynis Parrish in SPORTSDESK. I set it back down. “Thank you.”

“Like I said, everyone wants to do that. The great aura of an award, I suppose. But then again, I take it with me everywhere.” The corners of her mouth lifted a little bit, her eyebrows arching up in self-mockery. “I was nominated seven times, but only won once.” She shrugged. “After winning, it didn’t seem quite as important as it did all the times I lost. Please, have a seat.”

I sat down in a green wingback chair, sinking several inches down into it. She gave me a smile. “I don’t really know why Freddy wanted me to meet you, or why he needs a private eye, but I can never say no to him.”

“Did you need anything else, Glynis?” Rosemary asked from the doorway.

“May I offer you something to drink, Chanse? I have practically everything.” Glynis asked me in a pleasant tone. “The bar is quite well-stocked.”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“I’ll call you, Rosemary, if we need anything,” she said, dismissing her assistant without even looking at her. I heard the door shut behind me, and the sound of footsteps receding to the back of the house. She closed her eyes for a moment, her face expressionless, then opened them and smiled again. “I’m not having a good day, I must apologize to you in advance.” She sighed. “What can I help you with, Chanse? What’s going on with Freddy?”

I cleared my throat. “Well, Freddy and Jillian-“ it took a conscious effort not to say Frillian-“have hired me to look into something, and I’m hoping you can help me out.” I made my voice sound as sincere as I could. Granted, I wasn’t in her league as an actor, but I could play a part too.

“What’s this all about?” she asked, rubbing her eyes. “I have to admit, when Freddy called and was so mysterious about my talking to a private eye, I agreed to see you more about satisfying my own curiosity than anything else…” She shook her head, the ponytail flying. “We’ve been divorced for years now. And while we get along better than can be expected under the circumstances, I don’t mind admitting that I’m sick to death of talking about Freddy and his new wife.” Her voice dripped with scorn as she said the last three words. “I’m tired of being defined as the sad little wife he left for the glamorous superstar.”

I put the file folder containing the printouts on the coffee table. “Someone has been sending Freddy threatening e-mails.”

She looked me directly in the eyes. “And Freddy thinks I may have sent them?” She threw her head back and laughed the way she had on her show. “Oh, the arrogance! Some things never change. I guess he thinks I’m just sitting around pining away for him.” The catlike eyes rolled. “Trust me, Mr. MacLeod-Chanse-most days I don’t give Freddy and his wife a first thought, let alone a second. That was a hundred years ago, it seems. We’ve all moved on-even though the tabloids love the idea that I’m pining away. I can assure you that is most definitely not the case.” She scratched her chin again. “In fact, I’m seeing someone else now-I won’t say who, because we’re not ready to go public with our relationship. I’m sure you can understand why. I’m tired of being tabloid fodder. Was I upset when he left me for someone else? Of course I was! Who wouldn’t be? But I have moved on.”

Considering her reluctance to refer to Jillian by name, I found that a little hard to believe. I cleared my throat and plunged forward. “Well, unfortunately, I’ve traced the e-mails to the computer they were sent from.” I leaned forward and removed the receipt from the folder and handed it to her. “They were sent from a Mac you bought…” I gestured at the laptop. “Is that your only computer?”

“But that’s impossible.” She took the receipt and looked at it, then set it back down on top of the folder. Her eyes widened, her forehead creased. She shook her head. “I mean, that’s a copy of my receipt, but I can assure you I haven’t been e-mailing Freddy threats-or e-mailing him about anything, frankly. If I want to talk to him, I call him.” She made a helpless gesture. “I mean, yes, I have a website and I have e-mail, but I don’t usually use the computer for much of anything.” She shrugged again. “Most of the e-mail comes from my website, and someone in my publicist’s office takes care of all of that for me, answering it, sending out autographed pictures, things like that.” She picked up the folder and opened it. She pulled out one of the printouts and squinted at it. “This isn’t my e-mail account.” She put the folder back down with distaste.

I hadn’t expected her to admit to sending the e-mails, so I went ahead with my game plan. “I didn’t think so, honestly. Who all has access to your computer?”

“Well, it’s always here in the house-I never take it on set with me. So, anyone who comes into the house could access it-but why would anyone do such a thing? That doesn’t make any sense. I mean, why my computer?” Her eyebrows came together and her face reddened a bit. “That’s simply intolerable.”

“Someone could be trying to make trouble for you.” I replied, injecting sympathy into my voice. “Who regularly comes into the house?”

“Well, Rosemary, obviously. She’s here every day, and sometimes stays over.” She rubbed her eyes, and leaned forward. “My housekeeper Cindy comes in three times a week and is here all day-usually when I’m on the set. She does the grocery shopping and makes meals as well as cleaning. My trainer, Steve Marren, comes by here when I’m not working. I have a massage therapist-Tony- who comes in twice a week. And of course, my director and cast mates stop by every once in a while.” She shrugged. “I’m not much for entertaining, frankly, but I guess any one of them could get on my computer without my knowing it. But why would they send…” she stopped, picking up the folder again and opening it. She paged through the e-mails. “These e-mails are absolutely vile.” She tossed the folder back down on the table, her face showing her distaste. She narrowed her eyes. “I most certainly didn’t write or send them. If they came from my computer, someone else had to have sent them.” She stood up. “ROSEMARY!” she bellowed, making me jump. She smiled at me. “Sorry.”

The door opened and Rosemary stepped into the room. “Yes. Did you need something?”

Glynis stood up in a fluid motion. “Rosemary, you haven’t been using my computer for anything, have you?”

“Of course not!’ Rosemary’s face reddened.

“If you’re lying to me-“

“No, no, no!” Rosemary cowered, stepping back into the doorway.

I stared at her. She acted like she was afraid of Glynis. I looked over at Glynis. Her hands were on her hips and she was breathing hard, her face red. Her eyes narrowed as she took a few steps forward. Rosemary visibly shrank. Glynis’s voice continued to rise as she spoke. “Have you seen anyone-Darlene, Brett, Charity, anyone-using my computer?”

“No!”

“I’m going to need to speak to each of them.” I interrupted.

Glynis’s head whipped back around to me. Her entire face relaxed into a smile. “Of course. I want this matter cleared up just as much as Freddy does, I’m sure.” Without looking at her, she commanded, “Rosemary, get their phone numbers together for Chanse.” She sank back down on her sofa. She waved her right hand in a fluttery motion. “I’m getting a headache. Rosemary, after you get Chanse the numbers, would you mind showing him out?” It was an effective dismissal. I thanked her for her time and followed Rosemary into the hallway. Rosemary shut the door behind us. “Go wait in the front room, and I’ll join you shortly,” she whispered, and hurried off down the hall.

I walked back to the front room and sat down in one of the chairs. I opened the folder and started paging through the e-mails. The next step, I figured, was to make a calendar of the dates and times the e-mails were sent-and compare that with the household schedule. Granted, that was assuming Glynis hadn’t sent them herself. I closed my eyes and went over the entire interview again.

Was she telling me the truth?

I opened my eyes as Rosemary came back into the room. She handed me a piece of paper with the names and numbers of the rest of Glynis’s staff printed clearly on it. I smiled at her. “She seems like a rather difficult woman to work for.”

“Oh, no, she’s just having a bad day.” Rosemary smiled at me. “She gets these horrible migraines-suffers terribly from them. Today is one of her bad days. Most of the time, she’s an absolute doll-very kind and thoughtful. One of the best employers I’ve ever had.”

I stood up. “How long have you been with her?”

“Since she came to New Orleans.” Rosemary pushed an errant lock of hair back from her forehead.

“So, about two weeks?”

Her eyes widened. “Two weeks? Oh, no, she’s been here for about two months now. I was hired about a week or so before then-her former assistant had quit to have a baby-and I put the house together for her, found the housekeeper and everyone else.” She looked down. “It’s really an honor to work for her. I’ve been a fan for years.” She bridled a bit. “She says she wants me to come back to California with her when the movie wraps.”

“Wow.” I smiled at her. “Are you going to go?”

“I’ve always wanted to live in California,” she said wistfully. “And it’s a wonderful opportunity for me.” She took the piece of paper back from me and pulled a pen out of her pocket. “Let me give you my cell number. You can call me anytime. I’m at your disposal.” She wrote it down. “I’ll let everyone know you’re going to be getting in touch with them, and that it’s okay for them to talk to you.”

“I appreciate that.” I folded the paper and slid it into the folder. I walked over to the front door.

“It was nice meeting you.” She said, offering me her hand again. “And remember, call me if you need anything, okay?”

All the way back to my apartment, I replayed the whole interview in my head. Rosemary seemed okay, but I didn’t quite buy the ‘she’s a great employer’ routine. It seemed a little rehearsed-and the way Glynis had acted toward her made it seem like bullshit. Granted, maybe Glynis was having a bad day-she’d said she was-but something my landlady told me once about another woman in her social circle kept coming back to me.

Barbara Castlemaine moved in the stratosphere of New Orleans society-and had been one of my first clients. I’d handled something for her with discretion, and we’d become friends over the years. It had been at a party she’d given at her Garden District mansion, and after I ‘d been talking to this perfectly charming woman for nearly an hour, Barbara had peeled me away from her and in a low voice warned me away from her. “She’s a horrible woman,” she’d insisted over my protests. “You can always tell what kind of a person someone is by how they treat the help-and she treats hers like garbage.”

Glynis had certainly treated Rosemary that way. I wondered if she was that way with her other employees.

I called Loren to check in with him, see how he wanted me to proceed-or if he wanted me to. I got his voice-mail and left a rather detailed message about my progress so far-tracing the computer and so forth. I closed with, “Unless I hear otherwise, I’m going to proceed with checking out the people who had access to Glynis Parrish’s computer.”

I left messages for Glynis’s posse, then sat down at my desk and turned on my own computer. I opened a spreadsheet, and started logging in the dates and times the e-mails had been sent. It didn’t take long for the pattern to start to emerge. All of them had been sent in the early afternoons-and always on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

I started reading them again. Glynis had been right about one thing-the e-mails were all vile. They all alluded in some way to something Freddy had done-how his public persona was not who he really was. You act like such a do-gooder, one taunted, but those of us who know what you’re really like know better. You might be able to fool the world with your St. Freddy act, but I know the real Freddy. How do you sleep at night?

What on earth did that mean?

I logged onto the Internet and did a search for Freddy Bliss- and was promptly rewarded with over a hundred thousand hits. I moaned. It would take me forever to wade my way through all of them-and Glynis and Jillian probably had just as many on-line mentions. I sighed, and started clicking on links. A lot of them I was able to dismiss out of hand-movie reviews, fan sites, etc. What I was interested in was gossip. But even that wasn’t much help. Outside of his pre-Glynis romances with any number of actresses, Freddy appeared to have lived a fairly blameless life. There were no drunk driving citations, no crazy or errant behaviors in public. He was in his early thirties-close to me in age, actually-and had been born and raised in Newton, Kansas. He’d gone to a small university, Emporia State, for a couple of years, taking courses in theater, before he dropped out and headed out to Los Angeles to try to make it as a movie star. He’d guested on some TV shows, but his big break came in a small role in a film called Separate Vacations, about a married couple who always took separate vacations. He played a beach bum who seduced the wife, and had all but stolen the movie. After that, he signed with a major agency and moved on to starring roles. His marriage to the reigning television queen of sitcoms had been a big story-although they hadn’t been called Frynis or Gleddy. Despite being called a ‘golden couple’ by the gossips, they hadn’t been big enough to become a one-word entity. That story, though, had been eclipsed by the affair with Jillian-and the messy divorce that followed.

I stood up and stretched. It was just past five, and I wanted to take a quick shower before heading down to meet Paige for dinner. My neck was sore from hunching over the computer screen. I tried calling the people on the list again, but once again didn’t get anyone. I made a mental note to check in with Rosemary again after dinner, to see if she had in fact called them all for me.

At five forty-five, I pulled into a parking spot just past St. Philip Street on Burgundy. It was about a six-block walk to Port of Call from there, but my standard rule of parking in the French Quarter is to always grab the first parking spot I saw-there may not be another one in the entire neighborhood. And there’s nothing I hate more than driving around trying to find one. Besides, I always enjoy strolling through the Quarter-and Paige would be late as she always was. I decided to walk up Ursulines past Glynis’s house-it was on the way. I got out and walked down to the corner at Ursulines, and turned right. It was already dark, and the street lamps were casting their glow over the sidewalk. There wasn’t another soul to be seen anywhere. I looked over across the street. The gas lights on the front of Glynis’s house were flickering. There was no sign of light behind the closed shutters. I glanced at my watch-five fifty-two. I shrugged and started walking down the street.

I was about halfway down the block when Glynis’s front door opened. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man step out and slam it loudly. I stopped walking and looked over to watch. He came down the front steps in a hurry, almost stumbling on the bottom step and having to grab the metal rail to keep from falling onto the sidewalk. He was wearing a loose-fitting pair of jeans, and a hooded purple sweatshirt with LSU emblazoned on the front in bright gold. The jeans hung down low enough for me to see his lower abdomen and the waistband of his underwear. The hood was pulled up over his head, hiding his hair. It was also pulled down low in the front, covering the top of his face. Something flashed in my brain-I know that guy-as I watched him, trying to remember who it was and where I knew him from. There was something about the build, the way he carried himself, that struck a familiar chord.

New Orleans is a small town, and that happens a lot. Everyone looks familiar, but when I see them out of a familiar context, at first I blank on who they are and where I know them from. I once had a long conversation with a guy in a bar, never once giving away that I had no idea who he was or where I knew him from. Two days later, when I went into Café Envie, one of my regular Quarter hangouts, there he was, working behind the counter-and thankfully, wearing a nametag.

This guy across the street didn’t seem to notice me, and I was just starting to think I was mistaken when he reached the bottom of the steps and turned to walk towards the river. In that moment, he was directly under a street lamp, and I did a double take.

It was Freddy Bliss.

I opened my mouth to shout hello before crossing the street, but before I could form the word in my throat, he started walking up the street at a very fast pace, breaking into a run when he got to the corner at Dauphine. I stared after him until I lost him in the darkness.

I glanced back at the house. It was silent, no sign of life there other than the gas lights. That’s odd, I thought, what the hell was Freddy doing there? A cold chill went down my spine as I remembered my call to Loren. Surely Loren had passed the information along…had Freddy gone over to confront her?

You might be fooling the world with your do-gooder act, but I know what you really are.

I shuddered in the chill evening air.

I laughed to myself a little bit, trying to shake the feeling. I crossed the street and stared at the front of the house for a moment. I debated whether I should knock or not.

The house was completely silent.

A dog barked, and I jumped.

Get a grip, Chanse. Besides, it’s really none of your business, is it now, what Freddy was doing there?

I shrugged, put it out of my head, and headed to Port of Call.