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  “Or collie dogs? Can’t find anything. Probably a pretty clean liver on that score.”

  “So what did he do for sex? Man’s been divorced—what?”

  “About sixteen years.”

  “And? Did he take a vow of celibacy when the wife ran off? That is right, isn’t it? She left him? I think that’s what Kitty always said.”

  “I’m not sure, and don’t give me that look. I told you I haven’t hung with that crowd in years, and besides, Church is—was—a lot older than me.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  He answered her smile with narrowed eyes. “Okay, I’ll check it out. I do know he’s squired around several ladies. Widows and divorcees always making a play for him, eligible well-to-do man with the right color blood.”

  “As in blue.”

  “Right. But he stayed slippery.”

  “Seeing anybody recently?”

  “Nobody of any consequence, unless he’s got her well hidden.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Means nobody steady. Nobody he’s knocked up. Nobody who thought he was gonna marry her. Church just kept it all real light and easy. A date here. A horse race there.”

  “He played the horses?”

  “Just an example. He went every once in a while. So does Zoe.”

  “Now that you mention her—what if Church’s death—assuming that there’s something here other than your simple hit-and-run—had something to do with her? And, before I forget it, what about the ex-wife? Where is she?”

  “Seems to have disappeared. Probably worth tracking.”

  “You bet. Woman could have been sitting on a big, festering grudge that finally came to a head. Now, about Zoe.”

  “What about Zoe? Queen of Comus, you know that. Deb. Junior at Newcomb. Too skinny. Looks anorexic. Bulimic, you think? One of those?”

  “You can be both, though she’s probably the latter. I checked out her medicine cabinet, and I suspect she binges and purges. She’s got enough Ex-Lax to start her own drugstore. And speaking of drugs, has a very expensive little nose.”

  “When did you do this?”

  “Do what?” She gave him big eyes. “The medicine cabinet? Mardi Gras, when we went over to her house to watch her get ready for the ball.”

  “Is that your SOP when you go over to somebody’s house?”

  What kind of snoop was he? The man had no natural curiosity. “Sure, don’t you?”

  “Not recently. Anyway, so she’s a cokehead?”

  “Yep. And I caught her snorting in the Ladies at the Fairmont.”

  “That night we met?” His voice dropped a tad.

  “Yeah, Harry. On that momentous occasion. If you don’t count your making eyes at me in the airport the day before.”

  “Jesus. You ever cut anybody any slack?”

  “Sure. After I’ve had coffee.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so? We can have espresso here.”

  She shook her head. “I need to stretch my legs. Been sitting all day, on the plane—”

  He stood. “Then let’s go. Café du Monde’s brewing tourist swill, but we could get a cup to go at Chez Madeleine, corner of the square. Go for a stroll.”

  “Just a minute. Let’s finish this thought.” She pointed a finger in his face. Her polish was bright red. “What does Zoe’s being on coke give us? Anything?”

  “Maybe nothing. Maybe a lot. I think it’s worth taking a look-see.”

  “I think so too. Now, what else?”

  Harry shook his head. “Nothing pops right up. We have enough for starters, don’t you think?”

  What he didn’t tell her was about the conversation he’d overheard in the Pelican the afternoon before Church died: Maynard Dupree and Jimbo King, the pipe-handler, joking with the barkeep about a two-for-one deal. Offing the ambulance driver, G.T., and his redhead, Chéri. And what was it the barkeep had said? Throw in Maynard’s buddy, Church Lee, and I bet you got yourself a taker.

  Harry wasn’t telling Sam about that. A man had to keep something in his trick bag, didn’t he? Son would check it out. See where it went. Maybe pull it out at the last minute, shazam, dazzle the pretty lady with it. After that lunch at Galatoire’s. After a couple of hours at the Maison de Ville or maybe a suite at the Royal O. Maybe then he’d give it to her, for dessert.

  Sam stared at Harry’s grin. What was that sucker hiding? Well, it didn’t matter how many aces he was holding in his lap because he’d missed a most important point. He hadn’t even mentioned Church’s finances. The surgeon looked well-to-do on the outside, but who knew? People were more close-mouthed about money than sex. A man would rather tell you he was screwing a mongoose than he was on the skids. Cherchez la femme was a bunch of crap. In the nineties, cherchez les bank statements was more like it.

  But there was no point, she thought, in telling Harry everything. After all, it was his investigation and his territory. Then after he’d done all the legwork, helped her clean up all this mess, well, he’d have learned something, wouldn’t he?

  And maybe then she’d teach him another trick or two.

  Sam grinned back at Harry.

  Eight

  KITTY AND HER grandmother, Ma Elise, lived in one of those grand old houses Uptown, with an acre of grounds and gardens and ten bedrooms. It sported a full complement of white columns, lacy cast-iron balconies, a music room with a rosewood square grand piano, a sun room, banana trees surrounding a brick patio complete with dripping fountain—all built in the 1850s by Augustus Lee, who’d made his fortune as a sugar merchant.

  In the dining room now, after a dinner of Ida’s wondrous gumbo, Sam, Kitty, Zoe, and Ma Elise were pushed back from the long walnut dining table (it could seat twenty with all its leaves) enjoying their coffee.

  “The Garden District has always worn a proud face, you know. Most of the houses staying right in the same families,” Ma Elise was saying.

  “Well, it sure feels solid—real safe,” said Sam.

  “Oh, Lord, no,” said Ma Elise. “I didn’t mean that at all. Things have gotten terrible.”

  “The whole city has,” said Kitty. “The crime rate’s just awful. Thefts. Burglaries. Purse snatchings. Muggings. Can’t tell us from New York ’cept we have worse heat and humidity.”

  “And here,” said Ida, who’d stepped out of the room for a minute, now reclaiming her seat, “the pirates knock people in the head right on their own doorsteps.”

  “They read the society columns,” said Kitty, “check out the parties, probably jot them down in their datebooks, wait for folks to come home late with their jewels.”

  “Or rob the parties,” said Zoe. “I was at two this season that were held up.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Sam.

  “I wish. Both times guys marched in, wearing ski masks, carrying shotguns, got us down on the floor, took everything. And you know the story about Daddy.”

  Sam shook her head. “He was robbed?”

  “Oh. Well—” Then Zoe looked around the table, for all the world like a little girl seeking permission, Sam thought. She was quite shaken by her father’s death. She looked like a ghost with her translucent white skin—blue veins showing through—against that riot of dark hair. And she was even thinner than before, if that was possible.

  “Go ahead, Zoe,” prompted Kitty. “That’s why Sam’s here—to listen. You never can tell what might be helpful in settling this business.”

  Zoe reached for the coffeepot, poured herself another cup. At dinner Sam had watched Zoe eat enough for three. She wondered how long she’d wait to throw it all up. “It was about—what—six or seven months ago,” she began haltingly. “September? October? Sometime after the party season had started. Daddy was mugged coming home late one night.”

  “Getting out of his car?”

  “No—walking. We’d been to a party over at Celia Maguire’s, just a few blocks up from our house on Prytania—”

  Sam nodded. Since Church’s death, Zo
e hadn’t returned to that house, had moved in with Kitty and Ma Elise.

  “—and I’d come home a lot earlier. I’d walked with some other girls and our dates. Daddy came along later by himself. And that’s when he got mugged.”

  “Was he hurt?”

  “A cut on his arm, but it wasn’t bad. I almost lost it when I saw the blood.”

  “His attacker had a knife?”

  Zoe nodded. “I was scared to death, but—it was funny—Daddy was, like, excited. I guess ’cause he’d gotten away—outrun him.”

  “I think it made Church feel like a young colt again,” Kitty laughed. “Beating out a bad guy—especially a younger man.”

  “He took Church’s wallet?”

  “Daddy said he tried to. But he didn’t let him get away with anything.”

  “Did the police ever catch him?” Sam knew how unlikely that was.

  “’Course not,” said Ida. “Pirates like rabbits, jumping all around. Police know there’s hardly any point, going in those projects to catch ’em. I don’t know what it’s gonna come to.” She shook her head. “Drugs. No jobs for our young mens. End up bashing decent peoples in the head.”

  That was true. They all nodded. New Orleans, its inner city predominantly black and poor, was doing no better than any other metropolis in fighting poverty and illiteracy and their handmaidens, drugs and violence. The only difference here, perhaps, was that the haves and have-nots lived cheek-to-jowl, grand neighborhoods like this abutting slums. Riches were flaunted every day in the faces of the poor—and not just on TV.

  Sam looked around the table, deciding what tack to take. It was always best to interview people one on one. Especially with Zoe here, there were things the older women probably wouldn’t say. But a little dinner-table brainstorming could prime the pump for later.

  “Now, let’s assume this mugger didn’t know Church,” Sam said. “But was there anyone who did who might want to hurt him? Enemies? Old grudges?”

  The question lay on the table. Finally Kitty said, “Did Harry tell you about Cole Leander?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Kitty and Ma Elise exchanged an even look, then Ma Elise nodded, and Kitty explained. “That’s the malpractice suit.”

  “Oh, yes. He mentioned it. But I didn’t have a name.”

  “Well, Leander’s a real crazy person. Not that I’m not sorry about his condition, but he’s caused us all a lot of grief.” Kitty turned to her grandmother. “Ma Elise, did I tell you he called me the other day? I don’t know what he wants now. I’m gonna have our lawyer get back to him. You’d think now that Church’s gone, he’d have the decency to—”

  “Is he crazy enough to do something?” Sam asked.

  “Maybe. But he’s blind, you know. After the surgery—”

  “Which wouldn’t keep him from hiring someone else to do his dirty work.”

  “That’s up his alley for sure,” said Ma Elise. “But I don’t want to spoil Mr. Leander for you. You’ll find him downtown at the Leander & Sons barn. He should be quite an entertainment for you. You’ll see.”

  “Barn?”

  “He builds carnival floats.”

  “Well, that should be interesting. Now, what’s this business with Maynard Dupree I keep stumbling over?”

  “Oh, that,” said Ma Elise. “It’s perfectly silly. I used to tell Church he needed to grow up and get over that. Their disagreement goes back to when they were boys in school together. You know, they’re the same age.”

  Ma Elise paused. Sam could hear her thinking—were the same age. The death of her only grandson had hit her hard. At Mardi Gras, Ma Elise had looked a pert sixty in her gold watered-silk ballgown. Now add back two decades.

  “So what was the issue?”

  “Well, now, I told you this was silly. When they were little, hardly into long pants, they had a fight over Peggy Patrick, a little girl in their class.”

  “And this went on for thirty, thirty-five years?” Sam’s tone registered her disbelief.

  “I know it sounds ridiculous. And it was. Words were exchanged, a few punches, as I remember, a couple of bloody noses, and then one thing led to another. They were both very bright boys, fierce achievers. Once the battle was joined, they never gave up.”

  “It must have been awkward since they traveled in the same circles.”

  Kitty hooted. “You’re right about that. There are only about three hundred people in New Orleans, you know. In our crowd you see the same faces over and over, day after day.”

  “But they were very polite about it,” Ma Elise protested. “When Estelle, my daughter, Church and Kitty’s mother, was alive, she used to give Church holy hell about it. Said it upset everybody’s seating plans at their dinner parties. But it didn’t really. Their feud was just a given. You know, like somebody being allergic to tomatoes.”

  “We thought,” said Zoe, “that Mr. Dupree might block my being Queen of Comus. Since he’s the captain, the one who runs things. But he didn’t.”

  “I thought the king was in charge.”

  “No, no, the king changes every year. Captains are like the president, and they go on forever,” said Zoe.

  “Well, I think Maynard knew what a stink that would have caused,” said Ma Elise. “To have broken the succession, you being the fourth generation of Lee queens, well, you just don’t let personal feelings get in the way of a thing like that.”

  Only in New Orleans, Sam thought, then asked, “Do you remember Maynard ever doing anything that would have been harmful to Church?”

  “Well,” said Kitty, “men who have known each other for years do join up together in business deals, and every once in a while Church would come storming in, say Maynard had done him out of some investment opportunity. But that sort of thing’s so vague—” She waved her hand like a lace handkerchief. “I mean, nobody was really ever going to tell Church directly that something like that was Maynard’s doing. It think it was just more a feeling he got.”

  “A little paranoia?”

  “Well,” said Ma Elise, “you know, if you’re looking for Church’s enemies, you have no further to go than himself and his drinking. His father drank too—” She glanced at Kitty. “And Estelle, Kitty and Church’s mother, was known to have more than one sherry in the afternoon to pass the time. I tried to get Church to stop but—”

  “You couldn’t do it. You know that, don’t you?” said Sam.

  “I know, dear. But then, I look at people like you, who have found the strength—”

  “Not strength. It’s having no place to go but up or out—feet first—then finding something that keeps you straight. AA has positively ruined drinking for me.”

  Ma Elise laughed. “I wish they could have ruined it for Church too. Bless his heart, to have died drunk, because of being drunk.”

  Sam saw Ma Elise’s tears gathering. She had been hit hard. Sam was afraid even to look at Zoe. It would be good to put an end to this, to shut the door so the family could pick up the pieces and go on. But what if, for some reason, the inquiry didn’t fall out the way they planned? Poking around in a man’s past—often it was better not to know.

  “I wonder,” Sam said, taking it slow, tiptoeing, “if you all have given any thought to dropping this insurance matter?”

  “Well, I have,” Zoe said with sudden fierceness. “I think we ought to just let Tench Young keep his damn money. I mean, it’s not like I don’t already have a whole bunch coming from the first policy, and I’ve got the house, and the cars, and the camp at Grand Isle and the condo in Florida.”

  Sam watched a look pass between the two older women, toting up the cost of school, the clothes, the baubles Zoe had always taken for granted. They would have calculated the upkeep of Church’s house, now hers, over on Prytania, the housekeeper, the groundsmen, the gardener. Zoe could sell it, but no, on second thought, knowing the Lees, that probably wasn’t an option.

  “No way,” Kitty said, “We’ll fight Tench Young to the deat
h on this one. That tightfisted son of a bitch, let him go screw somebody he doesn’t know.”

  “He doesn’t do business with people he doesn’t know,” Ma Elise reminded her.

  “Well, isn’t that more the pity?”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you all,” said Sam, pushing back from the table. It was time to call it a night; she was a little tired, and there was enough in the pot to let things stew a little. She segued into a story about her old boyfriend, Beau Talbot, whom Kitty had always called the handsomest son of a bitch in the South, now chief medical examiner for the state of Georgia. They laughed at the tale of his recent wedding to a woman half his age, where the minister kept trying to get Beau to give the bride away to his best man, confusing the groom with the bride’s father.

  “Well, he ought to be ashamed of himself,” said Ma

  Elise. “I never could abide these May-December affairs. I think it’s disgraceful.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if one of those cute little things you and Ida hang out with at the poolhall all the time wanted to hook up with you,” said Kitty.

  “I would so!” Ma Elise protested.

  But Sam could tell from the twinkle in her eye that Ma Elise was lying. All it would take to change her mind was switching the players around.

  *

  A little while later, tucked into her four-poster in a big square corner guestroom on the second floor, Sam put down the book she wasn’t reading and recalled that conversation—specifically the part about older women and younger men.

  The women in her AA group in Atlanta joked about it: Get one you can train. Love those washboard tummies.

  Marie, her old dearheart, her San Francisco sponsor, had married a man nine years her junior and said it was the smartest thing she’d ever done—other than getting sober.

  Yeah. Well. But. Sam stared up at the brocade tester; the canopy above the bed was the same soft white as the bed curtains. The whole room was the color of heavy cream. A bride would be at home in here—or Miss Havisham.

  Now, that was a creepy thought, poor old lady, old as Ma Elise, as Ida, forever pecking around the edges of her moldering wedding cake with her great expectations crumbling.