G.T. Herren - Paige Tourneur 01 - Fashion Victim (2 page)

My fingers were already flying over the keyboard on my laptop, pulling up the website for a local television station. And there it was—
Local fashion maven murdered!
I clicked on the link and started reading. “I found an article online,” I said into my phone, headache and nausea forgotten. It was basic— just stating the facts. Marigny Mercereau was found shot to death in her home earlier this morning— I glanced at the clock, she was found almost three hours ago— by her son. The police were investigating, blah blah blah.

“Obviously, this changes everything.” Rachel was saying. “Can you—”

“Yeah, I’ll head down there and see what I can find out,” I replied, disconnecting the call. As I gulped down the rest of my coffee, I dialed my best friend— who happened to also be a private eye. It went right to his voicemail, so I left a message as I bolted up the stairs to take a shower and get dressed. As I showered, I went over the night again.

Marigny had seemed no different than she ever had. She always wore her long blonde hair in a braid down her back— someone had once told me rather nastily that Marigny wore it that way because she’d heard the weight of the braid would pull the skin on her face tighter. She was dressed badly— I always found it interesting that New Orleans’s only serious fashion designer didn’t seem to know what looked good on her and what didn’t. She was wearing a long dress made of some shiny blue material that gave her pale skin a bluish tint. Her make-up was also always bad— and there was always too much of it. She was a short woman, even shorter than me— and so an Empire waist was a mistake. She did, however, have enormous breasts that were pushed up to the point they looked like they were ready to explode out of her low cut dress. We’d made small talk— nothing much, the inane stuff two people who don’t really know each other say at parties— but we had confirmed the interview for today. That was the last thing she’d said to me before moving on to work the crowd.

It was the kind of crowd I expected— a lot of rich New Orleans women, some of whom I recognized. There was a lot of expensive jewelry on display, and I was amazed so many women were wearing heels— despite the fact that the party was in the front yard of the House of Mercereau. A six foot tall black cast iron fence enclosed the front yard. The front gate was usually wide open during business hours. Last night, the gate was manned by an off-duty cop and a skeletal young woman with her auburn red hair cut into a bob. I recognized the lacy blue dress she was wearing— it had all the hallmarks of a Marigny Mercereau original; the strange neckline, the three quarter sleeves, and the slenderizing silhouette. She was standing next to the cop with a clipboard, taking people’s tickets as they came in or checking their names off a list. She looked like she could stand to eat a French fry or a cupcake or maybe both. She had given me a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes when I passed her my ticket.

I headed to the bar, smiling and nodding politely to any number of society queens and
nouveau riche
social climbers and asked the tuxedoed bartender for red wine. I turned and surveyed the yard as I sipped one of the worst red wines of all time. The massive live oaks twinkled with little white Christmas tree lights, and a jazz quartet began playing in the far corner. I fidgeted, finished the glass, and got a second. It was pretty acidic, and I was glad I had some antacids in my purse— I was definitely going to need them later. I recognized a tall woman who was clutching the arm of Marigny’s gay son, Jackson— but it took me a moment to place her.
Oh, yes, Fidelis Vandiver— one of the women on that horrible reality show, supposedly about rich society women in New Orleans
.

I’d never even heard of Fidelis Vandiver before the article in the paper announcing who was in the cast. But since the filming had started, the six women were harder to avoid than stinging caterpillars in May.

I’d heard the filming for the first season was finished, which explained why she didn’t have a camera crew with her.

Jackson looked like a deer in headlights— and I was about to be merciful when he managed to pull free from her and head for the bar. He smiled when he saw me, and I offered him my cheek for the traditional air kiss.

“Paige! You look amazing, as always,” he lied graciously. Jackson had always hated the way I dressed; when I had been dating his older brother Aramis (I’m
not
making that up— but I sort of wish I were, for his sake) he had offered umpteen times to make over my wardrobe. But other than that he was charming and funny, so I let him live. “Where’s Ryan? Surely you’re not stag tonight.”

“It’s his weekend with the kids.” I smiled back at him. Ryan was Ryan Tujague, the guy I’d been seeing regularly for the last two years. Ryan lived on the north shore but worked in the city as a partner in his law firm. Sometimes he brought the kids into the city for the weekend, staying at his apartment in the CBD, but this weekend his eleven-year-old, Tucker, had a Little League game so they were staying at his house on the north shore. I hated when Ryan spent the weekends on the north shore— but truth be told I still wasn’t completely comfortable around the kids. I could have spent the weekend over there myself, but I used the incredibly convenient excuse of the piece on Marigny to get out of it. “So, yeah, I’m here by myself.”

He ordered a Scotch on the rocks and winked at me. “I hear you’re doing the interview with Mother.” He frowned at my glass and asked the bartender to refill it. “I’m sure you’re looking forward to that.” He leaned in really close to me and whispered, “Just remember everything she tells you is a lie.”

Before I could follow up on that, he took his drink and disappeared back into the crowd. I was already feeling more than a little buzzed— I was on my third glass in less than ten minutes— so I decided to slow it down a bit. I spent the rest of the party sipping red wine and talking with people I knew slightly— the kind of tedious conversation that makes me want to slit my wrists, so I kept gulping down the wine and getting more. By the time we moved inside for the fashion show, I was already tipsy if not drunk— and once I settled into a metal folding chair inside, it took all of my faculties to focus on the show itself.

The clothes, to be kind, were not to my taste.

I escaped as soon as the show was over and called a cab from the sidewalk.

Just remember everything she says is a lie
.

I
definitely
needed to have a little chat with Jackson.

Chapter Two

Before heading down to the House of Mercereau, I reviewed the notes I’d pulled together for the interview— all the background information I could find on her. Well, all the background information my intern Latrice could find, to be honest— and there wasn’t as much as I would have thought there would be. Most of it was fluff from the society pages in the
Times-Picayune
. Apparently, she’d never been considered newsworthy.

It wasn’t that surprising. What real journalist could ever take a woman seriously who’d name her son after one of
The Three Musketeers
? It was hard enough for me, and I’d
dated
him.

But to give credit where it was due, Marigny
was
a bit of a local celebrity— the frequency of her appearance on the society pages attested to that. Born and raised in New Orleans, she’d gone off to study fashion in Paris after getting an undergraduate degree at Newcomb. She’d worked at Chanel for about ten years before coming back to New Orleans in her early thirties and started her own design business out of her family home on Magazine Street. Her past was rather colorful, with numerous failed marriages (I’d found three wedding announcements in the
Times-Picayune
archive— I still have friends there) and rumored liaisons with any number of local stars, ranging from a former Saints quarterback to a celebrity chef to a former, very married, governor. No one was really sure exactly how old Marigny herself was— it would be easy enough to find out, but no one ever bothered to go to the trouble. She had several children of various ages. Aramis was now living in Memphis with his wife, and the middle son, Bonaparte, lived in Paris. Her youngest, Jackson, was in his late twenties at most, and working with her at the House of Mercereau. Even though I’d dated Aramis for a few weeks when he was single, I probably knew Jackson the best. Being what is sometimes called a “fruit fly,” I ran into him at fundraisers for gay charities frequently. I liked Jackson— he had a bitchy wit and wasn’t afraid to say
anything
— which made him lots of fun to stand next to at boring parties. I wasn’t sure which one of Marigny’s ex-husbands was his father; at some point he’d taken her last name.

I hoped Jackson wasn’t the one who found her body, but unless Aramis had come down from Memphis or Bonaparte (whom I’d never met) was here from Paris, odds are he had.

I closed the file on my laptop and sighed.

One of the many reasons I’d left the
Times-Picayune
was because I was their go-to girl for reporting on crime, and it had started taking a heavy toll on me emotionally. How many times can you report on the shooting of an innocent kid who wasn’t even ten yet? I’d already started burning out before Katrina came rolling ashore and the levees failed, and had pretty much spent the next two years reporting on unimaginable misery while living on Scotch, wine, mood stabilizers, Xanax, and pot. I’d needed pills to sleep, pills to wake up, on and on and on.

I was well on my way to becoming Judy Garland when the opportunity at
Crescent City
came open, and I never looked back. I’d weaned myself off everything— well, except the pot and liquor, I do live in New Orleans, after all— but there were times when I missed being a beat reporter. Assigning stories, editing, going to meetings, and taking
Crescent City
from being a lightweight piece of fluff to an actual monthly newsmagazine had all been fun at first, but if I was going to be completely honest, it was starting to bore me just a little bit.

Much as I hated to admit it, I could feel the familiar old adrenaline rush I always used to get when I was assigned a juicy story.

Skittle jumped up into my lap, purring. I scratched his head. “How about that, Skittle? Mama’s a reporter again!”

I just hoped this wouldn’t bring back some bad memories.

Chapter Three

A little less than an hour later, I parked my ancient Toyota Corolla in the shade of a massive live oak on Nashville Avenue, about a block away from Magazine Street on the river side. I locked the car and started walking.

Before I left my apartment, I’d tried calling Venus Casanova, a NOPD detective who also happened to be a friend of mine. When my call went straight to voicemail, I called her partner, Blaine Tujague. I’ve also known Blaine a long time— and he also happened to be my man-friend’s younger brother. I got his voicemail, too— which hopefully meant they’d caught the case. This was really good— having police detectives that were friends assigned to the Mercereau murder would sure as hell make my life a lot easier— but I was preparing myself for the worst, just in case.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I turned the corner at Magazine Street. Venus’s black SUV was parked in front of the House of Mercereau, and I could see the guys packing up the lab van— so the crime scene investigators were finished. I doubted seriously Venus would let me inside the house— friendship has its limits— but I could just lean against her SUV and wait for her to come outside when she was finished.

The House of Mercereau was a turn of the century Victorian style house, painted fuchsia. There was a driveway that led around to a parking lot in the back, and I knew there was a huge yard back there as well. Marigny Mercereau’s grandfather had built the place after he made his fortune importing bananas from Central America, and she’d converted the entire first floor into a showroom and store. Her fashion shows weren’t the traditional kind that you’d see in New York. Instead, she set up folding chairs in the big front room. The models came down the staircase in her designs and walked down makeshift aisles set up between the rows of chairs. She lived on the two upper floors of the house. I’d never been upstairs myself, but the nicest way I’d heard her décor described was “French Quarter whorehouse.”

I leaned against Venus’s SUV and sipped the cup of coffee I’d gotten from the PJ’s in the Winn Dixie strip mall on Tchoupitoulas. It was a cool day in early April, and there was some serious damp in the air. The sky was full of clouds, and if I didn’t miss my guess it was going to rain at some point in the day— hopefully not while I was waiting outside for Venus.

The front door opened and Venus stepped out onto the front gallery, followed by Blaine. She made a face when she saw me. Venus is a tall African-American woman, well over six feet, and always wore heels with her no-nonsense business suits to look even taller— and she could run in those heels pretty damned fast when she had to. Born and raised in New Orleans East, she’d put herself through LSU on a basketball scholarship and still hit the gym pretty regularly. She wore her hair cut close to the scalp, very little make-up or jewelry, but was nevertheless still attractive with strong cheekbones and a sharp chin. Her dark skin was flawless. Blaine was several inches shorter than she was and looked so much like his older brother they could almost pass for twins— the same curly blue-black hair, the same olive skin, the same blue eyes, and the same bluish shadow on his face when unshaven. Blaine was a lot shorter than Ryan, and a lot vainer— he looked like he lived at the gym and his clothes always emphasized his muscles. He lived with his long-time partner in my neighborhood, just a block or so from my apartment.

I smiled and waved at them with my free hand.

“What are you doing here, sister-in-law?” Blaine was a horrible tease, and he loved to call me that because he knew it drove me crazy.

I scowled. “I should just go ahead and marry Ryan so I can ruin all of your family holidays.”