G.T. Herren - Paige Tourneur 01 - Fashion Victim (8 page)

I gave him a sour look. “Preaching to the choir, dear. You know I think everyone has the right to a bridal registry.”

“I know, but I like to take a moment to point out the hypocrisy whenever I can,” he said, picking up yet another piece of pizza. I’d only had two slices and felt full, even though I wanted more. I envied his ability to pretty much eat as much as he wanted whenever he wanted.

Stupid biology, anyway.

He took a big swallow from his beer and burped. “And that Tony Castiglione is a piece of work, for sure. His lawyer was counter-filing and counter-suing and trying every sleazy trick in the book to try to get a cash settlement for Tony out of Marigny— he obviously was working on a percentage of the take basis. I looked him up, that’s his usual practice. His website says it makes him work harder for his clients.” He rolled his eyes. “So, yeah, there was a lot of stuff I had Abby look over and decipher for me.” His business partner, Abby, had majored in Pre-Law at the University of New Orleans and had been accepted into the Loyola University Law School, but hadn’t enrolled. “But here’s the really weird part— the settlement hearing was sealed by the court, so it must have been pretty nasty. And it was done at Marigny’s request.
And
he didn’t get a cent— the judge’s decision wasn’t sealed. This Tony Castiglione’s a pretty nasty character. He’s been arrested for assault a couple of times but never convicted. The charges were always dropped. Always women, I might add— he’s a predator. There’s a clear pattern there.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. Nothing makes me angrier than men who abuse women either physically or emotionally or both. For just a moment a memory flashed through my mind and my entire body went rigid.

Don’t go back there
, I reminded myself, pushing the memory back into a corner of my mind, where I slammed the door closed and locked it.

Chanse was still talking. “And he married again, a couple of months after the divorce— to the very same Amber Kormann. She’s what? Fifteen years younger than he is?” He shook his head. “Must be clearly a control thing with him— like I said, someone should just take him out somewhere and horsewhip his sorry ass. Last record of him in the system is a few months back— she had him arrested and charged with domestic abuse and spousal rape. But the charges were dropped yet again.” He frowned. “I’m trying to track them both down. His last known address was down in the Holy Cross district, but that property is also on the city’s blighted list, so who knows? And I can’t find anything on the wife. She has that same property listed… and her occupation on her last rental application was ‘entertainer’.” He winked at me.

I didn’t want to know how he’d accessed those records— I’m a big fan of plausible deniability. As long as he didn’t tell me, I was fine— even though I knew that he kept Abby’s boyfriend, a computer genius, on retainer to hack into places he shouldn’t. “So she was either a prostitute or a stripper or both.”

“I’ve got Abby talking to some of her friends down at the strip clubs, trying to see what she can find out about her.” One of the things I absolutely adored about Abby was she had put herself through UNO as a dancer at the Catbox Club, a Bourbon Street strip joint. She still danced every once in a while “to keep her hand in,” as she liked to say. “I’m really worried about the most recent Mrs. Castiglione, to be honest. Abusive men who don’t get help or don’t go to jail just get worse until someone ends up dead.” His face was grim. “And I can’t find any trace of her in the months since the charges were dropped— I don’t know if that means anything or not. Maybe she just changed her name and skipped town. But I don’t have a good feeling about it. The address being blighted really worries me.”

I bit my tongue. There were a lot of reasons for a woman to give a phony address— even more reasons for a woman to completely disappear.

Best not to go there
.

Instead, I said, “I think it’s great you’re so concerned about this woman, Chanse, but it really doesn’t have anything to do with Marigny, does it?”

He shook his head, his face still grim and angry. He’d once told me when we were both really high and drinking wine that his father sometimes hit his mother— so physically abusive men were always a trigger for him, just as they were for me. “No, it doesn’t. But I’m worried about this woman, and I’m not working on anything else. What can it hurt to look for her, make sure she’s okay?”

I knew better than to try to dissuade him when he got like this— anything I said would only make him more determined. It was one of the reasons I loved him like a brother. “This is all very interesting, but as far as Marigny was concerned, it’s all old news. She never charged him with abuse, did she?”

“No.”

“So why would he kill Marigny now? Wouldn’t he have killed her before the divorce if he wanted money from her? Killing her now doesn’t make sense. He isn’t going to get anything.”

He shrugged. “He doesn’t seem too bright, Paige, seriously. Any man who physically abuses women has more than a few screws loose. Who knows? Maybe he’s been brooding all this time about how she treated him. Maybe he found out she was writing a book that made him look bad— what does she say about him?”

“I haven’t gotten that far into it.” Reading her memoir was incredibly slow going, because the writing was so bad. My mind would get numb from trying to decipher what she was talking about and I’d have to get up from the computer. There were times I wanted to scream at the screen. “So far I’ve gotten to her college years. Outside of her friend Audrey, apparently everyone she went to school with at McGehee was a bitch from hell, and she named names.” The only one that I recognized was Athalie’s.

There was only one Athalie in New Orleans, after all.

He whistled. “That’s pretty ballsy, don’t you think? Wasn’t she afraid of getting sued?”

“Well, they’d have to prove what she said wasn’t true, and that she wrote it with malicious intent— and
intent
is always really hard to prove,” I replied. “And think of the publicity! Once it got into the paper— or on the web— everyone in the city would want to read the book to see what she had to say about people. She was probably
hoping
she’d get sued— it would be great marketing for her.”

“Are you getting a sense of her from the book?”

I closed my eyes. The pot was making my mind a little fuzzy, and I was getting tired— I wasn’t going to have any trouble going to sleep after he left. “I feel sorry for her,” I said, not opening my eyes. “I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as she makes it out to have been— who remembers high school pleasantly? I sure don’t. But it’s our
perception
of what it was like— someone else would probably remember it differently.” To be fair to Marigny, though, Audrey had pretty much painted the same picture of Marigny’s school days. “You know how teenagers always think everything is the end of the world? That whole ‘my boyfriend’s broken up with me and
no one has ever been hurt this badly ever before in the history of the world’
type thing?”

Chanse laughed. “Like how people I went to high school keep friending me on Facebook and are always so surprised to hear how much I hated high school because they thought I was popular and everyone liked me?”

“Exactly like that,” I replied. “I really do feel sorry for Marigny— all of the stuff she talks about in her introduction, the Russian royalty thing, all of that, all the husbands and even all the boyfriends. She talks about losing her virginity at fifteen in almost excruciatingly exhaustive detail. I don’t really need to know how badly it hurt or how long she bled after, thank you— it was all about her feeling like she didn’t belong and wanting to, so badly. They were mean to her at McGehee because she wasn’t New Orleans society. Her grandfather had made money importing bananas, but her father spent it all… and so not only was she nobody, but they were broke and everyone knew it. So she started making up this story about her grandfather being an illegitimate son of the Czar… which of course is bullshit. The last Romanov had one mistress before he married, and he was ridiculously faithful to his wife. But she told that lie so often she started believing it, and after Katrina she went over there to try to prove it.” I ran my hand through my hair. “None of the marriages worked out, her relationship with her sons wasn’t as close as she felt they could have been… yes, I feel sorry for Marigny. She was a very sad and lonely lady.”

“Is that going to be the theme of your piece on her?”

“It should be.” I leaned forward and flicked the pizza box closed on the two slices that were left. “I don’t know if Rachel would allow that. The great irony is she claimed she wrote the memoir to inspire other women to follow their dreams no matter what, but it’s not inspirational at all. Her story, I mean. It’s really sad.”

“But you haven’t gotten to where she starts running her own business yet.”

I stifled a yawn. “Yeah.” I stood up and stretched.

Taking the hint, Chanse stood up. “I’ll leave you the roach.”

“Thanks.” I followed him out to the gate so I could let him out. “Call me if you find out anything about Amber Castiglione, all right?”

He leaned down and kissed the top of my head. “I’ve got her financials, too— I just hadn’t a chance to look them over. You want me to email them to you?”

“Yeah. No sense wasting any more of your time on this. Thanks.”

I watched him walk down the street towards his own apartment before shutting the gate and walking back into my own. I put the pizza in the fridge and sat back down at my desk, the joint in my hand. I lit it and took another hit before diving back into Marigny’s memoir.

Chapter Nine

I woke up to the smell of bacon.

At first I thought I must have died in my sleep and gone to some wonderful heaven where angels make bacon, but then I realized it had to be Ryan.

One of the great things about my man was he loved to cook, and he loved to cook for me. Sunday morning I always woke up to wonderful smells coming from my under-utilized kitchen. I threw the covers back, glanced at the alarm and was shocked to realize it was just past ten. I usually didn’t sleep that late, but I had stayed up until almost one reading the damned memoirs. I walked into the bathroom, washed my face and brushed my teeth. I slipped on my house shoes and went downstairs, peeking around the corner into the kitchen.

Ryan was standing at the stove, scrambling eggs. There was a small plate with buttered toast, and two more pieces popped up in the toaster. He was wearing a pair of loose-fitting gray cargo shorts and a black Saints #9 jersey with BREES written on the back. I slipped up behind and slid my arms around his stomach, giving him a hug. “You’re back early,” I said, resting my face against his warm back.

“The kids had an early church pageant,” he replied, “so I dropped them off early and headed back over here.” He pulled one of my hands up to his mouth and kissed it. “Now, step away from the stove. I don’t want you getting burned by bacon grease or something.”

I obeyed, pouring myself a cup of coffee and sitting down at my desk. I touched the mouse and my screen woke back up. The last thing I’d done before going to bed— the same thing I do every night— is check my email, so the web browser was open to my gmail account. I started opening mail; nothing that needed immediate response. I deleted the spam, and was making good progress getting through them all when I saw one whose return address was all numbers; like a phone number, actually. I clicked the box preparatory to deleting it when something about the subject line had me move the cursor off the delete button.

I know who you really are
.

I swallowed, and glanced back over at Ryan, who was now pouring pancake batter onto the griddle. I clicked it open and my heart sank into my feet.

The message was simply two sentences:
I also know where you’re from. You’ll be hearing from me soon
.

“Not possible,” I whispered, and quickly deleted it.

I took a few deep breaths, chanting in my head a bit to calm my nerves and slow down my heart rate.
It’s nothing
, I told myself, until my stomach stopped roiling and the thudding of my heartbeat in my ears faded away.
It’s just the Internet equivalent of a crank call, some stupid kid playing around online and trying to be funny. He probably sent that to at least a hundred total strangers, just some stupid kid, It has to be nothing, right? There’s no way anyone could have found you, not after all this time
.

“Paige?”

I almost jumped out of my skin when Ryan placed his hand on my shoulder.

“Sorry,” I gave him a weak grin, and his face relaxed into a smile. “I was just thinking about this Marigny Mercereau piece I’m working on.” I shook my head.

“Ugh, that awful woman.” He made a face.

“Baby, she was murdered yesterday,” I gave him a bit of a frown. “And you know, she was really more sad than anything else.”

“Well, that’s terrible.” He sighed. “Poor thing. I went to Newman with Bonaparte, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know that.” New Orleans
really
was a ridiculously small town. “Were you friends?”

“We were on the football team together, and we got along, but we didn’t hang out or anything like that.” He wrinkled his brow. “I don’t think I’ve seen him since graduation.”

“Then why do you think she was an awful woman?” I tilted my head to one side and looked up at him.

“Your breakfast is ready, my love.” He grabbed my hands and pulled me up out of the chair, kissing me on the cheek. “We can talk about it while we’re eating.”

We always ate sitting next to each other on the couch. Skittle stared at us balefully from the coffee table when we sat down. The blueberry pancakes were delicious— and Ryan had brought blueberry syrup to pour on them. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I started eating, and I gulped them down along with two pieces of crispy bacon at a most unladylike speed. Finished, I wiped my mouth with a paper towel and picked up my coffee cup, more than a little embarrassed.