Rampart Street (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) (12 page)

He and his traveling companion switched to the South Rampart Line and rode for twenty blocks. Valentin hopped down at the corner of First Street and took his time strolling north. He picked up his pace a little bit as they crossed into the darker streets, taking a long way around, intentionally avoiding the blocks nearest the First and Liberty intersection.

As he came up on Willow Street, he made a sharp jag and cut down the alley. He was pleased to find that he was still deft at such maneuvers and could always slip away from anyone if need be. He left the string bean gawking and pacing in a panic. His prey had blown away like smoke.

In a minute Valentin had found what was left of Ten Penny's hovel and located the loose brick alongside the doorjamb in the back of the building, just as the Negro had described it. He snatched the ring, replaced the brick, and made his way back to the street. When he came up behind Picot's man, he slowed his steps and ambled around him as if it was Sunday afternoon in Jackson Square.

He heard the string bean let out a loud breath of relief. He kept his pace modest, trailing his new companion and leaving those rough streets behind.

Anne Marie Benedict had just finished her bath and was drying herself when Betsy pushed the door open without knocking. Anne Marie gave a start and pulled the towel around her. The girl was too fresh, and she was about to scold her for the hundredth time about keeping her place when she noticed that Betsy's coffee-brown face was all giddy with excitement.

"It's that
detective,
" the maid whispered. "Mr. St. Cyr. He's down on the gallery."

Anne Marie felt a flutter in her chest. "What's he want?"

"He says he needs to see you right away." She giggled. "Go on and go down like that. I dare you."

Anne Marie clenched her jaw to stifle a laugh and kept a stern face as she sent Betsy to tend to their visitor. She hurried down the hall to her bedroom, where she picked a beige high-collared shirtwaist and a dark blue skirt. She had decided in that moment that it was time to change from mourning black and gray. Still, she pinned her hair rather severely. She was in too much of a rush to notice that the flush in her cheeks was giving her away.

She assumed that the Creole detective had come by to report the arrest of the suspect named Lee. There had already been telephone calls from the police, from the lawyer Delouche, from Alderman Badel, everyone expressing relief that the terrible episode could finally be laid to rest.

She realized that if this was indeed the case, the detective she had hired—the
colored
detective—would have no more business there and would fade back into the fetid slough of Storyville, and most likely she'd never see him again. With that thought in mind, she turned away from the mirror.

When she came downstairs, she found him seated on one end of the divan. Betsy was hovering in the doorway, casting glances his way and trying not to grin. She straightened and pulled her eyes off him when Miss Anne Marie approached.

He stood up, not with a nervous jerk like most men; instead, he rose as smoothly as a serpent uncoiling. Anne Marie caught her breath as she settled carefully into the opposite chair.

"Mr. St. Cyr," she said, clearing the catch from her throat. "Please, sit down." He resumed his seat as deftly as he had left it. "Did Betsy..." She stopped, began again. "Have you been offered refreshment?"

"He didn't want nothing," Betsy piped up. Anne Marie frowned at the maid's tart tongue. She thought to chase her away, but she would only find some other place to lurk and eavesdrop. She returned her attention to the detective. "Are you here about the arrest of this Negro suspect?" she inquired.

Valentin wasn't surprised that she already knew about it. "I am," he said.

"Is he guilty?"

"I doubt it."

Anne Marie stared, glanced at Betsy, looked at him again.

"I questioned him," Valentin told her. "And I went to Rampart Street yesterday afternoon. I visited the scene of the crime, and I spoke to a woman who was with him when the shooting occurred."

"Was the woman a prostitute?" Anne Marie asked.

"Yes, ma'am. A crib woman."

Betsy said, "That means she—"

"I know what it means." She gave the maid a sharp glance, then returned her attention to St. Cyr. "And Mr. Lee was her customer?"

"That's right."

She eyed him closely. "You said you questioned him?"

"Yes, ma'am. This afternoon, in Parish Prison."

"What did he say happened?"

"He said that he and the woman heard a shot fired, and then he looked out the window and saw the body on the street. When nothing else happened, he ran out there. He said your father was already dead. He went through his pockets. That's all he did. So he said."

"And do you believe him and the woman?"

"They both told the same story," Valentin told her. "They could have put their heads together to make up an alibi, but I don't think they have the wits for it."

"Then why did the police arrest him?"

"To clear the case," he said, as if it was obvious.

"How can they do that, if he's not guilty?"

"Oh, they'll produce evidence and make sure he confesses," Valentin explained matter-of-factly. "It happens all the time. They'll get what they need on him, one way or another."

"Then what?"

"He'll be tried and convicted and hung in the yard," he said simply, adding, "and it will be over."

Her brow furrowed. "But that means an innocent man will lose his life."

Valentin smiled then, a lazy tilting of his mouth that brightened his gray eyes and softened his face. Anne Marie blinked in confusion and the thump in her chest came so hard she was sure he could hear it. She didn't dare turn her head to look at Betsy, who had let out a soft purr of her own.

"Mr. Lee isn't
innocent,
if that's your concern," Valentin went on, keeping the smile in place. "He's most likely gotten away with crimes just as bad." He thought about mentioning Ten Penny caught in the act of slicing off her father's finger, then thought better of it. "Anyway, this is only what I believe is true," he told her. "The police think they have their man."

Her eyes came back at him full of light, and now it was his turn to be a bit dazzled.

"If Mr. Lee didn't murder my father, I want to know who did." Her voice trembled and her face took on a blush of emotion. "I don't care what the police say. I want you to continue the investigation."

Valentin said, "All right, then."

"So do you—"

There came a sudden pounding from the floor above. Anne Marie's eyes flashed at Betsy and the maid scurried away.

"Is there something wrong?" Valentin inquired.

"No, not at all," Anne Marie said. "Are we finished now?"

Valentin said, "You should know that if I continue, I'll have to dig around your father's affairs. I mean business and personal."

She hesitated for a moment and he sensed her wavering. Then she said, "If that's what's required."

"And the first thing I need is for you to allow the release of the autopsy report to me."

She shifted, looking discomfited. "How do I do that?"

"Mr. Delouche will take care of it, on your instructions."

"I'll call him, then." Her voice was fading. "Anything else?"

"Not right now," he said.

She let out a breath of relief. Footsteps were padding back down the staircase. "Betsy will see you out," she said.

Sauntering along with Picot's man following like a tired hound, he rehashed the visit. Though he had to admire her mettle, he wondered if she understood that keeping him on the case could end up ruining her family name. Probably so; she was no dunce. So she knew, and was still willing to face a grim conclusion. She had her reasons, of course. He couldn't figure out what they were. But he would, sooner or later.

A streetcar was coming down the tracks, and he hopped on and found himself a seat by the window. Turning his head slightly, he saw his tail hurry to grab the rail and pull himself aboard, causing a clumsy commotion with the other passengers. The fellow might just as well have shouted out loud that he was following the Creole in the gray suit.

Valentin chuckled over this, then let out a sigh, thinking how little regard Picot must have for him to send such a sad sack. At the same time, he wouldn't put it past the lieutenant to have picked out the worst of his crew, just to make that point.

Anne Marie wandered into her father's study and she sat down at his desk, a large walnut affair with two reading lamps of polished brass. The afternoon sun hid beyond the curtains, casting a faint light across the Turkish rug. It was cozy there, a favorite place. When she was a little girl, she used to play under the desk, all safe and secure, until her father came in to work and chased her off. Later, she would curl up with a book in the leather chair that sat in the corner. On the rare occasion, they would share a rainy evening in sweet silence, she reading and he laboring over his papers. He never seemed to stop working.

After a few more moments in reverie, she opened the drawer, rummaged under a sheaf of papers, and took out a single sheet, which she held in her hands without reading.

In that very room, four weeks before, she had opened the drawer looking for her old diploma from Madame D'Orly's Academy for Ladies and came across the envelope that contained the letter. Curious, she took it out and saw that it was addressed to her father from Henry Harris himself, and that it was almost twenty years old. After she read it, she sat unmoving for a long minute. Then she put it back where she had found it.

The next morning she rode the streetcar to the city library, where she asked to see copies of the local newspapers from the early 1890s. Three days later she took the letter out again, carried it to the kitchen, where her father was drinking a cup of coffee, and laid it before him.

She remembered how he had stared at it, silent and unmoving, his face going pale, as if he was aging before her eyes. At one point he had started to speak, then couldn't get any words out.

"Is it true?" she had asked. "Did you do this?"

He gave her a sick look, his face draining of blood, as if something he had long feared, some nightmare, had come to life at last. It took another tortured half minute for him to give a slow nod.

She swallowed, holding back the sob that had risen into her throat.

"It was so long ago," he said in a whisper. "There's nothing I can do."

"You can't just leave it like this," she said tightly, her face flushing. "You can't."

He said nothing to that as he continued to gaze somberly at the letter with eyes that held a terrible grief.

"You've got to do something," she told him. To which he said not a word.

Less than two weeks later, he was dead.

She put the letter back in the drawer and closed it. The study seemed dark and close now, as if his ghost was lingering, and she decided she needed to get out of the house. She went to the foyer and called up the staircase that she was going for a walk, then put on a hat, wrapped a thin shawl over her shoulders, and stepped onto the gallery.

It was a dry afternoon and just a bit windy. She knew a lot of her neighbors still didn't consider it quite proper that a girl of her station wander the banquettes alone, but she didn't care. She was in the aftermath of a death in the family, and she needed to walk and to breathe something other than dying flowers.

As she started down the banquette, it occurred to her that those same neighbors likely thought there was something wrong with her, anyway. She was unmarried at twenty-two. Her brother was so derelict that he had appeared at the funeral for one agonized hour, then disappeared again, back to Mobile or Baton Rouge or Memphis, wherever his negligent shoes took him. Now she had a rough-looking detective going in and out her front door.

She had started something when she took the letter to her father that day. The arrest of the Negro named Lee offered a chance to lay it to rest again. All she had to do was let things be. As Mr. St. Cyr had said with that feral smile of his, Lee had to be guilty of something. It was a simple solution and might spare her and her mother from a nightmare. Instead, she had retained the services of a man who was most definitely the wrong kind of Creole for her part of town and put him to the task of digging all the way to the bottom.

She passed two matrons on the banquette. They were from the neighborhood and familiar, and yet she was so lost in thought that she didn't hear their murmured greetings as they went by. They looked over their shoulders, whispering and shaking their heads.

Though she had worked to keep the upper hand, she admitted that St. Cyr was having an effect on her. She didn't understand it, and it bothered her. She was not a silly schoolgirl who was prone to losing her wits. Indeed, with a weak mother and a father who wasn't there much of the time, she was left to her own devices.

Anyway, she wasn't like the other girls, who seemed to dream only of marriage and children. She read all the newspapers, knew about women clamoring for suffrage, and thought it a good thing. She took her own steps in that direction. She smoked tobacco when she felt like it, even in public, drank brandy—too much, of late—and only rarely wore a corset, much to her mother's dismay.