Something banged at the rear of the sanctuary. Before she had time to turn, something else banged at the front. A figure burst from a door to the left, a man dressed in black, watch cap on head, stocking over face. He was holding a metal object at his side-a handgun? Automatically, she reached for her purse, her.38. But… damn! She hadn’t brought it. It wouldn’t fit into the leather envelope Alison had talked her into. Never again! Never, never never! Shit!
She ground her teeth in agony, watching the man raise the gun.
“I can show just cause.” The voice came not from him, but from the rear of the church. “The groom’s dead.”
The man in black fired, fired again. Skip couldn’t tell if Aubrey was hit. The best man, standing next to him, lifted off his feet and fell against him, knocking him backward, blood gushing onto his white shirt.
Over Weezee’s screams, the bridesmaids’ screams, all the screams in Creole hell, the voice from the rear spoke again. “Everyone stay where you are. Anybody move and I waste the place.”
Skip turned. The man in the back also was dressed in black, also wore a stocking. He was pointing an Uzi. The shooter joined him, “Count to ten,” said the speaker, and they were out the door.
Skip was halfway down the aisle before a round of gunfire tore through the heavy air of the afternoon. A warning. Now the aisle was filling up. Should she try to get to the victims? No. A doctor would go, maybe half a dozen. That was the kind of crowd it was.
“Police! Let me through! Police!”
She might as well have been reciting “Hail Marys” for all the good it did her.
Alison Gaillard caught up with her, tugged at her elbow. She had on a peach-colored dress and straw hat with matching floaty band, like some caricature of a Southern belle in a rum ad-Try some of this in your Scorpion, Talk about deadly! Except the woman in the ad would be running barefoot on a beach instead of teetering on heels that were more like stilts. And she wouldn’t have tears welling in her china-blues. “Oh, Skippy, not Aubrey!”
Oh, Alison, not this crap!
Skip thought it. But she said, “Get me through this crowd, will you?”
Alison had the right shoes for it. Some might have kicked ass; Alison wasted insteps. Sailing past the injured, Skip finally made it outside. It was June 30, last chance for a June wedding, but the weather was more like August. Humid and still. Air you practically had to swim through. She felt her suit wilt as she ran to the curb, getting there just in time to watch a gray car turn the corner.
A maverick breeze caught Alison’s hatband; it fluttered artistically. “Nobody ever thought Buddy Carothers meant it. I mean, everybody says they’re gon’ kill their girl friend’s new flame.”
“Alison, hold it. Weezee dumped someone for Aubrey?”
“There was a big scene at the Twelfth Night Revelers-didn’t you hear about it?”
Skip shook her head. The revelers held their ball on the night in question, which meant the big scene would have been almost six months earlier. Plenty of time for tempers to cool.
“Buddy said he’d kill Aubrey on his wedding day. Who knew he meant it?”
Skip heard sirens. Good. Someone had thought to call the police. But for the moment she was the sole representative thereof. She went back inside, made her way to the front and found Aubrey well, standing outside a small crowd shaking their heads around the fallen best man. Three doctors had tried to help him. They told her, in that Southern way that simultaneously celebrates euphemism and false piety, that there was “nothing they could do for him.”
They also told her he was Aubrey’s father Noel, the Delacroix patriarch and head of the shipping company the family had founded.
She called homicide and returned quickly to help the uniformed officers who’d be the first to arrive. Since it was a Saturday, it was a while before the detectives came-when they did there was good news and bad news. The two who turned up were Joe Tarantino, a prince of a guy in Skip’s book, and Frank O’Rourke, who had personal problems and liked to make Skip his personal scapegoat.
“Hey, Skip,” said Joe. “You a witness?”
“Hello, Langdon,” said Frank. “Tried Weight Watchers yet?”
She gave them her Buddy Carothers gossip, made herself useful taking statements, and in the end succeeded in behaving in so puppylike a fashion that Joe asked if she wanted to take a ride over to Buddy’s.
O’Rourke was outraged: “She can’t investigate. She’s a witness!”
Joe only shrugged, “So maybe she can ID the guy,”
Buddy lived in half a double shotgun up near Carrollton, A small gray car parked outside could have been the one Skip had seen at the church. But Buddy didn’t answer the door. It opened when Frank tried it. The three looked at each other and shrugged, all knowing they shouldn’t enter, all agreeing they were going to.
It was clammy and dark inside. They built these old places to stay cool no matter how hot it got, and the AC was on as well. Skip shivered.
There was no one in the living room. All was quiet. But they found a heavy-breathing lump under a sour sheet on the bed. Beer bottles were everywhere, and a half-drunk bottle of bourbon on the floor hadn’t been reclosed. The bedroom reeked. A.38 lay on a nearby dresser. Skip sniffed the barrel. Recently fired.
Stuffed into Buddy’s closet, thrown on the floor in a heap, were one pair of black jeans, one black turtleneck, and half a pair of pantyhose, all slightly sweat-soaked. They’d stink when they dried out, but not as much as the rest of the setup, Skip thought. She didn’t like the open door.
The lump didn’t move, didn’t hear a thing, or else Buddy had taken acting lessons. The two men finally shook him awake enough to read him his rights.
Buddy’s story was that he’d been drunk for two days because the woman he loved was getting married. He didn’t own a.38 or a black outfit. He’d had a visitor the day before, a Jehovah’s Witness, maybe-something like that; he’d opened the door, talked to the person, and closed it, maybe locking it, maybe not.
Skip could almost buy the case against him. Buddy had done the shooting, with the accomplice doing the talking because Buddy’s voice was known. The accomplice had dropped Buddy off and driven away in the gray car. Buddy had faked the whole drunk number, even down to his blood alcohol level, just by drinking fast. He might have even had a heat on at the church, which would explain his poor marksmanship.
But if he hadn’t really been drunk-if the binge was a cover-then why leave the evidence lying around? And was there some other reason the accomplice had done the talking? Perhaps because the shooter was a woman?
It wasn’t her problem; it was homicide’s. The next thing she knew about it was what The Times-Picayune said in the morning: Buddy’d been booked. What the hell. If he was innocent, it would come out. It just wasn’t her problem.
It had rained that night and the weather was fresher. It was 7:00 A.M. on a beautiful summer day and she had the only walking beat in the city, one of the most gorgeous urban walks in the country. V.C.D. was her district, the Vieux Carré to other New Orleanians-the French Quarter to people “from away.”
Louis Two-Nose caught her on Bourbon, just above Canal, and dragged her over to Iberville where no one could see them. “Whereyat, Skip?”
“How you makin’ it, Louis?” She didn’t know how old he was. Fifty, maybe; or maybe thirty-five. A complex design covered his face, pinky-red, going to purple on his namesake honker. Today he wore a Band-Aid on his forehead, probably from a fall. He needed dental work and about a barrel of leafy green vegetables. And a month at the Betty Ford Cento’. He spoke in the Bronx-sounding patois uptown people call “yat.” Killer fumes came with the words.