Greg Herren - Murder in the Rue Ursulines

“Dale and I had not been husband and wife for two years before Freddy and I met,” Jillian continued. “I was going through a very rocky period when Dale and I met, is the only defense I can offer-we were fine for a year, and then I realized-“ she rubbed her eyes. “I realized that Dale just wasn’t serious enough for me. He wasn’t interested in anything other than all that Hollywood bullshit, you know? I moved out of his house a year after we were married. Yes, we never bothered to file for divorce until I met Freddy, but we also had barely spoken in those two years. When I moved out, he knew it was for good. So, no, Dale has no reason to be resentful of Freddy-no matter what the tabloids say.” She gave me a horrible smile. “And the publicity was good for Dale’s career. He wasn’t getting work until he got to play cuckolded husband for the entertainment of the masses.”

“Likewise,” Freddy said, “my ex-wife, Glynis and I were having problems for a while before I met Jillian.” Glynis Parrish had been a television star when she’d married the sexiest man alive. After the break up, she’d been everywhere: every talk show, every magazine cover, weeping quietly over her great heartbreak and humiliation. “Glynis played the jilted wife to perfection, as you must be aware. Hey, the marriage was over, and she was milking the publicity to make herself sympathetic to the audience, you know? So, I let her play it out-she got some movie roles out of it-and what did we care if people hated us?” He smiled at Jillian. “It all blows over after a little while-and people still came to see our movies.”

“But these e-mails started coming two weeks ago.” Jillian went on. “And just two weeks ago, Glynis blew into town to make a movie.”

I hadn’t heard about that. “She’s making a movie here?”

Freddy laughed. “She plays a woman who comes to New Orleans to rebuild her life after her husband leaves her for another woman…” He rolled his eyes. “Original concept, huh?”

“Okay.” I shook my head. “Kind of interesting that she came into town around the same time the e-mails started.”

“My mother is here too.” Jillian spat the words out, placing particular loathing on the word mother. “And I wouldn’t put anything past that bitch.”

Interesting. “Have some problems with your mother?” Jillian’s mother, Shirley Harris, had been a musical comedy star for years, moving between Broadway and film effortlessly. Until a bout of ill health had recently sidelined her, she’d been a huge draw in Las Vegas.

“How much time do you have?” Jillian laughed bitterly. “Look, my mother and I don’t have a relationship. I tried for years to have one with her. She doesn’t understand boundaries, she doesn’t understand anything other than what she needs. I don’t want anything to do with her. She knows this, but keeps pushing.” She sighed. “Wherever I go, there she is. Maybe if someone would give her a job, she’d forget all about me.” A pained look crossed her face. “My mother was always desperate for the limelight…and now that her star has faded, the only way she can get any attention is by talking about me.” Her lips narrowed. “It’s really pathetic, if you think about it.”

“Where is your mother staying?” Somehow, I doubted that Shirley Harris would stoop to this level of harassment, but one of her employees might.

She shrugged. “I don’t know, but she’s here. I can sense her evil.”

Okay, probably best not to push that one. “And your staff?”

“Doreen Benson is our assistant.” Freddy said, passing me another folder. “Inside this folder are cell phone numbers for Dale and Glynis, as well as the resumes for Doreen, our nanny Cindy, and Jay Robinette, who’s the head of our security detail-along with our cell phone numbers. Our private numbers.” He glanced at his watch. “Those numbers, needless to say, aren’t for public knowledge. Cindy, Doreen and Jay have been instructed to cooperate with you fully-anything you might need. If you need to meet with us at the house, just call us, and we’ll let Jay know to let you in. You know where the house is?” When I nodded, he laughed. “Everyone knows where our house is, right? But as for the rest-“ he shrugged. “If any of them are doing this, I doubt they’d want to talk to you.”

“All right.” I picked up both folders to put into my shoulder bag. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I know anything concrete, or if I need something.”

“Thank you,” Jillian said. “Please-get to the bottom of this quickly.” She reached over and touched my hand. “And please-be discreet.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

I watched them exit the conference room, and sat there for a moment. I opened the folder with the e-mails, and leafed through them. They were all insulting, some making derogatory remarks about Freddy’s genitalia-which naturally made me think of Glynis Parrish…until I remembered that a photographer had snapped pictures of Freddy sunbathing nude in the south of France a year or two earlier. Everyone in the world had seen him naked. Even I had-I hadn’t been able to resist clicking through the gallery of images when they’d been posted on a gossip website. There was no question that Freddy was a beautiful man-my best friend Paige had said when they’d moved here, “You know, I’ll see every movie he makes, because he always shows his ass. And he has such a nice one…” We had both laughed.

With a sigh, I shoved the e-mails back in the folder.

Loren came back into the conference room. He shook my hand. “Thanks for doing this, Chanse.”

“No problem,” I replied, and walked back out to the elevators. Frillian were long gone, and as I waited for the elevator, I wondered again if I’d made a huge mistake.

They were movie stars. They were paid lots of money to play roles, to become different people, to be convincing. It was their job . So, I would have to take everything they told me with a grain of salt, and be careful not to simply trust them. The feud between Jillian and her mother was well-documented in the tabloids-but then again, she’d also told me not to believe everything I read about them. So, what was true and what wasn’t true? They both claimed their former spouses held no grudges against them, that everything between them was fine. They’d been very careful, though, to point out that someone starting sending the e-mails right around the time Dale and Glynis came to New Orleans to make their movie.

The hardest part of this case would be to curb my natural curiosity. I didn’t need to know why the e-mails were being sent. I was being paid to find out who was sending them-and that’s what I was going to do. I’d file a report, destroy all copies of the files to maintain confidentiality, and then I could just walk away from all of this.

I climbed into the elevator, and hit the lobby button.

No, I wasn’t going to be able to take them at face value. And though I was trying not to let my curiosity run wild, I couldn’t help myself from thinking about it on the way down to the lobby.

There was something more going on here than either of them wanted to admit.

I was going to have to be very, very careful.

A nine-year-old probably knows more about computers than I do.

Don’t get me wrong, I can use mine. I know how to turn it on, I know how to open a program-I can even load software. I know how to hook my digital camera into it to download pictures. I can download music for my iPod. I can log onto the Internet to do research I used to have to do on the telephone, by mail or in person-which is an incredible time-saver. But beyond that, it’s like trying to read Vietnamese. I don’t understand why it crashes, nor do I know what to do to make it stop crashing. I don’t know how to wipe a hard drive (although discovering by accident is one of my biggest fears) or how to retrieve a file that’s been erased. I don’t know how to hack into someone else’s computer, or into a website-and have no desire to know. I barely know how to work with the spam filter on my e-mail account.