I sighed. I didn’t know enough. It always seemed to come back to Freddy and Jillian.
I grabbed the e-mail folder and started leafing through it. Whoever sent the e-mails knew something about Freddy-something they obviously didn’t want to become public knowledge. But the one person who knew Freddy better than Jillian could only be his ex-wife.
But whatever she might have known hadn’t concerned him enough to keep his fly zipped when he met Jillian- and if it hadn’t come up during the divorce, why would she wait three years to start threatening him?
Unless it was something she’d only recently found out-some big secret he’d managed to keep from her the four years they were married.
Something Freddy was willing to kill to keep secret-willing to risk the scandal of a murder trial to hide.
In all the articles I’d read about Freddy earlier that day, I hadn’t seen anything about his family or his life before he became famous. The background was all sketchy-I reached from some of the pieces I’d printed out. He was born and raised in Newton, Kansas-no mention of family or siblings. He’d gone to Emporia State for two years before dropping out and heading to Hollywood. He’d become a star in less than two years after arriving in Southern California-and his life was pretty well-documented from that point on.
So, it had to be something from his past-from Kansas.
The combination of pot, wine and Mardi Gras exhaustion was making me sleepy. I yawned and did a search on Glynis Parrish. Again, there were hundreds of thousands of mentions of her on the web. I found a bio of her on a movie-star site and read through it quickly. She’d been born on Long Island, the oldest of three daughters. Her mother had been a bit of a stage mom; trying to get her oldest daughter into show business. Glynis had started doing commercials as an early teen, got some bit parts in movies and television shows, and then had guested on an episode of
The rest was Hollywood history.
I clicked through the gossip sites, and found no pieces about her personal life before she started dating Freddy. She’d gone to openings and awards shows with her mother as her date. Of course, after she started dating the sexy superstar, there were plenty of pieces on them.
I frowned. They made it seem like she was the first woman whose husband had cheated on her.
Since the divorce, she’d dated some other actors, but nothing serious.
I made a note. Rosemary Shannon would probably know the identity of the latest man in her life.
It was pretty standard when someone was killed to look at the people closest to them. It was always loved ones who seemed to kill the objects of their affection. If a child disappeared and turned up dead, it always seemed to be one or both of the parents. It was enough to make you not want to fall in love, get close to anyone-it certainly increased the likelihood someone would kill you someday.
So, it stood to reason that after Freddy, the man in her life was the most likely suspect. It was just a matter of finding him. Why wasn’t she ‘ready to go public’? Was he married?
That opened up a whole new line of thought-but my brain was getting fuddled.
I stood up and stretched with a jawbreaking yawn. I was bone tired. The day had been an emotional roller- coaster, and I’d been tired when Loren’s call had awakened me. My bed was calling to me. I reached down and unplugged the landline, remembering Loren’s admonition. My cell phone number was unpublished-granted, it wouldn’t be hard for some enterprising reporter to dig up the number, so I set it to vibrate and left it sitting on my desk. I took Storm Bradley’s card out of my wallet and set it on the keyboard. I’d call him first thing in the morning.d just reached the corner of Barracks when my cell phone rang. I grinned, pulling it out of my jacket pocket, assuming it was Paige.
The caller ID read LOREN MCKEITHEN.
I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“MacLeod.” I said, wondering what this could be about.
“Chanse, it’s Loren. How quickly can you get over to Freddy and Jillian’s?” His voice was tense, and warning bells went off in my head.
“I’m not far. Probably about ten minutes, max,” I replied. “What’s going on?” This couldn’t be about the e- mails-that wasn’t really all that urgent. I felt goose bumps come out on my arms.
“Get here. Now. It’s important.” He hung up.
That didn’t sound good.
“So much for things going so well,” I said out loud. Something had happened-only I couldn’t imagine for the life of me what that could be.
I started walking faster.
And I couldn’t help but hear my mother’s voice saying,
I hated that she was right.
Chapter Seven
I’d known Venus Casanova for almost ten years.
She was a striking woman, not beautiful, but with the kind of arresting looks that not only catch your attention but hold it. Her skin was dark and ageless-she looked like she could be anywhere from thirty to somewhere in her fifties. She had strong features and prominent cheekbones from native American blood somewhere in the distant past. She always wore her hair cropped close to the scalp, and was one of the few women I knew who could get away with it. She was about six-one or two, and her body was muscular and defined. Like me, she’d gone to LSU on an athletic scholarship (hers was for basketball, and she’d played on the national team) and had kept her body in shape since then. She was the first black woman to make detective grade in the New Orleans police department-a combination guaranteed to make her unpopular.
Whispers that she was a lesbian had abounded in the department when I’d been on the force, but no matter what her sexual preference (she was actually straight), Venus was a damned good cop. She was honest-a rare quality in the New Orleans police department-and committed to her job. She was proud of her rise in the department, and frequently spoke to high school students about the importance of education and working hard. I didn’t know her well until the flood, but I’d always respected her. She’d always dealt with me honestly and fairly, even when I intruded into one of her cases. When Paul had been kidnapped, she’d kept me in the loop of the investigation, which I appreciated.
After the flood, Venus and I had become closer. She’d lived in New Orleans East in the house she raised her two daughters in, and had lost everything. I knew her partner on the force, Blaine Tujague, much better than I knew her. She’d moved into the carriage house behind Blaine’s house on Coliseum Square until she was been able to find an overpriced apartment in the Quarter-which she regularly griped about. For months after we all came back, Paige and I had met her and Blaine every night for drinks, at the Avenue Pub on St. Charles Avenue, and I’d grown to like her. She had an odd sense of humor, and was bluntly honest.
She’d considered taking her insurance settlement and retiring from the force, moving to Memphis to be closer to her daughters and their kids, but had decided to stay and be a part of the recovery. She could have taken the tests that would have improved her rank, but Venus wasn’t an administrator. “I’d rather stay where I am,” she always said, “where I can do some good for the people of this city. That’s why I became a cop, not to have to deal with all the bullshit that comes with a damned desk job.”
Her face was impassive when she walked into the interrogation room, shutting the door behind her. She nodded to me, and then inclined her head toward Storm Bradley, my attorney. “You think you need a lawyer?” She raised one of her eyebrows.
I’d called Storm after waking up and taking a shower. As soon I said who I was, he’d cut me off and insisted, to
