Murder in the Rue Ursulines

she bellowed, making me jump. She smiled at me. “Sorry.”

The door opened and Rosemary stepped into the room. “Yes. Did you need something?”

Glynis stood up in a fluid motion. “Rosemary, you haven’t been using my computer for anything, have you?”

“Of course not!’ Rosemary’s face reddened.

“If you’re lying to me-“

“No, no, no!” Rosemary cowered, stepping back into the doorway.

I stared at her. She acted like she was afraid of Glynis. I looked over at Glynis. Her hands were on her hips and she was breathing hard, her face red. Her eyes narrowed as she took a few steps forward. Rosemary visibly shrank. Glynis’s voice continued to rise as she spoke. “Have you seen anyone-Darlene, Brett, Charity, anyone-using my computer?”

“No!”

“I’m going to need to speak to each of them.” I interrupted.

Glynis’s head whipped back around to me. Her entire face relaxed into a smile. “Of course. I want this matter cleared up just as much as Freddy does, I’m sure.” Without looking at her, she commanded, “Rosemary, get their phone numbers together for Chanse.” She sank back down on her sofa. She waved her right hand in a fluttery motion. “I’m getting a headache. Rosemary, after you get Chanse the numbers, would you mind showing him out?” It was an effective dismissal. I thanked her for her time and followed Rosemary into the hallway. Rosemary shut the door behind us. “Go wait in the front room, and I’ll join you shortly,” she whispered, and hurried off down the hall.

I walked back to the front room and sat down in one of the chairs. I opened the folder and started paging through the e-mails. The next step, I figured, was to make a calendar of the dates and times the e-mails were sent-and compare that with the household schedule. Granted, that was assuming Glynis hadn’t sent them herself. I closed my eyes and went over the entire interview again.

Was she telling me the truth?

I opened my eyes as Rosemary came back into the room. She handed me a piece of paper with the names and numbers of the rest of Glynis’s staff printed clearly on it. I smiled at her. “She seems like a rather difficult woman to work for.”

“Oh, no, she’s just having a bad day.” Rosemary smiled at me. “She gets these horrible migraines-suffers terribly from them. Today is one of her bad days. Most of the time, she’s an absolute doll-very kind and thoughtful. One of the best employers I’ve ever had.”

I stood up. “How long have you been with her?”

“Since she came to New Orleans.” Rosemary pushed an errant lock of hair back from her forehead.

“So, about two weeks?”

Her eyes widened. “Two weeks? Oh, no, she’s been here for about two months now. I was hired about a week or so before then-her former assistant had quit to have a baby-and I put the house together for her, found the housekeeper and everyone else.” She looked down. “It’s really an honor to work for her. I’ve been a fan for years.” She bridled a bit. “She says she wants me to come back to California with her when the movie wraps.”

“Wow.” I smiled at her. “Are you going to go?”

“I’ve always wanted to live in California,” she said wistfully. “And it’s a wonderful opportunity for me.” She took the piece of paper back from me and pulled a pen out of her pocket. “Let me give you my cell number. You can call me anytime. I’m at your disposal.” She wrote it down. “I’ll let everyone know you’re going to be getting in touch with them, and that it’s okay for them to talk to you.”

“I appreciate that.” I folded the paper and slid it into the folder. I walked over to the front door.

“It was nice meeting you.” She said, offering me her hand again. “And remember, call me if you need anything, okay?”

All the way back to my apartment, I replayed the whole interview in my head. Rosemary seemed okay, but I didn’t quite buy the ‘she’s a great employer’ routine. It seemed a little rehearsed-and the way Glynis had acted toward her made it seem like bullshit. Granted, maybe Glynis was having a bad day-she’d said she was-but something my landlady told me once about another woman in her social circle kept coming back to me.

Barbara Castlemaine moved in the stratosphere of New Orleans society-and had been one of my first clients. I’d handled something for her with discretion, and we’d become friends over the years. It had been at a party she’d given at her Garden District mansion, and after I ‘d been talking to this perfectly charming woman for nearly an hour, Barbara had peeled me away from her and in a low voice warned me away from her. “She’s a horrible woman,” she’d insisted over my protests. “You can always tell what kind of a person someone is by how they treat the help-and she treats hers like garbage.”

Glynis had certainly treated Rosemary that way. I wondered if she was that way with her other employees.

I called Loren to check in with him, see how he wanted me to proceed-or if he wanted me to. I got his voice- mail and left a rather detailed message about my progress so far-tracing the computer and so forth. I closed with, “Unless I hear otherwise, I’m going to proceed with checking out the people who had access to Glynis Parrish’s computer.”

I left messages for Glynis’s posse, then sat down at my desk and turned on my own computer. I opened a spreadsheet, and started logging in the dates and times the e-mails had been sent. It didn’t take long for the pattern to start to emerge. All of them had been sent in the early afternoons-and always on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

I started reading them again. Glynis had been right about one thing-the e-mails were all vile. They all alluded in some way to something Freddy had done-how his public persona was not who he really was. You act like such a do-gooder, one taunted, but those of us who know what you’re really like know better. You might be able to fool the world with your St. Freddy act, but I know the real Freddy. How do you sleep at night?

What on earth did that mean?

I logged onto the Internet and did a search for Freddy Bliss- and was promptly rewarded with over a hundred thousand hits. I moaned. It would take me forever to wade my way through all of them-and Glynis and Jillian probably had just as many on-line mentions. I sighed, and started clicking on links. A lot of them I was able to dismiss out of hand-movie reviews, fan sites, etc. What I was interested in was gossip. But even that wasn’t much help. Outside of his pre-Glynis romances with any number of actresses, Freddy appeared to have lived a fairly blameless life. There were no drunk driving citations, no crazy or errant behaviors in public. He was in his early thirties-close to me in age, actually-and had been born and raised in Newton, Kansas. He’d gone to a small university, Emporia State, for a couple of years, taking courses in theater, before he dropped out and headed out to Los Angeles to try to make it as a movie star. He’d guested on some TV shows, but his big break came in a small role in a film called Separate Vacations, about a married couple who always took separate vacations. He played a beach bum who seduced the wife, and had all but stolen the movie. After that, he signed with a major agency and moved on to starring roles. His marriage to the reigning television queen of sitcoms had been a big story-although they hadn’t been called Frynis or Gleddy. Despite being called a ‘golden couple’ by the gossips, they hadn’t been big enough to become a one-word entity. That story, though, had been eclipsed by the affair with Jillian-and the messy divorce that followed.

I stood up and stretched. It was just past five, and I wanted to take a quick shower before heading down to meet Paige for dinner. My neck was sore from hunching over the computer screen. I tried calling the people on the list again, but once again didn’t get anyone. I made a mental note to check in with Rosemary again after dinner, to see if she had in fact called them all for me.

At five forty-five, I pulled into a parking spot just past St. Philip Street on Burgundy. It was about a six-block walk to Port of Call from there, but my standard rule of parking in the French Quarter is to always grab the first parking spot I saw-there may not be another one in the entire neighborhood. And there’s nothing I hate more than driving around trying to find one. Besides, I always enjoy strolling through the Quarter-and Paige would be late as she always was. I decided to walk up Ursulines past Glynis’s house-it was on the way. I got out and walked down to the corner at Ursulines, and turned right. It was already dark, and the street lamps were casting their glow over the sidewalk. There wasn’t another soul to be seen anywhere. I looked over across the street. The gas lights on the