The Devil Close Behind Page 5

  Antoine voiced what I was thinking. “And a week or two later, Slade and Laurette pack up and move.”

  “Any idea who this woman was?” I asked.

  Norma shook her head. “Never seen her before, or since. I hope you find Laurette, if only to set her parents at ease. But I’m sure she’s fine. She’ll get in touch with them soon enough. They need to give her some room.”

  Chapter Six

  Antoine and I left Norma Santini’s apartment and walked out to the street. “I have a list of Laurette’s friends to contact. That should keep me busy the rest of the afternoon.”

  He used the fob on his key ring to unlock his RAV4. “Cool. You do that while I head on over to Algiers to meet that client. I’ll pick you up at your hotel around five-thirty. If I’m running late, I’ll text you. We can get some dinner later, somewhere on Frenchmen Street, after we talk with my sister.”

  “After lunch at Willie Mae’s, I don’t know that I’ll need dinner,” I said.

  “This is New Orleans. Eating, that’s how we do.” He waved and slid into the driver’s seat.

  After he drove off, I sat in my rental car, with the window down, sipping water as I got out the list Laurette’s mother had given me. I called each of the women whose names and numbers were written on the sheet. In all three cases, the calls rolled over to voice mail, so I left messages. That done, I checked my list of recent calls. One was from Gary Manville, who’d left a voice mail as well. His message was terse, asking me to call him as soon as possible. I hit the call-back button on the phone. When the receptionist at Manville Security answered, I identified myself and she put me through to Gary.

  “Jeri, thanks for calling me back,” he said when he came on the line. “I’ve been trying to reach you for a couple of days. Any chance you can drop by my office today?”

  “I’m out of town right now. But I’ll be home in a few days, by next Tuesday at the latest. Can it wait?”

  He hesitated. Then he said, “Yeah. It’ll keep till you get back.”

  “All right. I’ll call as soon as I get back to town.”

  Wonder what that’s all about? I thought. Gary sounded as though he was worried about something. He ran his own firm, providing security to a number of businesses in the East Bay. If he was calling on my investigative services, it must be something he couldn’t handle on his own. But as he’d said, it would have to wait until I got back to Oakland.

  A moment after I’d ended the call, my phone rang. I answered and heard a woman’s voice. “This is Grace Boudreaux. I’m returning your call.”

  “Thanks for getting back to me.” I gave her a quick overview of why I wanted to talk with her.

  “I don’t know if I’ll be of much help,” she said, sounding as though she was convinced she wouldn’t. “But sure, I’ll talk with you. I’m at the university and I have some time right now. Can you come over here?”

  “I’m in Mid-City, at Laurette’s apartment building.”

  “Okay, you should be able to get here in half an hour,” she said. “There’s a coffee shop at University Center. I’ll meet you there.”

  The University of New Orleans campus was located at the north end of Elysian Fields Avenue, the street Stella and Stanley lived on in Tennessee Williams’s play A Streetcar Named Desire. The campus hugged a section of the Lake Pontchartrain shoreline. The lake, actually an estuary, connected to the Gulf of Mexico by several straits and passes. One of the guidebooks I’d read told me the lake was about forty miles from east to west and roughly twenty-four miles north to south, bridged by a long causeway that went from Metairie on the south to Mandeville on the north side of the lake. Farther to the east was Bayou Sauvage, where Dad and I had gone birding, its narrow strip of watery islands and channels separating Lake Pontchartrain from Lake Borgne to the southeast. A body of water as large as Lake Pontchartrain has lighthouses and one of these, now part of the university campus, was the Milneburg Lighthouse.

  I parked on a street near campus and walked to the University Center, which I’d located on a map. Students of all varieties crowded the walkways, going in and out of buildings. Outside the University Center was a long green lawn, with uno excised into the grass. The building itself had white pillars stretching two stories high. I went inside. Grace Boudreaux had told me she had brown hair and glasses, and she’d be carrying a gray nylon bag. I had no trouble spotting her, standing near the coffee counter, her light brown hair brushing the shoulders of her blue cotton blouse and a pair of wire-rims perched on her nose. Slung over one shoulder was the gray nylon bag, large enough to hold a laptop, I guessed. It had a blue-and-white uno logo on the side.

  “Grace? I’m Jeri. Thanks for meeting me. How about some coffee?”

  “What really appeals to me is that strawberry smoothie.” She pointed at the menu.

  “Coming right up.” I ordered my usual latte and a few minutes later carried our drinks over to where Grace stood. I looked around for an empty table in the center’s main hall, but they were all occupied by students.

  “Let’s go outside,” she said. “It’s such a pretty day, and I’ve been in the library most of the day.”

  We found a place to sit near the building. Grace took a sip of her smoothie, a thick pink concoction that didn’t look appetizing to me. She explained that she was a graduate student now. “When I met Laurette, we were both freshmen, studying English. I got my bachelor’s degree and now I’m working on a Master’s of Education in Curriculum Instruction. I hope to be finished later this year.”

  “So you’ve known her for several years. What about Chris, her husband?”

  Grace nodded. “I knew him, too. She introduced us not long after they met. Which was in the fall of sophomore year. At Swampball.”

  “What in the world is Swampball?”

  She laughed. “It’s a mud volleyball tournament, with the proceeds going to a scholarship fund. The people who put it together dig two pits on the library quad and fill them with water. People put together teams and they play. There’s music and food. It’s one of the big campus events in the fall.”

  “I can just imagine.” I was trying to, anyway, picturing college students playing volleyball in the mud. It didn’t sound like fun to me, but I’m getting old and curmudgeonly.

  “Laurette and Chris were on the same Swampball team that year, that’s how they met. They started going out and in the spring he asked her to marry him. I was at their wedding. Chris was such a nice guy. It’s such a shame he was killed in the Mideast. That damn war.” Grace sighed.

  That damn war, indeed, I thought.

  “I think Laurette would have stayed in school,” she continued. “Except she got pregnant. And oh, the morning sickness. She was miserable, throwing up all the time. Seeing what she went through was enough to make me think twice about having kids. People say the morning sickness doesn’t last. Anyway, she was so sick she couldn’t focus on school, so she dropped out. And then, with a brand-new baby, well, it’s hard to think about anything but diapers and feedings, let alone getting a degree. I think she would have come back to school eventually, but when Chris died, she was in a bad place. Then her little girl, Hannah, died in that car accident. How much heartache can one person take?”

  I didn’t have an answer for that.

  Grace took another sip of her smoothie. “I thought things were getting better for her. Now you tell me she’s left town with Slade? That really surprises me.”

  “It surprised her parents, too. I’m trying to get a sense of what has been going on with Laurette, which is why I wanted to talk with you. I gather you’ve stayed in touch with her all these years. When was the last time you saw her?”

  “January,” Grace said. “We got together for dinner one night, in the middle of January. But we talked on the phone more often, every month or so.”

  I sipped my latte. “And your most recent phone conversation? How long ago was that?”

  She thought about it for a moment, one finger toyin
g with a strand of her hair. “It was after Mardi Gras.”

  “That’s how you folks keep time down here?”

  Grace laughed. “Yeah, you’re right about that. Anyway, it was March, after Slade moved in with her.”

  “What do you know about Slade?”

  “He’s a musician, plays guitar. I suppose some people would think of him as good-looking. I know Laurette did. Though I must say, he wouldn’t be my cup of tea. Laurette met him in November, when she was out with some people she knows from work. She said they were working their way through the clubs in Frenchmen Street and Slade was playing at one of them. He asked if he could call her and she gave him her number. To hear her tell it, they hit it off right away. Laurette seemed happy in the relationship. I was glad for her. She needed someone in her life. But…” She hesitated. “It must have heated up pretty fast. She only met him a few months before and then he moved into her apartment at the end of February.”

  “What did you talk about, the last time you spoke?”

  “Oh, the usual. My studies, her plans.”

  “Plans with Slade?” Had Laurette told Grace she was thinking of leaving? Perhaps Laurette had voiced something vague and unformed, something Grace dismissed as idle talk.

  But now Grace was shaking her head. “No, nothing like that. She was thinking about changing jobs and maybe going back to school. When Laurette and I met for dinner in January, she said she was bored with her job at Entergy. She was working as an admin assistant. It wasn’t very challenging, she said. Same old, same old, day in and day out. She was ready for a change. She said she wanted to do something else, to reinvent herself. The trouble was, she didn’t know what she wanted to do or who she wanted to be. I encouraged her to sign up for some classes, either here at the university or at one of the community colleges. Find a class that engages you, I told her. Something you always wanted to study, just for the heck of it. Take art history or a pottery class, just something new. I thought that would be a good way for her to figure out what she wanted to do. She said she’d think about it. In fact, she thought art history sounded interesting. But when I talked with her in March, she hadn’t done anything. I guess she was all wrapped up in her relationship with Slade.”

  “Did she ever say anything about wanting to leave New Orleans?”

  Grace took another sip of her smoothie before answering. “Yes, she did. More than once. It was after Hannah, her little girl, died in the car accident. Laurette was getting some counseling and I talked to her more often, giving her what support I could. A couple of times, she told me she wanted to get away. The memories of Chris and Hannah were too much.”

  “Did she say where she might be interested in going?”

  “She talked about Florida,” Grace said. “She has a cousin who lives in Pensacola, in the Panhandle. That’s about two hundred miles from here, so it’s not that far away. It would have been a change of scenery, though. But her family’s here. She’s close to her parents. And there are all sorts of relatives in New Orleans. So I wasn’t surprised that she didn’t do anything about going to Florida. Maybe she has now.”

  “Something to check out.” I needed to call Davina to ask for contact information on the Pensacola cousin. It was possible, then, that Laurette and Slade had gone east, to the Sunshine State.

  Grace didn’t have anything more to add and, checking her watch, she told me she had an appointment. After she’d gone, carrying her smoothie, I went back inside the University Center, tossed my coffee cup into a trash receptacle and located a restroom.

  I walked back across campus to the street where I’d parked the rental car. When I checked my phone, I had a message from Mary Abbott, who said she’d be happy to talk with me. I called her back and she gave me the address of the shop she owned in the Lake­view District, saying that she’d be there all afternoon. “I’ll come over now,” I told her. When I ended the call, I looked up the address and started the car.

  I drove north through the campus, past the lighthouse, and headed west on Lakeshore Drive, crossing the London Avenue Canal and then Bayou St. John. I pulled over in a parking lot and got out of the car, looking out at the lake, vast and roiled with blue-green water. Whitecaps dotted the surface, and waves crashed against the shore. I’d seen the maps of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005. The neighborhoods along the lakefront, Lakeview, Gentilly and New Orleans East, had been inundated, like the Lower Ninth Ward to the southeast, with standing water eight to ten feet deep, and more. It had been more than ten years since the hurricane, but during this visit to the city, the signs of the devastation were still visible, with abandoned and derelict houses, or vacant lots where houses had once stood.

  I started the car and continued west along Lakeshore, then took a left on Canal Boulevard, heading south into the Lakeview District, the area west of City Park. Mary Abbott, the woman Laurette met in a counseling group for military spouses, owned a quilt shop on Harrison Avenue. I found the address in a small retail district with a bank, shops and several restaurants. I parked and walked to the shop, a storefront with a window decorated with quilts, patterns and bolts of fabric, all of them in bright-colored florals for spring. I went inside and threaded my way past more fabric displays to the counter, where a woman worked the cash register, ringing up a sale for a customer. I stepped to the end of the counter and examined a flier about classes offered at the shop, then I looked at a small bookshelf that held books about quilting. I pulled out a volume about the quilts made by the African American women of Gee’s Bend in Alabama. A few years ago, I’d seen an exhibit featuring those quilts at San Francisco’s de Young Museum.

  The woman at the cash register finished the transaction and I put the book back on the shelf.

  “Are you Mary Abbott?”

  “No, I’m Alice,” the woman said with a smile. “Mary’s in the back room.” She waved toward the rear of the building, where shelves filled with bolts of fabric served as a partition.

  “Thanks.” I walked past the wall of fabric and found myself in a work room with tables, several of which held sewing machines. In the middle of the room was a long, waist-high table used for cutting fabric. A short, sturdy woman in her forties leaned over the table, wielding a rotary cutter over a length of purple fabric spread out on a dark green cutting mat. She looked up as I entered. Comfortable and down-to-earth were the impressions I got when I saw her laugh lines and pleasant hazel eyes.

  “Hi, I’m Jeri Howard. We spoke on the phone a little while ago. Thanks for agreeing to talk with me.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Jeri.” She pushed a button on the rotary cutter to keep the round blade from moving and set it on the table. “I wish the circumstances were different, given what you said in your message about Laurette. I’m happy to do whatever I can to help.”

  I’d had enough coffee for the time being, but talking over a cup of java is one of the best ways I get information. When I suggested finding a coffee shop, Mary shook her head. “Thanks, but I don’t drink coffee in the afternoon or evening. Can’t take the caffeine.” Her smile turned impish. “However, there’s a branch of the Creole Creamery just around the corner on Vicksburg Street. Are you up for some ice cream?”

  “Oh, yes. I am always up for ice cream.”

  We left the shop in the hands of Mary’s assistant and headed out to the street. Having been to the ice cream shop’s Prytania Street outlet in Uptown, I was happy to give the place another try. The creamery was crowded on this warm afternoon, which didn’t surprise me. I strolled along in front of the glass-topped counters, filled with enticing cartons of frozen delights, and sampled a few flavors. Mary decided on a waffle cone with two scoops, Buttermilk Lemon Pie and Bananas Foster. I went for the waffle cone, too. For me, there’s chocolate and everything else, so I selected something called I Scream Fudge to go with the Triple Chocolate Brownie Brittle. We settled in at a small table near the back and enjoyed our ice cream for a few minutes, trading pleasantries.
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  Then I got down to the reason I was here, giving Mary more details than I’d provided in my earlier phone message. “I’m talking with Laurette’s friends. I understand the two of you met several years ago in a counseling group.”

  Mary took her time answering, using a napkin to wipe ice cream from her lips. “Yes, we did. My husband was a master sergeant in the Army. He died about the same time as Laurette’s husband died. The Veterans Administration here in New Orleans has a counseling group for people whose spouses have been killed in action. I’m about twenty years older than Laurette and my husband was career Army. Sam and I had been married for twenty-one years and we had three kids. My oldest two are in college and the youngest is still in high school. But we did have something in common, in that we’re both New Orleans natives and we both lost our husbands like that. So we got to know each other. Talking about the loss helps us get past it. I think both of us benefited from the group. Then we went our separate ways. I opened this shop and she got that job at Entergy. But we stayed in touch.”

  “How often did you talk?” I asked.

  “Every couple of months. Saw each other now and then. But not that often,” Mary said. “Then after the car accident, I got a call from her. She was distraught. Who wouldn’t be? She needed to talk with someone who wasn’t her mother or sister or another relative. So we talked on the phone every few days. I would meet her, every couple of weeks. I urged her to get some grief counseling. In fact, I steered her to another group I’d heard about, for people dealing with the loss of a child. She did go to the group and told me that it helped. Groups usually do, if you give them a chance. I even tried to get her interested in quilting,” she added with a smile. “Just so she’d have something to do with her time. But that didn’t take. She said she wasn’t interested in anything crafty. As the months passed, she seemed to be handling the loss. She talked about going back to school, and I encouraged her to do that.”