Murder in the Rue Chartres Read Online Free PDF Page A

had abandoned the city, and in the chaos of the flood there had been no real command. But Blaine and Venus were both dedicated to their jobs, and I knew they’d neither looted nor stolen cars nor left the city. Both looked tired and haggard, though. The humorous sparkle I was used to seeing in Blaine’s eyes wasn’t there anymore. They’d both lost weight, and their eyes looked hollow with fatigue.
    “Welcome home,” Venus said as Paige put a glass of red wine in front of her and handed Blaine and me bottles of beer before sliding into her own chair. She lifted her glass. “Such as it is.”
    Her voice was bitter, and in that instant I remembered she had lived in New Orleans East, which wasn’t there any more. “Venus, I’m sorry about—”
    “Yeah, well, what can you do?” She shrugged. “Once the insurance settles up with me, I’ll be fine. I was insured to the teeth.” She took a sip of the wine. “If the fuckers ever do settle up.”
    “Are you going to rebuild?” I hated to ask. She’d probably been asked a million times.
    “I don’t know; there doesn’t seem much point.” She took a pack of cigarettes out of her purse and lit one. “Can’t even decide until the government decides if they’re going to let us…maybe it’s time for a change and I should move.” She sighed. “I don’t need that big old house any more anyway. The girls are grown and on their own, and it was kind of lonely. I thought about selling before all of this happened, you know…should have moved beyond the thinking stage, I guess.”
    “She’s staying in our slave quarter,” Blaine said. “For as long as she likes.”
    “Now, white boy, how many times do I have to tell you not to call it that?” She flashed a ghost of the smile I remembered. “As long as you got a black woman living there, we’re calling it a carriage house, remember?”
    Blaine rolled his eyes at me. “See what I got to put up with? So, Chanse, what about you? Now that you’re back, what are you going to do? You staying? Or are you going back to Dallas?”
    “I’m staying.” I wasn’t in the mood to tell them about the breakup with Jude yet. And it felt good to say it out loud. New Orleans was home. “And I can keep busy, I’m sure. Was there a lot of damage to the shipyards and the port?”
    “Some.” Venus shook her head. “Why do you ask?”
    “Just curious, is all.” I laughed. “I was hired by Iris Verlaine to find her father a couple of days before the storm, and then she fired me on Friday morning—and was kind of rude about it. I figured it might be some karmic payback if their shipyard was destroyed.”
    “Iris Verlaine?” Venus asked, her voice strange.
    I got a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Yeah, that’s what I said.”
    Blaine gave a weird laugh, and ran a hand through his curls. “Small fucking world, huh? The last case to drop into our lap was Iris Verlaine. She was shot and killed in her house the Friday night before the storm. We didn’t really get much of a chance to look into it, what with the storm and everything on Saturday. And now I imagine the crime scene is destroyed. She lived in Lakeview.”
    “She’s dead?” I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up. That was the last thing I was expecting to hear.
    “Looked like a robbery—she came home and surprised them in the act, and they shot her,” Venus replied. “Funny that should happen the same week she hired and fired a private eye, though. You say she wanted you to find her father?”
    “Uh huh.” I cast my mind back to that afternoon. She’d arrived punctually at twelve-thirty. At that time, Katrina was forming out in the Atlantic Ocean and looked like it would be heading across the southern tip of Florida on its way to the Gulf. We were all just starting to pay attention to the path, but it was still too early to panic about it. We’d already been hit by two small hurricanes—Cindy and Dennis—in July. Every time