Big Easy Bonanza

follow orders.
    There was only one other woman on the boat and she was too old, too heavy, and too short to have been the person they were chasing. Among the men there were one or two candidates, but none looked exactly right—either their clothing or body types seemed slightly off.
    Skip went back to the Toyota, thinking to search it, and found Steve there standing guard (for which she was grateful). No point, she thought, worrying about prints on the door handle since she had probably spoiled any such opportunity. She opened the car and saw, as she hadn’t before, that there was a woman’s stocking lying in the front—or rather half of a pair of panty hose that she surmised had been used as a mask—and a pair of plastic gloves. There was nothing in the glove compartment but maps, and nothing else in the car, not even keys.
    At Algiers, everyone got off except Steve and Skip. No one claimed the car. Skip hunted up the captain for help on a thorough search of the boat. But there were no stowaways.
    On the ride back they went up to the passenger deck, able to relax for the first time in an hour or more. Even now, in winter, Skip could feel the heaviness of the river. It was cold, and Steve tried to draw her to him, but she pulled away.
    On land she made a quick call to get the Toyota towed and handled with care, and to have its license number run through the computer. It was registered to a Horton Charbonnet, a name she didn’t know. But her mind wasn’t on the car—it was on getting back to LaBelle’s, where she’d be met by people from the crime lab and homicide. She and Steve said almost nothing on the drive over. Skip was worried about what she had to tell him.
    But he had guessed. As he parked he asked, “Do I have to wait outside?”
    “I’m sorry. It’s a crime scene.”
    “Should I just leave?”
    “Not if you want to go to Tipitina’s.”
    “You’ve got to be kidding. You want to go dancing? After this?”
    “Not exactly. I have to interview someone there. Want to come with me?”
    He shrugged. “Sure.”
    “When the others get here, I’ll come get you. You were a witness, and we’ll have to interview you too. Just do me a favor—make it clear I couldn’t stop you from going through the damned window.”
    She gave him a kiss on the cheek and went back into the apartment. The place was a mess. There was dust and a dead plant, indicating the owner hadn’t been around lately, and there were the signs of a systematic search—things not destroyed, but moved fast and thrown to the floor. Surveying the house, she saw that the searcher had not quickly found what he was looking for, every room had been torn apart, every picture pulled from the wall as if to find a safe—a preposterous idea, thought Skip, in such a building. Having no gloves, she plucked one of LaBelle’s tissues to use as a handkerchief.
    There were few papers—only records of bills LaBelle had paid, but no tax records, and no books. In the living room, though, there was a good collection of records, mostly jazz and other music by black artists, each record pulled from its jacket, some of the jackets torn apart. On the coffee table, open facedown as if it had been shaken, was a dime-store scrapbook, ivory-colored and held picturesquely together with cord rather than bound. Using her tissue, she turned it over.
    It was a scrapbook of newspaper clips, stories about the St. Amants, particularly about Chauncey. But each time Bitty or Marcelle went to a luncheon and got a mention in the society column, the entire column had been clipped and the relevant item underlined in plain blue ink, the lines sometimes shakily drawn. Every time Chauncey moved, practically, he got his name in the papers—for political contributions, for serving on boards, for being president of a bank that did a lot of business in the city. There were only two clips on Henry—one saying a play was about to open in which he was one of the actors, and then a review of the play.
    It was a meticulously kept record of more than a year in the life of the St. Amants—fourteen months, to be exact. It went back no further than that.
    One other item caught Skip’s attention—a framed painting of a New Orleans street scene, a picture inexpertly but lovingly painted by an obvious amateur—Philomena Doucette was Skip’s guess, in some senior-center art class. It had been tossed facedown on the floor and she thought she saw tape marks on the back, as if