Big Easy Bonanza

if he was a friend of yours. He’s dead. Took pills, probably Saturday.”
    “No!”
    “You knew him well?”
    “It isn’t that—”
    “His neighbor found him. He was supposed to have dinner last night with her and her husband. He’d asked if he could bring Mrs. St. Amant, so she wouldn’t be alone, but Mrs. S. says he never even phoned her about it. When he didn’t show, the neighbor investigated. Found the door unlocked, the body lying on the bed, fully clothed, hands folded on chest.”
    Skip’s heart was pounding. She sat on the floor, trying to ground herself, to keep her mind from racing. Hoping she sounded normal, she said, “Did he leave a note?”
    “Oh, yes, he left a note. In which he confessed to the murder of his best friend, Chauncey St. Amant.”
    “But why? Did the note say why?”
    “He was in love with Chauncey’s wife.”
    “Bitty? But—”
    “But what?”
    She had been about to say, “but she drinks,” and then realized how stupid that sounded, how blind she’d been to the obvious. She said, “Go on.”
    “It seems that Mrs. St. Amant rejected him for his trouble and, overcome with remorse and heartbreak, he decided to do himself.”
    “I don’t believe it.”
    The lieutenant spoke very gently. “I know it’s a shock, Skip. But believe me. He’s dead.”
    “It sounds so
fishy
.”
    “The note’s definitely in his handwriting. And there was something else—a holographic will.”
    “My God. Leaving everything to Bitty?”
    “No. We don’t know yet if this will supersedes another. It didn’t mention everything, only his business, the antique store. He left it to Marcelle Gaudet.”
    “I didn’t even know they were close.”
    “Who knows? Anyhow, we’re mopping up the case—thanks for helping out on it.”
    “Oh, God, I feel awful.”
    “I know you do, Skip. I’m really sorry.”
    “I mean physically sick. This has never happened before—”
    “You’ve had a shock. Why don’t you lie down for a while? Come in an hour or so late.”
    In an hour, Skip called her sergeant at V.C., her old district, and pleaded serious female trouble, probably an ovarian cyst, she’d had them before and they could—
    Eager to avoid the grisly details, he cut her off with a gruff, “Okay.” Not even,
See you tomorrow.
Just
Get off the phone, lady
. She’d thought he’d feel that way.
    She couldn’t stop now. Too many cans of worms had been opened, the biggest one named LaBelle. If Tolliver had killed Chauncey for love of Bitty, why had he burglarized LaBelle’s apartment? Why had he killed himself after less than a week? Surely he hadn’t fallen for Bitty, whom he’d known all his life, any time recently. It must have been years ago. So maybe it took him some time to get up his nerve to kill Chauncey—or to go nuts enough to do it—but after waiting years for her, why give up after less than a week? Logically, he would have expected her to go through a period of mourning and then he would have begun a formal courtship. It was too early for any of that to have happened.
    Skip knew that the theory about going nuts would technically cover those objections, but nothing she knew or could imagine covered LaBelle.
    She put on her gray suit—she had a sympathy call to make—and then she looked up the two P. Johnsons she hadn’t yet reached. If she was going to talk to Stelly, it had to be this morning, before Stelly heard about Tolliver. The body had been discovered too late to make the morning paper, but already she could have heard it on the radio. The first address was out in New Orleans East, and a woman answered.
    “Mrs. Johnson?”
    “Yes?”
    “Is this the Peeler Johnson residence?”
    “Yes, it is.”
    “I’m with the gas company. Our meter reader’s having trouble finding your meter. I was wondering—are you going to be home for a while?”
    “Another hour probably.”
    She thought at first she had the wrong house. The kid sitting on the steps was unmistakably white. But the address was right. “Do the Johnsons live here?”
    “Uh-huh. My mom’s inside.” He sounded like he had a cold.
    The house was a small red brick one, an Ozzie and Harriet-style dwelling with a nice lawn and a bicycle on the front walk. She heard the kid’s mother before she saw her.
    “Mark? Mark Anthony, who told you you could go outside?” She opened the door and stepped out, in jeans and an old black sweatshirt, faded more or less to charcoal. Her hair was caught up