Big Easy Bonanza

proteges, helping them find gigs and giving them what he called “artistic subsidies” when they needed them. Invariably his proteges had been black, and some of them had taken advantage of his generosity, spending the money on drugs and ending up in jail, which gave the racists in Chauncey’s crowd ammunition against his liberal civic ideas—ammunition of the sort that is whispered rather than aired in the press. But a couple of unfortunate incidents hadn’t stopped Chauncey on either front. He believed in civil rights and he believed in music, and he supported them. Not that he didn’t also support the symphony (in the years when there had been one) and the museum—he believed in the arts, period—but because New Orleans jazz was largely performed by black people, his love of it had been lumped with what, even in the high-toned Boston Club, was still called “nigger-lovin’ “ (by its cruder members, anyway).
    So Marcelle was right. He had lots of enemies. Racists and ultraconservatives who simply wanted to maintain the white male status quo. He’d had those for a long time. However, lately, as his political ambitions had come to the fore, he’d made enemies in his own political camp as well. Black politicians and ultraliberal whites who wanted to see Mayor Soniat in Baton Rouge had turned on him for attempting to split the liberal vote. He had political enemies, all right. But Skip wondered how any of them could get a key to Uncle Tolliver’s apartment.
    It was a famous apartment by New Orleans standards, having once been featured in Architectural Digest. It was slightly ornate for Skip’s taste, but given her current spartan living conditions, she gasped with pleasure on seeing it again. It had the twelve-foot windows that opened from the floor, fourteen-foot ceilings, and anachronistic fireplaces of almost every building in New Orleans; perfect surroundings for the antiques Tolliver collected so lovingly.
    He had painted the walls terra-cotta, a rich backdrop for the blue-and-white Chinese porcelains flanking an ormolu clock on the mantel. An American primitive hung over the collection. The rug was one of the quieter Chinese ones, the fabric on sofa and chairs, on the other hand, an assertive print from Brunschwig & Fils.
    Skip thought she would have killed for a mahogany desk she was sure must be Sheraton. But a very dark, simple coffee table was obviously meant to be the center of attraction—the stage for Tolliver’s most spectacular orchid performances. Smaller (though equally priceless-looking) tables were crowned with blooming orchids as well, but this one held a massive display of the plants Bitty watered, grown in a room in back that Tolliver had converted into a tiny greenhouse. The gun that must have killed Chauncey, an odd-looking old revolver, was lying beside a plain clay flowerpot.
    In the middle of the elegant carpet was a tumble of clothes—a blonde curly wig, red satin shirt, blue satin skirt, gloves, mask, and D-cup bra with wadded-up rags that had given the balloon effect. A two-gun holster with one gun still in it had been flung onto a needlepoint footstool that jutted out at a funny angle in front of its chair. Dolly must have kicked it askew in her rush to undress.
    The three of them had checked the place out, then called Marcelle inside to see if anything was missing. Looking at the pile, she made a little sound, as if she’d been jabbed in the solar plexus. “The clothes,” she said. “You can trace the clothes, can’t you? Surely whoever sold that outfit would remember.”
    They all moved closer and looked at the items, not touching. The wig could have come from Woolworth’s. The other things looked cheap and sleazy. Probably the murderer had bought each item separately, and from someplace that sold a lot of similar merchandise.
    O’Rourke sighed. “We might have better luck with the guns.”
    They might indeed, Skip thought. She didn’t know much about firearms, but these looked odd.
    Skip moved out to the balcony. There were plants there—a Norfolk pine, jasmine, some smaller things. There was even a Christmas cactus in a clay wall sconce between the windows. Two old-fashioned wrought-iron chairs were grouped on either side of a damp, dirty circle on the floor. On one of the chairs sat a gardenia plant in a pot the size of the circle. Skip’s stomach flip-flopped as she realized Dolly must have removed the pot so she could stand where she needed to to get