Jazz Funeral (Skip Langdon #3) (Skip Langdon Mystery) (The Skip Langdon Series) Read online

  “But if the marriage was shaky, nature came along and settled the matter, in the form of Melody, whom George adores, by all accounts. Always has. So I guess the marriage turned out okay after all. It’s still extant.” She paused, thinking about it. “I don’t know. George is pretty cold, so maybe he didn’t much care what she was like—she was female, she was gorgeous, she was his kid’s mother. That’s enough for some guys.”

  “Most of them, it seems like.”

  “Yeah, the only problem is, we end up pissing them off by having personalities.”

  “And Patty’s got to have one. I didn’t get much sense of her, though.”

  “She seems like a hard bitch to me—pretty much somebody who saw a good thing and went after it. But what do I know? Lately, she’s been going to a lot of weird doctors for Chinese herbs and stuff. Maybe she’s sick or something.”

  “What’s her background?”

  “Skippy, with women like Patty, that’s the sort of thing one doesn’t ask. Let’s put it this way, whatever it is, it’s not Uptown. She’s a self-made woman as much as George is a self-made man. Only she made herself by latching onto George.”

  Skip’s sense of democracy was slightly offended. “Well, it’d be the same thing if she did come from Uptown.”

  “No, because that’s where she’s living now. If she was a poor girl from Uptown and married a rich guy in another town, that might be analogous. But if you’re from here and you stay here, you’re already made, there’s no self about it.”

  “That’s one of the things I hate about the place.”

  “Now, Skippy, it has its up side.”

  Like the relationship she enjoyed with Allison. She’d grown up on State Street and knew she’d never get all this dirt if she hadn’t put in her preschool years in the neighbor kids’ sandboxes. Skip sighed. It was a hell of a trade-off. She said, “Do you happen to know if George is just a guy who drank too much in a crisis? Or is he in AA?” She was thinking of the wineglasses in Ham’s kitchen.

  “Let me think.” She was quiet only a moment. “I’m sure I’ve seen him drink. Sure—at weddings, things like that? I saw him with a champagne flute that time Lala Bettencourt married Bony Henderson.”

  “Bony?”

  “For Bonaparte. It only lasted six weeks, but not because George Brocato didn’t toast the happy couple.”

  “Tell me about Ham.”

  “Well, he was about thirty-four, I guess. Quite a bit older than we are, but I used to see him around, didn’t you? Before he got incredibly famous. I always thought he was kind of quiet and nerdy, but then he turned up with all these cool musician friends. Funny how much better a guy looks if he’s got an entourage.”

  “Look at George Lucas. What about the ex-wife?”

  “Oh, Mason. Went to Sacred Heart. Perfectly nice lawyer. I guess I haven’t really heard much about her, probably because there’s not much to hear; now Ti-Belle’s another matter. She just dropped from the sky, like Patty. How do these women do it? Now you see them, now you don’t, or vice versa. I don’t know a damn thing about Ti-Belle and neither does anybody else. Burns me up. It’s bad for my reputation.”

  Ti-Belle.

  She was just a little too mysterious to leave alone. When Skip was done with Allison, she dialed Ti-Belle but got no answer. That figured—she was probably at George and Patty’s. To go there or not? Somehow, it didn’t seem urgent enough to disturb the family. Instead, she drove out to Melody’s school.

  Country Day might not be in the country, but it looked as if it was. Both building and grounds bespoke money and taste, cultivated the look of an Eastern prep school. It was amazing, Skip thought, how relaxed you could get just walking around there—though maybe not if you were a teenager. Between hormones and insecurity, it would probably take more than a few trees to calm you down.

  At Country Day you reached the main building, a stately columned affair, by means of a circular drive, and when you entered, you were in a paneled living room. Coming through the big double doors, Skip stood for a second, taking it in. Eventually she decided to walk toward the sign that said “Headmaster’s Secretary.”

  Country Day prided itself on developing a high level of social skill in its students, and the members of the administration proved excellent exemplars to learn from. Despite the trappings, stuffiness apparently wasn’t the style here. The very mention of Melody’s name brought concerned murmurings and instant efficient activity.

  Skip was given the headmaster’s study for her interviews, and in five minutes was closeted with one Sharon Sougeron, Melody’s faculty adviser. In the brief time she had to study her surroundings, she realized she could have entered blindfolded, asked herself the question, “How will this room look?” and described it perfectly. The Uptown decorator, whoever she was, had struck again. Two wing chairs faced a leather sofa; the tables were shiny dark wood, the lamps brass, the prints Audubon, the walls paneled. A room in the same impeccable taste as a basic black dress, and every bit as daring. Ah, but the magnolia’s a nice touch, she thought, as a gust of lush scent wafted through the window.

  Sougeron was thirty-fiveish and a little on the plump side, with dark curly hair, worn short, and white, delicate skin. Between the curls and the curves and the pearly skin, she was the very picture of Southern womanhood, dressed in a white silk blouse and navy skirt, accessorized with chunky jewelry.

  She wore a wedding ring, and Skip had no doubt she was heterosexual, yet as soon as she opened her mouth, the word “butch” came instantly to mind. It was something in her voice and her manner that all the makeup and jewelry in the world couldn’t hide. She taught English, the principal had said, but Skip would have guessed gym.

  Her voice was brusque and dismissive, the voice of someone who had more important things to do, and Skip wondered if it was always that way, with her husband, for instance, in tender moments.

  Sougeron, of course, was well-aware that Melody was missing—she’d talked to Patty and George no fewer than three times on Wednesday, the day before. Whatever she’d said, she seemed to be regretting it.

  “How could I know, how was I supposed to know? I just figured Melody’d run away—typical unhappy teenager. I wasn’t even very sympathetic.”

  “How could you know that, Ms. Sougeron? Are you saying you know something that’s made you change your mind?”

  “Well, something’s happened to her, it’s obvious. Her brother gets killed and she goes missing? It can’t be coincidence.”

  “I expect you know Melody pretty well. Can you give me a sense of her? If I met her, whom would I meet?”

  “Well, if you could get past the attitude, she might be a pretty nice kid. But nobody’s ever been able to.”

  “She’s a troublemaker, is she?”

  “No.” She thought about it. “No, I wouldn’t say that. I guess boys are mostly troublemakers; girls are just twits.” Skip wondered if Sougeron would define the term. She waited.

  “Melody’s like a black cloud most of the time—a sullen, sour little girl.” Sougeron held her elbows and shivered deliberately, as if shaking Melody off. “And when she’s not sullen, she’s bitchy and disrespectful.”

  “How’s that?”

  The teacher shrugged. “It’s nothing you can put your finger on. It’s just her attitude. Oh, well, wait—there is something you can pin down. She cuts class and she lies.”

  “Lies? About what?”

  She shrugged again, obviously hating to be put on the spot. “About everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Whether she did her homework. Where she was yesterday when she wasn’t in class. Everything.”

  “Do you have any idea how she gets along with her parents?”

  “Only a mother could love her, I’ll tell you that.”

  “You don’t know anything specific?”

  “She’s a behavior problem. What does that tell you?”

  “I don’t know. What does it tell you?”

/>   “She’s probably as much a problem for them as she is for me.”

  “How about her brother? Did she ever talk about him?”

  Sougeron shook her head. “She didn’t talk to me about anything. Spoke only when spoken to, and then with reluctance.”

  “Okay. She cuts class, she’s got an attitude—how does she manage to stay in school here?”

  “Well, believe it or not, she’s usually a pretty good student—but if she doesn’t like the subject, you can’t get her to do beans. And she’s a very good musician, most people think, but I’m no judge of all that. She can write, though. She’s not a bad poet at all.”

  “A poet? She wrote poems?” Skip’s heart started beating faster. If ever there was a window to the soul, surely it was a teenager’s poetry.

  “Songs, mostly.”

  “What about?”

  “Oh, you know. Love and beauty. Sadness. As if a kid that age could have a clue.”

  “Sadness? Can you remember any specifics? Do you have any of her work?”

  “No, I don’t save their work, I give it back to them. And I don’t really remember what she wrote about. She’s got a way with words, that’s all. But she’s not so brilliant anything stuck in my mind.” She stood. “Anything else?”

  Skip looked up, surprised. For a moment she’d almost forgotten the other woman, her mind occupied with trying to form a picture of the sullen, defiant teenager Sougeron had described. She hadn’t yet gotten to the meat of the interview. “A few things.”

  Sougeron remained standing.

  “Does she use drugs?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Well, does she hang out with kids who do?”

  “Officer, this is a private school. Kids who use drugs are asked to leave.”

  In the unlikely event anyone finds out about it.

  “Who does she hang out with?”

  “Her best friend’s a girl named Blair Rosenbaum. And she’s got a boyfriend named Flip Phillips.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Maybe the kids she plays music with. Joel Boucree’s one of them, I don’t know the other.”

  “Okay. Thanks for your help.”

  The school counselor was next, a sixtyish man who liked his gumbo and his fried catfish, judging by his shape. He was short, with a reddish neck, white moustache, and bushy white hair worn slightly long for New Orleans.

  “Mr. Nicolai, I’m Skip Langdon.”

  “Matthew,” he said with a broad smile, and Skip suddenly had the feeling he was very good at his job. He was somebody who could probably put the kids at ease and convince them he was on their side.

  “I was hoping you could tell me a little about Melody Brocato.”

  “Where she is, you mean. Lord, I wish I knew.”

  “Any ideas?”

  He spread his arms. “Not really. All her little buddies are present and accounted for. I’ve already asked them if they know, of course.”

  He recited the usual list—Blair, the two musicians, and Flip.

  “I just talked to Melody’s homeroom teacher. I gather Melody’s a difficult kid.”

  “Well, I guess it’s all in the perspective.”

  Skip waited, sensed a favorite theory about to pop out.

  “If Ms. Sougeron’s trying to ram English and history down their throats, it’s only natural some of ‘em are going to choke. The ones who do are probably the ones she calls ‘difficult.’ That’s the reason I quit the classroom—I hate trying to make ‘em do something they don’t want to do. I just like to talk to ‘em—listen to ‘em. That way I haven’t got a program, and that means they can’t sabotage my program if they don’t happen to feel like conformin’. Whole different perspective. You see?”

  “So you figure you see a different side of Melody than Ms. Sougeron did.”

  “Oh, indubitably.” Skip had noticed the studied way he dropped his final g’s; now she was starting to think it must really cramp his style not to be able to smoke a pipe while pontificating. “I see an extremely creative young woman there.”

  “Ms. Sougeron said she writes good poetry.”

  “She’s famous for it. The teachers pass it around it’s so good.” He rocked back and forth, as if he did have a pipe. “What’d Ms. Sougeron say? That Melody’s sullen? Uncooperative? Something like that?”

  “Matter of fact, yes.”

  “Well, what you got here is an exceptionally bright young lady. Bright but not that crazy about school. Her teacher says sullen, but I’d say restless comes closer to it. If somebody put a gun to my head and made me pick the most gifted student in the school, she’d be in the running. Might be the one. ‘Course it’s hard to know till twenty years later when they’ve done it or failed to do it, whatever it is, but I’d say Melody’s got a fightin’ chance to be the one that does it. Most people’d probably pick one of the boys—a jock with all A’s, somethin’ like that, but they haven’t been around as long as I have. Kids like that either get tired of being perfect—in which case they become drunks—or they keep on doin’ it. Turn into pediatricians who work for the homeless on weekends, that kind of thing.”

  Skip was fascinated in spite of herself. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Why, nothin’, of course, but they’re still just bein’ good little boys. Don’t ever develop any real sense of self, who they are. And they don’t really …” He paused here. “… achieve, if you will. In a grand sense. Pediatricians might help a lot of local kids, even save a lot of lives, but a kid like Melody’d be more likely to find the cure for cancer.”

  “She’s that smart.”

  “Not smart. This idn’t about smart. ‘Course smart helps, smart’s a big part of it, but face it. Detective, most all the kids here are smart. Country Day hasn’t got any real dummies. But we got some real conformists, and Melody’s not one of ‘em. She’s a romantic; a dreamer. No tellin’ what’s goin’ on under all those curls when she’s starin’ out the window, cheatin’ Ms. Sougeron out of one more perfect little English student. Twenty years from now Melody could be the graduate Ms. Sougeron invites to come back and talk to the new kids, inspire ‘em to go on to greatness like she did.”

  “She’s a very good singer, I hear.”

  He nodded. “Yep. That might be how she makes it. Voice idn’t that much, but somethin’ about her—she’s got …” He thought a minute. “Passion. That’s what it is. And man, can she sing the blues. Like she knows what she’s talkin’ about.”

  Skip thought about it. If she’d had a voice, she could have sung the blues in high school too—what teenager couldn’t? She said, “As I remember, being sixteen is no root beer float.”

  He leaned forward. “Look, the stuff that goes on in these kids’ homes’d curl your hair—best families in town and all that, but probably no different from what you’d get at Fortier or Warren Easton. That’s families. Imperfect.” He wrinkled his nose so thoroughly that Skip sensed what he wanted to say and didn’t dare.

  She stared him right in the clever blue eye. “Fucked up.”

  “As young Joel Boucree would say, ‘You got that right.’ In fact—” He stopped in mid-sentence, interrupting himself. “No, wait. Let’s talk about young Joel a minute. He’s a perfect example of the kind of kid Melody’s not. Near-perfect test scores. Extremely high IQ. Works like a demon. Scholarship student, in fact—one of only ten or twelve blacks in the whole school, I’m ashamed to say. Joel Boucree works his little butt off; if we had to vote, faculty and students, on ‘most likely to succeed,’ Joel’d probably win hands down, even though he idn’t much of a jock. But he hasn’t got any need to spend the next twenty years provin’ himself. People have been tellin’ him all his life who he is, and he’s real good at pleasin’ adults, so he probably likes what they say. All he’s got to do is live up to it. Now Melody’s not so good at pleasin’ adults—she’s probably got to make her mark, one way or another. You see what I mean?”

  Skip wasn’t sure she
did, but if she said so, she’d never get away. She said instead, “Does Melody strike you as more unhappy than any other melancholy teenager?”

  He shrugged. “Probably not. Just more frustrated than most. Something’s bothering her, though. She probably ought to be in therapy.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  He thought about it. “I guess she just seems like she needs someone on her side.”

  “I thought—” Skip stopped herself. That was the role she thought Ham had played. She rephrased: “Did she ever talk to you about her brother?”

  “Yep. She’s crazy about him.”

  “Do you know about any trouble between the two of them?”

  Nicolai looked astonished, as if he’d just caught on to something important. “You think she murdered him.”

  “He’s dead and she’s missing. So far I don’t think anything more than that.”

  “Well, she didn’t kill her brother. She loves him more than anything on this earth.”

  “She told you that? I didn’t realize the two of you were that close.” She hadn’t really thought that much about their relationship—it just didn’t seem to her the sort of thing a kid would tell a counselor.

  “I’ve been around a long time. Some things you just know.”

  Oh, great. How much of what you told me is true and how much is stuff you “just know”?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Clearly, Joel Boucree, Doug Leddy, and Flip Phillips were next on the agenda, but talking to kids was a delicate business. It usually required an adult witness and parental permission. Often, it was accomplished only after difficult negotiations. However, to her surprise, Skip found the principal almost unnaturally helpful. The Brocatos, apparently, had leaned on her.

  The proposal was this—the principal herself, Mrs. Murray, would phone the kids’ parents and lean, in turn, on them, and she’d get Matthew Nicolai to sit in. In return Skip would do the interviews after school. Murray would hold Flip, but Skip would interview the boys in the band off campus, at a nearby garage where they practiced every Thursday afternoon.