The Girl on the Edge of Summer Read online

  Less than an hour had passed since I stepped in her door to again hitting the parish line back into New Orleans.

  Deciding I might as well work on the other case I’d taken, I swung into the French Quarter—the parking would be an expense I’d pass on to my client—and headed to the Historic New Orleans Collection on Chartres Street. Mr. Douglas Townson had the kind of expectations only money can buy. If I wanted to take some of that money, I’d need to at least have something to show before he called, which I suspected would be any day now.

  Four hours later, with a short break for a lunch of coffee and beignets—everything else in the area would either take longer or be too expensive—I had probably about most of what I was going to find.

  My eyes were tired from staring at the microfilm. I’d culled through most of the papers from the time. The story had gotten reasonable play, although not front page like I suspected they thought they deserved. I did find out enough to suspect the family story was tidied up.

  The murder took place near the intersection of Marais and Conti. In 1906 that would have been in the downscale area of Storyville. Called a “vice district,” it existed from 1897 to 1917. Services ranged from the putative high-class establishments along Basin St. to the low-rent cribs in other parts of the district.

  Respectable, happily married gentlemen did not meet their demise in that part of town unless they had business there. The newspaper report was bland, not hinting at anything, but they may have figured that the location was enough to give it away. Frederick Townson had been stabbed multiple times and had bled to death. His body had been found by an early-morning delivery man. That also brought up questions. The area had not only the brothels, everything from huge mansions to one-room “cribs,” but bars and restaurants to serve the other needs of the customers. The police report noted that Townson had last been seen leaving his hotel the previous evening. Had he partied all night and only met his demise on the way home in the early hours? Or had he been left there unnoticed for a good part of the night?

  Those bare details hinted at why the police hadn’t made it much of a priority. A man in that part of town was up to no good, and when trouble found him, he might be considered to have been looking for it. Unless his great-grandson was wrong about his wealth, he seemed more like a man who would frequent the upscale places on Basin, not in this area for the fifty-cent jobs. (Yes, I had to do some web surfing on Storyville.) A respectable gentleman in a very unrespectable part of an already unrespectable area of town.

  He clearly wasn’t the upright man he claimed to be, or else the constables were afraid that investigating would uncover something worse than murder, that he liked it kinky (yes, they did kinky back then). Or the reality that it was a random meeting of two strangers, and the people who lived in the area were unlikely to admit to having seen or heard anything, even if they were standing two feet away.

  This, of course, was not the answer my client wanted.

  The Historic New Orleans Collection has a good run of newspapers including the Times-Picayune going back a long stretch, far more than I needed. They did suggest the main branch of the New Orleans Public Library if I wanted to look more at public records—which, quite frankly, I didn’t. But I would, because it added more hours to bill to Mr. Townson and part him from money I could probably put to much better use than he could. It wasn’t likely I’d find much else.

  As I walked back to my car, I called a friend who is an archivist to see if she thought plowing through the records in the main library would be worth the time and if she had any idea of where else I might search. I had to settle for leaving a message.

  My phone rang as I was driving home. I assumed it was my archivist friend and she could wait the ten blocks until I was safely parked. Being in the French Quarter, roadwork, tourists, and people who underestimate their ability to imbibe and steer a car / bike / their feet are reasons to not phone and drive.

  I parked in front of my house before pulling my phone out.

  My phone rang again in my hand; the same number, one that looked familiar, but I couldn’t place it. I answered.

  “He’s here,” a woman’s voice said to my answering.

  “Wait, who?”

  “Him, the name you gave me.”

  Susie Stevens. She was speaking in a harsh whisper, making it hard to recognize her voice.

  “At your house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Inside?”

  “No, outside.”

  “Maybe you should call the police.”

  “No, I can’t do that.”

  “Your husband?”

  “He’s…out of town.”

  A lie. But I let it pass. “Is he threatening you?”

  “No, he says he wants to talk.”

  “What is he doing at your house?” That was the real question.

  “You’ve got to help me. I can’t deal with him alone.”

  I sighed, not into the phone, mind you. I said, “I’ll get there as fast as I can,” and hung up, pausing only long enough to run into my house to get my gun, a jacket to cover it, and a second phone. Trick of the trade: carry two phones; that way if one gets taken, you have a backup. Fast Eddie might be packing and he might be smart enough to take away my phone, but he probably wasn’t smart enough to look for a second one.

  My fervent hope was that he’d be gone by the time I got there. I kept to my promise that I’d be there as soon as I could, but even if traffic was kind, that was fifteen minutes. Patience didn’t seem to be Eddie’s virtue. I avoided the interstate and took the back roads to evade the evening rush hour, taking Bienville up to City Park Avenue, which turned into Metairie Road—it seems every time a road crosses a boundary, the name has to change—and from there squirreled around to Mrs. Stevens’ house.

  I was out of luck. The hulking black truck sloppily parked, its wheels over the curb and onto her perfect lawn, told me Eddie was still around.

  I spotted him, just as parked as his truck, lounging on her front steps, fiddling with his phone. I wondered if he was texting another young girl while waiting out Mrs. Stevens. Eddie wasn’t smart, but he seemed to have enough animal cunning to know when he spooked his prey and he understood he had Mrs. Stevens cornered in her house.

  He’d aged a few more pizzas and six-packs from the picture I’d found of him online, getting old while he was still young, a little more bloated, the waist starting to strain at his pants, the eyes more lost in the face.

  I drove past and around the corner before parking. I wanted to be out of the car and able to watch him before he realized I wasn’t just someone coming home.

  My phone rang again. Mrs. Stevens. I cut off the call and immediately texted. “Just got here.” Then I turned my phone—both of them—to vibrate.

  Time to be my best butch, bad-ass dyke. I was betting that Eddie was a bully and, like most bullies, only wanted to play with those he could beat.

  I adjusted my jacket to make sure my gun was well hidden—I fervently didn’t want to have to even think about using it.

  Using a deliberate but not hurried walk, I turned the corner.

  Eddie looked up at me but then dismissed me—woman, too old to bother with. I would take that as Eddie clearly liked them on the very young side.

  I turned up Mrs. Stevens’ walk and called, “Edward Springhorn?”

  He glanced up from his phone.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “I do. You’re trespassing. You need to move on.”

  “I need to talk to someone ’bout a misunderstanding.” He smirked. Yes, he actually smirked at me. Some gray-haired lady wasn’t going to boss him around.

  I pulled out my license, flashed it in front of his face, far too quickly for him to see anything other than it was something official in a fancy leather case. “How many times do I have to ask you, Eddie?”

  “My friends call me Ed.” Smirk gone, petulant now.

  “Good, Eddie, because I’m not a friend. I�
��m the detective who had to read through all those nasty texts you sent to Tiffany Stevens. I’m here because I’m the only one professional enough to verbally”—I made it three words—“warn you to get the fuck out of here instead of making sure you and your truck have a little accident on the way to lockup.”

  “What the—?”

  “Get the fuck out of here, Eddie, and don’t come back to this neighborhood unless you’re picking up garbage.”

  He stood up, his face turning a shade of red that told me he’d have blood pressure problems by the time he was thirty. His jaw worked, grinding his teeth. “Let me see that license.”

  “You’ve seen it. Get out of here.”

  “Who do you work for?”

  “Better be careful. We’re watching you. That delivery truck might be stopped unexpectedly. Or we might just notice that you’re texting someone a little too young. Statutory rape can put you away for a long time.”

  “You can’t tell me what to do.” Eddie didn’t want to be run off by a woman—misogynistic bastard that he was—but he was blustering, his eyes not looking at me, darting quickly across the lawn to his truck.

  “I just did. This is private property. Get off it and get out of here.”

  The jaw worked again, and his face was red enough that he might be having blood pressure problems now. Then he lunged at me, veering at the last minute to slam me with his shoulder as he passed, muttering, “Sorry,” to pretend it was an accident.

  I shot out my foot, catching his ankle, jerking up and back hard enough to trip him.

  “Sorry,” I said clearly. “Only trying to keep from falling.”

  He landed hard, smashing half onto the walk and half onto Mrs. Stevens’ no-longer-neat flower bed.

  “Fuck you, you fucking cunt.” He jumped up, the adrenaline of anger moving him faster than his lumbering body should have. He faced me, his hands bunched into fists.

  I’d probably win, I know how to fight, have trained in karate long and hard enough to protect myself. But Eddie was big and young, and one lucky blow could do a lot of damage.

  I pulled my gun and did my best TV lawman stance. “Don’t do it. You’re on private property, you’re been told to leave. The property owner called me to get you out of here. Come at me and I have a blank check to shoot you.” I dropped the gun barrel slightly. “At this range, you’ll spend the rest of your life dribbling piss down your leg. And texting is all you’ll be able to do.”

  Some people never learn. He lunged at me.

  I fired. But aimed at the lawn about twenty feet to the side, hoping the bullet went safely into the dirt.

  The retort of the gun was—finally—enough to make him stop in mid-step. Then back up half a step.

  He stared at me long enough I could feel the weight of the gun.

  Then he spun around, a stream of variations of “fucking cunt” over his shoulder until he was in his truck and peeled away. He was driving so recklessly I waited for the sound of a crash, but heard only one squeal of brakes and a car horn.

  I tucked my gun back into my jacket and headed up the walk to Mrs. Stevens’ door. I had a few questions for her.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  She didn’t seem eager to let me in, only opening the door a few inches to my knock and asking, “Is he gone?”

  “We need to talk,” I told her, wedging my foot in the door.

  I heard her sigh and the door inched open enough for me to slip in, a clue as to how welcome I was.

  “Is he gone?” she repeated.

  “For now.”

  “Did you have to pull a gun?”

  Oh, now the proper Southern lady shows up. “It was that or a knock-down physical brawl on your front lawn. That would have really ruined your flowers.”

  She was smart enough to look abashed, seeming to realize I’d just done her a big favor. “I’m sorry. I just worry that the neighbors might…”

  “You have more worries than the neighbors right now.” I walked around her, going to the room we’d met in this morning and taking the same chair.

  She followed, also taking her chair from the morning, although this time sitting as far back in it as she could, as if the distance between us would keep this away from her.

  I was silent long enough for her to be uncomfortable, her eyes darting from point to point on the floor, anywhere but my face. Finally, I asked, “What prompted Eddie to pay you a visit?”

  Another dart of eyes across the room, then she said, “I’m not sure.”

  “I just got rid of him for you, not something you hired me to do, risking getting my face punched in. You need to tell me everything that might possibly have anything to do with him coming here. Who did you call?”

  Her eyes jerked to my face, but only briefly before going back to the restless scanning of her immaculate floor. “I had to do something. I couldn’t just let him…get away with it.”

  “I thought you said you were going to sue him.”

  “Yes, we are, but that takes time. He doesn’t have the right to…go around like nothing happened.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I called his work, told them what kind of person he was. That was all. I don’t know how he found out about it.”

  I tried to keep the exasperation out of my voice. “Because his work did what most workplaces would do when someone they don’t know calls out of the blue and accuses one of their employees of something. They talked to that worker. Think about it. Someone you don’t know, never heard of, calls you about your son and makes accusations. He denies them. Who do you believe?”

  “But that’s my son!” Now she looked at me, like I was suggesting an outrage.

  “Maybe Eddie works for his dad. Or a relative.” I hadn’t researched who owned the trucking company; there didn’t seem to be a need. I had to admit that Eddie looked like the kind of guy who needed a favor to get a job. I doubted he’d be hired on his sterling résumé.

  “What? Why didn’t you check that out?”

  “Because you hired me to find out who he was, not do a complete background check. And the last we talked, you misled me into thinking you and your husband were going to grind him through the legal system. You forgot to tell me you were going to call his workplace and try to get him fired the second I walked out the door.”

  Her eyes were still looking at the floor, but her expression showed I’d hit the mark. “I didn’t think he’d come here.”

  “The guy is an arrogant, stupid thug. You called his work, trying to get him in trouble, possibly fired.”

  “I thought they would want to know.”

  “I doubt it.” This woman needed some serious reality checking. “They want to know that he doesn’t wreck their truck and delivers whatever he needs to deliver on time and in one piece. They might be interested if he uses drugs, but only because they’re worried about him wrecking the truck. For all we know, they’re the same kind of asshole jerks he is.”

  “Why on earth would she have anything to do with someone like that?” Mrs. Stevens wailed the question, then started crying.

  This is not what I do well, but I had enough sense to go to the kitchen, get a glass of water—such neatly organized cupboards, the glasses were easy to find—and a wad of paper towels in lieu of finding any tissues.

  Back in the sitting room, I handed her the water and towels. She drank half the glass before wiping her face.

  In a gentle tone, I said, “She did what girls throughout time have done when they’re young and on the edge of exploring the world. She responded to attention, to someone telling her what she desperately wanted to hear, that she was becoming an attractive woman.”

  Mrs. Stevens sniffed, a slight nod of her head.

  “And she ran into someone like him, older, with enough wiles and experience to know how to flatter those young girls, to tell them exactly what they want to hear. Eddie was probably worse than most, more cynical, manipulative, crude, willing to do anything to get what he wanted.”
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  “The pictures,” she sniffed again, then took another gulp of water as if it could wash this away.

  “Yes, the pictures,” I agreed. “I think she was figuring out what was going on, that she shouldn’t have anything more to do with him.”

  “She was smart, she would have known better quickly.”

  “Yes, she was,” I said. I didn’t know that was true, but I was willing to tell her what she wanted to hear. Maybe we all do it. I understood why Douglas Townson’s family cleaned up the story of their grandfather’s murder. Grief has to be tempered with what can be borne. His murder would have been hard enough; to also lose the man they thought they knew would have compounded the grief. Mrs. Stevens did not—and perhaps could not—need to know how naïve her daughter had been, and how far it had gone.

  I continued, “I know this is terribly hard for you, to think he could do what he did to your daughter, ruin your life, and still be walking around free, but men like him don’t escape. I can promise you that. Life will get him and it will get him hard, he’ll go to jail, lose his job, never have a relationship or a son at LSU.”

  “How can you be sure?” she asked.

  “Experience. He doesn’t have the self-control, the ability to sacrifice for the future, to plan, to think. He is scum, and scum stays with scum. A bar fight, a drunken crash, ending up in jail. It’s going to happen.”

  She nodded. Maybe she believed me, or maybe she just desperately wanted to.

  “You need to let that happen. Do something with your son, hike the Rockies or go to Europe over summer break. Remember your daughter as the wonderful girl she was. Let life take care of Eddie.”

  “We were, Tiffany and I and Alan, going to celebrate her graduating high school by going on a cruise this summer. She was so happy planning it.” Mrs. Stevens started crying again.

  “Maybe you should go on that cruise for her. Take her memories, believe she’s somewhere watching, with you.”

  Another gulp of water and the towels across her face, “I don’t know if I can do that.”