Murder in the Garden District (Chanse MacLeod Mysteries) by Greg Herren Page A

her in person. I figured a housemother would have a maternal interest in the girls. I also figured that it wouldn’t even occur to the Sheehans to let the housemother know how Alais was doing. If I was wrong, I could just hang up. No harm, no foul, right? But I was right. Mrs. Fisk hasn’t heard a word from the Sheehans or Alais since the girl came home, and did she ever want to talk. I told her that Alais wasn’t getting any better, she was being medicated for depression, and her shrink was at his wit’s end because she told him nothing. Did Mrs. Fisk know anything that could help the poor girl out?”
    She leaned forward. “You’re going to love this, Chanse.”
    “You’ve pretty much already earned a dinner at Commander’s,” I said.
    “Great. So, Mrs. Fisk tells me, ‘Poor Alais hasn’t been the same since her boyfriend died.’”
    “Let me guess—he fell down the stairs and broke his neck,” I said, half joking.
    She looked like she’d swallowed a canary, and it had been quite tasty.
    “No, but could you imagine if he had? Once that woman started talking, she wouldn’t stop. Most of it was nonsense, but I finally got his name out of her. I found as much as I could about it on the local paper’s website.”
    She reached into her backpack, pulled out a folder and handed it to me. I opened the folder. A handsome young black face stared at me, next to the headline, STUDENT KILLED IN ROBBERY. He was wearing a jacket and tie—it looked like a school photo—and seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him. His name was Jerrell Perrilloux and he was from New Orleans.
    “He was found on a Sunday morning when he didn’t show up for work at Starbucks,” Abby explained. “His manager kept calling him, and was worried when he got no answer. So after work he went by Jerrell’s apartment to check on him. The door was ajar and he found the body. Jerrell’s computer and cell phone were missing, but nothing else.”
    “Poor kid,” I said.
    I rifled through the printouts. The police had no leads. He’d last been seen on a Saturday afternoon, by the girl he was dating, but her name wasn’t released to the papers—no doubt the fine hand of the Sheehan family, although it seemed odd that they had strings to pull in upstate Mississippi.
    “I can see why Alais is having problems,” I said.
    “Mrs. Fisk—the racist bitch—made it clear she didn’t approve of Alais’s taste in boys. And apparently some of Alais’s sorority sisters didn’t much care for the notion of one of their Kappa sisters dating a black boy. The police questioned all of them, but found nothing. Alais and Jerrell pretty much kept as low a profile as they could in a little town like Oxford.”
    “Maybe the romance started before then. Did you—”
    “I was just getting started on looking into him when you called,” she interrupted. “Jerrell went to Warren Easton, and I don’t imagine students at Newman have much call to mix with public school kids—at least not if Cordelia was their grandmother. And Jerrell was a year ahead of Alais at Ole Miss. I’ll get back to work on it at home.”
    She slid the picture of the car’s license plate into her bag.
    “Anything else? Should I catch up to Carey again? I didn’t really ask him about what happened Monday night.”
    “Give that a rest for now. See what you can find out about Jerrell and his family.”
    I filled her in on my conversation with Loren. He’d been clear we were to stay away from the Sheehan family, but Jerrell Perrilloux wasn’t a Sheehan.
    “So keep looking into this kid—it may be nothing, but…”
    Abby hoisted her backpack over her shoulder.
    “It’s interesting how people who get close to the Sheehan family keep dying,” she finished my thought dryly, adding, “I hope that doesn’t include you and me.”
    “That makes two of us,” I said.

Chapter Six
     
    Truly, timing is everything. When a bullet whizzes past you unexpectedly, it doesn’t