Murder in the Rue St. Ann by Greg Herren Page A

slowly. I took another hit, and started to mellow out as the vodka and the pot began to work in tandem. I leaned back in the couch and closed my eyes. He had to be innocent. He had to be.

Chapter Six
     
    I didn’t sleep well, which wasn’t much of a surprise.
    I thought getting stoned and having a few more drinks would take the edge off my anxiety and sufficiently anaesthetize me, but I was wrong.  All it did was put me into an obnoxious kind of unrestful half-sleep. My body was asleep but my mind was racing. When the alarm went off at seven, I groaned and hit the snooze button, I was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to lie there all day. With my eyes closed, I argued with myself about getting up. I could stay in bed until Loren called me with the bail amount. I wouldn’t have to shower to go see a bail bondsman or to go down to Central Lock-up—they’d seen much worse down there than an unshaved and unshowered gay man. In one of life’s hateful little ironies, my mind was finally tired and begging for sleep. I let myself lie there for another half hour before I dragged my ass out of bed and put on coffee to brew while I showered.
    I was just getting out of the shower when someone rang my doorbell. As this was computing in my foggy brain, whoever it was gave up on the bell and started pounding on the door frame hard enough to rattle my windows.
    The hot shower hadn’t worked. I still had a bit of a pot hangover. I shook my head to clear the fog but it didn’t work. I stumbled as I put my robe on, still dripping wet. Not cool. Maybe the coffee will help , I thought as I opened the front door.
    “And just when were you planning on telling me Paul was arrested?” Paige demanded, puffing on a cigarette. She was tapping her foot, one hand on her hip, her huge black purse slung over one shoulder. She pushed past me into my apartment.
    Paige Tourneur was my best friend. We met in college at my fraternity, Beta Kappa, where she was my little sister. She now worked as a reporter for the Times-Picayune, a job she truly hates. She really wants to write romance novels, and has been working on one for about three years.
    Her reddish hair was disheveled, and her eyes were bleary from lack of sleep. She wore a tight short black skirt under a cream-colored silk blouse. She wore heels that put her a little over five feet. The most striking thing about Paige was her eyes. The left was blue and the right was green. She always joked that if she got fired, she could always tell fortunes in Jackson Square.
    “What are you doing up so early?” I asked.  Paige hated mornings almost as much as she hated her job.
    She held up a box of Dunkin Donuts. “I brought breakfast, so you’d better fucking have coffee ready.” She looked me up and down. “Oh, for God’s sake, go dry off and put some clothes on.” She plopped down on the couch, opened the box, and revealed a dozen donuts, all glazed. It’s the only kind she’d eat. She grabbed one and looked at me. “Get me some coffee first, honey.”
    I walked into the kitchen and poured us both a cup. I brought it in to her and grabbed a donut. Donuts weren’t on my diet either, but what the hell. I’d already blown the diet completely to hell already anyway.  I walked back into my bedroom and pulled on underwear and sweatpants. I joined her in the living room.and lit a cigarette.
    Both of her expertly plucked eyebrows went up. “Smoking again? And donuts? What’s going on?”
    I blew the smoke into the ceiling fan. “Yeah, well.” I shrugged. “I had a hell of a day yesterday.”
    “So I gathered.” She picked up her third donut. “So what the hell is going on? At about five this morning I got a call from the city editor telling me Paul’s been arrested and charged with murder. What the fuck, Chanse?” The city editor was a friend of hers. Paul and I had met him at a party in the summer. Nice guy—intelligent and a little on the sloppy side because he was always