King of Cups, Reversed
A powerful man who might be double-dealing
“She’s playing us,” I said once Frank returned from walking her to the gate.
“Totally.” Frank shivered as he sat down at the computer. “Man, it’s cold. But yeah, Lady Barron is trying to get us to do her dirty work. But on the other hand…if there’s something to the stuff about Billy Barron, we’ve got to look into it.”
“Well, he was a baseball star,” I replied, trying to remember. “He went to Ben Franklin? Maybe it was Newman, I don’t remember exactly. It was around the same time I was at Jesuit. I mean, he was a pretty big deal…everyone in town knew about Billy, like we knew about the Mannings and Leonard Fournette. It didn’t hurt, either, that his dad used to take out full-page ads in the paper congratulating him on his successes…”
“That must have been mortifying for him,” Frank replied as he started typing on the computer keyboard.
“You’d think.” I shook my head. “But Steve Barron used to do that all the time—take out ads, I mean. Usually to let everyone know his side of his latest feud or something.” I scratched my head. “Billy was also a big-time player at LSU, played on a couple of national championship teams—Steve bought at least three full-page ads both times, I think, and of course he had his restaurants all done up in LSU colors, hosted viewing parties for the College World Series…I think he donated a lot of money to the LSU baseball team, too.”
Frank frowned at the computer screen. He leaned back in the desk chair and put his hands behind his head. “Didn’t he have a big fight with his neighborhood association?”
“Wow! I’d forgotten all about the Christmas decorations thing.” I laughed. Steve Barron built one of those hideous McMansions on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. It was a gated community, just outside of Mandeville, and his mansion was on lakefront property, with a mini-marina for his boats.
When Steve was alive, his mansion’s Christmas decorations were legendary. People came from all over the state just to see them. The lights could be seen by passengers on airplanes both landing or taking off from Armstrong International. His neighborhood association insisted they be either removed or toned down, and the annual battle over the Barron Christmas decorations was breathlessly reported on by local news outlets.
“He feuded with the Garden District Association, too, when he put in that Barron’s on St. Charles Avenue, between Felicity and Jackson. They thought the original plan for the place was too tacky for the Garden District. They wound up in court, they settled. He agreed to tone down the outside décor of the place.” I tried to remember. “It wasn’t a Barron’s, though, I think he was trying to launch another brand? It was only open a couple of years.”
“Sounds like he was quite a character,” Frank commented.
“Yeah, he was. But he wasn’t so interested in getting his name in the papers after Katrina. And then, of course, he died last year.” I walked up behind him. “Hey—is that Billy Barron?” An image search was up on his screen.
“Yeah. Why?”
“He was at the party Friday night. I saw him there. He was with a woman—I didn’t see her face, but I saw him. He talked to Ryan, and then the woman pulled him away.” I frowned. “Now why would he go to the premiere party for a show with his stepmother?” I crossed my arms. “Rebecca certainly didn’t get him on the guest list. Maybe Chloe? Since Remy didn’t go?”
“But you said he was with another woman.”
“Yeah.” I looked at the computer screen. Billy Barron was a good-looking man, I’d thought so when I saw him at the party.
“Interesting.” Frank pulled up an address directory and typed in William Barron. “He lives in English Turn. Shall we head over there and see if he’s home, maybe have a chat, see if he knows anything?” He glanced at his watch. “We should have time before Taylor gets back.”
“Let’s go.”
English Turn was a gated community on the West Bank, which meant taking the Crescent City Connection to cross the river. It was across the river from Chalmette, below the battlefield where Andrew Jackson commanded a ragtag group of Americans that turned back the British army, winning the Battle of New Orleans after the War of 1812 had ended. But that wasn’t how English Turn got its name. The story we learn as children in Louisiana History was that the original French explorers had made camp at the site that is now the French Quarter. Bienville, the city founder, was traveling back down the river to the gulf when he and his men encountered an English frigate sailing up the river. Bienville somehow convinced the English that the river and the territory had already been claimed for France and convinced them to turn back. Some say that he also warned the English that there were incredibly hostile native tribes farther up the river. Whatever the reason, the English turned around and sailed back to the Gulf. That bend in the river where they turned around has been called English Turn ever since. This gated community for recently wealthy people who didn’t necessarily want to deal with living in historic homes or neighborhoods (with all the rules that come with them, and the sky-high Orleans Parish taxes) had sprung up around the time New Orleans got a reputation for being “dangerous”—as a cover for white flight from the newly segregated public schools in the city.
It’s true that crime in the city began to rise in the 1980s, but white flight had already started.
Based on what I’d seen on the show Friday night, Fidelis also lived in English Turn—yet another grande dame of New Orleans who didn’t live in New Orleans.
“New Orleans adjacent,” as the locals sneered.
“The Barron civil war would be an interesting storyline for the show,” I commented as Frank took the Charles de Gaulle exit once we crossed the bridge. “Props to Rebecca for going on the show. If she could manipulate the narrative…”
“But can she actually control the narrative?” Frank asked. “Only Eric had the final say on what storylines they used and how the women appeared on the show, right?”
One of the things I’d always found interesting about the Grande Dames shows was how manipulative they were. Scenes could be edited to eliminate context; something sounding completely innocuous in a casual conversation might sound horrifically damning when removed from its original context. Eric’s eyes were fixed firmly on the bottom line: it was interesting how women who became enormously popular and developed huge social media followings—and therefore might want more money or more control over their image—wound up getting the so-called bitch edit. As their popularity and social media following plummeted, the sufficiently humbled Dame would either leave the show or bow down to Eric Brewer.
Everyone had to kiss his ring, which could lead to resentment…and possibly murder.
I pulled up a search engine on my phone and googled grande dames of new orleans reviews.
A lot of articles about Eric’s murder popped up—some mentioned Chloe’s as well, but apparently Eric was much bigger news outside New Orleans—but there was also a review on Nola.com, the Times-Picayune’s website.
The headline was amazing: “The Grande Dames Are Here, and It’s Everything We Feared.”
Ouch.
It was from this morning but had been filed before the murders.
The latest iteration of the enormously popular Grande Dames shows, a New Orleans franchise, premiered on Friday night to a packed house at the Joy Theater on Canal Street.*
I scrolled down to the footnote, which read, as I suspected, This review of the show was filed before the news broke about the murders of producer Eric Brewer and cast member Chloe Valence. For our coverage of those events, please click here.
I didn’t want to click there. I didn’t want to see what the news said about Taylor. I didn’t want to even think about Taylor’s name being on sites like TMZ or E! I was kind of surprised that tabloids hadn’t descended on our apartment the way they had when we were involved in the Metoyer investigation—an experience I’d rather not ever live through again, thank you very much.
Especially with the Colin thing going on.
The Colin thing.
I glanced over at Frank. His jaw was set, his teeth clenched, and that muscle in his lower cheek was twitching the way it always did when he was angry.
Probably not the best time to talk about the Colin situation.
I scrolled back up on the screen.
One can’t help but wonder what these shows could have been. Producer Eric Brewer often talks about how he initially intended the first show—the Marin County edition, the so-called “OG” of the Grande Dames—to be a documentary about modern day women trying to have it all. Most of the women in the original cast of the show were all successful women running their own small businesses or companies, trying to maintain the work-home-family-career juggle, trying to have it all, and how difficult that was. But as the shows aired, the personalities of the women became more central to the show, their personal foibles and interactions with the other women, and the breakout star was Kristi Domanico, a woman with a volcanic personality, her own high-end real estate business, a failing marriage and an inflated sense of her own importance in the lives of everyone she knew, including children, employees and the other women on the show. It was a formula that drew ratings, and that became the formula for the first spin-off franchise, the enormously popular Manhattan show, and with Marin County about to enter its twelfth season of filming, Kristi is the sole remaining member of the original cast.
The news that after one failed attempt to launch a New Orleans franchise, the network had managed to succeed the second time around was not greeted with much joy in the city. Television shows and movies have a bad history with New Orleans, emphasizing the stereotypes of “boobs, beads, and booze”—the Dennis Quaid film “The Big Easy” in particular held in derision in the city to this day—and when one of the Grande Dame of New Orleans says, within the first five minutes of the premiere episode, that the city is about “beads, booze and boobs”—you could almost hear the collective groan of New Orleanians all over the world.
The other great irony of the show is that several of the women are not actually residents of New Orleans. Two that are—Chloe Valence and Margery Lautenschlaeger—are the closest thing to reaching into the social stratosphere of New Orleans that the show has; the Valences are one of the oldest families in the Garden District, and of course, Lautenschlaeger is one of the wealthiest women in the city (one has to wonder what she is doing on this show? This reporter certainly did). But Chloe Valence is not to the city bred; she is originally from Mississippi and wasn’t a debutante, despite the impressive Rex and Comus credentials the Valence name carries with it.
Serena Castlemaine, who also lives in the Garden District, is a recent transplant from Dallas. Megan Dreher lives in the lower Garden District.
The other women boast addresses that aren’t necessarily New Orleans: Rebecca Barron lives on the North Shore, and Fidelis Vandiver lives in English Turn on the West Bank.
But all the ingredients are there for another successful Grande Dames franchise: conspicuous overconsumption, unashamed narcissism, and petty fights and arguments that basically have nothing in common with adult behavior and everything to do with junior high school mean-girl tactics. From most of what I’ve seen of these shows, it always comes down to a variation of the old “telephone” game; someone says something snarky about one of the women to another one of the women, who then tells the woman about whom it was said what was said, which leads to arguments and the other women being forced to either play peacemaker or choose sides between the two who are arguing. Lather, rinse, repeat, lather, rinse, repeat, over and over and over again. The viewers are encouraged to participate in this nonsense by reading the women’s blogs on the Diva TV website, where you can also see deleted scenes and other videos of interest. Apparently, an entire cottage industry has sprung up around these shows; numerous websites and magazines publish recaps of each episode online and encourage comments from viewers; the dames themselves are encouraged to live tweet the episodes and engage with the viewers that way. Some of the women have used these shows quite successfully to promote themselves and their businesses; their personal brand.
The rest, apparently, just want to be on television, no matter how horrific it makes them appear to the casual viewer.
Props are certainly due to the production team and the editors who stitched the episode together. New Orleans looks stunningly beautiful in the shots used to provide local color, whether it’s the streetcars going up St. Charles or a carriage ride in the Quarter or a barge moving up the river or the buskers in Jackson Square, the city looks lush and beautiful and inviting to tourists.
And ultimately, maybe that’s the best we can hope for from this abominable show: that it will encourage people to come visit because it’s beautiful—even if the show makes them wary of engaging with the people who actually live here.
“Ouch,” I said, looking up from my phone as the car slowed. We were pulling up to the gated entrance to the English Turn development. “Good thing we brought the Jaguar,” I said as we stopped outside the gatehouse. A uniformed security guard whistled as Frank put the window down.
“That is one beautiful car,” the guard said. He was holding a clipboard. “Are you expected?”
“We’re here to see Billy Barron,” Frank replied. “And no, he’s not expecting us.”
“And your name?”
“Frank Sobieski,” Frank replied, “We’re with the production staff of the Grande Dames?” He said it as though he was used to having people bow and scrape to him.
The Jaguar was definitely a perfect prop for this performance.
“Oh. Let me just give him a call.” He stepped back inside. We could see him through the window talking on a telephone.
“Well, it was worth a try,” I said.
Just as I finished saying it, the gates swung open as he stepped back outside.
“Do you know how to find Mr. Barron’s place?” When Frank said no, he gave us directions. Frank put the Jaguar back into gear and we drove into English Turn.
As far as new houses or McMansions go, it wasn’t so terrible. I’ve certainly seen much worse (the Philadelphia cast all lived in a similar style development along the Delaware just north of the city, and their houses were tacky—the kind of place people who grew up with nothing or poor thought meant classy. And yes, I know that sounds snobbish, but you know what I mean), but there was a newness to the whole area that I didn’t like. The houses on the left backed up to the lagoon that circled the golf course, and between houses we could see the water. Some of the houses had docks or gazebos out on the lagoon. Everything was perfectly manicured. I don’t know, I guess I’ve been spoiled by the Quarter and the Garden District, but it all seemed a little prefabricated, a little too clean, a little too nice, a little too perfect. There were trees, but no massive live oaks with enormous roots to tear up the sidewalks and driveways and the streets. Some of the houses had fountains or statues in the front yards, bushes trimmed into topiary. The lawns were lush and so green they looked like AstroTurf.
The entire development had been built up around a golf course, so that was probably why the lawns looked like putting greens.
Billy’s house was typical of nouveau riche Southerners with little to no taste: a two-story stone building, with two one-story wings extending on either side, an enormous front gallery with huge round stone columns. My mother sneeringly calls these houses “offensively racist Gone with the Wind wannabe clichés, and you’d think people would know better now.” The driveway curved to a three-car garage attached to the wing on the left. Dormer windows broke the ceiling line above the porch. The lawn was that same lush dark emerald green, with perfectly trimmed bushes behind white stone gravel beds running along the front of the house. We parked in the carport and rang the doorbell.
It sounded like a bell tolling for the dead.
This, I reflected, was an awful lot of house for one person.
We didn’t have to wait long before the front door opened.
“You’re not with the show,” Billy Barron said, a smile spreading across his handsome face. “But I knew the name. Great bluff, though.”
I just stared at him, unable to speak.
Billy Barron was, without question, one of the best-looking straight men I’d ever seen. He had what some people call star quality, others charisma; whatever you wanted to call it, he had a lot of it. I couldn’t stop looking at him. Standing in the doorway wearing only a pair of tan shorts, his stomach was flat with just a slight ripple of abdominal muscles. He wasn’t ripped, but a focus on diet would get him there in no time. His chest was perfectly shaped and strong, with a patch of dark bluish-black hair directly in the center, a trail leading down over the flat stomach to the waistband of the shorts. His eyes were a sparkling violet-blue, his thick bluish-black hair pulled back into a ponytail. His chin was cleft, his cheekbones high, and there was a knot where the cartilage of his nose met the bone; it had been broken and set badly at some point in his life. His olive face was darkened by a bluish-black shadow from not shaving. His teeth were perfect and almost blindingly white.
“Come on in!” He waved us past him into the foyer of the big house. “Nice car!” He whistled as he shut the door behind us.
“You knew my name?” Frank was able to speak, which was a good thing. I’d apparently lost the ability. He led us into a big room with an enormous window, opening onto the backyard with a lovely view of the lagoon beyond. It was decorated in what a bitchy decorator would call straight man cave testosterone. The furniture was dark, bulky, and heavy looking. A gigantic flat screen television was mounted on the brick above the fireplace. The only thing missing was mounted animal head trophies. “Do you mind if I ask how?”
“Sure.” He pulled an LSU baseball jersey on, the ripples in his stomach flexing as he yanked it down. “Your nephew—he’s the one who was with Eric Brewer the night he was murdered.” He flashed that mesmerizing smile at us again and held up his big hands. He grinned at me. “And you’re Scotty Bradley, right?”
Dumbfounded, I nodded. “How—how did you know?”
He laughed. “Serena Castlemaine. I had drinks with her yesterday. She told me all about you guys. You’re trying to clear your nephew, which I can respect. You want to question me, right?”
Frank and I traded glances. This was going much easier than either of us had anticipated.
Maybe he has nothing to hide.
“Have a seat, make yourselves at home.” We obliged by sitting down on the black leather sofa. “Can I get you something? Coffee? Water? Anything? Nothing? Okay.” He sat down in an easy chair, his legs spread wide in that easy comfortable way of all good-looking straight men. “I’m going to be up front with you, okay? I think what Eric did to your nephew was terrible, absolutely terrible.” His teeth gleamed again. “And I didn’t kill anyone.”
Telephone, telegram, tell Serena, I thought. Aloud I said, “Has anyone implied that you did?”
He waved his big right hand dismissively. He was wearing one of his College World Series championship rings. “You hear things. And I don’t put anything past my stepmother.” His face darkened into a scowl. “That gold-digging whore will do anything to keep me from overturning my father’s will. You know she was just a hostess at Barron’s on St. Charles when my father met her and decided to make her wife number five?” He crossed himself. “God rest my poor mother’s soul that she didn’t live to see this.”
In for a penny, in for a pound, I thought, diving in. “But you were having an affair with Chloe Valence?”
“I don’t know that I’d call it an affair. Do you mind if I have something to drink? You sure you don’t want anything?” When we both demurred, he got up and grabbed a bottle of Pellegrino from the little refrigerator by the bar. “I slept with her. Probably not one of my better moments, but it was only twice, and we both agreed it would never happen again.” He opened the bottle, filled a glass, and tossed a slice of lemon into it. He sat back down on the sofa, adopting the wide-legged spread from before.
And I became acutely aware that he wasn’t wearing underwear.
He sighed. “This stupid fucking show. I went to one of the parties being filmed, at Margery Lautenschlaeger’s. Chloe and I had a bit much to drink, and her husband was out of town”—he held up his hands in a kind of what’s a guy going to do gesture—“and it just kind of happened.”
“Weren’t you—um—involved with another one of the grande dames? Fidelis Vandiver?” I asked.
“Fidelis and I have had an off-again, on-again thing for a number of years.” He shrugged. “It’s kind of a love-hate thing. We went to high school together.” He grinned. “In fact, I went to high school not only with Fid but with Megan, too. And Margery’s daughter, Amanda. And yes, Amanda and I had a thing in high school, but…” He sighed. “I know it’s not gentlemanly to say this, but Amanda…well, she’s not right in the head.” He twirled an index finger around his right temple. “I know she’s out of the hospital now, and back living with Margery…but…”
“Rebecca said that Fidelis was also involved with your father?” I asked. “Was that not true?”
He made a face. “Rebecca wouldn’t know the truth if it punched her in the face. No, Fid was never involved with my dad. Like I said, we’ve had this off-and-on thing. It never works out for us, but we always seem to wind up back together if, you know, we’re not involved with anyone else.”
“You know that both Eric and Chloe were killed with blunt objects, that could have been baseball bats?” Frank asked. “And given your own history…”
“All of my bats are present and accounted for.” Billy smiled, gesturing toward a door on the other side of the room. “My trophies and mementoes are all in that room, in cases.” He smiled. “Well, I don’t have all of my old bats, though. You know where the others are?” He leaned forward, his eyes gleaming. “My father’s house. You know, where Rebecca lives?”