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THE NEXT MORNING, MARY-Alice, Gertie, and Fortune sat in a quiet corner of Francine’s Diner. They held their conversation until Ally had taken their breakfast order and was out of earshot.
“Before we do anything else,” Mary-Alice said, “I think we should report what I found out. To the sheriff.”
“I already talked to Carter,” Fortune said.
“You mean after I texted you last night?” Mary-Alice asked innocently. “Goodness, it was already quite late. I hope he didn't mind.”
“What’d he say?” Gertie asked.
The conversation paused when Ally came back to refill coffee cups and water glasses.
“He said he appreciated the information,” Fortune said. “But he didn't think someone of Marine Montreuil’s description would be able to sneak into Sinful unnoticed. Much less blow someone’s head off with a shotgun and sneak out again.”
“But they were divorced,” Mary-Alice said. “Doesn't that make her a suspect?”
“I mentioned that. He said there are millions of divorced people who manage to get through the day without killing each other.”
“Well, I just want to say, you did good work, Mary-Alice.” Gertie said. “You found out that Victorin was married, which none of us surely did know. And thanks to you we also know what Leonie was going on about to Deputy Breaux. She didn’t mean the Marines. She was talking about Victorin's ex-wife Marine. Fortune, are you saying Carter's not even going to go talk to this ex-wife?”
Fortune shook her head. There was another moment of silence when Ally brought the breakfasts. All three had ordered the biscuits and gravy special; it was cheap, delicious, and quick.
“They've halted the investigation,” Fortune said. “Sheriff Lee isn’t going to stand up to Celia. And as far as Celia is concerned, they have their suspect.”
“So if we were to go to New Orleans and just happened to run into a certain Marine Montreuil,” Gertie said, “we wouldn’t be interfering with any official investigation at all, now would we?”
“We're going to New Orleans?” Mary-Alice asked. “When?”
“Soon as you finish your biscuits and gravy,” Gertie said.
Mary-Alice volunteered to drive, but Fortune (disconcertingly) pointed out that “you never know when you might have to go off-road.” Gertie climbed into the front passenger seat of Fortune’s Jeep. Mary-Alice carefully buckled herself in behind the driver’s seat.
“You have the dossier?” Gertie asked.
“In the glovebox,” Fortune said. “Can you hand it back to Mary-Alice?”
Mary-Alice found herself holding a manila folder. Inside was information on Marine Montreuil: a small passport-sized photo, a list of current and previous home and work addresses, and an aerial map of the big medical center on Canal Street. Marine worked there as a nurse, according to the information in the file.
“Why are you giving this to me?” Mary-Alice asked as Fortune pulled out to the main road.
“You’re the one who knows Victorin’s mother,” Fortune said. “That gives you an excuse to talk to her former daughter-in-law.”
“You mean just walk right on up to her?”
“I’d say you managed very well with Miss Eulalie last night,” Gertie said.
“But I don’t want to interrupt a nurse while she’s tending to her patients,” Mary-Alice pleaded. “That wouldn’t be right.”
“There's a rest stop up ahead,” Gertie said. “Do we have time? I won't be a minute.”
Fortune pulled off the road in front of a gas station/bait shop.
“Gertie, did you have to drink that fourth cup of coffee?”
“You want me alert, don't you?” Gertie slowly let herself down from the Jeep and headed into the building.
Fortune turned to Mary-Alice.
“You want to make a pit stop too, Mary-Alice?”
Mary-Alice took in the mildew-eaten siding, ripped screen door, and hand painted sign: “Fresh” Sandwiches Bait and Gas
“No thank you,” she said. “I believe I’ll wait right here.”
They reached the Medical Center at around eleven. Fortune pulled into the parking garage and took a ticket, then headed up the ramp to prowl for an empty spot.
Mary-Alice felt a rush of excitement on entering the city. She found New Orleans exhilarating. It was like another planet with its gleaming towers, 24-hour shops, and most wondrous of all, escalators. Mary-Alice had been fascinated with escalators ever since her mother had taken her into New Orleans to shop for her confirmation dress at Krauss, one of the first department stores in the nation to feature “mechanical stairs.”
Once they were on the Medical Center grounds, Fortune and Gertie seemed to know exactly where they were going. Mary-Alice followed them into a lobby, down a corridor, outside, and then back inside. Then down a sidewalk under some scaffolding, and around a corner, and through the automatic doors of the hospital cafeteria. (There were no escalators on the way, alas). They bought sandwiches, then went out to the dining room, where Fortune chose a high table by a floor-to-ceiling window.
“We have a good view from here,” Fortune explained as she took her seat. Outside, medical personnel in scrubs and civilians hurried past in the punishing heat.
“There she is,” Gertie hissed, so suddenly that Mary-Alice nearly choked on her tuna sandwich. “That’s her!”
A young woman in pink scrubs, her hair dyed the color of red velvet cake, was walking away from the cash register. Mary-Alice was relieved to see that the woman was alone; she wouldn’t have to barge in on anyone’s conversation. She grabbed her paper plate and reached the young woman just as she sat down.
“Excuse me,” Mary said to the young woman. “Aren’t you Marine Montreuil? I feel like I recognize you.”
To Mary-Alice’s relief, Marine replied,
“Yes I am. Won't you join me, ma’am? Please.”
Mary-Alice sat down next to the young nurse. Seconds later, a man approached their table. He was in his late fifties and bald as a plate, with the fiercest eyebrows Mary-Alice had ever seen. Mary-Alice noticed that he wore a gold wedding band.
“I’m real sorry to tell you this, Roger,” Marine said with a sweet smile. “I won’t be able to join you for lunch today. I have some family business to deal with.”
“Family business, huh?”
The man looked from Marine to Mary-Alice and back.
“Fine,” he said peevishly, and stalked off.
“I don’t believe I know who you are,” Marine said quietly, “but thank you so much for showing up when you did. Now I can eat my lunch in peace.”
“Was that man bothering you?”
“I don’t believe he’s dangerous, but he does make me uncomfortable. And I shouldn’t hold it against him that he works in the morgue, but it may be that I do. Never mind, now. How can I help you?”
“I’m a friend of Victorin Lowery’s mother, Miss Eulalie,” Mary-Alice said. “So it really is family business of a sort. My name is Mary-Alice Arceneaux.”
“It's a pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”
“I'm so sorry about Victorin.”
Marine lifted her perfectly-shaped brows.
“How did you know about Vicky? I just got the call from the Sinful Sheriff’s Department this morning.”
So it seemed that Carter had followed up, if only by telephone.
“I suppose you can’t really keep a secret in Sinful,” Mary-Alice said.
“That’s true as can be. Where is Miss Eulalie? Is she here with you?”
“No, Miss Eulalie’s back home. I just happened to be here with friends and when I saw you, I thought you looked familiar.”
“How did you recognize—oh, the wedding pictures. Of course. Victorin still has them. Had them, I should say.”
Mary-Alice had a different answer prepared, but decided to go with Marine's explanation.
“Yes, of course, that’s it. Poor Miss Eulalie. She is simply distraught. I must say, she thinks quite highly of you, you know.”
Marine smiled slightly.
“Well I must say, that’s news to me.”
“She let slip that she always thought you were too good for her son.”
Marine ripped open a bag of potato chips and shook them onto her paper plate, next to her veggie wrap.
“I wasn’t good for him at all, ma’am, sorry to say. I’m a medical professional, and I couldn’t help him. I saw it coming, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”
“Stop what?” Mary-Alice asked.
“Vicky ending it all. Now I heard from the sheriff that he got himself shot by some lowlife moonshiner, but I don't believe it. He was much too careful for that to occur. He wouldn’t have let that happen unless he wanted it to. Or he simply didn’t care anymore.”
Mary-Alice wondered how Ida Belle would feel about being called a “lowlife moonshiner.” Knowing Ida Belle, she’d probably get a kick out of it.
“Do you believe Victorin was troubled?” Mary-Alice asked.
“Troubled! I should say so. He believed people were monitoring his thoughts. He told me there were cameras behind his eyes, and a big monitor in CIA headquarters showing everything he saw in real time. He thought there were government agents sitting around watching it, taking notes.”
“Oh, my, that's quite something,” Mary-Alice said.
“When he wanted privacy, he would close his eyes. To make their screen go black, he said. Imagine what it was like...no, don't imagine. You know when I’d finally had enough? It wasn’t when he went and got himself fired. No ma’am, I stuck by my man. And it wasn’t even when he started going online and spending money we didn't have on body armor and all other sorts of peculiar things. No, now, I put up with all that business until one night Vicky got up and went through our apartment shooting out the smoke alarms. He said they all had listening devices in them, you see. That’s when I finally sent him back home to his mama.”
“I'm so sorry to hear that.”
“I still can’t believe he got himself killed. Say what you like about alcoholic paranoia, at least it made him careful. Maybe it hasn’t sunk in yet that he’s really gone. I don’t know. But I just can’t bring myself to feel sad today. I already did my grieving. Do you know, I only just talked to him on Friday. He seemed...I want to say he seemed fine. But he wasn’t fine. That’s for sure.”
Marine glanced at her watch.
“Ma’am, it surely was nice talking to you, but I’m afraid I have to leave now. We got a whole bunch of domoic acid poisonings coming in. Listen, I’m not supposed to say anything because they don’t want people to panic, but let's put it this way. I’m certainly not going to eat shellfish for a while. Oh, please, ma’am, give Miss Eulalie my love, won’t you?”