I called Ruby Jemison, making sincere apologies for my state when we’d spoken before. She said she was happy to meet me for coffee later this evening, in about an hour and a half. She suggested a small Greek place on Decatur, not far from where Jerry’s office used to be, across from the French Market. “How will I know you?” I asked before she rang off.
“I’ve seen your picture, I’ll find you,” she said.
Michael had showed her my picture? I felt oddly flattered. I knew he had one of me on his desk at work, but in his wallet too? My emotions started doing a tango, or some other violent dance where the partners competed for who got to lead. If he loved me so much, why not trust me? Why not catch me at MacKay’s funeral and tell me there and then? Or he could have spoken to me at the house in Slidell.
Thinking about the MacKay house led my brain back to the redhead again. Holly, the bitch. She had something to do with this, and I needed to know more about her. Nothing I’d found about MacKay gave me much information about her. For that I would need Vanessa or Madeleine or one of Jerry’s researchers. I called Madeleine and got her voicemail. I gave her the address of where I’d be. If Ruby was unwilling to talk to me, maybe she’d be willing to talk to a family member of Ian McKay’s.
I had been to Kyritsis’ a few times. It was a short walk and I decided to get there early. It was a small place. I’d never seen it empty, but it was usually not crowded. While reminiscent of some of the restaurants in Chicago’s Greektown, it was decorated in light blue, and was very low-key when it came to atmosphere. Tourists easily overlooked it, since it wasn’t a daiquiri barn or a Place to Be Seen or a place to eat spicy Cajun or Creole food. In other words, it could be comfortable for a person alone or with a friend or two having quiet conversation. I sat in a booth and ordered a hummus plate and coffee, more to keep my hands busy than anything else.
“Zofia?” The low voice I’d heard on the phone. I looked up and saw an attractive, oval-faced black woman in her fifties with. Her nose was broad and flat, her lips glistened with honey-colored lip gloss and her hair was swept up, on the sides, with curls in a fluffy bouquet high at the back of her head. She was smartly dressed in a caramel pantsuit, topped by an eggshell cardigan. I blinked. She’d sounded younger on the phone, my age or so. Clearly her attitude was young, but her skin was rough, and her face had lines that indicated hard living and not a lot of laughter.
“Ruby?” I stood up to shake her hand. It was thin and bony, but not calloused.
“I would have known you anywhere,” Her handshake was firm, but not annoyingly so. It was usually jerks that squeezed too hard, so I took this as a good sign. “Michael’s talked about you a lot.”
I wished I could say the same, but didn’t say so. When we sat down, I said. “At the NA meetings?”
She nodded once, not surprised. “How did you find out?”
“His boss told me.” It was tempting to smile secretively and said I had my ways. Marie would have done that. Ruby seemed predisposed to liking me, however, so why give her a reason not to?
“Oh, I’m glad you know,” she said with a relieved smile. “I just wish Michael had told you.”
I liked her for that and smiled. “Me, too. Would you like something to eat? The hummus plate feeds two easily.”
“Thank you. Coffee please,” this to a server that materialized out of nowhere and just as quickly went back where she came from. The good ones in New Orleans always did. Sometimes I wondered if their feet actually touched the floor. You almost never heard them coming.
“The thing is,” Ruby continued, “I don’t know how much help I can be to you. What goes on in the meetings always stays in the meetings. When I told the police this, they didn’t like it very much. Addicts are not a legally protected class like a spouse or a priest. The cops don’t seem to get that the anonymous part really is anonymous.” Nate had been right.
She continued, “I know Michael’s last name because he volunteered it when he gave me his cell number, but we don’t ask. One of the detectives said they could get me for obstruction if it turns out I knew something that could have helped and it was too late.”
I wasn’t sure if that would have been Levin or Washington, I thought as I nodded sympathetically. The food and coffee arrived as if summoned. “They do that, it’s part of their job. It’s annoying as hell, but it is part of their job.”
A carrot stick stopped halfway to her mouth. It was so quiet we heard a bit of hummus drop off it onto the table. “So, you’ve been involved with the police too.”
Her attempt to draw a parallel ticked me off. “I don’t have a record, but yes, involved is a good word for it,” I said sharply. “A couple of dead bodies have turned up in my bookstore, which is a little different than having served time.” At her surprised look, I said, “The cops told me that.” Well, they had told me about Michael. Dodson had told me about her time in the cooler.
A wince crossed her face and exaggerated the network of lines around her eyes and mouth. “To serve and protect. And to manipulate and entrap if it serves their purposes.”
Sarcasm. That I could relate to. I put a choke chain on my temper. She did agree to come out here, after all, and she was fond of Michael. I could listen. I could always yell later. “What can you tell me, Ruby? Any little thing might help.”
She relaxed. “I’ve known Michael almost since he came to New Orleans. He had to be in a program as a condition of his release, and I offered to become his sponsor. Sometimes it helps to work with someone who is different than you are. He’s crazy about you, you know.”
I knew that, but it didn’t help. “Does that make it okay to keep the truth from me?”
She closed her eyes and sighed. “No, it doesn’t. I think it’s okay that I tell you he wanted you to know the whole story. He just didn’t know how to tell you. Naturally, he was afraid of your reaction.”
Silently, I admitted to myself I didn’t react well to surprises. I’d hated that Washington had the information to throw in my face. Aloud I simply said, “He had reasons.” Some of them were even good.
“He came to a meeting every day this week, he had a lot on his mind.”
“Ian MacKay, right?”
She nodded and looked relieved. ‘So you know some of what’s been eating at him.”
I dipped a pita triangle in the hummus and chewed a bite while I chewed on her information. “I only know it from my point of view, that’s the thing.” I thought of MacKay’s tattoo, the odd constellation on his neck. Could Michael have known as early as Sunday night that something was off? Did Ruby know this?
Time to find out. “He knew who MacKay was on Sunday, didn’t he?” I should have realized that before. “That fits with him being so tense. I thought he was just worried about me.”
“He was, Zofia. He found you collapsed on your floor. And yes, he did know you were talking about Ian. That tattoo you described was pretty memorable. I think he was trying to protect you.”
“Call me Zo,” I said before asking, “Protect me from what?” Or maybe it was whom?
“Hearing about his past before he was ready?” I could tell she wasn’t sure.
“More coffee, please,” I said to the server. “And an order of stuffed grape leaves.” I mulled over what she had said. Michael wasn’t the first person in my life to try and protect me from a secret. The last time hadn’t worked out very well either. I decided to leave that be for now. “Did you happen to walk out of the meeting together on Thursday afternoon? That’s the last time anyone has seen him.”
“We did, yes.” She said. “There was a guy in a leather jacket leaning on his car, waiting for him.”
“Dark hair, dark eyes?” Objection your honor, leading the witness. This is why I never went to law school. Well, that and all the lawyers. I had been much better off as a reporter.
“His hair was dark, but I didn’t get close enough to see his eyes. What was weird was there was a woman in the driver’s seat of his car. Redhead.”
“Holly.” I said, narrowing my eyes. Her driving explained the seat being forward when they found the car. “Did Michael ever mention anything about her that you can tell me?”
“I can tell you,” a voice to my left said. I looked up and saw a friendly face.
“Ruby Jemison, meet my friend Madeleine. You spoke on the phone while I wasn’t feeling well.” They shook hands. “I just realized I don’t know your last name, is it also MacKay?” I moved over so Madeleine could sit. Madeleine was dressed in server black and white and smelled not unpleasantly of cigarette smoke and deep-fried appetizers. She ordered a diet Coke from the server.
“Nice to meet you,” Ruby said. “You’re Ian’s sister?”
“It is MacKay,” Madeleine said to me. To Ruby she said, “Zo and I met at Ian’s funeral. I’m one of his cousins.”
“Ian’s fake funeral,” I said definitively.
“How can you be sure?” Madeleine asked.
“Because Ruby saw him on Thursday afternoon. He and Holly picked up Michael from a meeting.”
Holly,” Madeleine spat. “Can I have some of this?” she grabbed a pita triangle without waiting for an answer. “That bitch. I can’t stand her. And I just found out he married her and didn’t tell anyone.”
“He married her?” There’s a motive in there somewhere. I’d get back to that later. “Michael wasn’t too fond of her either, if I recall.” I said wryly. “If she’s who I think she is, he ran into her in Tennessee a couple times last year. She wasn’t working. He gave her some money because she was having trouble getting by.”
“It probably went right up her nose,” Madeleine said and I saw Ruby nod her head just once. I busied myself with the grape leaves while Madeleine continued. “The damn cow. I can’t believe Ian got involved with her, never mind that they eloped. I can’t see what he found attractive.”
I considered blackmail for a moment. What other secrets did I not know? So much for getting to motives later. “Did Holly work with them in California?” I asked, coming from another angle.
“Yeah, she did,” Madeleine said, confirming my suspicions. “But she wasn’t at the party where they all got busted.”
Convenient that, I thought as I considered what I just heard. Ruby sipped coffee and didn’t say anything. I watched her face when Madeleine spoke. Sometimes the way someone didn’t say something could be very telling. This was definitely the case here. Her facial expressions unconsciously provided the corroboration I was looking for.
“Ian told me about it when he came back from California,” Madeleine said. “They all got fired one day.”
I nodded. Michael had mentioned that, going into work one day with a high-paying job, walking out with a severance check in his hand, directly to the nearest bar. They’d gotten the place to open up at nine-thirty in the morning, and most of the office had arrived there by ten a.m. to drink themselves comfortably numb.
“Well, they did this on a Friday at the beginning of summer, and they got three months of severance pay. Michael, Ian, Holly, a bunch of others were really into partying. Not just booze or pot--that’s about as crazy as I ever got--but uppers, coke, the whole nine yards.”
Bright lights, big city. Life in the fast lane. Why was I having eighties’ flashbacks? The picture she was painting was so different from the man I thought I knew.
“No one thought they’d have any problem getting a new job, the way Ian told it,” Madeleine continued. Ruby kept eating vegetables and hummus and nodding affirmatives. I think she was relieved the secret was out in the open. “Then the party at Michael’s beach house got raided. They had a shitload of coke, pot, you name it. A bunch of them ended up in jail.”
“Why wasn’t Holly there?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Madeleine said. “To hear Ian tell it, she dropped off the planet for a couple years. She never lost the coke habit, though.”
“Yeah, I remember her sniffling,” I said, “but drugs didn’t occur to me until later.”
Ruby stood up. “I need to go now, girls. I’m meeting someone down the street for dinner. You’ll let me know if you hear from Michael?”
I shook her hand. “Thank you for meeting me, Ruby. Of course I will. I’m really sorry our first conversation didn’t make much sense.”
“That’s okay; I understand. Some people don’t react well to cold medication.”
I opened my mouth then shut it. Discretion being the better part of valor and all, why let the woman know I was pretty sure I’d been drugged? Madeleine swung out of my side of the booth into the seat that Ruby had vacated.
“Tell me more about Holly,” I said. “I think she’s keeping Michael somewhere—otherwise we would have a body by now. She seems to stop just short of murder, thank God.” I shuddered as I realized I wouldn’t be alive otherwise. “I also think she’s behind Ian’s fake death, especially after what Ruby just told us. Why would Ian fake his death, Madeleine?”
“Hell if I know,” she said. “I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that he did it. Ruby doesn’t sound like she has a reason to lie about it, though.”
I met the server’s eye and she appeared with more coffee for me and more diet Coke for Madeleine. Madeleine ordered a chicken shawarma sandwich.
“Holly showed up in New Orleans about six months ago,” Madeleine went on. “I don’t know what Ian saw--sees--in her. They were friends back in California, but she was married when they all worked at DigiCom. Her husband kicked her out and she went a little nuts--that’s when she pushed herself on the party crowd. Michael, Ian and most of the rest were techies. She was in sales, but she’d been crashing on the couch of someone who was in Ian’s department, so she’d get included sometimes when people went out or someone threw a party.”
“And you said she never gave up the coke habit?” Money for drugs was a motive. Money in general was a motive and the MacKays’ had plenty.
“I haven’t actually seen her do it, but you met her. She’s hyper, she sniffles all the time, and her pupils are huge. I’d add being irritable to the list, but I think she’s always been that way.”
I could see that, easily. “Irritating, too. Could Ian have been getting her cocaine?”
“Probably. He never had any problems getting drugs for me when I wanted them. He gets X for Vanessa and her friends.”
“X?” I hazarded a guess. “Ecstasy?” And Vanessa was supposed to be watching Maryam? No wonder the kid got away from her so easily.
“Yep.”
I pulled out my cell phone and called Jerry’s house. I got Allison. “He’s not here, Zo, I thought he was meeting you about Michael again. He said something about a new lead.”
Oh, were Jerry and I going to have words. “He hasn’t made it yet, Allison,” lucky for Jerry, I could think on my feet. “When did he leave?”
“About half an hour ago.”
“Hmm. He should be here by now.” Or wherever he was going. “He might have hit traffic or had a hard time parking. How was the game?”
“The Pandas won, but Sandra missed you--she scored her first three-pointer. How are you feeling?”
“A little better, thanks. Listen, I won’t keep Jerry long, I promise.”
“That’s what he always says, Zo, I’m a little tired of it.”
So am I, Ally, I thought. “Once Michael’s found safe, we’re going to go on a trip together,” I said, wondering if that was true or not. “We’ll be out of your hair.”
“It’s not that I begrudge him your friendship, Zo. It’s that he’s never home anymore. Once he settled into just managing the company, he got restless. I think he welcomes the chance to get out and do things again instead of sitting behind a desk. With the two of you being so close, it’s easy for him to consider you a special case. Try not to encourage him so much, okay?”
“I promise, Ally.” I let her go and let out a torrent of abuse that would have embarrassed a longshoreman.
Madeleine looked impressed. “What was that all about?”
“Someone else not telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And now I am going to beat him over the head with it.” I wished for a moment I had played softball growing up. I would have kept a bat for sentimental reasons.
Madeleine took her sandwich from the server and took a huge bite before she continued. “What did you do before you owned a bookstore?” she asked.
“I was a reporter,” I said while I hit the memory button for Jerry’s cell.
“I would not have guessed that. They’re usually not this violent, are they? I thought objective was the name of the game.”
I didn’t answer, paying more attention to the phone. Not surprisingly, I got the damn voicemail. “I don’t know where you are, who you’re with, or what you’re doing, but I just covered your ass with your wife. So we’re going to forget that you think I’m losing my mind. I’ve got one name for you, and I want everything you can dig up. Holly Fisher.” I looked at Madeleine. “Do you know if she had any other names?”
“No idea, but I can tell you she was born in Connecticut.”
“From Connecticut, Jerry. Divorced, has a cocaine problem, so she might have a record. Call me as soon as you get this.”
My phone rang ten minutes later.