The Sowing Club didn’t take sides. They sat in the corner. Everyone knew who they were, though, and until the serious drinking got under way, they were constantly interrupted by greetings from coworkers and ass-kissers.
Oh, yes, they had gall and nerve, for in the midst of New Orleans’s finest, they calmly talked about the mercy killing.
The discussion would never have gotten this far if they hadn’t already had the connection they needed. Monk had killed for money, and he certainly wouldn’t have any qualms about killing again. Dallas was the first to see the potential and to take advantage by saving Monk from the judicial system. Monk understood the debt he would have to repay. He promised Dallas that he would do anything, anything at all, as long as the risks were manageable and the price was right. Sentiment aside, their killer was, above all else, a businessman.
They all met to discuss the terms at one of Monk’s favorite hangouts, Frankies, which was a dilapidated gray shack just off Interstate 10 on the other side of Metairie. The bar smelled of tobacco, peanut shells that customers discarded on the warped floorboards, and spoiled fish. Monk swore that Frankie’s had the best fried shrimp in the south.
He was late and made no apology for his tardiness. He took his seat, folded his hands on the tabletop, and immediately outlined his conditions before accepting their money. Monk was an educated man, which was one of the main reasons Dallas had saved him from a lethal injection. They wanted a smart man, and he fit the bill. He was also quite distinguished looking, very refined and shockingly polished considering he was a professional criminal. Until he was arrested for murder, Monk’s sheet had been clean. After he and Dallas had struck the deal, he did a little bragging about his extensive résumé, which included arson, blackmail, extortion, and murder. The police didn’t know about his background, of course, but they had enough evidence to convict on the murder — evidence that was deliberately misplaced.
The very first time the others met Monk was at Dallas’s apartment, and he made an indelible impression upon them. They had expected to meet a thug, but instead they met a man they could almost imagine as one of them, a professional with high standards — until they looked closely into his eyes. They were as cold and as lifeless as an eel’s. If it was true that the eyes were mirrors to the soul, then Monk had already given his to the devil.
After ordering a beer, he leaned back in the captain’s chair and calmly demanded double the price Dallas had offered.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Preston said. “That’s extortion.”
“No, it’s murder,” Monk countered. “Bigger risk means bigger money.”
“It isn’t . . . murder,” Cameron said. “This is a special case.”
“What’s so special about it?” Monk asked. “You want me to kill John’s wife, don’t you? Or was I mistaken?”
“No, but . . .”
“But what, Cameron? Does it bother you that I’m being blunt? I could use another word for murder if you want, but that won’t change what you’re hiring me to do.” He shrugged and then said, “I want more money.”
“We’ve already made you a very rich man,” John pointed out.
“Yes, you have.”
“Listen, as**ole, we agreed on a price,” Preston shouted, then looked over his shoulder to see if anyone had heard.
“Yes, we did,” Monk replied. He seemed totally unaffected by the burst of anger. “But you didn’t explain what you wanted done, did you? Imagine my surprise when I talked to Dallas and found out the details.”
“What did Dallas tell you?” Cameron wanted to know.
“That there was a problem you all wanted eliminated. Now that I know what the problem is, I’m doubling the price. I think that’s quite reasonable. The risk is more substantial.”
Silence followed the statement. Then Cameron said, “I’m tapped out. Where are we going to come up with the rest of the money?”
“That’s my problem, not yours,” John said. He turned to Monk then. “I’ll even throw in an additional ten thousand if you’ll agree to wait until after the will is read to get paid.”
Monk tilted his head. “An extra ten thousand. Sure, I’ll wait. I know where to find you. Now give me the details. I know who you want killed, so why don’t you tell me when, where, and how much you want her to suffer.”
John was shaken. He cleared his throat, gulped down half a glass of beer, and whispered, “Oh, God, no. I don’t want her to suffer. She’s been suffering.”
“She’s terminally ill,” Cameron explained.
John nodded. “There isn’t any hope for her. I can’t stand to see her in so much pain. It’s . . . constant, never ending. I . . .” He was too emotionally distraught to continue.
Cameron quickly took over. “When John started talking crazy about killing himself, we knew we had to do something to help.”
Monk motioned him to be quiet as the waitress walked toward them. She placed another round of beers on the table and told them she’d be back in a minute to take their dinner orders.
As soon as she walked away, Monk said, “Look, John. I didn’t realize your wife was sick. I guess I sounded a little cold. Sorry about that.”
“Sorry enough to cut your price down?” Preston asked.
“No, I’m not that sorry.”
“So are you going to do it, or what?” John asked impatiently.
“It’s intriguing,” Monk said. “I would actually be doing a good deed, wouldn’t I?”
He asked for the particulars about the wife’s unfortunate condition and also wanted to know about the living situation inside the house. As John was answering his questions, Monk leaned forward and spread his hands in front of him. His fingernails were perfectly manicured, the pads smooth, callus free. He stared straight ahead, seemingly lost in thought, as if he were constructing the details of the job in his head.
After John finished describing the floor plan, the alarm system, and the maids’ daily routine, he tensely waited for more questions.
“So, the maid goes home each night. What about the housekeeper?”
“Rosa . . . Rosa Vincetti is her name,” John said. “She stays until ten every night, except for Mondays, when I’m usually home so she can leave by six.”
“Any friends or relatives I need to be concerned about?”
John shook his head. “Catherine cut her friends off years ago. She doesn’t like visitors. She’s embarrassed about her . . . condition.”
“What about relatives?”
“There’s one uncle and a couple of cousins, but she’s all but severed ties with them. Says they’re white trash. The uncle calls once a month. She tries to be polite, but she doesn’t stay on the phone long. It tires her.”
“Does this uncle ever stop by uninvited?”
“No. She hasn’t seen him in years. You don’t have to worry about him.”
“Then I won’t,” Monk said smoothly.
“I don’t want her to suffer . . . I mean, when you actually . . . is that possible?”
“Of course it is,” Monk said. “I have a compassionate nature. I’m not a monster. Believe it or not, I have strong values and unbendable ethics,” he boasted, and none of the four men dared laugh at the contradiction. A hired killer with ethics? Insane, yes, yet they all sagely nodded agreement. If Monk had told them he could walk on water, they would have pretended to believe him.
When Monk finished discussing his virtues and got down to the business at hand, he told John he didn’t believe in cruel or unnecessary pain, and even though he’d promised that there would be little suffering during “the event,” he suggested, just as a precaution, that John increase the amount of painkillers his wife took before bed. Nothing else was to change. John was to set the alarm as he did every night before retiring, and then he was to go to his room and stay there. Monk guaranteed, with an assurance they all found obscenely comforting, that she would be dead by morning.
He was a man of his word. He killed her during the night. How he had gotten inside the house and out again without setting off the alarm was beyond John’s comprehension. There were audio and motion detectors inside and video cameras surveying the outside, but the ethereal Monk had entered the premises without being seen or heard, and had quickly and efficiently dispatched the long-suffering woman into oblivion.
To prove that he had been there, he placed a rose on the pillow next to her, just as he had told John he would do, to erase any doubt as to who should receive credit and final payment for the kill. John removed the rose before he called for help.
John agreed to an autopsy so there wouldn’t be any questions raised later. The pathology report indicated she had choked to death on chocolates. A clump of chocolate-covered caramel the size of a jaw-breaker was found lodged in her esophagus. There were bruises around her neck, but it was assumed that they were self-inflicted as she attempted to dislodge the obstacle while she was suffocating. The death was ruled accidental; the file was officially closed, and the body was released for burial.
Because of her considerable bulk, it would have taken at least eight strong pallbearers to carry her coffin, which the funeral director delicately explained would have to be specially built. With a rather embarrassed and certainly pained expression, he told the widower in so many words that it simply wouldn’t be possible to squeeze all of the deceased into one of their ready-made, polished mahogany, satin-lined coffins. He suggested that it would be more prudent to cremate the body, and the husband readily agreed.
The service was a private affair attended by a handful of John’s relatives and a few close friends. Cameron came, but Preston and Dallas begged off. Catherine’s housekeeper was there, and John could hear Rosa’s wailing as he left the church. He saw her in the vestibule, clutching her rosary beads and glaring at him with her damn-you-to-hell-for-your-sins stare. John dismissed the nearly hysterical woman without a backward glance.
Two mourners from Catherine’s side of the family also came, but they walked behind the others as the pitifully small group marched in procession toward the mausoleum. John kept glancing over his shoulder at the man and woman. He had the distinct feeling they were staring at him, but when he realized how nervous they were making him, he turned his back on them and bowed his head.
The heavens wept for Catherine and sang her eulogy. While the minister prayed over her, lightning cracked and snapped, and thunder bellowed. The torrential downpour didn’t let up until the ash-filled urn was locked inside the vault.
Catherine was finally at peace, and her husband’s torment was over. His friends expected him to grieve but at the same time feel relief that his wife wasn’t suffering any longer. He had loved the woman with all his heart, hadn’t he?
Despite others urging him to take some time off, the widower went back to work the day after the funeral. He insisted he needed to keep busy in order to take his mind off his anguish.
It was a bright, blue, cloudless day as he drove down St. Charles toward his office. The sun warmed his shoulders. The scent of honeysuckle hung heavily in the humid air. His favorite Mellencamp CD, Hurts So Good, blared through the speakers.
He pulled into his usual spot in the parking garage and took the elevator up to his suite of offices. When he opened the door bearing his name, his secretary hurried forward to offer her heartfelt condolences. He remarked to her that his wife would have loved such a glorious summer day, and she later told the others in the office that there had been tears in his eyes when he’d said Catherine’s name.
As the days passed, he appeared to be battling his depression. During most of his hours at work he seemed withdrawn and distant, going through his routine as if in a daze. Other times, he seemed shockingly cheerful. His erratic behavior was a concern to his staff, but they dismissed it as the understandable remnants of his grief. The best thing they could give him now was space. John was not one to discuss his feelings, and they all knew what a private person he was.
What they didn’t know was that John was also quite the busy boy.
Within a couple of weeks after “the event,” he had thrown out every painful reminder of his wife, including the Italian Renaissance furniture she had so loved. He dismissed her loyal servants and hired a housekeeper who hadn’t known Catherine. He had the two-story house painted from top to bottom in bright, bold colors, and he had the garden re-landscaped. He added the fountain he’d wanted, the one with the cherub spouting water out of its mouth. He’d wanted the fountain for months, but when he’d shown Catherine a picture of it in a catalog, she had decreed it too gaudy.
Everything was finished to his satisfaction. He’d chosen contemporary furniture because of the sleek, uncluttered lines. When it was delivered from the warehouse where he’d been storing it, the placement of each piece was personally overseen by the interior designer.
Then, when the last delivery truck had pulled away from the driveway, he and the oh-so-clever, beautiful young designer christened the new bed. They screwed the night away in the black-lacquered four-poster — just like he’d been promising her for over a year now.
CHAPTER TWO
Theo Buchanan couldn’t seem to shake the virus. He knew he was running a fever because every bone in his body ached and he had chills. He refused to acknowledge that he was ill, though; he was just a little off-kilter, that was all. He could tough it out. Besides, he was sure he was over the worst of it. The godawful stitch in his side had subsided into a dull throbbing, and he was positive that meant he was on the mend. If it was the same bug that had infected most of the staff back in his Boston office, then it was one of those twenty-four-hour things, and he should be feeling as good as new by tomorrow morning. Except, the throbbing in his side had been going on for a couple of days now.
He decided to blame his brother Dylan for that ache. He’d really nailed him when they’d played football at a family gathering in the front yard at Nathan’s Bay. Yeah, the pulled muscle was Dylan’s fault, but Theo figured that if he continued to ignore it, the pain would eventually go away.
Damn, he was feeling like an old man these days, and he wasn’t even thirty-three yet.
He didn’t think he was contagious, and he had too much to do to go to bed and sweat the fever out of his body. He’d flown from Boston to New Orleans to speak at a law symposium on organized crime and to receive recognition he didn’t believe he deserved for simply doing his job.