The Whispering Room

“Daddy wanted me to name him Bandit, on account of his mask. See?” She held up the kitten so they could admire the black markings on his face. “I like Domino better. Daddy’s just an old silly billy anyway. Right, Mama?”

Meredith Courtland stared at her daughter in stricken silence. When the nanny appeared in the doorway, she said on a quivering breath, “Colette, would you please take Maisie back out to the pool? I’ll join you in a few minutes.”

“Can Domino come, too, Mama? Please? Pretty please with sugar on top,” the little girl pleaded.

Meredith Courtland pressed a hand to her breast. “No, sweetie, cats don’t like the water. Domino can stay in the kitchen while you swim.”

“Can I give him a treat?”

“Just one.”

The child grinned impishly at Evangeline as she skipped out of the room behind the nanny.

“Please, have a seat,” Meredith said, indicating a white sofa behind a mahogany coffee table inlaid with chips of colored glass. As she sat down in a chair opposite the sofa, the gossamer fabric of the sarong floated gracefully around her slim legs.

Her posture was very straight, the lines of her face carefully composed. Except for the tears glistening on her lashes, Meredith Courtland looked rigid and emotionless.

She doesn’t dare let herself feel anything, Evangeline thought. Not yet. Not until she’s alone. And then the pleasant ennui of her once-cosseted existence would pass into memory with the dawning of a stark, cold reality.

She would awaken in the morning, mind swept clean by sleep, and turn, see the empty side of the bed and it would hit her again, that terrible sense of loss. That bottomless pit of despair.

“Paul’s dead, isn’t he?” Her voice was flat with acceptance, but there was a glimmer of something that might have been hope in her eyes.

Evangeline dashed that hope with one word. “Yes.”

Her eyes fluttered closed. “When?”

“His body was found this morning in an abandoned house in the Lower Ninth Ward. We think he’d been dead for a few days.”

“A few days? Dear God…” Meredith Courtland’s neck muscles jumped convulsively as she swallowed. “How did it happen?”

“We won’t know the exact cause of death until after the autopsy. But we have reason to believe your husband was the victim of foul play.”

She gave a visible start. “You’re saying…he was murdered? ”

“I’m very sorry,” Evangeline said softly.

“But…” Her expression went blank again. “That’s not possible. It’s just not.”

Murder happened to other people.

“Is there someone you’d like us to call? Family or friends you’d like to have come and stay with you right now?” Evangeline asked.

“Stay with me? I don’t know….” She couldn’t seem to form a clear thought. She skimmed her fingers down one arm. “Colette and my daughter are here….” She closed her eyes briefly. “Oh, God. How am I going to tell Maisie? She adores Paul….”

Her voice cracked and her bottom lip trembled as she lost the struggle for self-control. “God,” she whispered on a sob and put her hands to her face as if she could somehow forcibly stem the tide of raw emotion that bubbled up her throat and spilled over from her eyes.

Evangeline fumbled for a tissue in her purse and handed it across the coffee table to the crying woman. Meredith Courtland took it gratefully and after a moment, she dabbed at her eyes as she turned to look out the French doors at her daughter.

In the ensuing silence, every sound in the house seemed magnified. The ticking of the grandfather clock in the foyer. The soft humming of the maid upstairs.

And into that awful silence came the high-pitched laughter of Paul Courtland’s little girl as she splashed happily in the shallow end of the pool.

Meredith drew a deep, shuddering breath and folded the tissue into a neat little square on one thigh. But her eyes never left her child.

“I wondered if something was wrong when he didn’t come by for Maisie on Sunday,” she finally said. “They always spend the afternoon together, and he never missed a single Sunday. Never. He loved being with her. He was a wonderful father.” She paused to unfold the tissue as painstakingly as she had creased it. “A lousy husband, but a great father.”

Evangeline and Mitchell shared a look.

“You and Mr. Courtland were divorced, then?” Mitchell asked carefully.

“Separated. He moved out a few months ago. He has a place in the Warehouse District. A loft. ” Her head was still turned away, but there was no mistaking the bitter, derisive edge to her tone. She may as well have informed them he’d moved into a whore-house for all the scorn that dripped from her voice. “I guess the Garden District just wasn’t a cool or hip enough address for him anymore.”

Evangeline and Mitchell exchanged another glance. Mitchell’s nod was almost imperceptible.

“Do you have his current address?” Evangeline asked.

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t. It’s just off Notre Dame, I think. I don’t know the street number. I’ve never been over there. When I needed to get in touch with him, I called his cell phone or the office.”