Death Before Facebook

gasp. “She must still be wearing the dirty overalls.”
    Skip said nothing for a few minutes, but the information trickled out: Dennis was dark, Reed was light, he wore jeans, she wore a summer dress with sandals, and Sally wore overalls.
    Skip wondered what else there was to get. She repeated Sugar’s earlier statement “Reed and Dennis really hate guns.”
    “
Hate
them. Feel strongly. Arthur tried to give Reed a little gun to carry around—you know how dangerous it is in the Garden District—but neither of them would hear of it. They said they didn’t want to live like that.” She turned away for a moment. Gazing back at Skip, she said, “Of course, Arthur had a lot of opinions.”
    Once more, Skip heard a clatter. It was Grady, back with a handsome young woman in tow, a black woman, though probably she’d describe herself as Creole. She was barely beige in color, and she wore her straight hair in a low-riding ponytail.
    “This is Nina Phillips. She’s our director of sales; at Hebert’s.”
    Before Skip could shake hands, Sugar had repeated her performance with Grady—fallen upon Nina Phillips’s neck, wailing.
    “That’s right,” said Nina. “Grady’s told me everything. You just go on and cry.”
    It was a good time to talk to Grady. While Sugar wasn’t listening, she asked him the same question she’d asked his mother. “Tell me a little about Reed and Dennis.”
    He pondered a moment Finally, he said, “The couple of the nineties. She’s the brains of the operation. Also the brawn.”
    Skip smiled. She didn’t think he was nearly done. “How so?”
    “God forbid anyone should call me a feminist—they shoot guys for that in some parts of town—but look, he’s got it easy, she’s got it hard. She brings home the bacon and then she cooks it; after changing into some diaphanous frock and also changing the baby, of course. I guess it’s like that apochryphal old woman said: ‘I makes the livin’ and he makes the livin’ worthwhile.’”
    “I gather you don’t think much of your brother-in-law.”
    “Oh, completely wrong. Fine fellow. Charming fellow. Anyone my dad hated can’t be all bad.”
    Skip’s heart speeded up.
    “But don’t get too excited.” He shrugged. “There weren’t all that many people he liked.”
    “Your dad had enemies?”
    Grady looked startled. “The kind who’d kill him, you mean?”
    Skip nodded.
    “Well, I never thought of it that way. He was irascible. You don’t kill people for that, do you?”
    “You tell me.”
    “Tell you what? Tell you I did it? What is this?”
    Skip said nothing.
    “Look, some thug broke in here and killed him. What could be more obvious?”
    “In that case, what happened to Reed and Sally and Dennis?”
    Grady’s face, so facile, so obviously trying to betray no emotion, went slightly pale again. “I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.”
    Neither do I,
she thought. The Heberts were a prominent family. She didn’t know how much money they had, but it might seem reasonable to someone that they’d pay a good-sized ransom for a kidnapped member. Perhaps Arthur’s murder was the result of a kidnap gone wrong. But then, why take the remaining three when one would do?
    Because they knew the kidnapper’s face.
    Which didn’t bode well for their future.
    Sugar was beginning to come around again, talking quietly to Nina. Skip addressed the younger woman: “Do you know if Reed or Dennis had a gun?”
    Sugar said, “I told you—” but Nina interrupted, smiling, shaking her head. “They wouldn’t be caught dead with a gun. Neither one of them. Dennis—um—lost a relative once….” she let her voice trail off, apparently thinking of something too regrettable to mention.
    “I already told you that,” Sugar said; it sounded a lot like a whine.
    “How about Arthur?”
    “Arthur?”
    Skip nodded.
    “Arthur had a gun.”
    “Where did he keep it?”
    “In a safe in his office. Here, I mean. In the room he called his office.”
    “Would you mind telling Mr. Gottschalk? Our crime lab man.”
    “Of course not.”
    She smiled sweetly at Sugar. “Will you be all right alone?”
    Sugar looked a little disoriented, as if things were moving too fast for her. “I guess so. You mean tell him now?” She put a hand on her chest. Skip couldn’t tell if she was faking or not. But she nodded at Grady. “You can go with her if you like—just to the porch. An officer will meet you there.”
    She wanted