Murder Jambalaya. Lloyd Biggle jr.
years earlier, and it was hugely profitable. He was young—just thirty-two—with excellent health. He was intelligent, he was liked by his friends and even by his employees, and he had the respect of his competitors, most of whom were willing to concede, however grudgingly, that he was a very, very good antique dealer. Not only was his family highly respected in New Orleans, but if there had been a French equivalent to the Mayflower, the DeVarnay ancestors would have arrived on it.
Unfortunately, he also was missing. Had he suddenly crapped out after rolling sevens and elevens all his life? No one knew. On a Wednesday night two weeks earlier, he had left for St. Louis to attend an auction. He telephoned his widowed mother to tell her he was about to start for the airport—he always called her at least once a day. Shortly after that, he called a cab. Then he called back and cancelled the cab.
An expensive leather suitcase, a gift from his mother, was missing from his home, as were his toilet articles and some clothing. Obviously he had packed for the trip and left home with his suitcase. A quick check in St. Louis revealed that he arrived there, claimed his reserved hotel room, and attended the auction. He made a purchase at the auction and had it shipped to his store in New Orleans. All of that was as expected.
The one significant irregularity was that he failed to telephone his mother on Thursday or at any time after that. This had never happened before except when he was in Europe. She hadn’t heard from him since the call he made Wednesday night just before he left for the airport. He checked out of his St. Louis hotel on schedule early the next morning, Friday, but he missed his return flight to New Orleans, and neither he nor his suitcase had been seen since.
Jolitte DeVarnay, DeVarnay’s mother, was severely critical of the way the police had handled the case, but most missing men eventually show up again, screaming for help when they sober up or run out of money. DeVarnay hadn’t.
As far as anyone could discover, he had no enemies, no business or personal crisis to run away from, no secret life about to come unraveled. He was as open and above-board as the heir to ten million dollars could be. Even so, the police figured he had his own good and sufficient reasons for dropping out of sight for a week or two, and eventually he would be heard from.
His mother informed anyone who would listen that the police were idiots. Marc was a good son, he was close to his mother, and he wouldn’t have gone off of his own volition without saying anything to her about it.
Jolitte DeVarnay was not only a wealthy pillar of New Orleans society and politics, but she had long since promoted herself to duchess. She took her case to a series of higher courts—first the police commissioner, then the mayor, and finally the governor. It went without saying that she was on a first name basis with all three. Each in turn gave the police a prod or two but refused to call out the National Guard or ask the president to declare New Orleans a disaster area. By that time DeVarnay had been missing for two weeks, no one seemed to be giving his disappearance the serious attention his mother thought it deserved, and she was desperate.
On the recommendation of several wealthy friends, she made one more telephone call—to Lambert and Associates. Probably the fact that we call ourselves “Investigative Consultants” influenced her decision. She sounded like the kind of person who would feel humiliated if she had to engage a detective. Once she agreed to a retainer that would make even her bank account wince and indicated a willingness to accept a final bill in accordance with her status as millionaire and duchess, Raina Lambert took her complaint very seriously indeed and gave it the highest priority.
Meaning that she telephoned me in Savannah and dumped it into my lap.
“What do you make of it?” I asked Mara.
“It’s an either-or case,” she said.
“Explain yourself.”
“Either something drastic has happened to him, or there are secrets in his life no one knows anything about.”
“Or both,” I suggested. “The place to begin looking for a missing New Orleans businessman should have been New Orleans, not St. Louis.”
The photos had arrived when we reached her office, and both of us took time to study them. Marc DeVarnay certainly was a fine-appearing man. He was clean-shaven, his thick, dark hair had just the right stylish suggestion of a wave, and—as the fact sheet indicated—he appeared to be in robust good health. He also appeared to be the intense type of person who takes himself and life much too seriously, but a shy smile in one of the photos made me wonder whether he might be concealing a sense of humor. He looked much too open and forthright to be a successful businessman, but that could have been an asset for him.
We started at his hotel. Since there already had been inquiries by the St. Louis police at the request of the New Orleans police, our visit surprised no one. The attitude was a resigned, “Here we go again.” His photo was duly studied and identified; his registration card, a copy of which we already had in his dossier, was displayed. The signature matched as well as signatures usually match. He had stayed there several times before but at long enough intervals so that no one remembered him. The hotel staff couldn’t say whether he had behaved normally, but it found him a pleasant guest who caused no problems and tipped generously. He had checked in late that Wednesday night, he was out all day on Thursday as far as anyone knew, and he checked out and left early Friday morning.
DeVarnay had taken a cab to the airport, and the St. Louis police had located the driver and talked with him. He recognized DeVarnay’s photo and also the description of the leather suitcase. The one thing he remembered vividly was that when they reached the airport, DeVarnay had given the skycaps the brush-off and entered the terminal building carrying the leather suitcase himself—which surprised the cab driver. DeVarnay obviously was capable of carrying a suitcase, if he wanted to, or even two or three of them, but he had seemed like an affluent type who would disdain such drudgery.
Our next stop was the auction house. The Forsythe Galleries were a trendy art merchandising establishment. I disliked them the moment I walked through the door, and I disliked Jeremy Forsythe, its owner/manager, even more. He was the prissy kind of businessman—small mustache; small smile; small, evasive eyes. His galleries seemed to be hugely successful, but I wouldn’t have bought anything at all with confidence there, not even a da Vinci cosigned by Michelangelo with an attestation of authenticity from Rembrandt.
He was candid enough with us. “I know all about it—the police were asking,” he said. “Certainly DeVarnay was here. I remember him only too well. Since he was going to disappear anyway, I wish he’d done it earlier—before he screwed up my auction.”
We asked him what he meant by that.
“DeVarnay has a reputation,” he said. “He’s rich, he’s built a very nice business in a short time, and he’s maybe the country’s foremost Mallard collector. Supposedly he’s also an important authority on Mallard. I’d never met him before, but I’d heard all about him.”
Both Mara and I wanted to know who or what Mallard was.
“Prudent Mallard was a famous nineteenth-century New Orleans furniture maker,” Forsythe said condescendingly. “We don’t see much of his work this far north, but he’s very popular with New Orleans collectors. I’d managed to pick up five exceptional items, all in excellent condition, along with a few minor things, so I put them in a private auction with other pieces I’d been holding back. It was a special sale for serious Midwest collectors—admission by invitation only—and I invited DeVarnay and a few other out-of-state dealers and collectors I knew were interested in the type of things I was offering. The Mallard items were so good I thought DeVarnay would bid up the prices, in which case our local collectors, seeing how interested a big wheel like him was, would try to buy them themselves. Instead, he did very little bidding—he made a few cursory passes at the main Mallard pieces and then dropped out. That was his privilege. Unfortunately, I’d made the mistake of puffing him in advance, and because the out-of-town expert obviously wasn’t interested, the local people thought there must be something wrong with the items, and they wouldn’t bid, either. It was almost a disaster. Just to add insult to injury, DeVarnay suddenly came to life almost at the end and bought a small nightstand,