Murder in the Rue Ursulines by Greg Herren Page B

Freddy said in a monotone.
    My God, I picked up that stupid thing, I thought, a ball of acid starting to form in my stomach.
    Loren patted at his forehead again. “Of course, the police are going to check the phone records—and how is it going to look when they see Rosemary called here before she called them?”
    “It’s going to look bad, is how it’s going to look.” Jillian stubbed her cigarette out. “Can’t you just hear the news jockeys? Why did Glynis Parrish’s assistant call Frillian before she called the police? What are they trying to hide?”
    I couldn’t believe my ears. A woman was dead and she was worrying about what the papers would say? “Um, I’m sorry, but—“
    “You think I’m a cold bitch, don’t you?” Jillian lit another cigarette, her shaking hand barely able to click the lighter on. “This is a terrible tragedy, make no mistake about it, Chanse. I didn’t want her dead, and I certainly didn’t want this to happen. But going to pieces about it right now is the worst thing Freddy and I can do.”
    Freddy opened his mouth and then shut it again.
    Jillian blew smoke towards the ceiling fan. “This is going to sound incredibly callous, Chanse, and I want to make it clear that on a personal level, I’m horrified. I just frankly feel kind of numb right now. Poor, sweet Glynis.” She swallowed. “This is a horrible, horrible thing to have happened. I feel terrible because I knew and liked her. Her family and friends and fans are going to be devastated. But this is going to be a nightmare—not just because we lost someone we were close to—but because this is going to be prime scandal material.” She patted Freddy’s leg with her free hand, which was still trembling.  She seemed like she was barely holding it together.
    “This is going to be a feeding frenzy for the media. This could have a serious impact on our work with Project Rebuild—if people think we’re involved somehow...and the press is going to have a field day with this. It’s going to be news all over the world.” She stubbed the cigarette out angrily. “And that stupid assistant calling here—what was she thinking? One would almost be tempted to think that she was deliberately trying to cause trouble for us…” she waved her hand. “But I suppose there’s no sense being angry with her, the poor thing. It must have been quite a shock to come home to find Glynis murdered like that…” She shuddered and her eyes filled with tears. She wiped at them angrily with her free hand. “DAMN it.”
    “It is going to look bad—” I started to say, but she interrupted me.
    “ Assistant calls Frillian before police,” She made air quote marks, letting tears slip from her huge eyes. “ That’s going to be the headline, you know. They’re going to drag out all the nonsense about the divorce again. People will speculate that we did it—it doesn’t matter that neither one of us could have done it.” She sighed. “And those damned e-mails she was sending us…well, you read them. It’s going to look like we killed her to shut her up, keep her from spilling some big secret about us.” Again she grabbed Freddy’s hand, squeezing it tightly, “There isn’t anything, of course. I want to keep those e-mails out of the newspapers.”
    “But—“ I was confused. I remembered her saying at Loren’s office, there are things about us we don’t want anyone to know.  “I don’t think that’s going to be possible, Jillian. The police will check out her computer,  And they’ll find them—so it would be better to be up-front about it—otherwise, the police will think you’re trying to hide something.” I shrugged. “It seems to me that unless the e-mails are evidence, there’s no reason for anyone outside of the investigation to ever know about them.”   She seemed a bit paranoid.
    She glanced at Freddy, and turned back to me again. She bit her lower lip. “There has to be a way.”  She let go of