The Casket on Canal Street

The Casket on Canal Street – Part 4: Justice and Its Limits

A Mimi Delboise Mystery

The case is closed. But Mimi Delboise knows better than to trust tidy endings.

***

After Trevino was secured, the captain invited Mimi to his cabin to explain the full situation. She told him about the insurance fraud, the staged funeral, and her pursuit of the confidence man, though she carefully omitted Trevino's accusations about Mrs. Fortier's murderous activities. Some truths were too dangerous to share with strangers.

"You took a considerable risk coming aboard alone to confront a dangerous criminal," the captain observed. "What if he had killed you before we arrived?"

"Then justice would have had to find another way," Mimi replied. "But sometimes doing the right thing requires taking risks."

The Belle Orleans reached Natchez the next morning, where Trevino was turned over to local authorities along with evidence of his crimes. The stolen money was confiscated as evidence, though Mimi knew that little of it would ever reach the families he had cheated. The legal system moved slowly, and confidence men were skilled at hiding their assets.

She returned to New Orleans on the afternoon packet, arriving at her office late that evening to find Mrs. Fortier waiting for her.

"Miss Delboise," the woman said, rising from her chair with obvious anxiety. "I heard that you found Trevino. Is it true that he's been arrested?"

"It's true. He was working under an assumed name aboard a riverboat, continuing his fraudulent activities. He's now in custody in Natchez, where he'll face charges for theft and confidence games."

Mrs. Fortier's relief was evident, but Mimi detected something else in her expression—calculation, perhaps, or satisfaction that her problem had been resolved.

"And the money he stole? Will the families be able to recover their losses?"

"Some of it, perhaps. But most confidence men are skilled at hiding their assets. The families shouldn't expect to see much return on their stolen premiums."

"How tragic. All those people, left with nothing but worthless paper." Mrs. Fortier's voice carried exactly the right note of sympathy, but her eyes remained cold. "At least justice has been served."

"Has it?" Mimi studied her client's face carefully. "Mrs. Fortier, I need to ask you directly—was there anything about your relationship with Trevino that you didn't tell me? Any reason why he might have singled you out for his fraud?"

For just an instant, Mrs. Fortier's mask slipped, revealing something predatory underneath. Then the grieving widow persona returned, complete with trembling hands and tearful eyes.

"I don't understand what you mean, Miss Delboise. We were simply customers who trusted the wrong man with our money."

"Of course." Mimi gave a tight nod. "The case is closed." She didn’t mention the fee—keeping the money felt tainted, but returning it would raise too many questions.

Mrs. Fortier took the money with hands that were perfectly steady despite her apparent distress. "Thank you, Miss Delboise. You've brought closure to a very painful chapter in my life."

After her client left, Mimi sat at her desk thinking about truth and justice and the uncomfortable spaces between them. Marcus Trevino was a thief and a confidence man who had destroyed the financial security of forty families. He deserved to be in prison, and she was glad to have put him there.

But Adelaide Fortier presented a more complex moral puzzle. She had indeed murdered her husband, exactly as Trevino claimed—poisoning him with arsenic and arranging for a bought death certificate. She was a calculating killer who deserved to face justice for her crime.

Yet she was also genuinely a victim of Trevino's fraud. She had paid five thousand dollars for what she believed was legitimate insurance, only to discover after committing murder that the policy was worthless. Her rage and desire for justice, while twisted by her own criminality, were nonetheless real.

The problem was proof. Trevino's accusations about Mrs. Fortier's murder could be dismissed as the desperate lies of a convicted criminal trying to implicate others in his downfall. Theodore Fortier had been buried weeks ago, making exhumation for poison testing unlikely unless new evidence emerged. The fake insurance policy had been destroyed as evidence of fraud, eliminating any record of its suspicious terms.

Most importantly, Adelaide Fortier had played her role perfectly—the grieving widow seeking justice for financial fraud. Even if Mimi's suspicions were correct, proving that Mrs. Fortier had committed murder would be nearly impossible without Trevino's testimony, and his credibility was now destroyed.

Justice, Mimi reflected, was often more complicated than simply catching the guilty and punishing them. Sometimes the guilty were also victims. Sometimes seeking justice for one crime meant ignoring evidence of another. And sometimes the best you could do was ensure that some form of accountability occurred, even if it wasn't complete.

Marcus Trevino would spend years in prison for his crimes against forty families. That was justice of a sort, even if most of those families would never recover their stolen money. Adelaide Fortier would live with the knowledge that she had committed murder for nothing—no insurance payout, no financial gain, just a dead husband and the constant fear that her crime might somehow be discovered. That was a form of justice too, though not one imposed by any court.

The six dollars Mrs. Fortier had paid her felt heavier than usual as Mimi locked it in her desk drawer. She had been paid to find Marcus Trevino and bring him to justice for insurance fraud, and she had accomplished that goal. The fact that her client had committed an unrelated murder didn't change the legitimacy of the fraud case—though it did add layers of moral complexity that would haunt her thoughts for some time.

But as she prepared to leave her office for the evening, Mimi made a mental note to keep track of Adelaide Fortier's future activities. Murderers rarely stopped at one victim, especially when they discovered how easy it was to escape consequences. If Mrs. Fortier decided to marry again, her next husband might find himself facing an unexpectedly short future.

The case was closed, justice had been partially served, and Mimi had earned her fee. In the murky world of human motivation and criminal behavior, that was sometimes the best outcome she could hope for.

Outside her office window, the sounds of Royal Street continued—carriages clattering over cobblestones, vendors calling their wares, the distant music of evening entertainment beginning in the Quarter's saloons and dance halls. New Orleans went on with its business, indifferent to questions of guilt and innocence, justice and revenge.

Somewhere in the city, other confidence men were planning new schemes to separate trusting people from their money. Somewhere else, other murderers were calculating the best ways to eliminate inconvenient spouses. And somewhere, perhaps, other private detectives were pursuing cases that would force them to confront the uncomfortable truth that justice was rarely as simple as catching the bad people and protecting the good ones.

Mimi locked her office door and stepped out into the humid New Orleans evening, already wondering what moral complexities tomorrow's cases would bring.

The End.

***

Case Closed... for Now

Marcus Trevino's scheme unraveled, his illusions exposed—but justice never comes clean in New Orleans. For Mimi Delboise, the truth is never tidy, and every solved case leaves behind shadows. The Casket on Canal Street ends here, but the city has more secrets—and Mimi will be there when they surface.