Cake on a Hot Tin Roof (19 page)

Twenty-six

When Gabriel didn’t come back after a few minutes, I picked up my glass and carried it across the room alongside the cocktail waitress who carried the tray laden with drinks for my employees. The group hailed me like some conquering hero and lifted their glasses in salute. I laughed, pleased with myself for doing the right thing. My ex-husband, their former boss, had been fun-loving and gregarious. Picking up the tab for a round of drinks had been second nature to him. I had to work a little harder at making those kinds of friendly gestures, so I always felt a little rush of pleasure when one of them worked out well.

The Duke had a respectable-sized crowd tonight, but it wasn’t so busy that I felt claustrophobic. Laughter and chatter rose and fell all around me, but the group clustered around Zydeco’s tables was by far the loudest. I positioned my chair close enough to Dwight’s to get his attention easily, then waited through two or three songs before I made the effort. “Hey!” I said in the relative silence that fell between songs. “Could I talk to you for a minute?”

Dwight looked puzzled, but he nodded. “Sure. What’s up?”

“Not here,” I said. “Outside?”

He got to his feet and we wove our way back through the tables while the band’s lead singer, an aging man with a graying ponytail and a shaggy Fu Manchu mustache, announced the band’s next selection.

Outside, I led Dwight toward a park bench barely illuminated by a nearby streetlight.

He sat next to me, groaning a little from the effort. “I’m getting old,” he said with a grin. “I’m starting to sound like my old man.”

I scowled at him. “Don’t say that. We’re the same age.”

He laughed and stretched his legs out in front of him. “It’s gonna happen to us sooner or later. Might as well accept it.”

“Never!”

He laughed again and linked his hands behind his head. “So what do you want to talk about?”

I didn’t want to keep him away from the others for long, so I launched right in. “Sparkle told me that she saw you talking to my uncle by the pool the night of the murder. Do you remember what time that was?”

Dwight stretched then linked his hands together behind his head. “A little after midnight, I think. We’d already served the King Cake.”

That matched Sparkle’s memory and it gave me hope that I was on the right track. We hadn’t discovered Big Daddy’s body until after two. What were the chances that Uncle Nestor had stayed in the same spot for two hours? “Did you see anyone else out there?”

“Lots of people,” Dwight said, cutting a glance at me. “Are you interested in someone in particular?”

“Yeah. Whoever killed Big Daddy.”

Dwight grinned and settled more comfortably on the bench. “Wish I could help you, but I wasn’t around when he was killed.”

“Kinda figured that,” I said. “Otherwise, you’d have told Sullivan and there’d have been an arrest by now.” A breeze rustled the leaves overhead, a soft, soothing sound. Somewhere nearby a dog barked and music floated out from the Duke as the band began another song. “So what did you and Uncle Nestor talk about?”

“Nothing much. I asked how long they’d be staying, he asked whether you seemed happy.”

“How did he seem?”

“You mean was he agitated or did I think he was about to rush off and kill somebody? No. Neither. He seemed normal. Like a guy at a party he didn’t particularly want to be at.”

“How drunk was he?”

Dwight gave me a funny look. “He wasn’t. He might have had a little buzz on, but he wasn’t drunk. In fact, when I saw him, he was nursing a ginger ale. Said it was doctor’s orders.”

That surprised me, but maybe it shouldn’t have. I should have known that cutting out alcohol would have been on the same list as “take up jogging.” I was just having trouble wrapping my mind around the idea of Uncle Nestor following those orders without argument. But had I actually seen him drinking a lot, or had I just assumed he was drinking because of his behavior? “Did he say anything about the fight he had with Big Daddy?”

Dwight shook his head. “Nope. In fact, he acted as if it never happened.”

“I wish it had never happened,” I said. “So that was it? That’s all you two talked about?”

Again with the funny look on Dwight’s face. “Not exactly.”

I nudged him in the ribs with my elbow. “Would you just tell me? I’m too tired to pry it out of you.”

“He’s worried about you, Rita. He’s afraid you’re…how did he say it? Forgetting who you are and where you came from.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said, but I felt something tugging uncomfortably at my heart. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt Uncle Nestor or Aunt Yolanda, and I hated knowing that he felt that way. “What did you tell him?”

“I told him that you’re cool,” Dwight said. “That you’ve got it together and he shouldn’t worry so much.”

I grinned and slouched down on the bench so that I matched his posture. “Thanks. Did he believe you?”

“I doubt it.”

So did I. We sat there for a moment in companionable silence before I asked the other question that had been nagging at me. “So what did Sullivan want to talk to you about?”

“He didn’t tell you?”

I snorted a little. “Are you kidding? He hasn’t said two words to me about the investigation. So what was it? And please don’t tell me it was something that makes my uncle look even guiltier.”

Dwight shook his head. “Nope. He wanted to know about an argument I overheard between Big Daddy and Judd Boudreaux.”

“What argument? Where? When? Were they upstairs in the clubhouse?”

Dwight shook his head. “They were outside.”

So not the secretive conversation Ox had seen them having. That made me sit up a little straighter. “Did you hear what they were arguing about?”

“Not the whole thing, but enough. Big Daddy was furious about something. He grabbed Judd by the shirt and shoved him up against the wall. Looked like he wanted to rip him apart.”

The Big Daddy who’d been his brother’s protector for all these years? What was that about? “You don’t know why?”

Dwight shook his head. “I heard Big Daddy tell Judd that he’d crossed the line big-time this time, but that’s about it.”

I tried to imagine the soft-spoken Judd under assault from his big brother, and wondered what Judd had done that had made Big Daddy slip from protector to attacker. “What line?”

“I have no idea. Sorry.”

“So what did Judd say?”

Dwight lifted one shoulder. “He was pretty sloshed. Kind of hard to understand. He just kept telling Big Daddy that he’d pay him back.”

“Pay him back? Like get even?”

Dwight shook his head. “It sounded like they were talking about money to me. Judd said he’d pay Big Daddy back, and Big Daddy told him he’d better get it together by the next day or their asses would both be on the line.”

“Judd owed Big Daddy money?”

“That’s what it sounded like to me.”

For the first time, I gave some serious thought to what the financial situation was in the Boudreaux family. According to Judd, they’d been members of The Shores since he was a boy, so I assumed they were old money. But how was that money split, and who controlled it?

“Then what?”

Dwight shrugged again. “They argued like that for a while and then Big Daddy told Judd he was sending him to rehab. He said this was the final straw.”

I couldn’t imagine the Judd I’d met getting angry enough to whack his own brother over the head and push him into the pool, but could I have been wrong? “How did Judd react to that?”

“I don’t know. Estelle asked me for help with something she did to her camera, and I went back inside. By the time I went back outside, they were gone.”

I sat there for a minute, taking that all in and weighing it against what Miss Frankie had said about the relationship between Judd and Big Daddy and what Ox had already told me about the two of them the night of the party. “What about Uncle Nestor?” I asked when I couldn’t make all the pieces fit. “Did you see him after that?”

Dwight shook his head. “Sorry.”

“How late did you stay?”

“It took me half an hour or so to figure out what Estelle did to the camera. I left right after that.” He got to his feet and stood over me for a moment. “Just do me a favor, okay?”

“What’s that?”

“Be careful. If you ask me, all the Boudreauxes are crazy as loons. If one of them did kill Big Daddy, they won’t hesitate to hurt anyone else who gets in their way.”

His warning sent a chill up my spine, but I nodded. “Don’t worry about me.”

“I’m serious,” he said. “The police know everything I just told you. Just let them do their jobs.”

“I’m not trying to get involved in their investigation,” I assured him. “I’m just trying to clear my uncle.”

He walked away a minute later, and I stood there trying to decide whether to go back inside or head home. I craved some alone time, but Uncle Nestor and Aunt Yolanda had been on their own too much. I was quite possibly the world’s worst hostess. It was time to do something about that.

Twenty-seven

I parked three doors away from my house at a little after nine, relieved to see that the lights were still on. I found Uncle Nestor and Aunt Yolanda at the dining room table, talking about something over a pot of decaf. Aunt Yolanda bounced up when I came through the door and spent the next few minutes warming me up a plate, bringing me silverware, and fussing over me in a way I hadn’t been fussed over in months. Uncle Nestor didn’t say much, but I caught him watching me fondly a couple of times. I hoped that meant that we were okay again.

After I was finally tucked in with a plate of homemade tamales, chili
verde,
and tortillas, all my doubts about their feelings for me faded away. I ate quickly, a little embarrassed that I could put away so much of Uncle Nestor’s food after the étouffée at the Duke. In my defense, it had been a small bowl, and the only other thing I’d eaten all day was a blueberry streusel muffin so long ago it seemed like I’d had that in the previous century.

The chili was perfect, flavorful and garlicky, with a bite from the jalapeños that came with a slow after-burn. The tortillas were soft and warm. I tore off one piece after another, using them to scoop up the chili in the time-honored fashion of my childhood. I peeled away the hot corn husk wrapping from the tamales and enjoyed an entirely different taste sensation as the rich flavor of chili
rojo
exploded on my tongue. It was spicy without being hot, and the bland
masa
wrapping acted as the perfect complement.

If ever a meal expressed love, that one did. My stomach was comfortably full as I wiped up the last of the chili with a scrap of tortilla, and so was my heart. I missed my childhood home and the life I’d had in Albuquerque, but I loved living on my own for the first time ever, and my new career was more satisfying than anything I’d ever done. I suppose there are no easy answers to life’s hard questions.

They filled me in on their day—a stroll around the neighborhood, a stop at the corner market two blocks down, and phone calls home. I filled them in on mine, minus the stop at the Duke.

The mood was warm and cozy and I hated to disturb it, but there were too many unanswered questions between us. Besides, Uncle Nestor was in a good mood, and I didn’t want to let the opportunity to ask a few simple questions slip away. While Aunt Yolanda told me about Santos’s oldest son taking a tumble from his bike, I carried my dishes to the sink, rinsed them, and stacked them next to the dishwasher. When she’d finished, I broached the subject uppermost in my mind as gently as I knew how.

“I’ve been talking to a couple of my employees, Sparkle and Dwight. They had some interesting things to say about the night Big Daddy Boudreaux was killed.”

“Sparkle,” Uncle Nestor said. “She’s the one with the dark hair, am I right?”

“That’s right. And Dwight’s a friend from pastry school.”

“The dirty one,” Uncle Nestor said.

I was impressed that he’d made an effort to put names with faces. Resuming my seat, I put my feet up to take some of the pressure off the waistband of my jeans, which had suddenly become too tight. “He’s not dirty. He’s just…cleanliness challenged. And he’s very talented.”

Aunt Yolanda smiled indulgently. “He seems like a very nice young man.”

“He is,” I agreed. “But that’s not what I want to talk about.” I made eye contact with Uncle Nestor and said, “I know why you fought with Big Daddy. You might as well tell the police. If I found out, they will, too.”

He looked back at me with an expression of supreme innocence. “What makes you think I haven’t already told them?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the fact that Sullivan told me you hadn’t.”

“And you believe him over me?”

“He has no reason to lie about it,” I said without blinking. “So what’s up,
Tío
? Why are you still refusing to talk about it?”

Uncle Nestor made a noise like a low growl and turned his attention to my feet on the chair. “Why are your feet on the furniture? Didn’t we teach you better than that?”

“My house, my rules.” I grinned broadly as I repeated the phrase I’d heard too often as a kid. He was trying to distract me and I wasn’t going to let him get away with it. “Now, answer my question.”

He scowled up at me and blinked a couple of times. “What question?”

“The one about why you’re still refusing to talk about the fight you had with Big Daddy the night he died.”

Blink. Blink…Blink
.

Aunt Yolanda shot me a warning glance. “I don’t think we should talk about that just now.”

“Well, I do,” I said as gently as I could. “Staying silent isn’t helping him,
Tía.”
I turned back to Uncle Nestor. “If you’re trying to protect Aunt Yolanda, she’s not as delicate as you might think. She can handle whatever you have to say.”

Blink, blink
.

I sat up and put my feet on the floor, but only because I was too agitated to sit still. “How about I start then? Big Daddy made some disgusting comments about Aunt Yolanda and about me. You heard them. Maybe he even said them right to you. It made you angry and you blasted him in the face. How am I doing so far?”

Aunt Yolanda looked from Uncle Nestor to me and back again. “What comments?”

Blink
.

“You got into that fight because of me?”

Blink, blink
.

“Look,” I said, hanging on to what little patience I had left, “I understand that you’re kind of freaked out after your heart attack—which is another thing we need to talk about, by the way. And I understand that you’re worried about me, which you don’t have to be. And I can understand losing your temper, especially if you were drinking.”

Aunt Yolanda rounded on him, eyes flashing with anger. “You were drinking?”

Uncle Nestor shot me a look, and his wife a smile, clearly intended to placate her. “I wasn’t drinking, sweetheart. I promised I wouldn’t.”

“I just meant that I could almost understand what he did
if
he had been under the influence,” I assured her. “But I don’t understand starting a fight with one of Miss Frankie’s guests if you were stone-cold sober. And not just a fight. You hit him twice while I was standing there, and you went after him again later.
And
somebody heard you threaten to kill him.”

His eyes flashed to mine, and for the first time I thought he actually looked worried.

“That’s right,” I said, pressing my advantage. “Have I got your attention now?”

He sat ramrod straight, his chin held high, his dark eyes narrowed in disapproval. “I was raised to respect women, and that means that there are some subjects a man won’t discuss in front of them.”

Aunt Yolanda made a noise with her tongue. “What did that stupid man say that you think I can’t handle?”

Blink
.

He was good, but I wasn’t buying it. “If that’s the case, why aren’t you talking to the police? Sullivan’s not a woman. You could tell him what happened.”

Uncle Nestor’s gaze flicked to mine quickly. “Didn’t I teach you to respect your elders?”

“Didn’t your mother teach you to tell the truth? Come on,
Tío
. What’s really going on?”

He stood, and for a moment I thought he was going to leave the room. To my surprise, he took a couple of steps, then turned back to face us both. “It was that wife of his,” he said after a lengthy pause. His haughtiness had evaporated and he looked downright miserable. “I don’t know what was going on between the two of them, but she…” He slid an unhappy look at Aunt Yolanda. “She kissed me.”

My mouth fell open and it was my turn to stare.
Blink, blink, blink. “
She
what
?
”

“I didn’t know who she was at the time,” he said as if that explained everything.

Aunt Yolanda got to her feet, walked across the kitchen, and slapped him across the face. Hard. I was still trying to process what he’d just said, and I waited for her to laugh, to smile, to give some indication that she found the whole thing amusing.

She muttered something under her breath and swept up the stairs before I could wrap my mind around what was happening. When she’d disappeared, I turned my startled gaze back to my uncle and whispered, “What was that?”

Uncle Nestor looked unhappier than I’d ever seen him. “I didn’t want her to know. It wasn’t anything. It didn’t mean anything.”

“Well, of course not. Susannah kissed you, not the other way around. Right?”

He nodded, but he didn’t exactly look at me, and that gave me a bad feeling inside. “What’s going on,
Tío
? What don’t I know?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Are you kidding me?” I jumped out of my chair so fast it rocked back on two legs before slamming onto all four again. “Aunt Yolanda just slapped you. She’s royally pissed. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that something’s wrong here.”

“We’ll work it out,” he said, his voice barely audible.

“Work what out? What’s there
to
work out?”

“It’s nothing,” he said. He turned away, grabbed his jacket from the back of a chair, and disappeared out the front door, leaving me gaping after him.

I had no idea what was going on between them. I’d never seen them like that, not with each other and not with anyone else. But there was one thing I knew for sure—it most definitely wasn’t “nothing.”