Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 02 - Skeletons of the Atchafalaya (25 page)

Nanna left with Uncle Walter and his family, but not
before she fixed me with those filmy blue eyes. Slipping
my hand into my pocket and closing my fingers around the
bag of grin-grin, I remembered her warning. The old lady
was right. I found what I didn’t want. I pulled out the bag
so she could see it. I nodded briefly and pinned it to my
lapel. Who knows, maybe there are some things beyond
explanation.

One side of her thin lips curled in a smile.

Pa left with Bailey, who insisted Leroi and Sally accompany them. The only way Leroi would go was if his pa
went also.

Mom, Grandma Ola, Janice, and I were the last to leave.
I gave the police my notes. “Didn’t you say you put the
information on a laptop?” one officer asked.

I handed him the disk from my pocket. “Yeah. Here’s
most of it. The rest is on the laptop over there on the end
table. I’ll get it for you. The battery is missing, though.”

“Don’t worry, Mister Boudreaux. We’ll take care of it
and send it to you when we’re finished.”

I hobbled across the floor to the couch and end table.
The laptop was missing. Frowning, I glanced around the
empty parlor. “Janice, you see my laptop?”

Mom spoke up. “Oh, don’t worry. Your pa took it. He was afraid you might forget it, so he said he’d keep it for
you. He’s waiting at the interstate for us.”

A warning signal went up.

Later, as we waited in the helicopter, Mom leaned over.
“Why did she do it, Tony? She was a good girl.”

How should I reply? Should I tell her that A.D. was
Giselle’s father? Should I tell her that Giselle was part of
the rumors revolving around lolande and Bonni, or that
when Bonni inherited the estate, she planned to share it
with Giselle? The last was conjecture on my part, but why
else would the two of them reserve the wedding suite at
the Paramount Hotel in New Orleans? I was no prude, but
I didn’t even want to imagine what took place on trips
when all four went.

Mom shook my arm. “Tony? Tony! You hear what I
say?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, Mom, I heard.” In that moment, I decided to let all those skeletons rest in peace. For as long as
they would. “I don’t know why she did what she did. I
guess something just snapped.”

Grandma Ola shook her head. “Poor thing. She never
know her own pa. Maybe if she had, she be okay now.”

I looked around at Grandma Ola.

She looked up at me. “Don’t you think so, Tony?”

For a moment, I hesitated, marveling at her compassion,
envying her ignorance. “Yeah. Yeah, Grandma. I imagine
so.’,

Janice squeezed my arm.

I looked down at the mansion as we lifted off. I was
ready to get back to Austin.

We landed at Parker’s Convenience Store on 1-10. A
chartered bus sat nearby, waiting to take us into Lafayette
where we could pick up our rental cars. I looked in the bus
for Pa. He was nowhere to be seen.

Don’t jump to any conclusions, Tony, I told myself.
Maybe he’s in the store.

He wasn’t.

I questioned the owner. “Yeah. I remember him.
Scrawny little bum. He tried to talk me out of a beer, but
I didn’t go for it. He had one of them laptop computers
things he tried to sell me-”

“Great. You have it here?”

He frowned. “No. I got no use for that stuff. He went
outside and sold it to a trucker. Come back in and bought
a six-pack of Old Milwaukee before hitching a ride east
toward New Orleans with another trucker.”

I looked down at Janice. A rueful smile played over her
lips. She shook her head slowly. I agreed. I should have
known.

On the bus ride into Lafayette, Mom leaned across the
aisle and whispered. “I don’t see your pa.”

I skipped the details. “He isn’t here, Mom. He won’t be.
He headed for New Orleans.”

She stared at me a moment, nodded briefly, then whispered in Grandma Ola’s ear. The two leaned back in their
seats, and a small smile flickered across their lips.

By now, we were on the bridge spanning Atchafalaya
Swamp at treetop level. From time to time, the trees parted,
revealing the dark and mysterious waters of the swamp.
Janice laid her head on my shoulder. She stared at the black
waters below. “You think they’ll ever find her?”

I watched a skein of wood ducks glide down onto a calm
stretch of water. “There’s almost three thousand square
miles of water and forest out there. Even as a little girl,
she had a kinship with the Atchafalaya like no one I’ve
ever seen. Will they ever find her?” I shook my head. “Not
if she doesn’t want to be found.”

Two weeks later, word came that Giselle had been found.
She had succumbed to snakebite on a nearby island. The
medical examiner placed her death on the very night she
had fled the mansion. Despite the deterioration of the body,
the medical examiner determined she had been subjected
to over a hundred bites.

I think about her often, wondering if it could have turned
out differently. I don’t suppose so. What a shame.

Oh, the snakes. I almost forgot. A week later, I received
an e-mail from a snake vendor in Eunice, Louisiana. He
could supply me all the cottonmouth water moccasins I
wanted. All I had to do was give him a credit card number.

I toyed with the idea of sending one to Leroi just for the
heck of it, but I decided against it. I thanked the vendor
and informed him I’d just gone out of the snake business.