Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 07 - The Swamps of Bayou Teche (11 page)

“How did they know where we were, Tony? What
have we got ourselves into?”

“I don’t know. For whatever reason, someone is trying to scare us off.”

“Why?”

With a sigh, I shrugged and popped a chunk of pancake drenched with butter and pecan syrup in my
mouth. “I’ve thought about that. I’ve got a couple ideas, but nothing definite. One thing is certain,” I
added, jabbing my fork at him for emphasis, “we’re
going to find out.”

With a resigned shake of his head, he scooped up
some grits and gravy. “I hope you’re right,” he muttered. I could tell from the expression on his face that
he wasn’t convinced.

Throughout the remainder of the meal, I tried to
formulate the questions for Laura Palmo.

Had she heard from John Hardy; had she told anyone of my visit with her; what did she know about
Hardy’s gambling or his dealings with Jimmy Blue;
what was the relationship between Hardy and his exwife, Janelle Bourgeois; did she know anything about
Fawn Williams; had she heard Hardy even mention
the name Babin; and who might be around to tell me
of Hardy’s defunct bank back in the eighties?

After interviewing Palmo, I planned to visit Fawn
Williams and see what explanation she had to offer
about the gas receipt from Venable’s Convenience Store
on April 26th. And, not knowing when I’d get back to
Austin, I decided to see if I could talk Sue Cullen into
keeping my kitten until I found John Hardy.

From there, it was a lengthy trip up to Mowata and
Hardy’s ex-wife, Janelle Bourgeois.

Outside the restaurant, Jack and I paused, enjoying
the sun and reveling in the sinful meal we had just de voured. He patted his ample stomach. “I wish I could
have kept on eating,” he remarked with a grin.

“Yep. I was hungrier than I thought.” I held up a
link of sausage wrapped in a napkin. “I imagine the
kitten is too.”

Jack grew serious. “Tony, about yesterday and last
night. What you said back in there. Do you really
think that all they’re trying to do is scare us?”

I understood the question he had not asked. “I
hope so.”

Before he could reply, my cell phone rang. It was
Sergeant Jimmy LeBlanc. “Tony? We think we done
found John Hardy.”

I frowned at his choice of words. “Think?”

“Yeah,” he replied with a chuckle. “Hard to tell for
sure. He’s not all here”

“I don’t understand, Jimmy. What do you mean, he
isn’t all there?”

“He be some dissolved up. A hunter cut open the
belly of a big ‘gator, and there Hardy be, him!”

The unexpected announcement set me back on my
heels momentarily. I collected my thoughts and grimaced at such a gruesome, painful death. “What
makes you think it might be Hardy?”

“They find diamond ring in the ‘gator’s belly with
initials J.H. on the inside. The coroner’s coming out,
he. They always do autopsies in Lafayette”

“Can I see the body there?”

“Sure. I be sure to tell coroner. But-” he hesitated.

“But what?”

“But that not the only thing that be odd about all this.”

I arched a quizzical eyebrow at Jack. “You lost me
on that, Jimmy. What do you mean not the only thing
odd?”

His voice had a puzzled tone to it. “The body, it not
be at Whiskey River where the suburban was found”

“No? Where did they find it?”

“You not going to believe me, Tony, but the ‘gator
what eat him, they killed on Bayou Teche down between Maida and Bagotville in Terrechoisie Parish,
not up in the Atchafalaya Basin near Whiskey River.”

My jaw must have hit my feet because Jack looked
up at me in surprise. “What the? Tony, what’s wrong?”

I waved for Jack to button his lip. I stammered a
moment. “You … you … ah . . ” Finally, I managed
to form intelligible sounds. “How do you explain that,
Jimmy? I mean, eighty to a hundred miles away.”

“Me, I don’t know how to explain it. All I know is
that the sheriff boys in Terrechoisie Parish call me
about the body and the ring.”

Finally, I managed to collect my thoughts. “What
time you figure they’ll have the body in Lafayette?”

“Sometime after dinner. This is Sunday. The coroner, he probably going to want to eat hisself a big
Sunday dinner of stuffed pork chops, maque choux,
and rice.”

“All right. I’ll talk to you later.”

I punched off. Now I had one more question for
Laura Palmo.

Jack frowned up at me when I dropped the phone
back in my pocket. “What was that all about?”

I told him, and for a moment, I thought that huge
breakfast of his might come back up.

Being a Sunday, the bank was closed, but Laura
Palmo graciously consented to see me at her home.
After we checked out of the motel and stopped by a
local Walmart to pick up a cat carrier and nuggets for
the kitten, we headed toward Bayou Teche.

My thoughts drifted.

If the dead man was John Hardy, then that meant he
was probably murdered just after he left Benoit’s
Hunting Lodge, and the killer drove his Suburban a
hundred miles to Whiskey River. That also indicated
that there were at least two involved.

Jack broke into my thoughts. “Something wrong?”

“Huh? Oh, no. Nothing. Just thinking.”

“Here we are,” he announced.

“Huh?” His words jerked me back to the present.

“We’re here. That secretary’s place.”

It was like a scene from a movie.

A white Pontiac sat in the garage of a neat brick
home overlooking the bayou. Giant live oaks sur rounded the well-maintained two-acre grounds, and
the warm honeysuckle breeze swayed the long strands
of Spanish moss dangling from the limbs.

Laura Palmo smiled warmly when she opened the
door. “Come in, please. You’re lucky. I went to early
mass today” She paused when she spotted Jack in the
Cadillac. “Your friend can come in if he wishes.”

“No, thanks. He prefers sitting out there with a bottle of beer and listening to the birds.”

“Kind of early, isn’t it?”

“You don’t know Jack. He loves birds,” I shot back.
She laughed. “I wasn’t talking about the birds,” she
said as she led me through a tastefully, but modestly
decorated living room and dining room onto the sun
porch overlooking the bayou. “This is much more comfortable,” she announced, indicating a chaise lounge
with gaily flowered cushions. She sat on the edge of a
couch, ankles together and her slender hands folded on
her knees.

Despite the heat, she wore long sleeves and slacks.
“Mr. Hardy hasn’t returned yet if that’s what you’re
wondering. Maybe he’ll come in sometime today. He
must be having fun in the Bahamas.”

I arched an eyebrow. “You haven’t tried to contact
him?”

She shivered. “Heavens, no. Didn’t I tell you? He’d
probably fire me if I did. He told me to call only in an
emergency”

“But what about business? What if something
comes up that needs his attention?”

Her black eyes smiled. I sensed a hint of resentment
in her tone when she replied, “Marvin Gates takes
care of everything. Gates and Mr. Hardy are partners.
When I told him about Mrs. Hardy hiring you to find
her son, he just laughed and said the same thing I told
you-that John pulls this trick all the time.”

I hesitated, cataloging the fact she had told Marvin
Gates about my job. I debated whether to tell her
about Jimmy LeBlanc’s call. “Did John Hardy wear a
diamond ring?”

A puzzled frown wrinkled her forehead. “Why,
yes” She touched a manicured finger to the diamond
ring on her right hand. “Silver gold. Three one-carat
diamonds in a cluster.”

“With his initials inside?”

She nodded, her face reflecting her confusion. A
look of alarm filled her eyes. “Has something happened to Mr. Hardy?”

“I don’t know. His Suburban was found in Whiskey
River yesterday morning. This morning, the Iberville
Sheriff’s department called me. They found a body” I
deliberately shirted any details concerning the location of the body or method of death. “There’s no positive identification, not yet. They did find a diamond
ring with the initials J.H. The Lafayette coroner will
do an autopsy. We’ll know then for sure later today.”

She pressed her hand to her lips, her composure
starting to crumble. “But, it couldn’t be Mr. Hardy.
He’s in the Bahamas.” She hesitated, then said, “The
Dolphin Bay Country Club. Room 417.”

I shook my head. “There’s no one by that name registered at the Dolphin Bay Country Club. There isn’t
even a room with that number.”

She stared at me uncomprehending. “Are you certain?” She asked in a shaky voice.

“Yes.” I paused a moment, then continued, “That
was the number you gave me. There was no John
Hardy registered.”

“But … he called” Her black eyes stared at me in
disbelief.

I shook my head. “He wasn’t there”

Abruptly she reached for a pack of Virginia Slims
on the coffee table. “I … ah … would you like some
coffee?”

I could see my announcement had shaken her.
Quickly, I rose. “Let me. In the kitchen?”

She fumbled to fish out a cigarette. “Yes.”

I found the cups and filled them from a half-full
carafe on the warmer. The coffee was pure Cajunblack, strong, and thick as cane syrup. Let it cool, and
it would jell. “Anything in yours?”

“No … no. Thanks”

I sat the cup in front of her. She smiled nervously at
me. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to play the helpless female”

I smiled. “Forget it. It was a shock” For a moment, I considered trying to reassure her, to remind her that
there had been no positive identification, but I would
be lying for I truly believed the body cut out of the alligator was John Hardy. The coroner’s report would
only reaffirm my conviction.

She picked up a book of matches and lit her cigarette. I couldn’t help noticing she was a southpaw. She
inhaled deeply and blew a stream of smoke toward the
ceiling. She laid the matchbook on the coffee table. I
glanced at it. Bagotville National Bank, identical to
the book I found in the Suburban. And the matches
had been plucked from the southpaw side of the book.

Laura Palmo laughed weakly and held up the cigarette. “Bad habit, I know. John and Marvin Gates have
a steady battle going about smoking. We have a
lounge at the bank. John doesn’t smoke, but Gates
puffs away like a swamp fire,” she said, referring to
the local practice of burning swamp prairies to refortify the soil with nitrogen.

I stiffened at her remark. Hardy didn’t smoke! A
thought leaped into my head. Well, maybe leaped is a
little pretentious. Stumbled is what it really did, but
still, if Hardy didn’t smoke, then what was the matchbook doing in his Suburban?

My brain staggered forward another step. Could it
have been the matchbook belonged to whoever killed
him, if that had indeed been his body fished from
Bayou Teche?

And if the matchbook did belong to the killer or the accomplice, then chances are he, or she, was lefthanded, like Laura Palmo. I shook my head at the ludicrous idea.

She released a long sigh, breaking into my
thoughts. “Now, where were we?”

“Look, I know this is a shock for you, but if you
think you can handle it, I do have a few questions I’d
like to clear up”

She sighed wearily. “I’ll do the best I can. It’s just
that I’m, well, the news has upset me”

“I understand. I’ll be brief.”

“Thank you” She smiled weakly.

“As I understand it, when he called was when he
gave you the phone number in the Bahamas”

“Yes. Well, no. Not exactly. It was voicemail, but it
was Mr. Hardy.”

I frowned. “You didn’t talk to him yourself”

“No. But it was him.”

“You’re positive?”

“Yes.” Her bottom lip quivered. “It was his voice.
I’d know it anywhere. He left that number where he
could be reached”

“When you talked to him a couple days earlier-” I
hesitated.

She supplied the date. “On the twenty-fifth. That’s
when he said he was going to the Bahamas. Two days
later on the twenty-seventh was when he left the
voicemail. It was waiting for me when I came back
from lunch.”

I sipped my coffee. “This is good. We don’t have
anything like it back in Austin.”

Laura smiled faintly, but there was still a quiver in
her lips.

“Now what can you tell me about John Hardy’s exwife?”

She blinked once or twice, then drew a deep breath
and closed her eyes. After a moment, she opened them
and looked directly at me, struggling to regain her
composure. “Janelle? They broke up years back. He
never talked about her, but then about five or six
months ago, she called him. I answered the phone.
She wouldn’t tell me what she wanted, but she was
furious-screaming and cursing.” She paused, and
with a crooked grin, added, “She must be a Creole”

I thought of Sue Cullen and how enraged she had
become-a typical Creole reaction. I chuckled. “You
ever find out what it was about?”

She hesitated.

“Look, Laura. I’m just trying to get to the bottom of
all this. We don’t know anything for certain about
Hardy. For all we know, he might have reconciled
with her and told no one.”

She snorted. “I don’t think so. He made the remark
that she could get all the lawyers she wanted, but she
wasn’t getting another cent from him. And then-”
She hesitated. “Never mind.”

I looked up from my notes. “No. Go ahead. What
were you going to say?”

She grimaced. “Well, after Mr. Hardy made the remark about lawyers, he said she had threatened to kill
him if he tried to beat her out of the money she had
coming to her.”

Jotting down my notes, I changed the subject. “I
heard he had some gambling debts to a casino owner
by the name of-”

“Jimmy Blue. He owns the Louisianne Casino just
the other side of Maida a few miles from Morgan
City,” she put in. “Yes, Mr. Hardy has, or had, some
gambling debts. I don’t know any of the details, but
from time to time, Mr. Blue called and from Mr.
Hardy’s reaction, the news wasn’t too pleasant”