Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 07 - The Swamps of Bayou Teche (15 page)

The tone of that single word was telling me to take
a hike.

“Impressive,” I replied, nodding in true appreciation at her thoroughness, but the skeptic in me knew
the thoroughness could have been pre-planned. She
could have forged the planner as an alibi. I didn’t
think so, but I’d run across too many devious minds
that could have come up with such a ploy. I pointed to
the 10:00 client, Fred. “I’d like to talk to him.”

“Impossible”

“Why? You have something to hide?”

Momentarily flustered, she replied, “No, butYou’ve heard of client privilege, haven’t you?”

I grinned at her audacity. “I’ve heard of doctorpatient privilege, and lawyer-client privilege, but I
don’t think I ever heard of client-” I shrugged, and
feeling my ears burned, lamely said, “and well, you
know-privilege.”

She arched an eyebrow in pure innocence and in a
voice coated with smug disdain, said, “Oh? Well, I
make them feel good.”

I laughed at that. I liked Fawn Williams, a.k.a., Sophie Mae Brown. I hoped she was telling the truth. If I
learned she had murdered John Hardy, I’d be sorely
disappointed. Of course, she had motive. The problem
now was opportunity. “I won’t argue that, but-tell
you what. I believe you.” That was a lie, but I didn’t
want to make her run if she were indeed guilty. I
wanted her to think I believed every word she said, or
wrote. “You put me in contact with Fred here to satisfy my own mind, and I won’t speak a word of this to
the cops.”

Fawn stood abruptly, strode over to her desk, and
picked up an envelope. She fished out some canceled
tickets. “Look, I really don’t want to bother any of my
clients. Here are my airline tickets from Lafayette to
Baton Rouge and on to New Orleans. Look at the dates.
I left on Sunday, the twenty-fifth, and returned Friday,
the thirtieth. That should prove what I’m saying.”

I studied the tickets a moment, then handed them
back to her. “Anyone could buy these tickets. That
doesn’t prove you took the flight.”

Her eyes narrowed. “But, it’s the truth. I parked my
Cherokee at the airport all week”

“Look, Fawn. I believe you, but I’m telling you how
the cops will look at it, what the District Attorney
would say. Let me talk to Fred. If you were with Fred
at the Chateaubriand Hotel on the twenty-sixth at ten
that morning, then you couldn’t have filled the Cherokee up an hour earlier at Venable’s”

She studied me several seconds. Reluctantly, she
pulled a scrap from her day planner, scribbled a name,
and handed it to me.

I read it, Frederick J. Turner, Washington D.C. I
looked around at her, puzzled. “This isn’t the Freder-”

Wearing the same smug look the cat must have had
when he swallowed the mouse, she finished the question for me, “-the Frederick J. Turner, senator from
the pelican state of Louisiana.” She nodded. “That’s
him, the one and the same.”

Smiling at the bewildered look on my face, she
added, “Freddy has connections with the big builders.
Between you and me, he’s the reason many of them
stay in business, and they’re the reason he continues
to be re-elected” She paused. “So you can see that he
might be kind of sensitive about talking to you”

I grinned wryly. “Not as sensitive as if the media
got hold of it.”

She studied me a moment, then laughed. “Let me
call him.”

It was growing late in the afternoon when I left
Fawn’s apartment, but not nearly as late as it would be
when I met the good senator at the Achafalaya Regional Air Terminal east of Lafayette at ten that evening. I was to report to security, and they would take
me to him.

I glanced at my watch and decided Jack and I’d
have time to run over to Mowata and see Hardy’s exwife, Janelle Bourgeois. Being a Sunday, chances
were the cafe would be closed. If so we’d have to run
her down at home.

As I descended the stairs from Fawn’s apartment, I
checked the caller I.D. on my cell phone. Jimmy
LeBlanc. I punched in his number. Still no positive
identification. Hardy’s dentist could not be located, so a positive I.D. would probably have to wait until the
next day. Before he hung up, LeBlanc said, “You remember what we done talked about, you nosing
around?”

I stiffened, expecting him to say forget it. “Yeah.
Why?”

“Well, me, I talk to Emile. He says you go ahead.
Him, he like me. He thinks it be murder. Just give us
all you find.”

A sudden weight fell from my shoulders. “Don’t
worry, Jimmy. You’ll have it.”

Jack was popping his second Big Easy beer when I
climbed in. To the west, the sun was dropping below
the buildings, and a soft red glow was beginning to
light the late afternoon sky.

“Head out the interstate,” I told Jack. As we headed
west on Interstate 10, I pulled out my laptop, hooked
up my cell phone, and e-mailed Eddie Dyson, my savior on more occasions than I could remember.

At one time Austin’s resident stool pigeon, Eddie
Dyson had become a computer whiz and wildly successful entrepreneur.

I’ve always heard that all one must do to be successful is to find his niche in life. Well, instead of
sleazy bars and greasy money, Eddie discovered his
niche for snitching to be in credit cards and the bright
glow of computers. Any information I couldn’t find,
he could. There were only two catches if you dealt with Eddie. First, you never asked him how he did it,
and second, he only accepted VISA credit cards for
payment.

I never asked Eddie why he only accepted VISA.
Seems like any credit card would be sufficient, but
considering the value of his service, I never posed the
question. As far as I was concerned, if he wanted to be
paid in Japanese yen, I’d pack up a half dozen bushels
and send them to him.

Failure was not a word in his vocabulary. His services did not come cheap, but he produced. Sometimes the end is indeed worth the means.

I was hoping it would be this time. I needed background information for a handful of individuals so I
listed each person with whom I had spoken. I also
added Edgar Collins and Jimmy “Blue” Opilitto.

As an afterthought, I asked for details on Antigua
Exports as well as La Louisianne Imports in Bagotville.
And since his bill would be astronomical, I added the
banks of St. Kitts and Dominica along with account
numbers and routing numbers.

From Lafayette, we headed west to Rayne where
we turned north. Several miles up a narrow farm road
lined by rice fields surrounded by levies, we reached
Branch and turned west to Mowata.

Moise Deslatte hadn’t been too far off when he told
me there was only one of anything in Mowata. There
was one general store, one church, one welding shop, one blinking signal light. There were two cafes, but
then I saw one was boarded up. So, I guess he was
right. One of everything. By now, the sun had set, and
dusk was falling over the farming community.

To my surprise, lights were on in Lege’s Cafe. “Pull
in there,” I said.

“Good. I’m hungry,” Jack muttered, pulling into the
empty lot in front of the cafe. A battered Chevrolet
Caprice sat at the side of the small building. “How long
do you figure on being here? I gotta eat something.”

“Just so we’re back at the airport by ten”

A thin woman with her hair pulled back severely
and fastened with a rubber band peered through a
serving window in the wall behind the counter. Steam
rose around her. She smiled. “Find a table, you. I be
right there.”

A counter with a half dozen stools lined one wall.
Five bare tables filled the remainder of the small cafe,
all empty. We took the one closest to the kitchen. The
rich smell of home cooking hung in the air, and Jack
smacked his lips. “If their stuff tastes as good as it
smells, you might never get me out of here”

The small woman came around the corner of the
counter with two glasses of water in one hand and two
menus in the other. She wore a red plaid short-sleeve
shirt, baggy jeans, and sandals. Slapping the menus
down and sliding the water in front of us without spilling a drop, she greeted us. “Hello, there, boys.
You be new here in Mowata, huh?”

“Passing through,” I replied, searching for a
nametag, but seeing none. She appeared to be in her
fifties, maybe early sixties, and typical of most farm
women, she appeared to have been used pretty hard
by life.

Jack sniffed the air. “What smells so good?”

Her eyes lit. “That be the speciality of the day, beef
stew in thick gravy. We gots some left” She indicated
the teakettle-shaped clock on the wall. “We be closing
up soon.”

“Bring me a bowl of that stew,” Jack exclaimed. “A
big bowl.”

She frowned at him.

I laughed. “A plate will do”

A smile replaced the frown. “There you be. I comes
right back with the stew. Fresh bread and homechurned butter. What you drink? Sweet tea?”

“Fine.”

Jack frowned at me. “Plate? I wanted stew.”

“Just wait. Cajun stew is a little different than what
you’re used to”

He leaned across the table and glanced at the door
through which she had disappeared. “If that’s her, it’s
sure hard to believe she was married to a banker.”

I shrugged. “Never can tell. Get her in a beauty
shop, some nice clothes, and you might be surprised.”

Before he could reply, she returned with two large
platters heaped with steaming rice and covered by
succulent thick brown gravy that smothered chunks of
tender beef, wedges of potatoes, and carrots, topped
by fresh green hot peppers, and plopped them down in
front of us. Jack’s eyes grew wide. “All that?” he
whispered.

“All that,” I laughed.

When she returned with hot sauce, onions, hot
bread, and sweet tea, I asked her if she was Janelle
Bourgeois.

Her smile faded. “What for you wants to know?”

Her eyes grew cold when I told her John Hardy was
missing. I continued, “I thought you, since you were
once married, might have heard from him.”

She snorted. “That one, he worthless. I worked my
fingers to the bone helping him set up the bank in
Opelousas. Den he gets too good for me and divorces
me. Three years ago, he stopped my alimony.” She
grunted. “Wasn’t much, only five hundred a month.”
She shook her head sharply. “He ain’t no good”

I introduced myself and explained why I was here.
“You have time to talk?” I glanced around the empty
cafe.

Janelle Bourgeois studied me a moment, then
shrugged. “Why not?” She gestured to the empty
room. “We ain’t exactly turning customers away” She
laughed as she poured herself a cup of thick coffee
and plopped down in a chair across the table and promptly lit a cigarette. I breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, one who wasn’t a southpaw. “Now, whats you
want to know?”

“Last Sunday and Monday. Were you working?”

“Mais non,” she replied immediately. “Me, I been
visiting the old ones down in Maida. Lege, he own this
place. Lege, he lets me take off three, four days. I
come back last night.” She studied me a moment. “You
say this all abouts that no-good ex-husband of mine?”

I suppressed the excitement coursing through me
when she replied she had been in Maida. “Yes”

She chuckled. “That one, he do alls he can to keep
from paying me what he done owes me”

“Where did you stay in Maida, with your parents?”

“Mais non. The old ones, dey be in the old folks
homes, you know, them places that takes care of the
old ones.”

“Nursing home?”

“Oui. Nursing home” She took a drag off her cigarette. “Me, I stays with my cousin, Louise Babeaux.
She was Bourgeois until she marry Felix Babeaux,
her.” She shook her head and sighed. “I been gone
from there long time. It be changing. The ones I used
to know don’t live there no more.”

“Things do have a way of changing, Ms. Bourgeois, I-”

She interrupted. “Call me Nell. Dey all do”

“All right, Nell. I was told that you threatened to
kill John Hardy if he didn’t pay you what he owed”

The faint smile on her thin, wrinkled lips tightened
into a scowl. She replied heatedly, “Me, I don’t say
that to the man. If he say that, he be liar. Who tell you
I say that?”

I gave her an apologetic smile. “I can’t say. I probably misunderstood,” I added hastily, not wanting to
antagonize her.

“I tells you what,” she said, reaching into the
pocket of her jeans and withdrawing a worn fourinch Case knife. “Me, I be mad enough to make that
one a gelding. Mais non, there be no way I kill the
man. For only eighteen thousand dollar, I not be going to no jail.” She flipped open the blade to punctuate her remark.

Jack’s fork paused between his open lips. His eyes
bulged at the light reflecting off the wicked blade of
Nell’s knife.

“That’s how much he owes you?”

Her eyes glittered with rage. She picked up a napkin and drew the blade down the middle of it, slicing it
open without effort. “Oui. And to a po’ Cajun like me,
that a lot of money, but not enough to kill him for.”
She jabbed the blade in our direction for emphasis.