Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 07 - The Swamps of Bayou Teche (16 page)

Jack jumped back. She laughed and closed the knife.

“By the way,” I said, changing the subject, “you remember a boy you grew up with, Moise Deslatte?”

Her weathered face lit with memories of years past,
and for a fleeting moment, I was staring at the soft
round face of a young woman with stars in her eyes. She closed the blade, and Jack went back to his meal.
“Oui. That Moise. We be childhood bien-aimes,
sweethearts” Her eyes took on a faraway look. After a
few moments, she shook her head and came back to
the present. “That long, long time ago, that was.”

The scraping of a plate on the tabletop broke into
our conversation as Jack shoved his empty plate away.
“That was delicious,” he announced, grinning nervously at Janelle Bourgeois. “Why don’t you come to
Austin and let me open up a cafe for you. We’ll make
a fortune.”

The small woman beamed and, her cigarette
clutched between two nicotine-stained fingers, waved
at Jack, scoffing at him for teasing her. “Mais non. I
goes with you, what dese around Mowata do?”

I had more questions I could have asked, but she
had given me more than I expected. Besides, we just
had time to get back to the airport and meet with the
good senator.

She frowned at my stew. “You don’t eat.”

“How about a doggy bag,” I said. “I’ll eat back at
the motel.”

She nodded and headed for the kitchen.

Jack called out. “While you’re back there, why
don’t whip me another dinner to go”

Nell Bourgeois laughed over her shoulder.

The night was warm, so Jack lowered the top on the
Cadillac before we drove way.

Winding along the narrow asphalt roads back to the
interstate a few minutes later, Jack remarked, “She
doesn’t look like she’d ever been married to a banker,
you know?”

“I know. Maybe that’s why Hardy dumped her.”

“You think she killed him?”

Staring at the oncoming headlights, I replied,
“They don’t know if it’s Hardy or not.”

He snorted. “I’m no lawman, but you know as well
as me that-” He shivered. “That body was John
Hardy.”

I chuckled and lay my head back on the seat, staring at the stars overhead. “Yeah. It’s Hardy. The ring
clinched it for me”

“Well, then, do you think she did it? They found the
body in the bayou down by Maida. She was there. She
admitted it. And you said she threatened to kill him if
he didn’t give her what he owed”

Turning my head on the seat to stare at Jack, I
replied, “She might have been perfectly willing to use
that knife of hers on him in the manner she suggested,
but I don’t think she killed him. She denied it, and in
no uncertain terms.”

Jack grunted. “Wouldn’t anyone who was guilty?”

He had a point. “They’d have to be mighty clever
to be as convincing as she was. Do you think she
killed him?”

Pursing his lips, Jack considered my question. Finally, he shook his head. “No. She struck me as a plain, down-to-earth farm woman who wouldn’t lie to
save her own soul.”

Security at Atchafalaya Air Terminal sent us to the
maintenance gate at the east end of runway ninety.
“Park your car just outside the gate. The airplane will
taxi to you” The craggy-faced security guard pointed
through one of the expansive windows toward a line of
red lights. “Down there.”

Exactly two minutes before the hour we parked
and turned off the headlights. The pulsating glow of
lights lining the taxi strip illumined our faces with an
on-again, off-again red blush. Precisely one minute
later, running lights curved into the approach and
landing lights flashed on. A minute later, an Astra SP
with swept-back wings and the logo, National
Builders Corporation, braked to a halt fifty yards
from us.

The door just behind the cockpit swung up and
stairs hissed down. A burly man in a suit stopped in
the open door and waved for me to come in.

Five minutes later, I stood in front of the Cadillac
watching the jet curve gracefully into the night sky
and began a gradual turn that would take it back to the
east. I could feel the heat radiating from the cooling
engine of the big car.

“Well,” Jack asked from where he sat on the back of the driver’s seat and peering over the top of the windshield. “What do you find out?”

Without taking my eyes off the jet now slowly vanishing into the night, I replied, “Somebody’s lying, either Fawn Williams or Senator Frederick J. Turner.”

“What did he say?”

Keeping my eyes on the Astra SP as its lights mingled with the stars, I replied, “He said he was on a
fact-finding tour of the New Orleans’ levees that day”

“He deny knowing her?”

“No. But he didn’t see her that day”

For a moment, Jack remained silent. Then he whistled softly.

I nodded. “Exactly.”

“She knew you were going to talk to him. She had
to know you’d learn the truth. Why do you figure she
went ahead and lied about it?”

The navigation lights of the Astra SP finally disappeared among the stars in the dark night. With a sigh,
I replied, “No idea, but I plan to find out”

I climbed back in the car, and Jack slid down behind
the wheel. “How tired are you, Jack?”

In the pulsating red glow of the taxi lights, I saw the
weariness in his face, but all he said was, “Why?”

“How about a fast trip up to Opelousas? About
thirty or forty miles from Lafayette. We can get a motel there for the night.”

“Fine with me,” he said, leaning over the back of
the seat and pulling out a cold bottle of Big Easy beer.
“You want one?”

I started to refuse, but I was exhausted. The day had
been interminably long. It seemed like it was two
months ago since we chased the cottonmouth from
our room. “Why not? Maybe it’ll wake me up”

I had Jack pull up at the guard’s gate at the parking lot before leaving. The uniformed guard came to the
open door. “Yes, sir.”

“By any chance were you working last week?”

He nodded.

“Did you happen to see a red Jeep Cherokee leave
here last Sunday or Monday?”

His eyes narrowed. “You don’t look like the law.
Who you be?”

“No. Just a private investigator trying to find out
something about the Jeep.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t work Sunday, but Monday a
red Jeep Cherokee came in late and parked. The driver
was a woman with red hair. She wents into the terminal. Real looker. I never saw her come out. The Jeep, it
stayed there the rest of the week”

“Are you sure it was a Cherokee?”

He grinned. “Me, I been looking to buy one. One
just like that one.”

By eleven fifteen, we were ensconced in a clean,
but plain room at the Jean LaFitte Motel on the second
floor. This time I made sure the door was locked and
the safety chain engaged securely.

For a moment, I considered calling my cousin,
Leroi Thibodeaux. I hadn’t seen him since just before
Christmas at the funeral of his son, Stewart, who
stayed with me in Austin until he found a job. Unfortunately that job was dealing drugs, and Stewart, the
poor, dumb kid, ended up in the morgue.

“At least,” said Danny O’Banion, an old friend in
Austin and a concierge for the concierges of the mob,
a sort of lower-level liaison between those at the top
and the soldiers at the bottom, remarked, “at least you
know where he’s buried. No way you can put out flowers on Loop 360,” he added, referring to the ongoing
road construction around Austin rumored to provide
free burial plots for those who ran afoul of the mob.

I didn’t question him. Word had it that more than
one missing person rested peacefully beneath the
three feet of concrete that the great state of Texas
called Loop 360.

The hour was late; I decided to wait until the next
day to call Leroi. I really wanted to see that rascal. We
grew up together, inseparable despite the difference in
our races, but then, race was something we never
thought of. We were simply cousins and good friends.
His mama and my uncle, Patric Thibodeaux, had married against the wishes of both families.

Leroi and I had what I still consider an idyllic
youth. We hunted and fished together, went to the
movies together, and were constantly at each other’s
houses, although he did spend most of the time at
mine since his mama, Lantana, had died in childbirth.

To my disgust that night I lay awake for an hour listening to Jack snore like a chainsaw with a bad spark
plug while trying to figure out just where I stood in my
investigation.

I knew the corpse in the coroner’s office was Hardy.
Obviously, so did Jimmy LeBlanc and Emile
Primeaux. Otherwise why would they encourage me
to investigate it as a murder?

If it were murder, then I had perhaps two, maybe
three suspects, Nell Bourgeois, Fawn Williams, and
Moise Deslatte.

Nell Bourgeois had motive, eighteen thousand dollars worth, and she was in Maida at her cousin’s the
day Hardy disappeared, April 26. She could have enlisted her cousin, Louise Babeaux to drive one of the
vehicles to Whiskey River, and the two could have returned the Cherokee to the air terminal’s parking lot.
Both opportunity and motive. On the other hand, why
use Fawn Williams’ Cherokee? A random choice?
That didn’t make sense.

Still, as Nell Bourgeois had said, eighteen thousand
is not enough to pay for twenty or thirty years in
prison.

Fawn Williams claimed she had been jilted out of a
half-million-dollar investment fund. That amount was
more than enough motive. And she and her accomplice could have parked a vehicle in the vicinity of
Venable’s convenience store earlier. The two could
have run the Suburban into the river, driven back to
the convenience store where Williams filled up the
Cherokee before heading for New Orleans in a rented
car, while her co-conspirator could have driven the Cherokee back to the airport. Again both motive and
opportunity.

Moise Deslatte was hot-blooded, and to be shot at
and accused of cheating was not the kind of insult a
Cajun forgot. After talking to him, I didn’t believe his
motive was as compelling as the two women’s, but
still, the Cajun penchant for violence as a solution for
many disagreements stems from before the dispersal
of the Acadians from Nova Scotia and still runs in
their blood. The years might have diluted the intensity
of the emotion, but given the right set of circumstances, it could erupt in brutal anger.

Since Deslatte had spent the night in the bar of the
hunting lodge, he could have sent his alligator-hunting
goons, Juju and Marcel, to carry out the plot. The only
problem was the same as Janelle Bourgeois. Why use
Fawn Williams’ Cherokee? Still, I had a good argument for motive and opportunity.

I finally dropped off to sleep, and in my dreams, a
monstrous alligator was chasing me.

Next morning I tried calling Leroi, but there was no
answer. Muttering a soft curse, I began searching for
Edgar Collins in the Opelousas phone directory. There
were thirty-seven Collins in the directory.

“There’s as many Collins here as Boudreauxs,” Jack
remarked. “You sure Collins isn’t a Cajun name?”

I rolled my eyes and started dialing the E. Collinses.

The fourth E. Collins knocked me back on my
heels. “No, sir, it ain’t me, but I gots me a older cousin
who went by Edgar twenty or so years ago. Goes by
E.K. now.”

After a few more subtle questions, I learned he
had lost his life savings when a bank folded and
moved to Maida.

Maida!

Stifling my excitement, I stammered out my thanks
and surprisingly enough had the forethought to ask for
a phone number in Maida.

Jack saw the excitement on my face. “You find the
guy?”

I hesitated. “I’m not sure. This guy lost all his
money when a bank folded.” I eyed the list of Collins
in the directory. “He could be the one,” I replied, dialing the next number. “But I want to be sure”

Jack shrugged and went back to watching the John
Wayne movie on TV.

By noon, I was satisfied. I checked my notes. No
Edgar’s except for the one in Maida who now used the
initials, E.K.

I tried to call Leroi again, and again no answer. I
left a message, and then packed my gear.

Before we left, I made one more call, this one to
Sergeant Jimmy LeBlanc. I closed my eyes and
groaned when he said, “We gots no dental records, my
friend. The office burned to the ground last night.”

After muttering a few choice words, I asked, “Now
what?”

“Last I hear, dey done started checking DNA”

DNA! I muttered a few more choice words. Not
only would that send Josepphine Hardy into a tizzy,
but it would also take weeks to get the results.

“So,” he asked when I didn’t reply. “You remember
what we all talked about?”

A wry grin played over my lips, and I shook my
head at Jack. “You’re still okay with me investigating
it as a murder?”

“Oui. Emile and me, we can’t, not until we gots
definite identification. Just you remember, keep us
informed.”