Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 13 - The Diamonds of Ghost Bayou (14 page)

“Hey, Jack. You’re looking good.”

He winked at Diane. “I feel good.” He shot a dark glance at the door. “I’m ready to get out of here, but the doc wants me to
stay another day or so”

Diane rocked forward. “You know it’s for your own
good, sweetheart. He just wants to make sure your brains are not
scrambled” She winked at me.

“Yeah,” I replied. “You don’t have too many in there anyway.”

He muttered an amiable curse. The smile faded from his
face. “What’s going on?”

“Absolutely nothing, buddy. I’m not any closer to learning
who worked you over than I was three days ago.”

He grew serious. “What about the diamonds?”

I glanced at Diane. She smiled sheepishly. “I told him what
you said about the diamonds and about me being out at the house
by myself.”

“You should have told me,” he said.

Chuckling, I made a sweeping gesture at the bed. “And what
could you have done all laid up here like one of those Egyptian
mummies?”

“I know, but-”

“Look, Jack. There was nothing you could have done. There
still isn’t. You’ve just got to heal up so we can get you out of
here. Then you can defend your wife to the death,” I added with
a touch of dramatic flair.

He sighed and leaned back against his pillow. “Yeah, you’re
right. Still, I feel helpless.”

I eyed his cast and wired jaw. With a touch of wry sarcasm, I
replied, “Well, meaning no offense, old buddy, but the way it
looks to me, helpless just about sums up your situation.”

He snorted.

I nodded at his arm. “You can’t hit anybody, and you sure can’t
bite them. So, yeah. Helpless is as good a description as any”

He laughed. “I suppose so”

“Tell you what you two ought to do when you get out of here.
Sell the place and get back to Austin.”

Jack snorted. “No. No way. This is something I’ve wanted for
the last couple of years”

I started to argue with him, but at that moment, a young
nurse in tan scrubs entered briskly and proceeded to take Jack’s
vital signs. While she tended to him, I turned to Diane. “How
are you this morning?”

She smiled wanly. “Fine.” She laid her hand on the La-Z-Boy
armrest. “This isn’t the best mattress in the world. I’ll be glad
to get into my own bed.”

I grimaced.

Before I could speak, she continued. “Something wrong?”

“No, not really. I planned to run over to New Orleans today.”

She paused, realizing just how such a trip implicated her.
“And you don’t want me staying by myself?”

,.Yeah”

She patted the armrest once again. “I’m not eager for another
night in this chair. I’ll go with you. I can doze on the way.”

I stiffened. “My pickup’s twice as uncomfortable as that
chair.”

“We can take the Cadillac. I’ll sleep in the back.” She pushed
to her feet. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. We can stop at the house
and pick up a couple of pillows and a blanket.”

Blanket? Pillows? I tried to find some logical explanation why
she shouldn’t accompany me, one that would not offend her or
Jack.

“And I promise not to get in your way, all right?”

“Get in whose way?” Jack asked.

Diane turned to Jack. “Tony’s going to New Orleans. Like I
told you, he doesn’t want me to stay at the house by myself, so
I’m going to ride over there with him, if you don’t mind. Mr.
Jay’s at the vet’s, so he’ll be okay. Will you be all right by yourself?”

He looked up at me. “What’s in New Orleans?”

“A previous owner of your house. Jimmy Ramsey. Used to
be a school superintendent over in Texas.” I didn’t go into detail
about his possible involvement with Al Theriot or his cousin or
Lester Percher. “He might know something that could help us”

Jack looked skeptical. “Like what?”

“Who knows?” I shrugged. “That’s how these things are. You talk to enough people, and if you’re lucky, you stumble
onto something that will help.”

“Yeah. I understand. You go on, babe. I’m fine here. In fact,
get a gourmet dinner and spend the night at one of those fancy
French Quarter hotels. Separate rooms, of course.” He winked
at me. “I’ll be just fine here.” He reached for her hand. “Besides,
you need a break, sweetheart. I know it gets awfully tiring here
for you.”

The two gushy lovers outvoted me.

Outside, I grabbed my sports bag with a change of clothes and
toiletries from the pickup and tossed them into the trunk of the
Cadillac, an XLR convertible with the 4.6L V8 engine and fivespeed automatic transmission. I locked the pickup and left the
keys with Jack.

As we climbed into the car, sheriff Thertule Lacoutrue drove
past in his cruiser. He looked at me, and I waved.

We stopped by the house so Diane could change from her
dress into comfortable slacks and a baggy tunic and sandals.
Quickly, she assembled a couple more changes of clothes,
grabbed her makeup bag, and gave it all to me to haul out to the
car. She followed with pillows, a blanket, and an ice chest with
a bottle of Merlot and foam cups.

“We can stop in Lafayette and grab a hamburger,” she said.

By eleven o’clock, we were on 1-10 out of Lafayette heading
for New Orleans, with hamburger, fries, and Merlot in foam
cups.

Next stop, the City That Care Forgot.

By the time we reached the eighteen-mile-long bridge spanning the Atchafalaya Swamp, Diane had downed her lunch and
was snoozing in the backseat.

We’d kept the top up and turned on the air-conditioning. I
held the powerful car to the speed limit, taking care to stay in
the outside lane so every other vehicle on the road could pass.

And they did.

After leaving Baton Rouge on 1-12, we ran into road construction, an ongoing project in Louisiana. I can’t remember a
time in the last thirty years I didn’t run into construction on the
way into New Orleans.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve tried to obey road signs, and when I
spotted one stating the right lane was closed a mile head and I
was to move to the left lane, I did. Sure enough, after half a mile,
cars started slowing. Dutifully, I fell in at the rear. But naturally,
there were those idiots passing us on the right to see how far they
could get before breaking into line.

I stayed in my place in the line of vehicles, careful not to leave
more than ten or twelve feet between me and the car ahead. I discovered years ago, if you leave fifteen feet, a twenty-foot car will
try to pull in. Must be a macho sort of thing. Or a death wish.

To my delight, a massive eighteen-wheeler a few cars back
pulled out into the right lane, effectively blocking it so the jerks
couldn’t sneak in ahead of us.

Road signs in Louisiana usually warn you thirty seconds after you could have taken an exit that would have permitted you
to avoid the traffic jam.

This time, the road sign was correct.

By three o’clock, we were comfortably ensconced in rooms
next door to each other at the Lafitte Courtyard on Chartres
Street, a few blocks south of Jackson Square in the French Quarter. One block over and three or four north on Royal was Jimmy
Ramsey’s haunted house.

I’d experienced enough of New Orleans that it no longer held
any magic or mystery for me. Without a doubt, it is a world strikingly different from that which the average tourist visits, but
most never peer into the underbelly of that world, which is mostly
seedy and filled with greed and selfishness.

Drugs were rampant, muggings common, thefts invariable,
and scams without end.

To the uninitiated, it was all glitter and glamour. To the initiated, it reeked of depravity.

Slipping into fresh clothes after showering, I booted my laptop and pulled up my mail. To my delight, Eddie Dyson had
responded.

I skimmed his reply but was disappointed to find he had not
provided information on Benoit’s cell mates. Technical problems, he had explained, which really meant nothing to me. Still,
I had some answers. I set up my small portable printer and made
a hard copy.

The only additional details of the heist Eddie could provide
that I hadn’t already learned from Louis Brasseaux and Emerente Landry at the Priouxville Bayou News or from Oscar
Mouton at the Bayou car lot was that Theriot hit the Eloi Saint
Julian Jewelers on July 6, and every single lead the law came up
with ran into a dead end.

According to Eddie, Jimmy Ramsey lost almost a quarter
million in shaky investments and was reduced to his teacher
retirement income of thirty-six thousand dollars annually. I
paused to study the last statement. Ramsey had over thirty
years in the business. His retirement should have been considerably more, unless he took part of it out as a lump sum.

Besides, if he’d lost all his savings, how could he afford a
three-story brick in the French Quarter? Of course there was the profit he had from the sale of his place on Ghost Bayou. On the
other hand, I had no idea how much he’d owed on the house or
how much he had cleared.

One thing I knew for sure, the prices of French Quarter multistory structures were counted off by the millions, not thousands. Leaning back in my chair, I decided those were some of
the questions I wanted answers to.

Around four o’clock, I rang Diane. I wanted to pay Jimmy
Ramsey a visit, and I was not too keen about leaving her by herself. I didn’t figure we’d have any trouble, for, other than Jack,
no one knew we were here. Still, I’d learned long ago not to take
anything for granted.

She answered on the fourth ring, her voice slurred with sleep.
She begged off, swearing her door was locked and the safety
chain fastened.

We were on the third floor, and our balconies overlooked a
lush patio. “What about the balcony doors?”

“Them too.”

Reluctantly, I agreed to go alone, hoping I wouldn’t regret my
decision.

A few clouds had rolled in from the south, casting welcome
shadows over the Quarter. I headed west down Toulouse to Royal
and turned right. Despite the cloud cover, heat radiated from
the sidewalk. All saloon and bar doors were thrown wide open,
their dark interiors inviting sweltering tourists into their cool
depths.

A few blocks north, I halted on the sidewalk and looked up at
Ramsey’s three-story house, the Dupre House, a brownstone edifice shrouded by the infamy that came from the savage torture
of servants in the 1840s.

Growing up in rural Louisiana, I had listened on raw winter
nights around the fireplace to Grand-pere Moise telling stories
he had heard while selling his sweet potatoes and other goods
in the French Market.

One of the most chilling stories was of the Dupre House, and
of its mistress, Madame Dupre, and her treatment of her servants.

Even if such a person did exist, the last hundred and seventy years offered so much embellishment that fiction and fact had
become so mixed, neither could be discerned.

On the second floor of the brownstone was a covered gallery
surrounded by a wrought-iron railing of fleurs-de-lis, accessed
by a flight of stairs at either end.

Next to the large oak door on the gallery was a sign:

I knocked on the door.

No answer.

l knocked again.

Moments later, the door opened and a paunchy man with
thinning hair and a bulbous nose stared at me. “Yes?”

“My name’s Tony Boudreaux. I’m looking for Jimmy Ramsey.
I was told he owns this house.”

The older man, who was about my height, studied me suspiciously. “What about?”

I took a step back. “You’re Mr. Ramsey?” I could see the
wheels spinning in his head.

With a look of dismissal on his face, he growled, “If you’re
selling anything, I’m not buying.” He started to close the door.

“The only thing I’m selling, Mr. Ramsey, is a share of a twomillion-dollar reward.”

The door swung back open. An expression of understanding
played over his plump face and then faded into amused tolerance.

“The diamonds, huh?” He shook his head. “Nobody’s found
them yet.” It was a statement, not a question.