Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 13 - The Diamonds of Ghost Bayou (9 page)

His bushy white eyebrows ran together when he furrowed his
brow in concentration. “Best I recollect, it was the Eloi Saint
Julian Jewelers, and they offered a 25 percent reward for the
jewels.”

I whistled to myself. No wonder people had been searching
for the diamonds. Keeping an impassive face, I replied, “Any
luck?”

Emerente shook her head, her bouffant hairdo bobbing back
and forth. “No. Not counting those in Alexandria.”

Brasseaux nodded to my empty coffee cup. “We got more.”

I shook my head. “You mentioned they didn’t catch the Judice boys until later. They didn’t go to prison with Theriot?”

The old editor rolled his eyes. “It be several years before
Lacoutrue learn the Judice boys was with Theriot.”

“Just before the statute of limitations run out,” Emerente said,
punctuating her remark with a firm shake of her head.

Brasseaux grimaced at the interruption. “That be right.”

Emerente continued, “Thibodeaux, he tell the sheriff. That’s
how Lacoutrue know.”

Brasseaux glared at her. “You want to tell this story?”

She glared back.

“All right, then,” the old man continued. “By then Theriot was
dead, but the boys was sent to prison. That be about seven or
eight years ago. Donat, he die there. C. K., he was a mean one.
Tried to break out and got another ten years”

“He still there?”

Emerente poured another cup of coffee. “He be killed too, three
years ago. Riot.” She shook her head. “That be terrible place.”

I glanced down at my notes. “That’s interesting. Now, this
Guzik-what can you tell me about him?”

Emerente- shrugged. “That one, he keep to himself.”

Louis nodded in agreement.

Patting the back of her hairdo, the Bayou’s ace reporter continued, “When Guzik not at the nightclub, he be at his place on
the bayou. Me, I never see him in Priouxville, not once in all
that time.” She looked around at her editor. “How long that be?
Five or six years?”

Brasseaux grunted. “About that. He keep mighty close to
himself. I hear the boys at the electric company say they never
see no one at the house” He paused and shivered.

Emerente jumped back in. “Then one morning, the mailman,
that be Prosper Esteve, he find Guzik floating under the bridge
over Alligator Bayou. He managed to throw a rope over the body
and drag it to shore”

Brasseaux clucked his tongue. “What be left of it.” He leaped
to his feet and wagged a wrinkled finger. “Me, I get you something.” He rummaged through a file cabinet and moments later
returned with a page of news copy. He handed it to me. “This
tell you about Guzik,” he said, pointing to the byline. “Emerente, she write this two days after his body, it be found. Good
story,” he added, winking at her.

She beamed.

I remained with the two chatterboxes another thirty minutes,
managing to glean a few pieces of information that might prove
to be stepping stones-to what, I wasn’t sure.

Big Tim Strollo had died of a heart attack; Ramsey had moved
out after suffering financial losses; Theriot died in prison, and his partner, Oscar Mouton, continued running Bayou Country
Motors; and the only remaining members of the Prioux family were in their nineties and lived at Priouxville Glen Care
Center.

As I rose to leave, Brasseaux said, “I suppose you already met
old Rouly out your way, huh?”

I laughed. “Yeah.”

“That one, he be quite a character.”

“I could tell. He even told me about one of your citizens,
L. Q. Benoit, who was found dead. Claimed it was a loupgarou.” I expected a smile from them, but both grew serious.

Emerente spoke up. “Me, I don’t believe all that much in such
stories, but there be two more what be killed like Benoit.”

My own smile faded. “What’s that?”

Brasseaux ran his wrinkled fingers through his full head of
white hair. “Oui, Charley Primeaux and Dudley Vitale. They
be found dead. Beat to death like Benoit.”

A hint of fear glittered in Emerente’s eyes. “There be tracks of
the horse by them. Me, I know for sure they be by Dudley. I see
them”

The old editor knit his brow. “Naturally, we all know there be
no such thing as loup-garou, but the sheriff, he say the autopsies
show they was beat to death. By a horse.”

Emerente arched a pencil-darkened eyebrow. “You think
what you want. Like I say, I see them tracks by Dudley, but then,”
she added, a hint of Old Country superstition in her voice, “the
tracks, they disappear.”

I frowned. “What do you mean, `disappear’?”

She held up her arms in exclamation. “Disappear, vanish, go
away” She explained, “Dudley, that one, he was found beside
the dirt road to his shack. The tracks, they was all around him,
and then they was no more. I look for them, but they be gone”
She pointed to a spot on the floor. “They go down the road, and
then,” she said, pointing to another spot, “they not there. Only
footprints made by a boot, the boot of that one who become the
loup-garou.” She jumped to her feet. “I show you” She rummaged
through a file cabinet.

Brasseaux snorted and rolled his eyes. “Next thing that one
be saying is that it was all voodoo. Marie Laveau reborn.”

Emerente glanced over her shoulder, her eyes shooting daggers at him. “You don’t know nothing, you foolish old man. Just
you wait. Ah, here it be.” She opened a folder and handed me
two pictures. “This be what I talking about.”

The first 8 x 10 glossy showed a series of horse tracks leading
from a body in a ditch and ending abruptly in the middle of the
dusty road, where a set of human footprints took over. The second was a close-up of one of the tracks.

I glanced at the second one and then looked again, realizing
the one leg of the horseshoe’s U was bent outward a couple of
degrees.

She jabbed a finger at the first glossy and glared at Brasseaux.
“Now, how you explain that, old man?”

Brasseaux just snorted. “Simple. The passing cars, they wipe
the tracks out.” He shook his shaggy head of white hair. “There
be nothing supernatural about that.”

She snorted. “You ain’t worth talking to, you know?”

I pushed to my feet, figuring I’d leave before the two came to
blows. “I appreciate the information.”

She smiled at me. “Come back anytime. We open seven days
a week. After church on Sundays.”

Out in the pickup, I glanced at my notes, concentrating on
the diamonds. Any of the names on my list could have discovered them. Unfortunately, three of them were dead. Shaking
my head, I slipped the note cards into my shirt pocket and
started the engine. I couldn’t question dead men, but I could
question those who knew them.

The sun baked down from directly overhead when I pulled
under the carport and parked beside the Cadillac. I didn’t even
want to think about how the heat would have intensified the
smell of clove.

I sighed with relief when I saw that the windows were thrown
wide open. I rolled my eyes, knowing my ex-wife was waiting
for an explanation-one that I still hadn’t managed to fabricate.

I opened the storm door and winced as the odor of clove hit
me. I called out, “Diane! It’s me, Tony”

“Back here,” she replied from the kitchen.

I looked past the snack bar but failed to see her. Then she
poked her head from behind the open refrigerator door. “I was
going to make a sandwich. Want one?”

“Sure,” I replied.

Closing the door, she placed dressings and lunch meat on the
table. She hadn’t changed clothes from the day before. “What
happened last night? The house reeks of clove.” She crossed the
kitchen and opened the breadbox. “Huh?”

Up to that second, I had no answer, and then a response just
rolled off my lying lips. I touched a finger to my jaw. “I had a
toothache. I had a bottle of clove oil, but I dropped it, and it
broke. Sorry.”

She smiled and slid in at the snack bar. “Accidents happen.
Fix your sandwich however you want it,” she added, pointing to
the ingredients on the table.

We made idle chitchat over a light lunch, after which she announced that she planned to take a nap.

That was fine with me. I had work to do on my laptop, and I
wasn’t any too keen about anyone looking over my shoulder.
Later that day after I dropped her off at the hospital, I planned
to pay a visit to the Sparkle Paradise. Guzik was dead, but
maybe I could learn a little about him. He had bought the house
from Big Tim Strollo, an influential mobster. Maybe I was
grasping at straws, but at the time, I had nothing better to
grasp.

All I needed was to come up with an enticing offer so
the new owners of the Sparkle might consider loosening their
tongues.

Booting up, I went online using my mobile broadband network card and contacted Eddie Dyson, my savior more than
once.

At one time, Eddie was known as Austin’s resident stool pigeon. Since then, he had become a computer whiz and wildly
successful entrepreneur.

Instead of sleazy bars, back alleys, and dirty money, he’d
found his niche for snitching in the bright glow of computers
and the comforting security of credit cards. Any information I
couldn’t find, he could. Personally, I figured he had hacked
into some kind of national database. What kind, I had no idea,
but he always came up with information, information that
suggested his total disregard of the principles of the 1974 Privacy Act.

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 just 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 Albanian leks or Angolan new kwanza,
I’d load up a couple dozen bushels and send them to him.

He seldom failed me. That’s why I didn’t mind his prices,
which bordered on the obscene.

In my e-mail, I requested information on the jewel heist as
well as on each of the previous owners of the house. I wasn’t
sure if there were more that I needed or not. When I got that
information, I’d see where I stood. As an afterthought, I asked
for the cell mates of L. Q. Benoit, as well as those of Al Theriot
and his two accomplices, C. K. and Donat Judice.

After sending the message, I went to the New Orleans Picayune archives, where I read about the robbery. There was not all
that much to it. Several months later, an article covering Theriot’s
arrest, trial, and sentencing came out, and, finally, one last article covering Theriot’s death in prison.

Continuing my search, I gathered material regarding Big
Tim Strollo. As far as the media went, he was clean in regard to
the heist. According to his nephew, Anthony O’Donnell, Strollo
financed the casino, a financial undertaking of Herculean proportions, well into the multi-millions back in the late nineties,
millions that could have come from the heist.

I Googled Jimmy Ramsey, the only former owner said to be still
alive, and learned that upon his retirement from the Texas school system, he’d moved to Louisiana, where he’d leased a cabin on
Ghost Bayou. According to the Priouxville Bayou, he’d then
bought the house from Theriot a few months before the jewel
heist.

Another article reported he had been too free with school
money and, at the age of sixty-one, took his retirement. That
would put him in his mid-seventies now. Further searching came
up with two Jimmy Ramseys in New Orleans, both seventy-four.

I promptly dialed the first number under the pretext of a boyhood chum searching for an elementary pal in New Orleans. Luck
was with me, for the first Ramsey professed to having lived in
New Orleans for only the last six years.

The second Ramsey had lived in New Orleans all his life.

Further research on Ramsey number one told me he owned a
multistory haunted house in the middle of the French Quarter
and provided guided tours through it. I leaned back and studied
the screen. Real estate in New Orleans wasn’t cheap, not even
after Hurricane Katrina. A twenty-by-forty apartment still went
for up to half a million.

Made me wonder what a three-story would cost. Eight million?
Or more?

There wasn’t much on Theriot, so I figured on paying his
former partner, Oscar Mouton, a visit at Bayou Country Motors. The last couple of members of the Prioux family were in a
nursing facility. The skeptic in me wondered just how they paid
for it.