Rumble on the Bayou (11 page)

You know everyone in town, right?"

"'Course. Been here all my life. Served damn near everyone a beer at some time or another. Except some of the old spinster ladies. Big church people, you know."

Richard nodded. Strange as the people may seem, it was the Bible Belt. "I don't suppose you'd want to tell me who owns the businesses in town. You know, where the money in Gator Bait comes from?"

Pete studied Richard for a moment. "The major players. That's what you're looking for, right?"

Richard blinked at the phrase.

"Hey, we got television here. I'm a big fan of those cop shows. Investigators, DAs, forensics, you name it, I'll watch it." Pete picked up a serving tray and began to wipe it down with a clean cloth, clearly deep in thought.

"Well, we can start with Buster Comeaux. He owns the shrimp house. Employs probably eighty percent of Gator Bait, either by actual employees or buying shrimp from the locals. Without the shrimp house, there'd be no Gator Bait."

Richard nodded. It was the typical dynamic of a small town. One main source of employment keeping the entire place afloat. Richard hoped for all their sakes the price of shrimp stayed up and the shrimp stuck around town. "What's Buster like?" Richard asked.

"He's great. One of the best men around. Gives Dorie a bit of a problem by not fixing his traps properly at the shrimp house. Gators get in and Dorie has to get them out or pay Curtis to do it. She keeps threatening to bill him. Wouldn't surprise me if she did over this last time." Pete leaned back against the register, paused for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah, all in all, I'd say Buster was a great man."

Pete rubbed on the tray again, apparently lost in thought. A minute later, he picked up his explanation. “About thirty years ago or so, best I can remember, Gator Bait ran into a big pinch. Shrimp weren't running well, and the market had dropped way off. Even though he was losing money and giving a whole lot of his inventory away, Buster never turned down a sale and never let a single employee go."

"How'd he manage that?"

Pete shrugged. "Don't rightly know. But Buster came from one of the better families in Gator Bait. He probably had a little put back from his parents. Plus, I'm sure he'd made a healthy profit from all the years before when shrimp was running better. I just know that Gator Bait stayed afloat because Buster Comeaux didn't close the doors. And for that, I am grateful. Hell, he's going on seventy now and still works every day."

Richard nodded. "And this Curtis who helps Dorie with the alligators-who's he?"

Pete smiled. "Why, Curtis is the stuff bayou legends are made of. He has a way with those creatures that you wouldn't believe unless you saw it, so I'm not even going to try and explain. You stick around long enough and you'll get a chance to see Curtis in action. I tell you, it's a sight to behold."

"So he's a specialist?" Richard asked, still a bit confused over what services Curtis provided.

Pete laughed. "Yeah, I guess you could say that. He's an extraction specialist. The gators get in and Curtis gets them out. He's the best at his job. Not even Dorie can match him."

"Does Curtis own a business here in Gator Bait?"

"Lord, no. Curtis is just a good ole boy with an incredible talent. I dare say he couldn't even balance a checkbook, much less run a business."

Richard nodded. "What about the grocery store? Who owns that?"

"Sammy Breaux. Sammy Breaux, the third, I guess I ought to say. Grocery store's been in the family for as long as Gator Bait's been around. Another good man, Sammy. Always extends credit to people who are running a little short on luck. Probably takes the stiff on most of it, but it hasn't stopped him from doing it."

"What about the motel and the boat shop?"

"Hell, you're staying at the motel, aren't you? I figured you'd already met Stella."

Richard frowned, trying to match a person with the name. "You mean the little gray-haired lady?" It was the only woman he could remember in the motel except housekeeping and Ms. Congeniality at the front desk.

Pete snorted. "Little gray-haired lady, my ass. If you was to arm wrestle, I'd put my money on Stella. Her dad was one of the founding residents of Gator Bait. He did boat repair out of his house, but stayed too drunk to ever make any real money off it. Stella took notes and did a much better job than her dad."

"So she owns the boat shop," Richard mused. "then why is she at the motel? Did I miss that part?"

Pete shook his head. "Stella knows how to run a business. The boat shop makes money hand over fist. Only sale or repair in town and she doesn't jack the prices up over the cities. She has a captive audience. When more people started coming down here to fish, Stella built the motel next to the boat shop. She rents boats out, too, you know?"

"No, I didn't know that. I guess she's a pretty sharp businesswoman."

"Got that right. Her and Jenny. Jenny's been cooking for residents of Gator Bait since elementary school bake sales. When her momma got sick and they needed help caring for her, Jenny opened the cafe. She doesn't have much free time, but her momma has a full-time nurse that lives with 'em."

Richard finished his bottle of beer and put it back on the counter. Pete picked up the bottle and dropped it in a wastebasket behind the bar. Without even asking, he popped the top on another bottle and passed it to Richard.

“
Yeah," Pete said, rubbing his chin again. "Seems the women in this town have been the ones to really branch out. Change things for the better, you know? Stella, Jenny and Dorie, of course. Gator Bait wouldn't be the way it is today without those three." Pete nodded to Richard and moved to the other side of the bar to serve people who'd just arrived.

Richard took a drink of beer and stared at the glass wall behind the bar. Three women, four men and an entire town beholden to them. Most likely, one of them was a felon.

But which one?

***

Dorie sat at the kitchen table on her boat, staring at the television on the bedroom wall but not hearing a word of the dribble coming out of it. The microwave dinner in front of her cooled rapidly, but she wasn't concerned about food at the moment. She was concerned about Shawn Roland. And more importantly, who Roland was working with in Gator Bait just in case Richard was right and the deal had already been made.

She tapped one nail on the table and considered the possibilities. They weren't good. The local shrimpers and fishermen weren't smart enough to hide this sort of operation from her, so they were out. Besides, they had no way to launder drug money-not the size Richard was talking about anyway. Someone else might pay them to haul the product around, but they weren't making the initial deals, that was for sure. Jenny was out. Dorie picked up her beer and took a drink. Wasn't she?

She dropped her beer back to the table and shook her head in disgust. Of course she was, but what about the others? This is why she had never wanted to work in Gator Bait. The odds were against something of this magnitude happening, but Dorie knew that when and if it did, she'd have to consider her friends and family suspects. At least in a big city, most people were strangers. It was easier to see things clearly and when the time came, not difficult at all to take people down.

But this was different. This was her town. This was her family. And one of them might be a criminal. Dorie slumped down on the bench, the food and beer completely forgotten, and cursed the day she ran the print that brought Richard Starke into her town.

C
HAPTER SIX

After a restless night, Dorie planned to go into the office the next morning and attack locating Richard's bad guy with a new resolve. More than anything, she wanted Roland captured and Richard out of her town before everything fell apart in front of her. Unfortunately, the state had other ideas and sent a mass of paperwork they wanted back the same day.

So she put Richard to work looking at maps of the bayous and he had thankfully remained in studied silence the entire time. It took her most of the morning to process the forms when she realized she couldn't complete her obligations without a trip to one section of the game preserve for photos.

Aggravated with the further delay, she told Richard in a clipped voice that whatever he had planned would have to wait until afternoon and started out the door. Richard, in an apparent fit of insanity, followed her out and asked to go along, leaving Joe standing in the front office window staring at them and shaking his head.

Dorie drove in silence, the night's sleep doing little to improve her mood. In fact, if it was possible, she felt worse than ever. At least Richard was wisely keeping his mouth shut for a change, making her wonder why he'd bothered to come along at all. Not that she was complaining. She was in no mood to discuss the conclusions she'd come to last night after her third beer.

She drove down a logging trail to a posted section of the preserve and took a couple of photos the state required, then jumped back in her jeep and headed back to town, eager to get started on the search for Roland. They were a few miles from the sheriff’s office when her cell phone rang. It was Joe.

"I got a call from Mrs. Paulie," he said. She says there's a grill going at Boudreaux's, and they are not grilling burgers. Do you want to check it out?"

Dorie clenched her teeth. "Don't have a choice. You can't arrest him anyway if he's doing what I think he's doing, and if he is, I'm going to use him for crab bait."

“
Problems in paradise?" Richard asked as she closed the phone.

"A small one," she said as she wheeled the jeep around in the opposite direction. "And one easily solved. But I'm afraid we'll have to put off your investigation for a little bit longer. I have to go arrest an idiot."

Richard grinned. "An idiot, huh? This should be interesting. I haven't seen one of those around here yet."

Dorie's scowl turned to a look of mild appreciation. "Good one, Dick. You're coming right along on this cynicism thing. Maybe one day you can give the real professionals, like me, a run for their money."

The conversation stopped short as Dorie turned off the paved road and onto an old logging trail that hadn't been used in some time. The jeep bounced through the holes and gaps in the broken planks that made up the low-lying parts of the trail. Dorie glanced over at Richard, who braced himself with the door and the roll bar of the jeep, and smiled.

She bet this wasn't what he'd expected when he came looking for his bad guy. Richard Starke was getting a grade-A lesson in rednecks and good ole boys. He thought only the big city had issues. She smiled. A city boy like Richard wouldn't survive a weekend here alone.

Dorie finally ended the agony by cutting left, directly into the marsh. She stopped the jeep in front of a dilapidated old cabin where three men sat outside in lawn chairs in front of a huge grill, the remnants of a massive beer-drinking party surrounding them. Richard took one look at the grill and turned to Dorie in surprise. There was no mistaking the twelve-foot shape rotating on the massive spit. He noticed her flushed face and was sure it wasn't with excitement. No, Dorie Berenger was mad, with a capital M.

She got out of the jeep, slammed the door, and stomped toward the three men in front of the grill, who at least had the good common sense to look a little afraid. "Clint Boudreaux, how many times have we been through this?" she said to the man sitting closest to the grill. "I told you I had given you my last warning. This time you are going to pay, and you are going to pay dearly."

Clint raised his hands in protest. "Now, Dorie, you know I would never kill a gator out of season unless it was in self-defense."

She gave him a skeptical look. "Uh-huh, and what exactly were you doing that required defending yourself from an alligator?"

Clint tried the wide-eyed innocent look. He didn't quite make it. "I was just watching TV. Honest. And she came busting right through the door. See?" He pointed to a mass of splintered wood and netting next to the cabin. "I'm gonna have to get a new screen door. I'm the victim here, I swear."

Richard stared at the man and frowned. He wasn't sure exactly what was going on here, but he was positive Clint Boudreaux was no more a victim than any other repeat offender. He glanced at Dorie to gauge her reaction and didn't like what he saw. Her face was tense with anger, lips drawn tightly across her teeth. Her eyes were narrow and her hand hovered over her holster. For just a moment, Richard was pretty sure she would shoot the man.

"Where are they?" she finally asked, the words coming through clenched teeth, one short syllable at a time.

Clint held up both his hands in a surrender pose. "Now, Dorie, you know I wouldn't do anything like that-"