Baton Rouge Bingo (5 page)

Now I was really suspicious. “Quality time”
almost
always
meant doing something I didn’t want to, and without fail it turned out to be something terribly unpleasant.

But truth be told, I didn’t have anything to do until it was time to head over to the arena.

And I
hadn’t
spent any time with Mom alone in a while. “Okay, I’m up for whatever. Let me get cleaned up—just a quick shower.”

Less than fifteen minutes later, we were in her car flying down I-10 heading back in the direction of New Orleans.

“Where are we going?” I asked for probably the thousandth time since we’d gotten into her car. “I’m in the car, Mom, so it’s not like I can change my mind.”

“I have a hunch, okay?” She glanced over at me and back to the road as she swerved into a lane and around a slow-moving Cadillac. “The Porteries had a cabin on the north shore, just outside of Rouen, in the Manchac Swamp near Lake Maurepas. Her father and his buddies used to use it for hunting and fishing. If Veronica was behind the tiger-napping, she had to have a place to take the tiger, right? And it had to be somewhere relatively close but out of the way. What’s more out of the way than the Manchac Swamp?”

She had a point, I had to give her that. “But, Mom, the swamp is almost all the way back to New Orleans.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “It’s an hour drive, at most. We’re just going to head out there, take a look around, and head back, okay?” She patted my leg. “It makes sense, though, doesn’t it? The tiger was taken on a back road—a back road that might have been on the way to Rouen. No one has seen Mike since he was kidnapped. How is that possible? How do you hide a tiger? Wouldn’t it make sense for Veronica and her goons to take him to the old hunting cabin?” She moved over into the left lane. “It’s easier to get there from I-12, if I remember correctly. We take the Pumpkin Center exit, and take 22…” She wondered for a moment. “I think I can remember where the turn into the swamp is…I just know it’s easier from I-12 than from 55.” She laughed. “I always thought her father’s devotion to hunting had something to do with why Veronica became such an animal rights activist.” She grinned at me. “Kind of like how you’re such a determined meat eater because your dad and I are vegetarians.”

“That’s not why—most people eat meat,” I protested. “And once you’ve had bacon—well, there’s no turning back.” When we were kids, both sets of grandparents were horrified that Mom and Dad were raising their kids as vegetarians, so they fed us meat at every opportunity.

I swear to God if I never eat tofu again it will be too soon.

“I do miss bacon,” Mom replied in a dreamy voice. “Sometimes I dream about it.”

“You don’t
have
to be a vegetarian, Mom.”

“I know you find it hard to believe, but your father and I actually
like
tofu.” She winked at me. “But every once in a while, I slip down to the Rouse’s and buy some bacon, okay? And if you tell anyone I said that I’ll call you a liar.” She shuddered. “I don’t even want to think about how awful your brother would be if he knew.”

She veered off to the left—cutting off an enormous pickup truck on jacked-up tires that blared its horn at her—and got onto I-12. She reached down and turned up her satellite radio, which she had set on a classic rock station. I rolled my eyes as we hurtled along I-12, through the towering pine trees lining both sides of the highway. She flipped open the ashtray and pulled out a half-smoked joint.

“You are
not
going to get stoned and drive,” I said, grabbing it out of her hand. “Seriously, Mom. Do you want to get arrested again?” I dropped it into my shirt pocket. “We can smoke it when we get back to Baton Rouge.” I leaned back into my seat as she passed another eighteen-wheeler like it was standing still. “So, tell me about Veronica Porterie.”

“I’ve pretty much told you everything already.”

“Sure you have.” I smirked at her. “Do you really expect me to believe you haven’t spoken to her since that security guard was killed? I know Storm didn’t believe it, either.”

“You’re too smart for your own good,” she snapped. “Yes, I’ve spoken to her from time to time. I’ve even given her money sometimes, when she needed it.” She sighed. “The security guard was an accident—they thought the lab would be empty. They didn’t want anyone to die. It was an accident, Scotty. I believe her. Veronica might be a little unhinged when it comes to animals, but she’s not a killer.” She bit her lower lip. “I
have
to believe that.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. We sped along in silence for a while. We passed cars and exits at a pretty fast clip while the stereo blared Foreigner’s “Cold As Ice,” followed by “Carry On Wayward Son” by Kansas. Mom slowed down—not enough for my comfort level—to take the exit marked P
UMPKIN
C
ENTER
with B
APTIST
below it. She didn’t slow down even as we flew down the off-ramp, even though there was a stop sign clearly visible at the bottom of the ramp. She slammed on the brakes, throwing me forward—if not for my seat belt I probably would have gone through the windshield.

I come by my bad driving habits naturally. It’s clearly in my DNA.

“Drama queen,” Mom said, turning right and flooring it to pick up speed as we passed a gas station and a building with a sign that—and I am not making this up—read F
ORMAL
W
EAR AND
B
AIT
.

“Now, that’s a reality show just waiting to happen,” I commented.

“Don’t give them any ideas.” Mom rolled her eyes as the car picked up even more speed. “It’s bad enough they’re doing one of those
Grande Dames
shows in New Orleans.”

I chose not to tell her Frank, Colin, and I watched the
Grande Dames
shows religiously and were looking forward to the New Orleans version like kids waiting for Christmas. The road we were on dead-ended at State Road 22, and Mom turned left, speeding up again as we passed through a more residential area. I glanced at my watch—it wasn’t quite noon yet. There was still plenty of time for us to get back. The odds that Mike the Tiger was at this old hunting cabin were slim—hell, for that matter, the cabin itself might not even be there anymore. Mom hadn’t been out there herself since she was a teenager—and that was a lot longer ago than she wanted to think about. Even in a worst-case scenario, I didn’t have to be there for the first matches—I didn’t have to be there until Frank got into the ring—but the truth was I’d been getting into the matches somewhat over the years as Frank’s star rose.

To be honest, I had thought it was kind of silly that Frank had wanted to become a professional wrestler. I would never say that to him, of course—I’m not that big a dick. But I was a wrestler in high school and had always seen the professional style to be rather silly and cartoonish. But it took all of his courage to tell me he wanted to try it. It was in the days after the storm when the city lay in ruins and we didn’t know if New Orleans was going to rebound from the horror. I don’t know how long it took him to drum up the courage to bring it up, and he was so absolutely adorable when he told me—I didn’t have the heart to tease him or say it was ridiculous. He got accepted into a top training school in the Midwest and was gone for about two months.

And when he started e-mailing me photos of him in the outfits—well, he looked fucking smoking hot in the trunks, knee pads, and the boots.

Porn star hot.

And who knew Frank, so quiet and reserved, was charismatic enough to win the fans over and rock the interviews where he threatened maiming mayhem for his next opponent?

She slowed and made a right turn on a dirt road.

“How much farther is this place?” I asked. “Are you sure it’s still accessible?” Dirt roads leading into swamps didn’t exactly fill me with confidence. “We’re not going to get stuck out here?”

“Relax already.” Mom waved her hand dismissively. “We’ll be back in plenty of time. I don’t want to miss it, either. Dad’s taping the pay-per-view, too.” Mom and Dad were two of Frank’s biggest fans, taping every broadcast. They’d even hung a signed poster of him in trunks and wearing his title belt in their tobacco shop, the Devil’s Weed.

“If you say so,” I grumbled. Mom was not the best when it came to time management, so I knew I was going to have to keep an eye on the clock and nudge her along.

About twenty minutes later we were definitely getting into the swampy area nearer the lake. The road narrowed until there was barely room for our car. Less than a foot from the side of the road on either side was murky water and marsh grasses. Spanish moss hung from the huge limbs of massive live oaks. She was driving slower now. I couldn’t get over how silent it was out there. Finally, she turned into a dirt driveway with a rusted metal mailbox on the side of the road. The door hung open, and the little plastic red flag was hanging at a weird angle alongside. Mom didn’t speed up, and dust rose behind us in our wake. I saw an alligator’s head in the water alongside the road and shivered a bit. I’ve never been a fan of swamps, and that long-ago Southern Decadence weekend when I first met Frank, I’d been kidnapped by some very bad guys and taken out into a swamp to their camp. I’d had nightmares about that experience for quite a while afterward. Even though it had been eight years, I still got squeamish around swamps.

Eventually, though, the driveway turned back toward I-12, and the swamp was left behind a bit as we moved into a thick pine forest. Everything was so silent that the tires sounded really loud crunching on the dirt beneath us. “This is their hunting place?” I said, barely above a whisper.

Mom nodded. “We used to come out here a lot when we were in high school, you know, to drink and get laid and all the stuff teenagers do.”

“You don’t really think she brought Mike here, do you?” It seemed a little too pat to me. “I mean, wouldn’t this be the first place the cops would look? She doesn’t strike me as the type who’d make it this easy for the cops.”

“I told you it was just a hunch, Scotty.” She shook her head. “It certainly isn’t hurting us any to check it out. And you have to admit, if you were going to kidnap a tiger—this would be the perfect place to hide him, isn’t it?”

We went around another turn in the driveway, and a small cabin came into view. There was a beat-up, rusted Chevrolet Bel Air parked next to the little building. A big propane tank stook just a few yards away from the house. The cabin, raised about four feet from the ground, had a screened-in front porch.

Mom nodded. “Someone’s here.” She grinned at me. “I
told
you.”

“Maybe we should just get out of here,” I replied, still whispering. “I don’t have a good feeling about this, Mom. Really, let’s just turn around and get out of here.”

Mom pulled up right behind the Chevrolet with its Idaho plates and turned the engine off. “We’ve come all this way—we might as well see who’s here.” She unbuckled her seat belt and gave me a look. “You can stay here in the car if you’re afraid.”

I hate it when she does that.

With a sigh I removed my seat belt and opened the car door. I stood up and stretched, my vertebrae popping as I arched my back. I walked over to the Chevrolet and looked through the dirty windows into the backseat. It was filled with empty food containers and empty water bottles. The front seat was just as bad, and the dashboard was covered in dust. The front windows were open a slight bit, and I caught a whiff of a musty smell from inside. The Chevrolet had been sitting there for a long time, I was willing to bet. The windshield was spiderwebbed with cracks, and the shocks on the left side were shot—it was listing a bit. “This car’s been here a while,” I said. “I don’t think it’s been driven in a really long time.”

“Someone’s been here, though,” Mom insisted, pointing down into the dirt. “See those tire marks?”

I looked where she was pointing and had to admit she was right. There was also an oil spot in the dirt. “Maybe we should call the parish police…” My voice trailed off as Mom walked up to the cabin and climbed the sagging wooden steps to the porch. She opened the screen door and let out a bloodcurdling scream.

My heart pounding, I ran up to see what was wrong.

A woman’s body was lying facedown on the porch, a dried puddle of blood spread out beneath her head. Flies were buzzing around, and I gagged a bit from the smell.

“It’s Veronica!” Mom gasped the words out, and her right hand clutched my arm.

Crazily, I realized the chances of making it to Frank’s match just got slimmer.

It was after two in the morning when Mom and I finally got back to Baton Rouge.

Frank was waiting up for us in the living room, watching
Double Indemnity
on TMC, when I unlocked the door and we walked in. He immediately muted the television and jumped to his feet. He was wearing a tight white tank top over black sweatpants with the word
SAINTS
written up the side of one leg in gold lettering. The depth of his worry was written all over his face. “Are you both all right?” he asked.

I’ve never loved him more than I did in that moment.

The drive back had been worse than a nightmare. Mom was far too upset to be trusted to drive, so there was no choice—I had to do it, and I am a white-knuckle driver under the best of circumstances. Fortunately, at that hour there wasn’t much traffic for me to deal with, other than speeding eighteen-wheelers trying to run me off the road. But I was so physically and mentally fatigued that it took what little energy I had left to stay focused on driving. I’d drunk so much awful sheriff’s office coffee that falling asleep wasn’t a concern. I’d called Storm to tell him what was going on when it became clear we weren’t getting out of the Tangipahoa sheriff’s office to get to Maravich Center on time for Frank’s match. All I could do was hope Frank wouldn’t notice we weren’t out in the audience and wonder where we were until it was all over.

The last thing I wanted was to distract him before his big match, which was why I called Storm instead. Of course, Storm had wanted to jump in his car and rush over to Rouen to rescue us, but I’d told him not to bother. We hadn’t done anything wrong, so I figured we didn’t need a lawyer present.

I sagged in relief as Frank gave me a big hug and squeezed me until I could barely breathe. I’d been so terrified he’d be mad at me, and he had every right to be mad. I pressed my face against his strong chest and listened to his heartbeat for a moment. I could have stayed there forever—it felt so nice and comforting there in his arms—but he let go of me after kissing the top of my head and gave Mom a big hug. As he hugged her, he said, “Mom, you look like you could use a drink. What can I get you?”

“Bourbon. No water, just ice,” she said, her voice still shaky. He helped her over to the couch and she sank down onto it with a heavy sigh.

I bit my lower lip. I was more than a little worried about her, to be honest. Usually, nothing brings out the fire in her soul more than dealing with the police. I’d never seen her like this before—so drained and lifeless, with no spirit or fire in her eyes. The deputies hadn’t let us ride together to the station, putting us into separate cruisers, and another deputy drove Mom’s car. When the Tangipahoa Parish sheriff’s office finished with us and had let us go, Mom seemed completely out of it as we walked out to the car. The only thing she’d said was when she told me she didn’t trust herself to drive. This worried me, given my reputation in the family as a lousy driver. No one ever let me drive if they could possibly help it.

She hadn’t spoken in the car during the drive either. She just closed her eyes and rested her head on the passenger window. I kept glancing over at her to make sure she was okay. She seemed paler than usual.

It was the first time she’d seemed her age to me. Her youthful spark was gone.

But to be fair, it
had
been a rough day. Mom had never come across a dead body before, let alone the corpse of a childhood friend, and as the car hurtled through the dark Louisiana night, I’d wondered if she was going to be all right.

I’d been through an emotional wringer myself since we opened the door to the cabin’s screened-in porch and saw the body lying there.

It seemed like we stood there forever, like time had somehow come to a stop. We stood there, unable to move, just staring at the body. Neither one of us said anything. There was no sound other than the humming of cicadas and an occasional splash from the bayou directly behind the cabin.

The woman had been shot in the back, and I could see at least two bullet holes in her red-and-black sleeveless flannel blouse. She had a flip-flop on her right foot, but her left foot was bare. The other flip-flop was a few feet from where she lay. The force of the bullet had probably carried her forward a few feet before she’d gone down face-first on the warped wood. Her gray shoulder-length hair was fanned out around her head. Bluish-green bottle flies were circling her body, landing on her or in the sticky puddle of blood spreading around her torso before taking flight again. The air was thick with humidity, so it would probably take the blood longer to dry. I calculated she’d been dead somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four hours. She was wearing jeans shorts and hadn’t shaved her legs in a while.

“Is it Veronica, Mom?” I asked, finally breaking the silence.

Mom moved beside me. I heard the screen door slam shut behind her and then I heard her throwing up in the yard.

I didn’t know what to do—other than the standard
don’t touch anything, it’s a crime scene.

I took a deep breath of the thick, fetid air.
Stay in control, Scotty, don’t get sick yourself
,
I thought, fighting against the gorge rising in my stomach. I took another deep breath and focused.
Be professional, Scotty, it’s just another case. What do you see?

I opened my eyes and switched into investigator mode, making mental notes.

I could tell she’d been trying to escape her killer—that was apparent from the position of the body. She’d almost managed to reach the corner where the screen porch turned at a ninety-degree angle to continue around the side of the cabin when she’d been shot. The screen door hadn’t been latched, and I turned my head to look out at the dirt driveway through the screen. There were any number of tire tracks out there in the dirt—I’d have to leave all of that to the cops.

It stood to reason that someone had driven up, I realized. She’d probably been inside the cabin, waiting for someone. A car had pulled in, and she’d come outside to see who it was. The killer had come onto the porch—so it was most likely someone she knew. She hadn’t been nervous at first—but then the killer had pulled a gun and she’d tried to get away. I narrowed my eyes, turning around and taking it all in.
Why didn’t she try to get into the house? Wouldn’t that have made the most sense? Why did she try to run around to the side porch?

I stepped toward the front door of the cabin. It was slightly ajar, and I could feel cold air coming through the crack. I was probably right—she’d probably come outside when she heard the car pull up. She hadn’t shut the door all the way—it looked like the wood of the door and its frame had been swollen by humidity so many times they both were a little warped, so the door had to be slammed in order to shut. I couldn’t see anything through the small opening—it was dark inside. I resisted the temptation to go in and poke around—the cops wouldn’t appreciate that—so I turned my attention back to the crime scene itself.

The porch itself needed painting, as did the cabin, and the screens had rusted. The wooden planks, once painted a pale blue, were rotted through in places and warped in others. There were some solid metal chairs, the kind that sit on metal pipes and can rock a little, placed at regular intervals. They too had rusted in the heavy swamp air over the years, and looked like they hadn’t been moved since they were put there—sometime during the Eisenhower administration, if not earlier.

I got out my phone. Trying to move as little as possible, I took pictures of everything I could see on the porch from every conceivable angle before pushing the screen door open with my foot and walking down the steps.

Mom was still bent over, her hands on her knees. The remnants of her breakfast lay in the tall grass in front of her.

“You okay, Mom?” I said softly, putting my hand on her lower back.

She straightened up and nodded. She turned and wiped her mouth with her left forearm. She gave me a weak smile. She still looked pale and clammy, her eyes bloodshot and watery. “I can’t swear to it without taking a better look, but I hope you don’t mind if I don’t take another look, okay?” She breathed in deeply. “I’m pretty sure that’s Veronica, though.” She shook her head and gave me a pleading look. “Damn. I don’t suppose we can just get in the car and just head back to Storm’s and pretend we were never here?”

“I wish we could do that, believe me.” I put my arm around her shoulders and gave her a comforting squeeze. “But someone may have seen us come out here, and if we don’t call the cops, they’ll want to know why. It won’t look good.”

“We could say we never went up to the porch at all.”

I looked at her. This wasn’t like Mom. “Is there something you aren’t telling me, Mom?” I asked. She didn’t answer, and I kept looking at her. Then it dawned on me. “You knew she was here, didn’t you?”

She bit her lower lip and nodded. “Yeah, I knew she was staying out here.” She took another deep breath. “Damn, I’ve got a nasty taste in my mouth.” She looked back toward the cabin. “You don’t think the cops’ll care if I rinse my mouth out with that hose, do you?”

“They’ll probably consider the whole place a crime scene, Mom.” I sighed. “But go ahead.”
And then you’re going to answer me some questions.

I watched her walk over to the side of the cabin and turn the spigot on the side of the building. She picked up the hose and rinsed her mouth out.

I checked my phone. I didn’t have much of a signal, but I figured I couldn’t just call 911 out here. I pulled up my web browser and did a search for the Tangipahoa Parish sheriff’s office.

I didn’t know whose jurisdiction this would fall under—state or parish or the town of Ponchatoula, but figured calling the parish sheriff was the safest bet—better to let them sort out jurisdiction. It took a lot longer than I would have liked for the information to come up, but finally it did and I called. After I told the dispatcher my name, our location, and that we’d found a dead body, I hung up and slipped the phone back in my pocket.

“So, you want to tell me what this little trip was all about, Mom?” I asked.

She wiped sweat from her forehead and squinted at me in the bright afternoon light. “I saw Veronica on Saturday. She called me, wanting to talk to me.” She held up her hand. “Stop right there—she didn’t say anything about kidnapping Mike, okay? She wanted to talk to me about Hope.” She exhaled. “She told me she was staying out here and she wanted to see Hope, wanted to know if I thought Hope would want to see her. I knew Hope was in the veterinary school, Scotty, but I swear I had no idea she worked with the tiger. I had no idea AFAR wanted to steal the damned thing.” Her voice sounded bitter. “So of course, once I heard about the tiger theft, it all made sense. I thought I could come out here and reason with her, surely she wouldn’t want to have Hope take the fall for her…” She let her voice trail off.

I didn’t say anything. I appreciated Mom’s loyalty to her friend, but Veronica Porterie’s track record wasn’t that great.

And there were any number of people who wouldn’t be in the least bit sorry to hear she was dead.

We wound up not having to wait more than about twenty minutes or so before a parish police car came rolling up the dirt driveway with its lights flashing. A ridiculously tall young deputy got out—he had to be at least six foot five in his bare feet. He couldn’t have weighed much more than one hundred and fifty pounds on a good day. He was gangly—all elbows and knees and angles. I couldn’t imagine where he could find pants to fit his tiny waist and lengthy legs. He had strawberry-blond hair, cut in the traditional Southern small-town way—short and standing straight up like a bristle brush. His hairline was a perfectly straight line running across his reddish forehead maybe an inch or two above his eyes. He had an enormous Adam’s apple in a really long, storklike neck. His ears stuck out from either side of his heavily freckled, reddish face like the handles on a coffee mug. His wide-set eyes were his best feature, almond shaped and a bright green with golden flakes. “Hey, you the ones who called?” he drawled as he shut the car door behind him. “You say you found a dead body?”

I stepped forward and held out my hand. “Scotty Bradley. I’m the one who called. The body’s on the porch.” I gestured with my head in the direction of the cabin.

His hand was damp and enormous. It was mostly bone and skin, yet still he had a good strong grip. Up close he was even younger than he’d seemed when he got out of the car—I figured him for about twenty-two, twenty-five at most. He spoke in a deep, mellifluous voice, and the beautiful green eyes looked intelligent. His accent seemed almost put on, like he wanted us to underestimate him. He certainly did look every inch the stereotype of the wet-behind-the-ears hayseed deputy, though.

“Deputy Donnie Ray Tindall, Tangipahoa sheriff’s office, nice to meet you, Mr. Bradley.” He looked over at Mom. “Ma’am?”

“Cecile Bradley.” She took a hesitant step forward, holding out her hand. He took it, gave it a quick shake and let go.

“My mom,” I said. “She’s a friend of the deceased.”

“Sorry you had to see that, ma’am.” Donnie Ray tipped his cap at her. His voice was gentle. “You want to go have a seat in my car, get out of this heat, cool down a bit?”

Mom shook her head. “Thank you, I’m fine.”

I wasn’t so sure about that—she still looked a little green to me.

Another sheriff’s department car pulled up and parked next to Donnie Ray’s. Two older men wearing the same uniform got out of the second car. One was short and had a huge gut that hung over his belt, and he hitched up his pants as he shut the car door. He was bowlegged and seemed to have more authority than the others. He crooked a finger at Donnie Ray, who gave me a little shrug and walked back over to where his peers were standing. The other deputy was taller than his companion, but strongly built with the body of a high school athlete who’d kept himself up in the years since. He wore mirrored sunglasses and stood slightly behind the short one, his arms folded. I couldn’t tell who he was looking at—I hate mirrored sunglasses.