Keepsake Crimes (15 page)

“What if I get lost?” Carmela ventured.

“Cost you more then,” responded Ned. “All that wasted time spent wandering around in the swamp, tryin’ to find your way back.”

“And if I hired a guide . . . ?” Carmela slipped out of the cardigan she’d thrown on earlier. The sun was shining down, and the air was redolent with humidity and the sweet smell of water lilies and wild camellias. She’d forgotten just how truly lovely it could be out here.

Ned Toler sucked air through his front teeth. “I’m pretty busy right now.”

“I can see that,” said Carmela. She paused. “I’d certainly make it worth your while.”

Ned pulled the battered straw hat from his head and scratched his lined forehead thoughtfully. “Twenty dollars says I can run you out there right now.” He checked his watch, an old Timex stretched around his wrist on what looked to be a snakeskin band. “But we gotta be back by two.”

“What happens at two?” asked Carmela.

“Gotta get ready for my date,” Ned Toler said with relish. “Takin’ the widow Marigny to a
fais-dodo
at the church over in Taminy Parish.”

A
fais-dodo
was a Cajun shindig. A big party with lots of food and dancing.

“They gonna have a crawfish boil and cook up some gumbo and frog’s legs, too,” continued Ned Toler. “Plus they got a pretty good zydeco band that cranks up early.”

“Okay,” said Carmela, who didn’t have a lot of trouble conjuring up a vision of Ned Toler doing the Cajun two-step with the widow Marigny. “Deal.” She looked around for Boo but didn’t see her.

“Don’t you worry none about your little dog,” Ned Toler assured her. “She won’t go nowhere. My hounds stick closer to home than a wood tick on a possum. They’ll take good care of her.” Ned Toler snatched up the remaining beers and headed for the dock. “Come on then.”

Carmela pulled a pair of sunglasses from her bag and slid them on. Following Ned Toler onto the rickety dock, she was surprised at how lighthearted and at home she suddenly felt out here.

Her momma had grown up not far from here, in a little shrimping village over on Delacroix Island. She herself had never lived out here, of course, had only really lived in Chalmette and, more recently, in New Orleans proper. But she’d visited out here plenty of times. Had enjoyed some weeklong stays with her cousins during the summer when she was young. The mists that crept in at twilight, the cry of screech owls, and the sharp, hoarse bark of the alligator raised goose bumps on a lot of people who ventured out this way. Sent them scurrying right back to the apparent safety of the city. But not Carmela. She liked the wildness of the bayou, the abiding sense of being surrounded by raw nature. It was somehow very comforting. And peaceful, too.

Isn’t it funny,
Carmela thought to herself,
that Shamus grew up in relative luxury in the Garden District but chose this as a place to hide out. To try to find himself.

Had something of her rubbed off on him? Hmm. Now there was a weird thought.

T
HE Meechum family’s camp house, located at a promontory point at the far end of the Barataria Bayou, had been constructed some eighty years ago. Each one of the cypress and cedar boards had been split, sawed, planed, and nailed in place by hand.

Viewing the camp house from a distance as Carmela was now, coming up the river in Ned Toler’s sputtering motorboat, the structure appeared fairly substantial. Built on stilts and hunkered into a grove of saw palmetto and tupelo gum trees, it looked impervious to the occasional hurricane that lashed its way in from the Gulf of Mexico. Windows that were hinged on top and opened outward to allow breezes to sift through could be battened down in a heartbeat. The steeply pitched roof shed water easily. The cypress and cedar boards were thick and sturdy. An open-air porch wrapped around the front and sides.

As Ned’s boat puttered up to the small dock, he reached over and handily tossed a rope around one of the wood pilings. Then Ned snugged his watercraft up close, allowing Carmela to jump out.

She’d been here twice before, always with Shamus. The first time had been when they’d returned from their honeymoon in Paris, and Shamus still had a couple days before he had to get back to his job at the bank. That had been a wonderful couple of days. Evenings they snuggled together in the double bed upstairs in the loft and talked about their future. Mornings Carmela had struggled good-naturedly to cook bacon and grits on the old-fashioned wood-fired stove.

Carmela’s second visit to the camp house had been last spring. Shamus had wanted to come out here and take photographs of the azaleas and water hyacinths that were in bloom. Back then he’d been mumbling and grumbling about how much happier he’d be if he were a photographer instead of a banker. About how much happier he’d be if he could work outdoors. Of course, back then she hadn’t really
heard
what he was saying.

Skipping lightly up a path of crushed oyster shells, Carmela climbed the steep, sturdy stairs and found herself on the wide porch that spanned the camp house on three sides. With its roof of pressed tin, she could imagine sitting out here in a storm. You could put your feet up on the railing, watch the bursts of heat lightning. Or listen to the beat of the rain, cozied up under a homemade quilt in one of the old cane chairs.

Carmela could hear the jangle of keys as Ned Toler came up the stairs behind her, pulling a heroic ring of keys from his pocket.

But the door to the camp house stood wide open.

Frowning, Carmela stepped over the threshold into the camp house.

The place looked like a hurricane had whipped through.

“Oh no!” exclaimed Carmela. Someone had obviously ransacked the entire place. What had been a fairly utilitarian and orderly little home was now an utter mess.

Carmela stared in dismay at the jumble of papers, dishes, knickknacks, and utensils that littered the planked wooden floors. The simple wooden chairs, so spare in their design, were overturned and strewn everywhere. One of the chairs had been completely smashed.

Ned Toler pushed in behind her. He held up a hand, indicating she should remain quiet. He stood, head cocked, listening for anything or anybody that might still be around, but the intruders seemed to be long gone.

“Damn,” he said. “I was just out here day before yesterday, and everything was fine.”

“Was Shamus here then?” asked Carmela.

“Yeah,” said Ned Toler. Striding around, with his brow furrowed, his face displayed a fair amount of displeasure. “What a mess,” he snorted as he grabbed a cane chair and set it upright.

“Who would do this?” said Carmela.

“Who’s ever got it in for Shamus, I s’pose,” barked Ned.

The main floor of the house was a combination living room-kitchen area with a small partitioned-off storage room. Upstairs was the bedroom loft.

Ned clumped up the narrow flight of steps that led to the loft. “It’s all catawampus up here, too,” he called down to Carmela. “Damn.”

“How else would somebody get out here if they didn’t come through Baptiste Creek village?” Carmela called to him.

Ned Toler came clumping back down the stairs, looking grim. “Lots of ways, really. There’s fishermen and sightseers that come through here all the time. That’s why I make it a point to check out here every few days. No tellin’ when somebody decides to play squatter.” Ned shook his head angrily again. “We’ve had people camp out here and help themselves to firewood and such, but nobody ever broke in and
trashed
the place before.”

“What now?” said Carmela, looking around at the devastation and noting that a venerable old cypress table now had a broken leg.

“Now I better get back quick and grab a couple new locks.” Ned Toler frowned at his wristwatch. “Then I’ll run back out and install ’em. Tomorrow, I’ll come back and sort things out as best I can.”

Carmela nodded. There was nothing to be done here.

What had the intruder been looking for?
she wondered.
Clues as to Shamus’s whereabouts? Or something else?

She shrugged, puzzled, and followed Ned back to the boat.
Have to think about it later. Like Ned Toler said, he wants to get back quickly.

Back at the village of Baptiste Creek, Carmela thanked Ned Toler for his trouble, then headed off to round up Boo. She found the little dog snoozing in the sun with Ned Toler’s hounds. Clipping a leash to Boo’s collar, Carmela pulled her away from her hound dog friends and started for her car. Then, at the last minute, she decided to investigate a little food stand that had seemingly sprung up like a mushroom in her absence. Somewhat lifted out of her low mood by the dazzling array of fresh produce and home-canned goods, Carmela bought a dozen fresh brown eggs from the old woman who was manning the stand, then added a loaf of prune bread and a couple jars of homemade pepper jelly to her order. The boudin sausage, a Cajun sausage of pork and rice, looked wonderful, but Carmela passed. Just way too many calories.

“Lagniappe,” said the old woman with a shy smile as she pressed a little package of bourbon balls wrapped in cellophane into Carmela’s hand as she handed over her change. Lagniappe was a word that meant “a little extra.” It was a charming custom that still flourished in many parts of Louisiana. Grocers giving a little extra to a customer’s order, restaurants adding a little something on the plate of a favored patron, ordinary folks sharing the bounty of their garden with their neighbors.

IT WASN’T UNTIL CARMELA WAS DRIVING BACK
to New Orleans, with a dozen or so miles racked up on the odometer, that she slowly became aware of the blue car behind her.

She studied the innocuous-looking dark blue sedan in her rearview mirror.
Am I being followed?
she wondered.
And, if so, what the heck is this all about?

Carmela speeded up. The blue car behind her immediately sped up. She eased off the gas a bit. So did the blue car.

Okay, genius,
she told herself.
You’re being followed. You figured that out all right. Now what would old Kojak do?

In the next half mile, Carmela got her big chance. Just past an old gray clapboard church with a flickering blue neon sign out front that proclaimed
Jesus Saves
, she swerved off the main highway onto a narrow little trail marked Two Holes Swamp Road. It was a dirt road she’d traveled a few times before. It was also one that wound circuitously through a generous portion of the Barataria Bayou, then eventually snaked back and hit Highway 23—
if
you knew exactly where to turn. The operative word being
if
, since Two Holes Swamp Road had more darn spur roads and offshoots than a tangle of wild grapevine.

Right now, Carmela’s Cadillac, Samantha, was bumping along, kicking up a voluminous trail of dust. She figured it had to be completely obscuring the vision of the driver behind her.
Piece of cake,
she thought.
I ought to lose this joker in a matter of minutes.

Carmela narrowed her eyes and pushed her foot down hard on the accelerator as she spun down the narrow dirt road. Dear Samantha, always hungry for a hit of high octane, guzzled deeply and responded with another appreciative burst of speed. But the driver in the blue car, seemingly unfazed by the dust she’d been kicking up, stuck tenaciously behind her like a burr.

Now what?
she wondered.

With a flash of inspiration, Carmela cranked open her sun roof, then dug her right hand into the sack of eggs that rested precariously on the seat beside her. She waited until the car pursuing her was lined up directly behind her, then eased the little brown egg onto the roof and let it roll backward.

The egg skittered and danced along her car’s roof like a billiard ball, then slid down the back window and bounced off the trunk like a missile spat from a grenade launcher. Hitting the windshield of the car behind her, the little brown egg landed with a deadly splat, obliterating the vision of the driver.

Rocketing down the dirt road, Carmela wove the Caddy from side to side, kicking up a barrage of dust and debris. Now the windshield of the car behind her, coated with sticky egg yolk, had become a virtual magnet for dirt.

“He goes to get that car cleaned up,” Carmela advised Boo, “the seven ninety-nine econo-wash isn’t gonna cut it. That boy’s gonna have to pop for the fourteen-dollar suds-o-mania with plenty of hot carnuba wax!”

Approaching a Y in the road, Carmela barely hesitated as she navigated toward the right fork. This road was slightly narrower and bumpier, and as the bayou closed in around her, fronds of palmetto swatted at her windshield.

Peering in her rearview mirror, she saw that the driver of the blue car either didn’t see her make the cut or chose not to follow.

When Carmela finally passed an old wooden sign that pointed toward a dilapidated boat launch, she knew the next left turn would loop her back to the highway.