Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 02 - Skeletons of the Atchafalaya (13 page)

“What did it hurt how much time they spent together?”

Patric cleared his throat and stared at the ceiling. “Not
so much the time together, I don’t think. They just think
Bonni, she should have friends more her age than Giselle.
They think Bonni, she should find her a nice young Cajun
boy.”

Naive me, I still didn’t understand exactly what he was trying to tell me. Like two blind men playing catch, Uncle
Patric would toss out an implication, and I’d miss it.

Before I could pursue the matter, Leroi came into the
kitchen. He shook his head. “The storm stalled. She isn’t
moving.”

I closed my eyes and dropped my chin to my chest. I
shoved Patric’s information back into the recesses of my
brain and muttered a soft oath at the latest change in the
storm. Outside, the wind and rain blasted the house. I
couldn’t help wondering how the families down in the village were managing. Their shelter was cedar and cypress
clapboard, not brick like ours.

My mind wandered back to Giselle. Everyone in our
family knew she was illegitimate. It had been one of the
whispered secrets cussed and discussed at every family
gathering. Everyone knew, but no one admitted it. But,
now-if what Uncle Patric said was true-why, that wasI couldn’t say the word.

Leroi stuck his head in the door. “Any coffee there?”

Patric waved him in. “Come here, boy. Me, I gots a
question.”

Leroi frowned at me and shrugged as he came up to the
kitchen table. “Shoot.”

“Yesterday, you say you come inside to use the john.
You go upstairs. Why you not use the toilet down here?”

It was a good question, one I should have asked, but like
I said, I’m no Al Grogan.

Leroi sighed wearily. “Someone was in there, Pa. I didn’t
want to waste any time because Tony was waiting out in
the truck for me so I went upstairs. Okay?”

Patric glanced at me, a smug grin on his face as if to
say, “You see. It wasn’t my boy.”

I winked at Leroi. “That’s what I figured, but how do
you explain the screwdriver?” I looked from one to the
other.

Patric shrugged. “That easy. Anyone could open the toolbox in back of Leroi’s truck. Anyone.”

That’s how I figured it also. I just wanted one of them
to say so.

The lights flickered once, twice, then continued burning
steadily. Patric cleared his throat. “The generator? We got
enough gasoline?”

“Sure, Pa. There’s several tanks in the shed. Looks like
they ought to hold about two or three hundred gallons
each.”

Giselle and Janice came into the kitchen. Janice poured
some coffee while Giselle updated us on the storm. “Started
moving again, heading back east.”

I grinned at Janice as she plopped down in the chair next
to me.

“That’s good,” I replied, making an effort to be jovial.
“Means we’ll be on the best side of the storm.”

Leroi snorted. “If there is a best side.”

Giselle laughed. “Always the pessimist.”

Setting her coffee down, Janice ran her slender fingers
through her short, brown hair. Pinching the midriff of her
wrinkled and stained blouse between her fingers and
thumbs, she pulled it out and fluttered it up and down. “If
the offer still goes, Giselle, I’ll take you up on one of those
blouses. I’ve had this one on so long, it’s beginning to feel
like another layer of dried skin.”

“Sure.” Giselle pushed back from the table. “Let’s go up
and get you one.”

“Think I’ll listen to the radio a spell,” said Patric, rising
and following the girls from the kitchen.

Leroi and I sat alone in the kitchen, listening to the howling wind scream around the eaves. He glanced at me. His
voice was a mere whisper. “Tony, about that snake. You
don’t think Uncle George was right, do you?”

I studied him a moment, my own thoughts still confused.
“No. I don’t know what happened to the snake, but it
wasn’t voodoo.” I shook my head, deliberately ignoring
Grandma Ola’s beliefs. “That just doesn’t happen.”

He nodded. “That’s what I thought. But, still, it’s weird. I mean, the way it vanished and the place was cleaned up.
Makes no sense,” he continued, rising and leaning over the
kitchen sink so he could peer through the glass insert in
the storm shutters. “No sense at all.” He grunted and shook
his head. “Can’t see a thing,” he muttered. “Wonder how
deep the water is.”

I looked up at the twelve-foot walls of the kitchen.
“What I’m wondering is just how much did A.D. remodel
this place? I mean, did he do extensive remodeling? Foundation? Walls? You know what I mean?”

Leroi shrugged. “Some said he spent a bundle on everything. Others said he just hit it a lick and a promise. Truth
probably is that nobody really knows. Why? Something got
you worried?”

I considered his question a moment. “No, just wondering. These old houses were built solid anyway, almost solid
cypress and oak. In storms like this, it’s reassuring to know
it will hold up against the worst nature can throw at it.”

Leroi patted the tabletop reassuringly. “Yeah. Know
what you mean.”

Janice came back into the kitchen wearing an oversize
tank top. Behind her in the parlor, I spotted Giselle pausing
to visit with the Venables. I couldn’t help noticing she wore
the same green tank top she had worn the day before.

Sally entered the kitchen just as another gust of wind
and blast of rain slammed into the house, rattling the storm
shutters. “What are you boys up to?” she said brightly.

Leroi kissed her lightly. “Tony was saying how glad he
was this old house is built like a castle. Nothing can hurt
it.,,

“Yeah. Solid as a rock.”

At that moment, I felt vibrations through the soles of my
feet.

With a resounding crack that split the roar of the storm
and a groaning shudder that ran through every board in the
house, the east veranda collapsed.

All thoughts of the three deaths were forgotten as the
house erupted into a cacophany of screams.

We had no idea what kind of damage had occurred. The
walls were all standing, no water was pouring through holes
in the roof, no wind was whipping through broken windows.

“What do you suppose it was?” Uncle Henry stood with
his arm around his wife and a couple of his grandkids.

George had opened a French door on the east side and
was peering through one of the glass inserts in the storm
door. He looked back at us. “I’m not certain, but I think
the veranda fell in. The rain is so heavy, it’s hard to tell.”

Bailey, his cheeks flushed with drink, growled. “Then
open the door and look.”

“No.” George shook his head. “Too risky. The wind
could tear it off.”

Bailey turned to Patric. “We need to take a look.”

“You heard George. Not right now, Bailey,” Patric replied testily. “Wait until the storm lets up some.”

Bailey glared at Patric, then gestured to Pa. “What do
you think, John Roney?”

Pa sat up on the couch, sipped his can of beer, and
glanced around the room slowly. “Don’t matter to me. Soon as I take a nap, I’m fixing to teach A.D. how to play poker.”
He took another long gulp of beer, then leaned back on the
couch and closed his eyes.

I stared at him for several seconds, wondering if something was wrong with me for not being embarrassed over
my own father’s drunken behavior. How could I be embarrassed? He was a stranger, one who stole from me the
only two times I had seen him in the last thirty-two years.

“George is right, Bailey,” Uncle Henry said. “If it’s
caved in, there’s nothing we can do about it. Let’s just keep
ourselves safe.” He glanced at the overhead lights. “And
pray the generator keeps running.”

Bailey glared at us. Reluctantly, he returned to the couch
and plopped down beside Pa.

I decided this was as good a time as any to talk to Uncle
Bailey. I pulled out my small notebook.

Bailey sat on the couch, fuming, glaring at Patric Thibodeaux.

I paused, deciding to resort to a little bribery first. I dug
through the ice chest for a Budweiser, then I ambled back
into the parlor and offered it to him. “Here you go, Uncle
Bailey.”

He frowned at me. “We need to look outside,” he said
stubbornly. “See what the storm did.”

With a shrug and a crooked grin, I replied, “You know
how it is, Uncle Bailey. Nowhere but Louisiana.”

He tried not to grin, but he couldn’t hold it in. With a
chuckle, he took the beer. “You a good Cajun boy, Tony.
Too bad you got to live over in Austin with all them heathen Methodist and Baptist.”

With a shrug, I said, “That’s the way of things, Uncle
Bailey.” Beside him, Pa snored softly. “Uncle Bailey, yesterday when you went upstairs, where did you go?”

His grin faded. “What you mean, Tony? Why you ask?”

“Because, we want to find who did this. If we talk about
it while it’s still fresh in our mind, we’ll be able to give the state police all the information they need. You might
have seen something that could help us. Understand?”

He belched. “You think me, I did it?”

“No.” And I didn’t. Truth is, I couldn’t imagine anyone
in our family committing such heinous crimes, but someone
did, and I had to help find him, or her. “All I’m going to
do is take notes on what you say and give them to the
police. That’s all. Now, yesterday, Pa and A.D. went upstairs about two o’clock. Later, you went up. Just tell me
what you did and where you went, step by step.”

He studied me a moment. “Okay, Tony. I tell you. You
good Cajun boy. I go up where your pa and A.D. play
poker. I think maybe your pa, he want to drink with me,
but A.D. make him play the poker. I go to my room, use
toilet, then go back downstairs.” He shrugged. “That’s all
I do.”

“What about the money clip? How do you explain that?”

Bailey Thibodeaux was a large man, heavy of bone, once
possessing mighty muscles that now had turned to flab. As
he tried to answer the question, he seemed to shrivel into
a wisp of a man.

“Me, I don’t know. When I leave John Roney and A.D.,
he alive. The money clip, I don’t know.” He sagged back
against the couch, his eyes fixed on the French doors.

Strangely enough, I believed him. I resisted the urge to
pursue Patric’s allegation that A.D. was Giselle’s father.
Maybe with someone else, but not with a drunk.

“What about A.D.‘s will? Are you in it?”

He cut his eyes at me sharply. For a fleeting moment, I
thought I saw a flash of fear in them, but then he was
shaking his head. “Me, I don’t know nothing about the will.
I gots no idea what A.D., he put in there.”

I tossed out an open-ended question. “Who do you think
might have done all this, Uncle Bailey?”

He turned up the longneck and gulped half a dozen swallows of beer, then shifted his gaze back to the French doors.
For several moments, he remained silent, and then he sur veyed the parlor. “There be some. A.D., he my brother, but
he no good. He always try to steal from family.” Slowly
nodding, he added, “There be them what like to see him
dead.”

“Who?”

He grinned up at me, a crooked, sad smile. He shrugged.
“I don’t know for sure nothing, Tony. Me, I’m just a big
drunk. Like your pa.” He sagged back on the couch and
closed his eyes.

I didn’t figure to get any more out of him at the moment,
but I made a mental note to come back. If I could get a
couple names, maybe it would help.

Heads together, Uncle Henry and Uncle Patric sat on the
staircase. The two cousins were deep in discussion. They
looked up as I approached. I spoke to Patric. “You mind if
I visit with Uncle Henry for a few minutes?”

“L’oh mon non. You go right ahead, Tony.”

Uncle Henry grinned up at me. “You play police with
me now, huh, Tony?”

I felt my ears burn. Nothing can put a person in his place
like an old relative who had once changed your diapers.
“Well, not much of one, Uncle Henry. I just wanted to have
a few notes for the state police. That’s all.”

He gestured to the stair step at his side. “Sit.”

I sat. Uncle Henry was of no help. Long accustomed to
hurricanes, he had been busy gathering his family to leave
when he heard shouts from inside the house. “That’s how
I hear that A.D., he be dead. Me, I see nobody go up stairs.”
He cut his eyes to the storm shutters rattling in their frames.
“The storm, it have me plenty scared,” he admitted. “Even
the bear, he don’t scare me that much.”

“Me too.” I glanced at the outside wall, imagining the
storm beyond. “They scare me too. Good thing Giselle
came up with you. She pushed Ezeline out of the way just
in time.”

Uncle Henry frowned. “Giselle? She not come upstairs
with me. She already there.”

I frowned at him. “You sure, Uncle Henry?”

He tapped his work-roughened fingers against his temple.
“What you think? I’m crazy? Sure, I sure. I hear big commotion. When I get up there, Giselle, she be pulling Ezeline
away from the bear’s claws.” He nodded emphatically.
“That I be sure of.”