Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 02 - Skeletons of the Atchafalaya (7 page)

Before we could respond to her order, a series of violent
convulsions seized Ozzy, jerking him into a sitting position
where he spewed vomit all over his lap.

He seemed to freeze in that position for several seconds,
and then his entire body went rubbery, and he fell back to
the ground.

The rain beat down on his face.

Ozzy was dead. Sally didn’t have to say it. I knew. And
to tell the truth, I was scared. We were caught between a
killer storm outside and a lunatic inside.

We couldn’t run because there was no place to run. Help
couldn’t come in.

Followed by a caravan of Thibodeauxs, Boudreauxs,
Millers, Broussards, Melancons, and Venables, we carried
Ozzy to the pantry and laid him on the floor beside the
freezer. About the only adults missing were Pa and Bailey,
both of whom I figured where sleeping off the whiskey and
beer.

“Now what?” Uncle Henry Broussard looked at me.

I glanced at the freezer, but before I could reply, Giselle
spoke up. “Oh, no, Tony. You’re not going to put him in
the freezer with A.D.”

A scatter of murmurs came from the family.

Sally and Janice stood in one corner of the pantry. I
could tell from the incredulous look in Janice’s eyes that
she could not believe the bizarre series of incidents of
which she had become a part.

When she stepped out of her Miata convertible on the
bridge earlier in the day, she left behind the familiar and
comforting social climate of Austin, Texas, with its country
club parties, bridge games, and fashion shows. She had
stepped into a culture three hundred years behind hers. I
smiled at her, but she didn’t return my smile. She appeared
dazed.

“Look,” I said to Giselle. “I don’t know what else to do.
We’re in the same boat with Ozzy as A.D. I don’t know
what happened to him, but-”

Sally spoke up. “A poison of some kind.”

“What?”

Everyone turned to gape at her.

She nodded and took a step forward. “The symptoms
point to it. Dilated pupils, convulsions, labored breathing,
vomiting. Those together would in all probability indicate
some kind of poison.”

Patric frowned. “You ain’t sure?”

Sally gave him a sad smile. “No.”

lolande, A.D. and Bailey’s sister, said. “You’re claiming
one of us poisoned Osmond.”

“No. I’m just saying the symptoms indicate poison. Only
a toxicology test can tell us that.”

George Miller grunted. “I bet a white nurse would
know.”

Uncle Henry Broussard spun around his weathered and
wrinkled face twisted in anger. His eyes blazed, and he
jabbed a bony finger in George’s face. “Shut your mouth,
George. You say anything like that again, and you’ll be
right down there on the floor with Ozzy. Leroi’s wife, she
knows what she’s doing. We got enough problems here
with one of our own trying to kill us all. We don’t need any white trash talk. You hear me? You and that stupid
voodoo nonsense.”

Uncle George glared at Henry, flexing his fists. An eerie
silence settled over the pantry. Tension rose. The only
sounds were the winds howling around the eaves and the
rain battering at the windows.

Uncle Henry took a step forward. “Now, you best hear
me, George Miller. When we were kids, I could whup your
tail, and I tell you now, cher, I can still do it.”

George tried to outstare Uncle Henry, but his resolve
wilted. He lowered his eyes. “All right. I didn’t mean it
that way. I….” His words faded away.

I winked at Sally. She winked back.

We didn’t know what else to do, so we laid Ozzy on top
of his pa.

The five of us climbed the stairs to Ozzy’s room on the
second floor, directly below his pa’s. I don’t know about
the others, but I noted that no sleeping arrangements had
been made in his room for others. He had planned on keeping the room all to himself. He was always selfish and
greedy.

“You think it was some kind of poison, huh?” I spoke
over my shoulder to Sally.

“That’s how it looks.”

A fifty-four-inch TV stood against one wall. Beside it
was a cabinet of videos. A couch and two chairs were arranged in front of the French doors leading to the veranda.
His king-sized bed stood against the third wall.

A half-full fifth of Jim Beam, Black Label, the bottle I
saw him take from the liquor cabinet, sat on the nightstand.
Next to the Jim Beam was a partially filled whiskey glass,
and beside it was a plate with a ham sandwich from which
three or four bites had been taken. An empty tumbler sat
on the other nightstand.

Giselle reached for the whiskey glass. I stopped her.
“Leave it here. Let the police take care of it.”

She blushed. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I was going to
take it and the plate down and wash them.”

I grinned. “I know you probably keep a spotless house,
Giselle, but this time, hold off on this room, okay?”

She laughed nervously. “Okay.”

I took several shots of the room, first from one side and
then the opposite, after which I photographed the nightstands. I turned to Sally and indicated the dishes on the
nightstand. “This looks like the only place he could have
picked up some poison. What do you think?”

She shook her head and slipped her arm through Leroi’s.
“You know better than me. All I know is that he displayed
the symptoms of poisoning.”

The dazed expression had faded from Janice’s face.
“Could there have been any other way for him to get the
poison?”

Sally shook her head again. “An autopsy might pick up
a scratch or bite.”

Leroi looked at me. “Maybe it was a snake.”

All of our eyes searched the room as one.

Sally said, “I don’t know much about snakes, but I never
heard of all those symptoms from a local species.”

“I don’t know,” I replied, squinting into the dark corners.
“Maybe we should take a look at Ozzy.”

Giselle groaned. “Don’t tell me you want to take Ozzy
back out.”

“No, we can probably look him over there in the
freezer.”

“Then we’d better get on with it,” Leroi said. “Before
he gets hard.”

We all looked at each other. Despite the solemnity of
the moment, a situation so bizarre, we had to laugh.

Giselle, Janice, and Sally sat at the kitchen table with
me. Leroi leaned against the refrigerator. “At least we know
he wasn’t snakebit,” he said.

“Which means that he probably ingested poison,” Sally
responded.

“Maybe it was some of Nanna’s voodoo,” Giselle said,
a wicked grin on her face.

“Yeah,” Leroi chimed in. “One of her wangas. That’s
what Uncle George claims.”

I snorted and waved their sick humor aside. “In your
dreams.” I glanced toward the parlor, filled with the strangest feeling that Nanna was staring at me.

Growing somber once again, we sat there for the next
several minutes, rehashing the night’s events, talking over
possible explanations, and coming up with nothing.

I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. I was
exhausted, but despite my weariness, I couldn’t shove aside
the frustration eating at me. I felt as if I had no control
over any facet of my life-not the storm, not the murders,
not the fact my father was coming home to live with us. I
had the hopeless feeling I was simply being dragged along
behind an escalating chain of events bound for a catastrophic explosion.

I muttered.

Leroi glanced at me. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I shook my head.

“Sounded like something to me,” Giselle replied, her
tone edged with a trace of amusement.

I studied her a moment. “It’s my old man,” I blurted out.
“He wants to move back to the farm with Mom and
Grandma Ola.”

Leroi’s eyes widened in surprise. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope.” I shook my head. “That’s what Mom said.”

Janice laid her hand on my arm. “How do you feel about
it, Tony?”

“I think the idea stinks.” And to my surprise, I realized
that was exactly how I did feel. “He left us thirty-two years
ago. He doesn’t deserve to come back,” I added, pouring
out all the bitterness and bile that I had kept bottled up
inside me for all those years.

Giselle leaned across the table. “But, he’s your father.
You only have one.”

I cut my eyes toward her. “He only had one son, and he
deserted him. Then when we did meet, he stole everything
he could get his hands on.” I shook my head emphatically.
No way did I want him to come back home.

“Maybe, Tony,” Sally said in a soft voice, “maybe he’s
coming home to die.”

We all stared at her for a moment. That thought had
never entered my mind. Still. “Well, maybe. I don’t know.
Let him find some other place,” I replied. “I….” I pushed
back from the table. “Look. We all need some rest, even a
few minutes. The sun will be up shortly. At least we’ll be
able to see outside.”

Janice gave me a wan smile.

“Yeah.” Leroi pushed away from the refrigerator and
glanced at me. “You girls best sleep up on the countertop.”

Giselle nodded to the floor. “What’s wrong with a pallet
on the floor? That would work….” She hesitated, her eyes
growing wide. “Oh, I see.”

“See what?” Sally frowned at her.

With a crooked grin, Giselle replied. “Crawly things
coming in out of the storm.”

“Probably not,” I said, not wanting to alarm them any
more than necessary. “But, it couldn’t hurt. Better safe than
sorry,” I added.

Leroi grinned crookedly. “The man’s right, ladies. Like
the old philosopher said, forewarned is forearmed. Or
something like that. Tony, you take the table.”

“What about you?”

He pointed to the pantry. With a wry laugh, he replied,
“I’ll sleep on the freezer. Be the first time in my life I can
claim I came out on top of Ozzy and A.D.”

We all laughed. Giselle shook her head. “Leroi, that’s
terrible, terrible.”

His grin grew wider. “I know, but it sure feels good.”

I lay on the table and stared at the ceiling. I tried to make
some sense out of all that had happened. For a fact, one of
our family had committed two murders, but who?

Unable to sleep, I rolled off the table and headed for the
stairs. Maybe if I took another look at the rooms, something
might click. As I ascended the stairs, I attempted to put
together a logical theory.

A.D. had cheated many of those with whom he had dealt.
I wasn’t sure just which families had felt the sting of his
chicanery, so I figured I would talk to them all.

I started with Uncle Bailey, born Bailey Claux Thibodeaux sixty-one years ago. Somehow, A.D. had shoved Iolande and Bailey aside and managed to get his hands on
their parents’ money and farm. I didn’t know how, but I
knew Mom and Grandma Ola could tell me.

There was no question in my mind that Bailey probably
harbored resentment toward his brother who, along with his
sister, lolande, had lived in a half-million-dollar mansion
on two thousand acres raising exotic animals while Bailey
and his wife, Ezeline, eked out a threadbare existence in a
shotgun shack in a rundown neighborhood in Eunice. He
worked as produce manager in a locally owned supermarket.

I paused at the bottom of the stairs. A frown wrinkled
my forehead. I didn’t know what I would have done had I
been in Bailey’s shoes, but I knew myself well enough to
know that I would never drink with a man who cheated
me.

On the other hand, I reminded myself, Bailey might have
simply sold A.D. his share of the estate.

And then there was Pa, who, I suppose, could have murdered his cousin. He had blood on him, but if the truth
were known, he probably wasn’t even aware of the blood.
The damp cards on the table where Pa had been seated led
me to believe that Pa probably passed out and drooled on
them. He wasn’t drinking beer, only whiskey. And trust
me, you don’t get condensation on a table from a bottle of
whiskey.

He was probably unconscious when the killer murdered
A.D. When he awakened, he staggered from the room, in advertently brushing his hand in the blood spatters on the
table and stepping in the pool on the floor. That would
account for the smeared spatters and footprints on the floor.

And then there was Leroi. Guiltily, I glanced over my
shoulder in the direction of the kitchen pantry.

He and I had gone to school together in Church Point.
When I left for the University of Texas, he headed for
Louisiana State, where he dropped out after two years. He
worked, married, and opened his own lube shop, which by
now had grown to four.

I suppose he could have held the resentment and desire
for revenge for thirty-eight years, but I doubted it. Still,
knowing that his uncle had swindled his father out of land
Leroi’s mother brought to the marriage was a motive not
to be discounted.

And then there was the murder weapon, a screwdriver
with a Catfish Lube logo on it.

The big question on my mind as I climbed the stairs was
if the deaths were tied together, or whether Ozzy had simply ingested the poison on his own.