Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 07 - The Swamps of Bayou Teche (13 page)

“A couple items. Not much. He told me about a
man up in Opelousas by the name of Collins. He said
you might remember the guy’s first name. Seems like
the old boy threatened Hardy years back”

She sat on the chaise lounge and gestured to the
couch. “He’s probably talking about Edgar Collins”
She hesitated a moment, then popped the tabs on two
beers and handed me one. “Seems like I heard Gates
and John talking about him now that I think about it.”

I frowned. “That’s odd.”

A tiny frown knit her brows. “What do you mean?”

“Gates. He said he and Hardy had talked about
Collins once, but he didn’t remember Hardy using the
man’s first name.”

An amused smile replaced the frown on her face.
“That doesn’t surprise me. Gates is as forgetful as the
day is long.”

Jotting the information on one of my ubiquitous
3” x 5” cards, I replied, “Thanks. Saves me a little digging.” I couldn’t help wondering if Gates had truly
forgotten or if it were a convenient lapse of memory.
Still, what could he gain by lying about an incident
that occurred before he met John Hardy?

I glanced up at her, and she was staring at me expectantly. “Anything else?” she asked.

“Yeah. Hardy and Gates were partners. What kind
of partnership agreement was it? Any idea?”

She studied the can of beer in her hand several seconds. “I’m not sure, but it was something like . . ”
She shook her head. “I can’t remember exactly. They
were general partners … and then something about
tenancy”

I jumped on her observation. “Would it have been
joint tenancy?”

Laura ran her slender fingers through her black
hair, revealing a portion of the gruesome scar on her
left cheek. “I think so. That sounds like it.”

I jotted my notes on a card while trying to suppress
my excitement. General Partnership with Joint
Tenancy-the right of survivorship. In other words,
when one dies, the entire interest goes to the other
partner.

If I’d ever seen motive, this was it.

“So, what next?”

I wasn’t really certain. “Maybe run down to Maida and see Fawn Williams before heading back to the
coroner’s office up in Lafayette.”

“About the autopsy?” Her face was grim.

“Yes, and then on up to Opelousas”

She glanced out the window at Jack in the Cadillac.
“Your friend looks bored.”

“That’s his natural expression. Don’t worry about
him.”

She hesitated a moment, parting her lips, then closing them.

“What?”

She shrugged, her black hair falling over her shoulders. “I was going to say if you and your friend are
around next Thursday, you might want to go to the annual festival down at Maida.”

“Festival?”

“Yes. The Loup Garou Festival, held at the end of
the first week of May every year.”

My eyes lit. “A regular, down-to-earth Louisiana
carnival? With dancing and everything?”

“With dancing and everything.”

I thought I heard her put a suggestive inflection on
the word everything, but I quickly chalked it up to my
imagination. “It’s been years since I’ve been to one” I
snapped my fingers. “You can count on it. If we’re
here, we’ll show up”

She smiled warmly, her eyes fixed on mine. “Is that
a promise?”

This time there was no mistake of the promise in
her tone. “Only if you’ll save me a dance,” I replied,
doing my best to imitate Cary Grant, but sounding
more like Don Knotts.

After dropping the kitten off to Sue Cullen in
Maida, I headed for Fawn Williams’ apartment.
That’s when I got the call from Sergeant Jimmy
LeBlanc. He was already waiting for me at the coroner’s lab in the Lafayette Parish Hospital. “I’m on my
way,” I exclaimed, signaling Jack to turn around and
head north.

Leblanc continued. “It be no pretty sight, Boudreaux.
The ‘gator, he break up the bones something bad, he do.
Suppose he gots to do that to swallow the man”

Jack frowned at me after I punched off, and I explained. “They’re already at the lab. The autopsy will
probably be over by the time we get there”

An hour later as we reached the outskirts of
Lafayette, Jack grumbled. “You getting hungry, Tony?
I’m starving.”

I pointed to a fast-food joint with the ubiquitous
name, Cajun Burgers. “There you are. They even serve
alligator burgers”

“Not me,” he muttered.

“And order some water for the kitten.” I caught myself and grinned sheepishly. “Sorry. I forgot we
dropped her off back in Maida.”

He shook his head. “You and your pets. You might
say you don’t care for them, old buddy, but you can’t
fool me”

“Well, as long as I can keep them away from you,
they’ll survive,” I replied, laughing.

“I was drunk then. I didn’t know what I was doing,”
he protested.

“Maybe not, but you killed a bunch of exotic fish
when you mistook the aquarium for the commode”

He muttered a curse under his breath, telling me
where I could go.

While we were waiting in the drive-thru line, I
asked Jack if he was getting tired of tagging after me.
“The truth is, I don’t know where all of this will lead.
If this guy in the coroner’s office is John Hardy, my
job still isn’t over. His mother hired us to find him, or
find whoever killed him. And either way, in all probability, someone out there is going to continue trying to scare me off. If you want to get back to Austin, I can
rent a car. No problem.”

He studied me a few moments, a look of injured
disbelief in his eyes. “You’re asking me to decide
between going back to the exotic metropolis of
Austin and the wonderful company of your ex-wife
or staying here with you and dodging snakes, alligators, loopy garous or whatever they are, and guys
who might be trying to kill us? Pardon the vernacular, Tony, but that ain’t no choice. I’m staying with
you.”

And so it was settled.

“If we haven’t got this tied up by Thursday, we’re
going to a Cajun carnival down at Maida,” I announced.

“Maida? That sounds like fun”

I grinned. “They call the carnival the Loup Garou
Festival.”

He looked around at me in disbelief. “The what?”

By the time we reached the hospital, Jack had
scarfed down three Super Burgers and a large bag of
french fries while I had managed to take care of a Junior Burger.

Jack pulled into the parking lot and stopped. I
opened the door. “You staying here?”

To my surprise, he replied. “No. I don’t care about
sitting out here by myself. Think I’ll tag along”

Inside we found our way through a warren of hall ways to the basement. A uniformed security guard
stopped us at the double doors leading back to the autopsy lab. I explained who we were and pointed
through the windows in the doors to Sergeant LeBlanc
and another officer standing before another door. “Ask
the sergeant in there. He’ll vouch for us”

The guard pushed through the doors, and the
smell of pine-oil disinfectant engulfed us, stinging
my nostrils. Moments later he returned and allowed
us in.

Sergeant LeBlanc came to meet us, eyeing Jack
suspiciously. I introduced him. LeBlanc grunted and
took me aside. He spoke softly so only I could hear.
“Didn’t you tolds me when we talked before that
Hardy’s mother wants you to find him or them what
kill him. That right?”

“Yeah,” I replied in a low voice, puzzled as to what
he was leading up to. “But I wouldn’t do anything
without your okay. I hope you believe that”

A satisfied grin curled his lips. “That is what I
wants to hear ‘cause between you and me, I think
someone killed the man. It don’t look like no accident to me. Me, I can’t do anything until it all be official, but you, since you are already nosing around,
then you might find something we can use. Understand?”

I studied him a moment. “Are you saying what I
think you’re saying?”

His lips parted over brilliantly white teeth in a broad grin. He took my arm. “What you think?
Now, let me introduce to the one what found the
body.”

He looked around. “Emile,” he called out to the
other officer. “This is Tony Boudreaux. He cousin to
Leroi Thibodeaux up in Opelousas. You remember
Leroi. We was all freshman at LSU together.”

We shook hands as LeBlanc explained, “Emile
Primeaux here is with the sheriff’s department what
got the body and the ring.”

Emile Primeaux was a head taller than Jimmy
LeBlanc, and I had to crane my neck to look up at
LeBlanc. I shook hands with the tall man. I guessed
Creole, for his complexion was light brown. “Pleased
to me you, Sergeant,” I said, noting the three stripes
on his sleeve. “You have the ring?”

He nodded, but made no effort to retrieve it.

I told him what I knew of the ring. “From what I
learned, the ring is silver gold and has a cluster of
three diamonds in the center.”

Primeaux slipped his hand in his pocket and pulled
out a silver ring. He studied it a moment, nodded, then
handed it to me. “Like this?”

I turned the ring over in my hand. “Sure looks like
the one she described.”

A frown knit his brow. He reached for the ring.
“Who you talking about that described the ring?”

“Laura Palmo, John Hardy’s private secretary at
the bank”

He nodded and slipped the ring back in his pocket.
“Me, I stop by and see her when I gets to Bagotville.”

Dipping my head at the closed door at LeBlanc’s
back, I asked, “Have you identified him yet? Is it
Hardy?”

Primeaux shook his head. “Gots to wait on the dental records from the dentist. No face left. Done be dissolved.” He shivered. “Them ‘gators, that acid in there
stomachs could eat up a bowling ball”

“But what about the ring? Doesn’t that pretty much
nail down the identification?”

Primeaux and LeBlanc exchanged amused looks.
Primeaux grunted. “How many J.H.‘s you suppose
there be?”

I understood his point, but I replied, “Hundreds,
thousands, but how many of them were around Maida
and owned a silver ring with three diamonds in a
cluster?”

LeBlanc chuckled. “Don’t suppose too many. Still,
we gots to wait for the dental records to be official.”
He hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “You wants to
see him?”

At that moment, the coroner came out-an older
man with a belly sagging over his belt, flopping jowls,
dark drooping bags under his eyes, and a lit cigarette
hanging from his lips.

Jack, who had been listening in rapt attention to our
conversation, spoke up, his voice choked with shock
and disbelief. “Is he really dissolved?”

The coroner paused in the doorway, frowned at
Jack, then winked at LeBlanc. “What do you think?”
he asked, stepping aside and holding the door open.

Jack’s eyes grew wide. He gagged, slapped his
hands to his mouth, and made a mad dash for the
men’s room down the hall.

Chortling under his breath, the coroner strolled
down the hall in the opposite direction, touching a
match to the cigarette dangling from his lips.

I grimaced. I’d seen my share of dead bodies, mutilated, mangled, burned to a crisp, but never one so
macabre as John Hardy, or what was left of John
Hardy if that’s who indeed it was. The alligator’s digestive process was highly efficient for the flesh, especially on the upper torso, the shoulders, and the head
had simply melted away like ice cream.

Emile Primeaux cleared his throat. “This one’s
wrists was rubbed raw, like he was tied up and tossed
in the bayou. Of course, we ain’t certain ‘cause we
didn’t find no rope.”

I looked up at the tall lawman in stunned disbelief.
“You mean, he could have been alive when-” The
horror flooding over me choked off my question before I could complete it.

Primeaux stared down at me impassively. “The
coroner, he say that there be no signs of wounds except them done by the ‘gator, so we know he wasn’t
shot or stuck with a knife, him. Probably an accident,
the coroner say”

In other words, there was no definite proof Hardy
was murdered. “You think it was just an accident?”