Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 07 - The Swamps of Bayou Teche (21 page)

I explained quickly. “Janelle Bourgeois said she
visited Louise and Felix Babeaux a couple weekends
back”

“So?”

“Are you Mrs. Babeaux?”

“Might be.”

“Well, ma’am, all I want to do is to verify that she
was here”

She frowned. “Ver … what?”

“I just want to make sure she was here.”

“Why you want to know?”

I lied. “There was a man murdered up in Mowata.
She said she was here when it happened”

“Oui. Nell, she be here.”

Suppressing a grin, I asked, “On the twenty-fifth
and twenty-sixth?”

“Oui”

I told another little lie. “She said she borrowed your
pickup. Can you tell me how long she was gone?”

The two of them just stared at me. Finally, after
what seemed like an hour, Louise replied, “Maybe
two hour.”

The small man chimed in. “That woman, she broke
up that old truck. That thing, it ain’t run since.” He
nodded to his wife. “Us, we work on it all the night.”

“Janelle too?”

He nodded emphatically. “She be the one that broke
it. She gots to help.”

I waved. “Thanks. That’s all I wanted to know” I
slid back in the car and whispered, “Now we can get
out of here”

Jack lost no time in turning the Cadillac around and
heading back to the main road. “What did all that
prove?”

I leaned back. “It proved that Janelle Bourgeois was
here all night, and that she couldn’t have killed John
Hardy.”

He frowned at me.

“Look, she got back to the house there around six
that afternoon. The pickup broke down. She was out
here all night helping them work on it.”

Jack nodded slowly. “You believe them?”

“Yeah. I believe them”

At that instant I heard the boom of a rifle and a slug
smashed a hole in the windshield.

Jack slammed on the brakes and the Cadillac slid
sickeningly toward the swamp, finally grinding to a halt
with its front wheels in the water up to the hubcaps.

“Look,” he shouted, pointing to a shadowy figure
running through the swamp, water splashing with
each long stride. The water appeared to be about only
ankle deep. “There he is. Loup garou! Loup garou!”

On impulse, I jumped out and dashed after him,
but after the four steps off the road, I went down up to
my neck. I staggered back to shore, coughing and
sputtering.

By now, our shadow had vanished among the cypress and palmettoes.

Jack rushed up to me. “Did you see him? He was
running on the top of the water?” Before I could reply, he blubbered. “That witch did it, the coochymar or
whatever she is.”

I just shook my head. “Don’t be ridiculous. Maybe
there’s a ridge out there. Let’s see” I handed him my
wallet and since I was already soaked, stepped thigh
deep into the dark brown water. I eased along parallel
with the shore for thirty yards, and then suddenly, I
found the ridge, which I followed several yards into
the swamp, all the while keeping a wary eye on the
dark waters around me. “See,” I said, turning back to
Jack. “There’s no such thing as magic or voodoo. Like
I said, there’s a ridge out here.”

Jack wasn’t convinced. When I waded back to the
road, he looked at me with a face whiter than my
grandmere’s Gold Medal flour. “You know what that
was,” he babbled. Before I could reply, he continued,
“That was one of those loup garou things.” He jabbed
a finger in the direction of the Babeaux shack. “That
old lady back there is a witch, a couchymar, and she
put a spell on him so he could walk on water.”

I snorted. “It’s cauchemar, not couchymar, and I
told you, there’s no such thing as a cauchemar or loup
garou. It’s all superstition. There’s a ridge out there.
You saw me on it. He wasn’t walking on water,” I
added with a sneer.

He didn’t believe a word I said.

It was late when we got back to the motel. I showered and put on clean jeans and a T-shirt. My running
shoes were soaked, so I donned my slippers.

“How about some local food,” Jack exclaimed.

“Feeling adventurous, huh?” I grinned.

“Just hungry.”

Across the street from the motel was the Crown
Royale Restaurant. At 7:00 P.M., it was packed, but we
found a spot and ordered platters of boiled crawfish.
Crawfish was a new experience for Jack, but he
quickly caught on to the proper way to eat the little
crustaceans. You eat the tail, which you pop off from
the head. Then you peel the scales and discard the intestine, a tiny black thread along the back, daub the
succulent white meat in an exotic sauce, and pop it in
your mouth. Washed down with cold beer, crawfish is
a true delicacy, a miniature lobster.

Unlike many Cajuns, however, I never could suck
the fat from the crawfish head.

When got back to our room around 9 or so. While
Jack hit the shower, I laid my 3” x 5” cards on the table
and went over what I had.

Janelle Bourgeois was not involved. She had motive, but not the opportunity.

Fawn Williams was still in the mix, but I truly believed the honorable senator was lying to cover his
keister. He was doing damage control, and the only
time a politician does that is when he is guilty of
whatever he has been accused. Otherwise, why would
he even go to the time and expense to fly from Baton Rouge to Lafayette? He could have just laughed at me
over the phone.

To me, everything now pointed to Marvin Gates.
He had motive in spades, a partnership and the offshore accounts. Opportunity? That, I didn’t know,
but a man in his position could have created the opportunity easily enough, and just as easily, I could
find out.

He could have met Hardy in Maida for some fabricated reason, struck him in the head, and tossed him in
the bayou. But who would have driven the suburban to
Whiskey River? One of Jimmy Blue’s soldiers?

No. If Gates was siphoning off mob money into a
private account, the last thing he would do was to involve Jimmy Blue in Hardy’s murder. One logical explanation was that he had somehow made contact with
Karen Babin’s brother, Thertule Pellerin.

The idea excited me. Yeah, that first day after I
talked with Laura Palmo, she told Gates I was in town.
He could have contacted Pellerin and sent him to harass us, hoping to drive us away. Pellerin then enlisted
the help of the two swamp rats. After all, one of them
was the thug who had jumped me last night.

My eyes were burning. I leaned back and rubbed
them. Not a bad little theory, but how to prove it without involving Jimmy Blue and the mob?

Closing my eyes, I let my mind drift, but it just kept
drifting into the proverbial brick wall.

I rose fresh and rested the next morning. During the
night, I had decided not to attempt to finesse Gates,
but instead hit him head on. I hoped if I told him I
planned to reveal the offshore accounts to Jimmy
Blue, he would break.

If he didn’t … well, either he was a lot tougher
than he looked, or Jimmy Blue was in the scheme up
to his scrawny neck.

Throughout the day I called the bank several times,
each time speaking with Laura Palmo. By midafternoon, I was getting restless. Gates had not returned from Lafayette.

My last call was just before closing. Laura apologized. “I was getting ready to call you, Tony. Gates
called a few minutes ago. He’s going straight home.
You can probably catch him out there.”

I thanked her and in the next breath, I headed for
the door. “Hey, Jack, I’m going out to Gates’. You
want to go?”

Jack shook his head. “Naw. Too hot out there.”

Gates looked surprised when he opened the door
and saw me. He had removed his coat and tie, and
rolled up the sleeves of his pale blue shirt. “Mr.
Boudreaux” He glanced over my shoulder at the
Cadillac. “I assumed you had left town”

I smiled amiably. “Not yet. But I probably will in
the next day or so.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Oh? The DNA results come
in?”

“No. Not yet. It takes some time.” I nodded to the
foyer. “Can I come in? I have a couple more questions.”

For a brief second, he hesitated, then stepped back
and opened the door wide. “Certainly. Come on in.
You know where the den is.”

I led the way into the roomy den. He gestured to a
chair at the table in the middle of the room. I shook
my head. “No, thanks. This won’t take long,” I said,
my voice hard and cold.

He frowned at me, clearly puzzled at my chilly demeanor. “Is … is something wrong?”

“That remains to be seen” I nodded to a chair
across the table. “But you might like to sit down first”

The portly man forced a nervous laugh. “You sound
serious.”

“I am, Mr. Gates. Dead serious.”

He swallowed hard, and a sheen of perspiration
broke out on his forehead. “Now you have me curious,” he said in a weak effort to joke, but he did take a
seat. “What’s this all about?”

Taking a deep breath, I played what I hoped was my
trump card. “No beating around the bush, Gates. I
know about the offshore accounts you and Hardy are
siphoning off the bank in St. Kitts and sending to Dominica. I have copies of account numbers and routing
figures”

His fleshy face paled, and his lips trembled. “You … you what? That’s nonsense. Absolute nonsense,” he added, becoming belligerent. “How dare
you come into my house with such a ridiculous accusation?” He hefted his bulk to his feet, his face crimson with fury. “Why, I’ll sue you for every cent you
and the company you work for have. I’ll-”

“Then I’ll just have to tell Jimmy Blue about the accounts. Or does he know about them already? Was he
in the scheme with you and Hardy?” I was certain
Jimmy Blue knew nothing about the accounts. There
was no way a small time casino owner like Jimmy
Blue would dare cross mob boss Joe Vasco.

Gates gagged and grabbed his stomach. He rushed
to the wet bar where he retched into the sink. I turned
my head and grimaced. When the heaving sounds
were over, I looked back around. His pale cheeks
were shaded with a tinge of yellow. He leaned forward
on the wet bar. “You … you wouldn’t do that. He’d
kill me.”

I almost felt sorry for the man, almost, but not
quite. “Someone threw Hardy to the alligators. You’re
the only one with enough motive, a partnership in the
bank, three offshore accounts, and-”

He interrupted. “T-Three? What do you mean
three?”

I held up my fingers and ticked them off. “First,
yours; second, Hardy’s; and third, Joan Rouly’s.”

A puzzled frown knit his forehead. “Joan Rouly? I
don’t know any Joan Rouly.”

Arching a skeptical eyebrow, I replied, “You don’t
know her?”

He shook his head. “I never heard of her.” The belligerence was gone from his voice now, replaced with a
pleading whine. “That’s the truth. I never heard of her.”

I dropped that line of questioning for a moment.
“Who wired the EFT’s to the bank in St. Kitts, you or
Hardy?”

Gates wiped a fat hand across his sweaty forehead.

“You might as well tell me. You’re in too deep to
back out now.”

With a drawn-out sigh, he muttered. “John or me.
We never let our secretary see what we were doing.”

I considered his response skeptically. Secretaries
always knew a lot more than the average boss gave
them credit for. A thought popped into my head, one I
didn’t like. Could Laura Palmo have stumbled onto
their scheme? No. I pushed the idea from my head.

He continued. “Look, I was in New Orleans when
John was killed, if the body they found is John. I can
prove I was in New Orleans. Three CEO’s and I were
in an all night party at the Chateaubriand Hotel.
They’ll vouch for me”

I shook my head. “They’ll say anything you want
them to just to cover their own tails.”

“All right, so maybe they will, but it’s the truth” He
hesitated. “Look, you know about the accounts. I can’t
lie my way out of them, but I swear I had nothing to
do with John’s death.”

“No? You know someone by the name of Thertule
Pellerin?”