Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 15 - The Mona Lisa Murders (2 page)

Right then, I should have turned around and headed back to Austin.

Should have!

But I didn’t. I kept driving.

And then around a couple curves later, I spotted the Camaro pulled to the side. With a cell phone in her ear, the young woman stood staring down at a flat tire. When she spotted me, she smiled and waved.

I grinned to myself. Served her right.

Given my Louisiana upbringing on the farm and the Catholic school, I was later ashamed of my reaction to her plea for help, but at the time, I gleefully returned her wave and kept driving. Besides, she had her cell, and I’d tell the folks at the lodge. They could send someone back.

The Wetlands Lodge sat over water on ten-foot piers in a small bayou surrounded by a thick grove of water oak and cypress.

While checking in, I told the clerk of the idiot driver stranded down the road. ‘She almost ran me in the water,’ I explained. ‘She can sit there all day as far as I’m concerned.’

He gave me a wry grin. ‘Don’t blame you. There be some dumb ones out there,’ he muttered, adding that if I hurried, I could catch a ride with the last guide boat for the day. ‘Theriot, he got only one client. He can take another, but he’s pulling out in fifteen minutes.’

I made the skiff with time to spare. My fishing partner was Lester Toles from Mountain Hills, Arkansas. Our captain, Quanne Theriot, a wizened Cajun, guided the twenty-foot Carolina Skiff deftly through the backwaters and sloughs of the vast swamp surrounding us, taking us to several glory holes and enough action to make us both cry ‘uncle’.

Having grown up in the swamp and bayous of Louisiana and Texas, I’d seen more than my share of alligators, but the reptiles were a novelty to Lester who spent almost as much time casting his lures in front of the alligators as to the trout.

Even so, we returned to camp with limits of fish.

I gave my catch to my boat mate, Lester. ‘I just like catching them,’ I explained. ‘No way I can eat all that.’

‘Well, then,’ the chubby Arkansan said, wiping the sweat from his fleshy forehead. ‘Least I can do is buy you dinner and a drink.’

After cleaning up, I headed for the dining room, anticipating an evening of fishing stories and easy camaraderie.

That fanciful little dream blew up in my face when I entered the dining area and spotted the young woman from the night before standing at the bar, glaring at me.

I hesitated, glancing around for Lester who had a table near the windows overlooking the bayou. He waved me over. I nodded and headed for him.

Though I did my best to ignore the baleful glare in the woman’s eyes, I couldn’t push her from my mind.

Chapter Two

Throughout our meal, Lester maintained a steady, good-old-boy conversation. I shot furtive glances at the woman. She continued to stare at me. I couldn’t shake the feeling I had seen her somewhere other than Jimmie Bonham’s.

By the time our plates were cleared away, I knew all about Lester, his family, his job, and his dreams. He leaned back and patted his ample stomach. ‘I’m stuffed,’ he said with a wide grin. ‘Always eat too much—like you can see,’ he added with a jovial laugh. He pushed to his feet. ‘Think I’ll take a walk around the porch before going to bed. Digestion, you know. You going out tomorrow?’

‘Bright and early.’

‘I’d like to go out with you, but my partner’s coming in. Maybe the three of us can get together later. You’ll like him.’ He gestured to the porch wrapping around the lodge. ‘Want to join me?’

‘Thanks, but no thanks. I got all the exercise I wanted this afternoon. Good luck tomorrow.’

After Lester departed, I glanced at the bar. To my surprise, the woman had disappeared. I frowned, as curious as I was puzzled.

She was nowhere to be seen in the dining room, nor did I spot her when I retired to the main room where the day’s clients were regaling each other with their fishing prowess.

Chalking her appearance up to happenstance, I soon lost myself in the discussion of hardest fighting fish and best techniques for catching them.

Around ten, the party began to fall apart. My guide was leaving at five-thirty so that meant I had to climb out of bed an hour earlier.

My room was on the second floor overlooking the bayou. After readying for bed, I turned out the lights and glanced one last time at the glass doors that opened onto my balcony. Beyond, the dark swamps exuded the same ominous feeling I’d experienced from swamps all my life.

Louisiana swamps at night were the last place I wanted to be. I didn’t believe in the age-old myths of
feu follet or loup garou
, but then I’d seen enough of those dark backwaters to know there were things beyond explanation—at least, to my simple-mind.

In the distance, a light punched a hole in the darkness, but only for a fleeting moment before vanishing. I squinted into the night, but the light never reappeared. I chalked it up to local fishermen.

The next morning, we pushed out before the sun rose. Our guide informed us we’d be fishing both the swamps and bays opening into the Gulf of Mexico during our morning jaunt.

As we sped away, I glanced back at the dock just as a large man lumbered onto the pier and stared after us. The hair on the back of my neck bristled. Even at this distance, he looked familiar. I shook my head. Don’t go getting all paranoid now, Tony, I told myself.

My fishing partner was a slight man named Antone Moretti. He was a congenial sort, but within minutes I realized he was no fisherman.

He readily admitted such, explaining that he’d always dreamed of fishing the Gulf of Mexico, and since his business trip had taken him through New Orleans, he figured to splurge on his dream.

Despite Antone’s ineptitude, he proved to be an amiable and likeable partner. He laughed at his own clumsiness and shouted with delight at what few fish he did manage to pull in.

The diminutive man was an art dealer, brokering consignment offers and submitting bids for various wealthy clients around the world.

‘Sounds interesting,’ I said, paying more attention to working my fishing lure.

‘You know art, Tony?’

I laughed. ‘Other than the comics, not much.’

‘But, you’ve heard of the Mona Lisa?’

‘Who hasn’t,’ I replied with a chuckle. ‘Some kind of bubblegum, isn’t it?’

Both he and Theriot roared.

‘Sometimes I work with a dealer named Bianchi,’ he said.

‘That’s good,’ I muttered, my attention on the monofilament fishing line stretched before me.

At the time, I never thought about the gist of his questions and remarks. And after an hour or so of art talk and idle questions, the conversation shifted. I figured Antone had finally realized when it came to art, I was a good fisherman.

Our guide, Theriot, exhibited superhuman patience instructing Antone, leaving me pretty much to myself. Two or three times, the Cajun guide settled us over secret holes I figured only he knew, allowing us to latch onto a lunker.

I managed two or three. Antone kept missing them. It required an experienced touch, and the game little guy just hadn’t the experience to acquire it.

Until just before eleven, and then he hit one.

Regardless of what he paid for his trip, it was worth it when he pulled in a fat trout. His face lit with excitement, he exclaimed. ‘Look at it, Tony. Look at it. I bet it weighs twenty pounds.’

Theriot laughed. ‘That be one good fish,
cher
, but probably it be more like four, five pounds, hey?’

After a light lunch and couple hours rest, I headed out for an afternoon of wade fishing in the shallow bays. Valsin Landry was our new guide. He and I sat in the skiff a few minutes until Valsin got a call that Antone had cancelled his afternoon jaunt.

Somewhere between the time we came in for lunch and went back out, the fish developed lockjaw. Valsin and I beat the Gulf to froth without a single strike.

Frustrated, tired, and sweaty, I was anxious for a cold drink in a cold room.

I opened the door to my room and jerked to a halt.

Sitting on the couch, one slender leg crossed over the other, the Melungeon woman stared up at me. ‘Close the door,’ she said flatly.

Surprised by her sudden appearance, I did as she said.

Before I could manage a word, a small smile curled her lips. She pushed to her feet. ‘A least you could have stopped and changed my flat,’ she said with a pout. ‘That was not very gentlemanly to drive right on past and leave a lady standing.’

I blinked once or twice, then realized she was the young woman who had run me off the room the day before. A myriad of confusing thoughts tumbled through my head. I managed to put together as astute a question as my puzzled brain would permit. ‘Who are you?’

She arched an eyebrow. ‘If you’re Tony Boudreaux, then I’m your cousin.’

Chapter Three

To say I was at a loss for words is as much an understatement as asserting Noah’s flood was simply a passing summer shower.

A shy smile flattened her lips. ‘I’m sorry about yesterday. I was looking for your white pickup. That’s what Leroi said you drove.’

‘Leroi? Leroi Thibodeaux?’

‘He’s my half-brother. His Daddy, Theophile, was my daddy.’

I frowned. I remembered Uncle Theophile running off, leaving fourteen-year-old Leroi and his mother behind. We never heard anything from him. We figured he probably got himself killed in some bar or saloon.

She grew serious. ‘My name is Latasha Domingue. I need your help. Leroi told me to find you. Your office said you were over here, so I ran you down.’ She paused. ‘I suppose you have a few questions.’

That was putting it mildly. I managed to nod. ‘Well, yeah, now that you mention it. I might have one or two. Like, what the hell is going on? If this is some prank of Leroi’s, I’ll kick his no-good butt.’

She suppressed a grin. ‘That’s how he said you’d act. The truth is—’ She hesitated. ‘It’s a long story.’

I still didn’t know if this were a joke or not. ‘Then, suppose you tell it.’

‘I’m a sophomore at Houston-Billets University. That’s in Austin. I—’

‘A sophomore?’ I eyed her up and down.

She laughed. ‘An older sophomore. I worked for a few years after high school so I could save enough for tuition to get started. I’m studying criminal justice. I plan on going into law. Just before school was out, I contracted to transport a package from Miami, Florida to a ranch on the Brazos River. Not far below the dam at Possum Kingdom Lake in Texas.’

‘So?’

‘So, someone tried to steal the package. When they couldn’t, they tried to run me off the road, and I’m not sure, but I think they even tried to kill me.’

I narrowed my eyes. ‘What do you mean, tried to kill you?’

In my years on this earth, I’d come to know people pretty well. After graduating from U.T., I taught English at Madison High in Austin, but parents, football, and ambitious administrators proved too much for me. I simply wanted to teach kids, but spoiled kids didn’t want to learn, buffaloed parents didn’t want to displease sissy or bubba, wimpy administrators didn’t want to antagonize doting parents, and all of them worshipped football like it was the biblical Golden Calf.

Then I sold insurance for even a shorter period of time. I hated it. Blevins Security was next.

And I guess you could say I blossomed there. I was familiar with computers, and within a couple years, discovered enough sites that for a nominal fee, I could find ninety percent of those individuals I sought.

With experience, I got to the point where I could usually detect someone blowing smoke. Latasha was playing straight. I gestured to the couch. ‘Sit.’ Remembering the light in the marsh from the night before, I drew the drapes over the glass doors.

‘Now,’ I said, plopping down in the chair beside the couch. ‘First things first. This package. Why would someone steal it? What’s so valuable about it they would want to hurt you?’

The slender young woman ran the tip of her tongue over her lips, wetting them. ‘That’s just it. I don’t know. I answered an ad on Williamsonlist dot com to transport a sealed package from Miami to the Steep Bluff Ranch in Texas. A big cattle and horse ranch.’

‘A package. Why not UPS or Federal Express?’

She shrugged. ‘No idea. All I know is when I get the package to the ranch, they’ll give me a cashier’s check for five thousand dollars.’ She paused and grinned. ‘With my savings, I’ll have enough for tuition for the next couple years. I won’t have to work so I can spend all my time studying. I’ll worry about my senior year later.’

My experience in investigative law immediately raised half-a-dozen red flags, none of which would now serve any purpose by being hoisted. If anything, they would make her even more defensive.

‘Where is the package now?’

‘In a luggage bin at the bus station in New Orleans.’

‘The key?’

‘In the mail to me at my hotel.’

I couldn’t resist grinning at her foresight. ‘What hotel?’

‘Southplace Courtyards. Near St John’s Cemetery in Metairie.’

‘You have no idea what’s in the packages?’

Latasha’s forehead wrinkled in a frown. ‘From talk I heard, it has something to do with the Mona Lisa.’

This was the second time today someone had mentioned the Mona Lisa. ‘The painting? The one in that museum over in France?’

She gave me a look of exasperation. ‘The Louvre.’

‘Yeah. That one. You haven’t looked in the package?’

‘No.’ she shook her head adamantly. ‘The box is sealed. If it’s open, I don’t get paid.’

I’ve seen a bunch of scams and cons, many of which have gilded many pockets and shrunk many bank accounts. On the other hand, I’ve witnessed the obscenely rich spend money on outrageously idiotic wishes, but this one I couldn’t figure.

Leaning back, I studied her. She didn’t strike me as one of those flaky college kids, but rather a sensible young woman. ‘Who did you contract with?’

‘His name is Uberto Bianchi. He’s an antiquities dealer in Paris. I checked his credentials. He’s legitimate. I talked to several dealers in the U.S., and they’ve all heard of him. He’s one of the largest brokers of antiquities in the world.’