Aurora 04 - The Julius House (21 page)

“Did you get a good look at him?”

“Yeah.” She had the strangest expression as she gathered up her hair and bound it back into her customary ponytail. “So?”

“It was the man who tried to kill us.”

The ax-man, somehow in league with Melba Totino and her sister Alicia? So he wasn’t in any way involved with my husband’s Latin American ventures; we could safely have called the police when he attacked us. We could be on the right side of the law, instead of Martin’s side.

“So. We follow him?” Angel asked.

“I guess so,” I said. “Can you figure this out?”

Angel shook her head. But she wasn’t unconcerned; her mouth was compressed into an even thinner line. Her hands gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white. She hadn’t liked being beaten, she hadn’t liked having been so close to losing her client, she hadn’t liked having to tell Martin or her husband about what had happened, and on a personal level, I suspected she really hadn’t liked having her face messed up.

From being basically indifferent about what she considered a personal obsession of mine, Angel had graduated to being vitally interested in the Julius case. So we both watched eagerly for the man’s emergence from the little house.

“We better not be here when he comes out again,” Angel said, and she started the car. We drove around the block until we were positioned on a cross street so that when he came out, we would be able to fall in behind him unless he did something crazy, like attempting a U-turn on the narrow, crowded street.

I was able to see him for the first time when he shut the door of Alicia Manigault’s house behind him. He was tall and muscular, and he looked younger than I’d remembered him. He wore jeans and a work shirt, with the sleeves rolled up. His hair was dark and curly, and he was cleanshaven; Angel and I had been good witnesses. It was hard to square this ail-American blue-collar hunk with the maniac waving an ax who’d so nearly mowed me down a few days before.

“He’s walking a little stiff,” Angel said happily. “I think we banged him around some.”

“I hope so.”

He strode to his lurid pickup truck and started it up.

We drove out of Metairie and across the Huey E Long Bridge and went south steadily. After at least twenty miles, he turned right, and we followed him. He didn’t seem to be looking out for cars following him, or for anything else.

“An amateur,” Angel muttered. I couldn’t tell if she was pleased by our attacker’s amateurism, or disgusted, or enraged. If it was difficult following him at night, she didn’t say so.

Now we were on a narrow road with a bayou on one side, houses on the other. There were boats lining the bayou, with signs for swamp tours, promising alligators and abundant wildlife.

Most of the signs featured the word “Cajun.” The lighting wasn’t good, but the white truck with the bright blazes painted on the side was fairly easy to spot. Finally it slowed and turned into one of the narrow driveways. We had to drive on past, and I stared as hard as I could in the dark to see a sort of cabin with a screened-in front porch. Ax-man had parked the truck under a carport, which the truck shared with a battered blue Chevy Nova and a tarp-covered boat.

“That’s the car he was driving in Georgia,” Angel said.

We drove on until we came to a juke joint, where Angel pulled in and parked. We looked at each other questioningly.

Neither of us knew what to do next.

“We could watch all night, or we could come back tomorrow, or we could call Shelby from a pay phone in there.” Angel nodded her head towards the bar, from which came loud zydeco music and a fairly constant flow of in-and-out traffic. I wasn’t about to go in there.

“Let’s find out more before we call Shelby,” I said. “I want to know who lives in that house.”

IT RAINED THE NEXT MORNING, steamy relentless rain that made the inside of the rental car damp and sticky despite the air-conditioner. We went from the Hyatt Regency in urban New Orleans to the cabin in rural south Louisiana, a sort of cultural leap that sat better with Angel than it did with me. By the time we got there, the truck was gone, but the old Nova was still parked where it had been the night before.

There were neighbors close to this cabin; lots facing the bayou were as valuable as waterfront property anywhere, especially since most of the people along this stretch of road apparently made their living giving tourists swamp tours. On the other hand, since tourists were common, we didn’t stick out as obviously as we might have. A tiny souvenir shop sitting cheek-by-jowl with a boat tour departure site was already open. The man inside, dressed in camouflage greens and browns, his rough black hair in tousled waves, looked like a refugee from a Rambo movie.

Angel put on some lipstick and slid from the car. “He’s more my type,” she told me. “I’ll see what I can find out.” The rain had settled down to a very light drizzle.

She’d left her elastic band off this morning, and her blond hair fluffed prettily around her narrow face. In a pair of tight jeans, a sleeveless T-shirt, and sneakers, she could stop traffic if she chose, and this morning, she did choose. She sauntered up to the service window of the little shack, rested her elbows on the sill, and within a minute was deep in conversation with the dark-haired man, whose white teeth flashed in a constant grin. Angel was smiling, shrugging, tossing back her hair, and in general behaving atypically. But it seemed to be quite effective. When she started back to the car, she turned around several times to call back, as he extended the conversation.

“Whoo,” she said in relief, as she slid into her seat. “Talk about Cajun! He had an accent so thick you could cut it, and could charm the birds from the trees, too.”

“What did he say?”

“I told him this long story . . . I’d met this guy in a bar last night, and I didn’t know his name, but he had this really distinctive truck and lived somewhere right about here. And then I said I’d lost the napkin with his name and phone number, but I was trying to track him down before he called me, because I suspected he was married. And I wanted to know for sure before I went out with him.”

“And?”

“This guy in the souvenir booth wanted me to forget about the man I’d met last night and go out with him instead, but I told him I’d promised the man I’d meet him tonight, though I’d shove him off if he was married.” Angel made a circular sweep with her hand to indicate how long this badinage had taken her. “What it all boils down to—the ax-man is renting this cabin, has been for a couple of years now. No one owns a house along this road that isn’t Cajun, by the way, because of some law that the houses go to family members and no one ever sells, but this particular house, the only son is in the Army right now and just wants someone to live in it until he comes back from his tour of duty—or something like that.”

“Did you get a name?”

“The name is apparently Dumont, or something like that. He works at the lumber yard not five minutes from here. And he is married; or at least there’s a woman in residence, and Rene said he’s heard she’s pretty ferocious. He advised me to keep clear.”

“I don’t know what to do now,” I observed, after we’d looked at each for a moment or two.

“Why would a man named Dumont attack us with an ax? Why is he the rent collector for Alicia Manigault? Where is she? She can’t be dead, if she appears for a few weeks each year and crams herself into that house with the Colemans and the dog.”

“And what does it all have to do with the bodies on the roof of your house, as long as we’re asking questions?” Angel added. “All I know to do is ask someone who might know the answer.”

I thought long and hard to find a way around that, but it did seem as if that was the only way to do it. At least the ax-man was gone, and maybe we could find out something in his absence that would explain his attack on us. What we were going to do about it once we discovered the reason, I hadn’t the faintest notion.

“Someone comes running at me with an ax, I want to know why,” Angel said. She was looking at me sideways, sensing my hesitation.

This was a point of pride for Angel.

“Let’s go knock on the door,” I said.

* * *

I pulled boldly into the driveway. I was driving, with Angel crouched on the floorboards. I parked as close as possible behind the old car, so the passenger door was not as visible from the front window. As soon as I’d gone inside with the woman, providing as much distraction as possible, Angel was to slip from the car and snake around back. There were enough bushes in the yard to provide cover. If the air-conditioner wasn’t already on, maybe there’d be a window open so Angel could hear if I got into trouble.

This was pretty close to having no plan at all.

My palms were sweating as I got out of the rental car. It was still raining enough to keep the tourists away, and the Bayou Cajun Boat Tour place across the road was deserted. I clamped my purse under one arm as if it were a friend, and I marched up to the cabin, creaked across the screened-in porch, and rang the doorbell.

I was prepared for the woman who answered the door to be tough, perhaps cheap-looking and foul-mouthed. Though very nervous, I was braced.

But I was not ready for the door to be answered by a dead woman.

“Yes?” said Charity Julius.

She thought much more quickly than I, no doubt about it.

The expression on my face and the gasp I gave left no doubt in her mind that she was recognized. She didn’t know who the hell I was, but she knew I recognized her.

About the time Angel was gliding around the side of the house on her way to the back, Charity Julius punched me in the stomach hard enough to double me over, and while I was bent, she brought her clenched fists down in a vicious blow to the back of my neck. By the time Angel was at the kitchen window listening, Charity Julius was dragging me to the bedroom and locking me into a closet where I suppose the owner ordinarily kept his guns; it was equipped with a very high outside padlock. At about the moment Angel began to be concerned at not hearing my voice, Charity was calling the ax-man at his job, and he was tearing home in his flashy truck.

I was sore but conscious in the dark closet, which seemed to be full of hard, lumpy things. I hauled myself to my feet, slowly and reluctantly, and waved my hand around above my head. I was rewarded with the feel of the string of the closet light. I gave it a tug, and looked around me in the sudden glare.

There were out-of-season clothes pushed to one side, and the other was occupied with fishing gear. The floor was covered with boots, from lace-up steel-toe leather ones to thigh-high waders.

I hoped Angel would come soon, but something might have happened to her, too. I had better find a weapon of some kind. The fishing poles refused to break into a usable length until I found an old bamboo one. With some effort, I shortened it to about a yard. The thick end was quite heavy, and I thought that if I had room to swing it, I could cause some harm.

“What are you doing in there?” Charity Julius asked from the other side of the door. It seemed prudent not to answer.

“We’re going to take care of you, whoever you are,” she said raggedly. “No one’s found us in all this time, and we’ll get the money in four more months. We haven’t waited all these years for nothing.”

I leaned against the door. “Who’s on the roof instead of you?” I asked. I was too curious not to.

“They found them?” It was Charity’s turn to be shocked. “Oh, no,” she said, so quietly I could barely catch the words.

I wondered why Mrs. Totino hadn’t called her granddaughter. She had to know Charity was alive; her live-in lover’s presence in the life of Alicia Manigault proved that. So why hadn’t Charity known?

I shifted uncomfortably in the cramped space. What was taking Angel so long? A glance at my watch said fifteen minutes had crawled by.

I had a feeling things weren’t going my way when I heard the male voice outside.

“Harley! She’s in the closet,” Charity Julius said, and another piece dropped into place.

Harley Dimmoch only wanted his family to call at a certain time because then he, and not Charity, could be sure to answer the phone. He didn’t let them come visit without lots of notice because she would have to stay somewhere else.

“Let’s see who it is,” he was saying, and then I had only the quick rattle of the key in the lock to warn me. I raised the fishing rod and launched myself out of the closet, which almost got me shot dead. The young dark-haired man was holding a no-nonsense revolver in his hands, and at my appearance he fired. Fortunately for me, the fishing rod caught him in the stomach and the shot went high, but at least it settled matters for Angel, who came through the unlocked back door like gangbusters.

The small bedroom was full of shouting, moving bodies, and the fear of the gun.

Charity was so busy trying to grab me that she missed Angel’s appearance until Angel justified all her martial-arts training by kicking Charity in the side of the knee, a decisive move, since Charity shrieked and folded instantly, and thereafter lay on the floor moaning.

Harley Dimmoch had grabbed my arm with his free hand and was trying to aim the gun with the other when Charity shrieked. He saw her go down, and I watched his face twist with desperation. He had begun to swing his arm to fire at Angel when she seized it, twisted his wrist clockwise with a curiously delicate grip of her fingers, slid closer to him and under his arm, and then with his arm twisted and extended in what must have been an excruciatingly painful position, kicked one leg out from under him and kept on raising his arm while he was falling until his shoulder dislocated—or perhaps his arm broke.