Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 07 - The Swamps of Bayou Teche (19 page)

Then later, Charley Benoit told me that Hardy had
arrived without boots. He had to buy them at the lodge.

Someone was lying. And I could see no reason for
Charley Benoit.

Immediately, I went back online and asked Eddie
for a background check on Laura Palmo, born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as well as requesting the listed
owners of the La Louisianne Import/Export and the
Antigua Import/Export businesses.

Then I looked up the telephone numbers for E.K.
Collins and Felix Babeaux. I wanted to interview
them as soon as possible. To my surprise, Babeaux’s
number was the one to which Hardy made a call at five on the afternoon of the twenty-fifth, and Babeaux
was also an in-law to Janelle Bourgeois, Hardy’s exwife.

Still, if Hardy did call Babeaux at five, then perhaps
Janelle Bourgeois had nothing to do with Hardy’s
murder. After all, even though she was in Maida on
the twenty-fifth, Laura Palmo spoke with him several
hours later-an impossible feat if Hardy had ended up
in the belly of that monster alligator earlier in the day.

E.K. Collins answered on the eighth ring in a halting, thin voice.

“Mr. Collins?”

“Yes.

I introduced myself. “I spoke to your cousin,
Ernest, in Opelousas, and he-”

He cut me off. “I know. Ernest, he called me. What
you want? You some kind of salesman?”

“No, sir. I’m a private investigator, and I’m looking
into the disappearance of John Hardy”

He caught his breath. “You’ve come to the wrong
man, Mr. Boudreaux. Me, I don’t see John Hardy in
over fifteen years since he done stole almost three
hundred thousand dollars my wife and me, we spent
years saving.”

“Could I come out and visit with you and your wife
for a few minutes? I’m up in Bagotville. I could be
down to Maida in fifteen minutes”

“My wife’s dead, Mr. Boudreaux. She die fourteen years ago while I was in prison. Dey wouldn’t even let
me go to her funeral”

“I’m sorry, truly sorry.”

“That don’t make no difference. Me, I don’t want to
be reminded of John Hardy, Mr. Boudreaux. I don’t
care about seeing you neither.”

“Then just answer one or two questions for me, Mr.
Collins” Without giving him the chance to refuse, I
continued, “And I promise not to bother you again.”

There was a moment of silence. “What questions?”

I relaxed. “When did you start using the initials
E.K. instead of your given name, Edgar?”

He seemed surprised at the question. Reluctantly,
he replied, “After I gots out of prison in ‘95 and
moved down here.”

“One last question. Can you tell me where you were
on Sunday, April 25? Not this last Sunday, but the previous Sunday.”

He paused. His tone wary, he replied, “Me, I be visiting my family in Opelousas?”

I frowned. “You mean, Ernest?”

“Yes”

“That’s odd. I wonder why he didn’t mention that
you had visited?”

The old man snorted. “Probably because you don’t
ask”

With a chuckle, I replied, “Probably so, Mr.
Collins. Probably so” I thanked him, adding that if
necessary, I might have to call him once again.

After hanging up, I jotted my notes on a 3” x 5”
card, then dialed Felix Babeaux. I studied the card
while the phone rang. With a wry grunt, I knew that
even if E.K. Collins had not visited his cousin in
Opelousas, there was no way I could prove otherwise.

Still no answer at the home of Felix Babeaux.

After I hung up, I pulled out all my note cards and
laid them out on the table. I had over eighty, and I
started reading back over them, one by one.

More than once in rereading my notes, a new idea,
a new angle would hit me, sometimes a profitable one,
sometimes not. This time I got lucky.

E.K. Collins had stopped using his given name,
Edgar, after he was released from prison. I read the
card again. Sunday, the day before at her house, Laura
told me his name was Edgar. How could she have
known if she’d only been with the bank nine years?
Even if there had been any communication with
Collins, he would have been using the initials E.K.

And then I remembered she told me she had overhead Hardy and Gates talking about him, but Gates
claimed Hardy never mentioned Collins’ given name,
which could have been a deliberate memory loss on
his part, though I had no idea why.

I leaned back and stared unseeing at the TV. I had
put together three maybe four shaky, little theories.

Fawn Williams motive was the investment fund.
And she had opportunity.

Janelle Bourgeois motive was the $18,000 back al imony. I still had to find out if she had opportunity, so
I planned to visit her cousin next morning, specifically
to see if she could not account for her time after 3 A.M.

Then there was Gates. He had motive with the
money-laundering scheme. And he knew about the dentist office burning only hours after it happened. He
could have ordered the burning. Opportunity? He could
have hired someone.

And then back to the money-laundering scheme,
which I hoped had nothing to do with Hardy’s death. I
wasn’t crazy about upsetting any mob connections from
Jimmy Blue up to Joe Vasco in New Orleans. Messing
with mob money led to only one outcome, and it wasn’t
one I particularly relished. If it were money-laundering,
I planned to turn it over to Emile Primeaux and Jimmy
LeBlanc, and beat a hasty retreat back to Austin, Texas.

There was still Moise Deslatte and his two braindead sidekicks, Juju and Marcel.

My stomach growled. I pushed back from the table
and opened the ice chest. I picked up a can of Big
Easy beer, then hesitated. With a shrug, I replaced it
and headed out the door. A Coke or Dr. Pepper would
do just fine.

The steady rain continued, pounding against the
roof. Out on the second floor esplanade, I placed my
hands on the rail and leaned forward, studying the
lights of the city and the reflection of headlights off
the wet roads. For some reason, I thought of the loup
garou. A perfect night for one. I shivered.

I headed down the esplanade to the soft drink machine on the landing at the head of the stairs leading to
the ground floor.

As I turned the corner, I glimpsed movement in
front of me and ducked. I felt a hard object graze the
top of my head and heard it slam into the stucco wall
of the motel with a crack.

I threw my arms up and out, knocking away the
hand holding the club. In the same movement, I
straightened my bent knees, springing upward and
throwing a straight right.

My knuckles hit bone, and a muffled cry echoed in
the stairwell.

My attacker tumbled head over heels down the
stairs, and I lunged down right after him. He must’ve
been part cat for as soon as he hit the ground, he
bounded to his feet. Before he could take a step, I
leaped on him, sending him sprawling to the ground
with me on top and bouncing the back of his head off
the concrete.

He grunted and went limp.

When I climbed to my feet, I froze. He was one of
the two swamp rats I’d spotted back at the fish camp,
driving the powerboat that tried to cut us in two. I
looked around, but no one was to be seen. I dragged
him back under the stairwell and leaned him up
against the wall. “All right, wake up,” I growled, shaking him roughly. “Who are you? Who sent you?”

He groaned. “No one,” he muttered.

My blood boiled. I usually shy away from violence,
but this cracker had been doing his level best to drive
us away, or perhaps even kill us. Viciously, I slammed
him face first on the concrete and jabbed my knee in
his back while lacing my fingers under his chin and
pulling back, curving his spine into a position it
wasn’t designed to take.

He grunted.

“Tell me,” I hissed between clenched teeth. “Who
sent you?”

Groaning in pain, he muttered. “Don’t know. I-”

I yanked harder. “Don’t lie. Who? I’ll pull your
head back to your heels if I have to”

“Awright, awright. You be breaking it. Pellerin!
That guy’s name, it be Pellerin,” he groaned. “He the
one.”

I tugged hard. “First name.”

“Don’t know. Just Pellerin.”

Pellerin? Puzzled, I relaxed my grip slightly, but it
was enough for him to spin over, throwing me off balance. Before I could catch myself, he lashed out with
his foot and kicked me in the chest, sending me tumbling over backward. By the time I leaped to my feet,
he was racing across the parking lot into the darkness.
I took after him, not ten feet behind.

He shot between two cars, then cut to the right.
When I tried to make the cut, my leather-soled shoes
slipped on the wet tarmac, and I went skidding on my posterior. By the time I climbed back to my feet, he
had disappeared.

I stood staring after him. “Pellerin,” I muttered, remembering Juju’s assertion that when Babin’s wife,
Karen, was killed, her brother, Thertule Pellerin, disappeared into the swamps, supposedly bewitched into
a loup garou by the local cauchemar. I shook my head
wryly. Maybe the loony ran off into the swamps, but
he had certainly not morphed into a loup garou.

Jack was in when I returned. He stared at my disheveled appearance in surprise. “What the-”

“A visitor,” I said, stripping off my wet shirt. I related
briefly the details while I slipped on a fresh T-shirt.

“What was he, a mugger?”

“Anything but. One of our friends from the bait
camp and the boat that tried to cut us in two.”

His eyes grew wide.

I nodded, figuring he’d be better off back in Austin,
for it could be that things might become intense
around here. “Look, Jack, I think you ought to go
home. It’s getting serious around here. I don’t think
they’re kidding anymore.”

He blanched, gulped, then set his jaw. “I’m staying,
Tony. No way I’m going off and leaving you.”

I could have hugged him at that moment, but I didn’t
want to give him the wrong impression. “All right,” I
replied brusquely. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

After Jack dropped off to sleep, I stared blankly at
the TV, trying to figure out how Thertule Pellerin fit
into John Hardy’s death. His sister, Karen Pellerin
Babin was dead, killed in a car crash just after she
gained her release from prison. The only idea I could
come up with was that maybe Gates had learned the
brother’s identity and somehow contacted him.

I managed to put together a theoretical account of
what had been taking place. Gates and Hardy were
stealing from the mob. The hidden accounts testified
to that. Gates, becoming too greedy, had Hardy killed,
thereby taking over his share of the bank in addition
to his accounts. But someone else was in the mix,
Joan Rouly, who was siphoning off Hardy’s funds
from the Dominica Bank to an account at the bank in
Nauru, a small island three thousand miles northeast
of Australia.

As much as I hated to admit it, the only logical
bank employee with access to Hardy and Gate’s personal information was Laura Palmo. I cringed at the
idea, but there it was.

I pondered over just how I could get Gates to come
clean. In a brilliant flash of inspiration, I knew. I’d
simply threaten to tell Jimmy Blue.

Shaking my head, I turned off the TV and pulled
the covers up about my neck. “You’re reaching, Tony.
Reaching too far. Keep it up and you’re going to fall
flat on your face.”

During the early morning hours, Jack woke me up. “I can’t sleep, Tony. I keep thinking about how these
people always know where we are. You keeping saying there isn’t nothing supernatural about it, but I’m
saying something is there. Something unnatural is doing all this. There’s got to be.”

I lay staring into the dark above my head. I had no
explanation. I blew softly through my lips. “If there is,
I don’t know what it is.”

After breakfast next morning, I called Gates at
home. He was at a meeting in Lafayette and would return the next day.

I sat staring at the receiver, considering my next
step. I had no luck contacting Louise Babeaux, so I
decided to drive on down and get directions from a local. All I needed to know was if Janelle Bourgeois had
disappeared anytime after 3 A.M. on the twenty-sixth.