Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 07 - The Swamps of Bayou Teche (6 page)

A startled curse burst from my lips when I saw a
four-foot black water snake hanging limply by the tail
from the doorjamb. In its mouth was a dead mouse.

Jack was blubbering.

A cold chill ran up my spine. I knew the meaning of
the snake and mouse. It was a chilling warning from
the old ones to a transgressor, threatening him with
the same fate as the mouse, if he continued his pursuit.

Nonsense as far as I was concerned, but despite being several years into the twenty-first century, there
were still many believers in gris-gris and wangas out
in the swamps; there were still many who were driven
by the old superstitions. And as long as they were out
there, they had to be taken seriously.

I picked up a chair and poked at the snake. It didn’t
react. I breathed easier. “It’s dead,” I muttered, looking again at the mouse in its mouth and remembering
Nanna, my great-great grandpa’s sister who claimed
to be a seer and to whom many had gone for gris-gris
and wangas.

“You sure?” Jack had backed up another couple steps.

“Yeah, I’m sure. Come on. Let’s go”

“But-”

“Just walk around it, Jack. Come on. Let’s get out
of here.” Grabbing my gear, I scooted around the dangling snake and abruptly jerked to a halt. “Jeez,” I
muttered.

“What? What?”

“Take a look.” I stepped aside and nodded to the
Cadillac.

Written on the passenger’s window with what appeared to be white shoe polish were the rain-smeared
words, “Mind your own business.”

Jack cursed. “Look what some yokel did to my
Caddie,” he shouted, brushing past me.

I grabbed his arm. “Hold on. Look at that” I
pointed to the ground beside the car. There in the mud
were several footprints, all barefoot, slowly filling
with water.

Jack looked around at me, alarmed. “You don’t
think .. ” He gulped, unable to utter the words stuck
in his throat.

I shook my head. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“But bare feet. Remember last night at the lodge?”
He shook his head. “This is crazy, Tony. This is really
crazy.”

I remembered. That was the trouble. I remembered
too well.

We threw our luggage in the trunk, wiped the words
from the window with a threadbare towel, courtesy
Empire Arms Suites, and headed for Whiskey River.

I decided against telling Jack the significance of the
snake and mouse. He was too jumpy. I didn’t believe
in all the superstitions, yet he was right about one
thing. It was crazy.

Winding, twisting scenic byways don’t lend themselves to speed, especially when a fine mist is falling,
but we covered the fifty miles of tortuous highway
from Morgan City to Lafayette in three quarters of an
hour. Then we headed east.

“I said it before, and I’ll say it again. These people
are weird,” Jack muttered, peering into the mist and flexing his fingers about the steering wheel. “A snake.
Ugh” He shivered. “What was it, some kind of sign or
something?”

I glanced at him, leaned my head back on the seat,
and lied. “Beats me.”

Jack fell silent, pensive. Several minutes passed.
Keeping his eyes on the road, he said. “It’s spooky,
Tony. If it was the same guy from last night-you
know the one who cut the tree down-how did he
know where we were?”

All I could do was shrug. That was one question I
wished I had the answer for.

At 5:30, in the steady mist, we pulled up in front of
the Iberville Parish Sheriff’s office in Grosse Tete,
French for “big head” I imagine a psychologist could
have a field day with the Freudian implications of
such a name.

Louisiana law enforcement does not hold Louisiana
private investigators in a great deal of esteem, and as
far as they’re concerned, out-of-state P.L’s are even
lower-on the same level as a cockroach.

So consequently, my faithful fleece-lined leather
coat back in Church Point would have provided very
little protection from the chilly reception I received
from the sheriff’s department. I explained Mrs.
Hardy’s wishes and the details of my visit to their fair
state, plus the fact I was a Louisianan first, and a Texan second, but Watch Sergeant Jimmy LeBlanc
shook his head. “We don’t need no help over here. We
do the job ourselves. We find him. And if something
do happen to him, then we handle that too”

Often I think that fortuity is the primary means of
most accomplishments. Happenstance sometimes becomes an unexpected but welcome bedfellow, for just
before Sergeant LeBlanc dismissed me for Texas, the
phone rang. It was from the Opelousas Police Department.

After he replaced the receiver, I commented that I
had family in Opelousas, hoping that might make him
reconsider. “My cousin. He has a chain of lube shops
there. Maybe you’ve heard of them, Catfish Lube?”

His eyes widened with surprise. “What’s that you
say? Your cousin, he own Catfish Lube?”

“Yeah.”

“You say Leroi Thibodeaux be your cousin?”

I nodded, surprised he knew Leroi.

Recognition lit his eyes, and a broad grin split his
dark face, his white teeth a striking contrast against
his blue-black skin. “I hear of you. You the white boy
that be Leroi’s cousin. The one he calls the white
sheep in the family.”

I grinned. “You know Leroi?”

“Do I? Him and me, we went to LSU together.” He
shook his head and chuckled. “Me, I could tell you
some things about that cousin of yours”

“Not as much as I could tell you,” I replied, relaxing.

We exchanged stories about Leroi for a few minutes.
I brought the subject back around to the purpose of my
visit, explaining my request to inspect the Suburban.

Jimmy LeBlanc hesitated, which gave me the chance
to tell him I had information about John Hardy’s activities from April 23 through the early morning of the 26.
Within a few more minutes, I brought Sergeant
LeBlanc up to date on what I had learned from Charley
Benoit, and then managed to elicit his permission to inspect the Suburban, which was down at the local salvage yard.

“But yourself, don’t you touch nothing, you hear
me?” Sergeant LeBlanc cautioned.

“Can I at least look inside? I might get an idea
where he is.”

His brow furrowed as he pondered my request. Finally, he nodded. “Don’t see what that would hurt nothing, and,” he added, “you tell us if you find anything.”

I offered my hand. “You got it, Jimmy.” I scribbled
my cell phone number on a piece of paper and handed
it to him. “Would you let me know if you find him?”

He grinned amiably. “For Leroi’s cousin, I suppose
I will.”

Barney Knowles owned the salvage yard. I had expected a burley, pot-bellied, cigar-chomping redneck,
but Barney was short and lean and dark as swamp water. Pure Cajun without a Cajun name. Go figure.

He eyed me suspiciously and glanced over my
shoulder at Jack who was trying to sleep in the front
seat. I suggested he call the sheriff’s department to
confirm my authorization to inspect the vehicle, but he
shrugged and nodded to the black Suburban still
hooked up to his tow truck. “There she be. Help yourself.”

The steady drizzle had carved streaks in the layer of
reddish mud that had coated every inch of the Suburban, clogging every crevice, every crease, every curve
of the vehicle.

I opened the door of the 2006 Chevrolet Suburban.
The smell of fish smacked me in the face. I surveyed
the interior. Nothing but pink mud. No luggage, no
shotguns, no boots, nothing.

I opened the glove compartment.

More mud and a handful of water-soaked papers.

I eyed the papers hungrily, remembering my promise to Sergeant LeBlanc not to touch anything. I shot a
furtive glance at the office, but Barney Knowles was
nowhere to be seen.

I retrieved the papers, spread them on the muddy
seat and wiped the mud from them. There was an invoice from La Louisanne Import/Export billing Antigua Import/Export for $86,000.00 for Tiki furniture,
whatever that was; four or five receipts from the same
Shamrock station in Bagotville, the most recent dated
April 23, the day Hardy left for the lodge; and the remaining two slips were duplicates of wire transfers from the Bagotville National Bank to the State Bank
of St. Kitts and the other to the Dominica Republic
Bank.

St. Kitts and Dominica? Geography wasn’t my
strong suit in high school, but I guessed the two were
Caribbean banks. What kind of business was a
Louisiana bank doing with offshore banks? I shrugged,
figuring that in today’s global economy, the smallest
bank in Podunk could be doing business with the Bank
of Moscow, but to make certain, I copied the account
and routing numbers from the duplicates.

From the corner of my eye, I spotted movement at
the office. I glanced up to see Barney standing in the
door, watching me suspiciously.

I waved, at the same time slipping the papers back
in the glove compartment and closing the door. I
glanced at the fuel gauge. The needle registered three
quarters of a tank. The key was in the ignition. I
turned it, but the needle didn’t budge.

While I’m no expert on modern technology, I
guessed that when the water shorted out the Suburban’s computer, the needle froze.

I glanced at the odometer. Only three thousand miles.

Given the size of the gas tanks on Chevrolet Suburban, I guessed a quarter of a tank was about the
amount of fuel to cover a hundred miles.

Just before I closed the door, I spotted a matchbook
in the mud on the floor. Using the tip of my finger, I brushed the mud from the cover. Bagotville Bank.
Must have belonged to Hardy. I eased open the cover.
Mud caked the cardboard matches, but not so thick I
couldn’t see three or four had been plucked from the
left side of the matchbook.

Staring off into space, I sorted through what I knew.
Hardy left Bagotville on the 23rd; fought with Deslatte on the 25th, called his secretary on the same day
telling her he was taking a jaunt to the Bahamas; left
the lodge sometime in the early morning hours of the
26th; and on the 27th, called his secretary, Laura
Palmo, allegedly from the Bahamas; and today, Friday, April 30th, his vehicle was fished from Whiskey
River.

It appeared John Hardy had driven straight to the
river without any side trips. The absence of a receipt
later than the 23rd, plus three-quarters tank of gas,
would indicate such.

Surveying the interior of the vehicle one last time, I
studied the layers of mud coating the seats and headliner. I jotted down what I had found on my 3” x 5”
cards before I walked across the lot to Barney
Knowles.

“Find what you was looking for?”

I shrugged. “Whatever it was, I didn’t see it. Let me
ask you a question. You pull many cars out of Whiskey
River?”

He pursed his lips. “Some”

“How long you figure that one was in the water?
There was a lot of mud in it.”

The thin Cajun chuckled. “That old river, she be
nothing but mud. Still, I suppose three, four days.”

Three or four days.

That little tidbit of information supported my theory that he had driven straight to the river from the
lodge, but why?

The eighteen-mile bridge spanning the Atchafalaya
Swamp is actually two bridges separated by a strip of
low-lying land a little more than a mile wide, a strip
that provides a plethora of convenience stores, liquor
stores, beer joints, truck stops, gas stations, and
dozens of other small enterprises.

On impulse I pulled off at the small community of
Rowan. On either side of the farm road were two convenience stores, Venable’s, a thrown-together structure of corrugated iron, clapboard, and plywood, all
painted a dark green.

Across the road was a competing convenience
store, Kwik Stop, which was in even worse repair.
The gasoline lanes were filled with potholes, but the
pumps appeared brand new, a concession accorded the business by oil companies anxious to peddle their
wares.

Three Harley hogs were parked near the door. In
bold Algerian cursive across the gas tank of one were
the words Angel of Death.

The inside of Kwik Stop was as shabby as the outside, and from the hallway leading to the restrooms,
the cloying odor of unwashed toilets flooded across
the racks of produce next to the open doorway.

Jack headed for the men’s room while I picked up a
couple Nehi creme sodas.

A single biker was making a purchase at the counter,
blocking the owner’s view of the other two bikers who
were openly stuffing various items inside their leather
jackets. There was not one of the three I would have
cared to meet in a narrow alley on a dark night.

When the three bikers left, I sat the soft drinks on
the counter. My experience has been no questions are
asked or no restrooms are used unless the customer
purchases at least one item.

“Morning,” I said to the portly man behind the
counter, as I plopped down a twenty.