Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 07 - The Swamps of Bayou Teche (8 page)

Sometimes I’m slow on the uptake around women,
but it didn’t take a brain surgeon to see why Hardy desired an intimate rendezvous with her. I introduced
myself.

She smiled brightly. “Private investigator?” She
arched an eyebrow. “Hope I haven’t done anything
wrong.”

I laughed. “Nothing like that, Miss Cullen. I-”

“Ms.-” she replied quickly, correcting me. “I
haven’t been a Miss for several years”

A perfect setup for chivalry. “You couldn’t prove it
by me, Ms. Cullen.”

She laughed, revealing startling white teeth. “My,
how gallant. And call me Sue”

I nodded to the north. “I’m Tony, and I grew up
over in Church Point. My grandfather Moise taught
me manners from the old days”

“I’m grateful to him. There isn’t much of that
around anymore,” she replied, indicating a chair in
front of her desk. She fished a pack of Virginia Slim
cigarettes from her desk drawer. She held the pack out
to me. I shook my head. “You mind if I smoke?”

Those green fingernails of hers fascinated me. “Go
right ahead”

After she blew a stream of smoke into the air, she
smiled. “Now, how can I help you, Tony?”

“It’s about John Hardy. My firm-”

The warm smile on her face froze. Her eyes glinted
coldly. The cigarette between her lips trembled. She
snapped it from her lips and hissed. “Don’t talk to me
about that-that-” Then she uttered a couple words
you’d never thought would roll off those pristine lips.

I hastened to explain. “My firm has been retained to
locate John Hardy. That’s all.”

A faint smile curled her lips. “Locate? He’s missing?”

I nodded.

The smile grew broader. “Personally, I couldn’t
care any less of the whereabouts of that piece of white
trash”

The vehemence in her tone rocked me back in my
chair. That must have been some argument they had. I
arched an eyebrow and whistled. “I didn’t mean to hit
a sore spot, Ms. Cullen … I mean, Sue. I know you
had problems at the lodge, but-”

She glared at me a moment, and then her demeanor
softened. “I apologize, Tony. It isn’t your fault. It’s
just that John Hardy-well, he’s the most despicable,
most reprehensible human being I have ever had the
displeasure of knowing.”

I gave her a wry grin, hoping to lighten the mood.
“Obviously then, John Hardy wouldn’t get your vote
as Man of the Year.”

A glitter of amusement filled her eyes, and she took
a long drag from her cigarette. “Obviously,” she remarked, punctuating her comment with a stream of
smoke. “Maybe Snake of the Year.”

“But you were at the lodge together.”

“Not together,” she replied firmly. “Not the way
you think. We met there to discuss business.” She hesitated, then explained. “John wanted my company’s
business. We did over four million last year.” With the
cigarette firmly entrapped between the slender fingers
of her left hand, she gestured to her office. “I have
branches in Morgan City, Opelousas, and Lafayette.
He learned that I’m an avid hunter, so he invited me
on a spring turkey hunt at Benoit’s Lodge” She
paused, inhaled a lungful of smoke, and then continued, her words rolling off her lips along with the cigarette smoke. “But his idea of a spring turkey hunt
included me as the turkey and the hunting blind was
his bedroom” She paused, and with a wry grin,
chuckled. “I should have known better. John Hardy
has the reputation as a womanizer from Morgan City
to Lafayette, but I didn’t expect him to hit on me” She
hesitated, a tiny frown knitting her carefully plucked
eyebrows.

“Go on. What else?”

She studied me a few moments longer, then a look
of defiance glittered in her eyes. “He threatened to
sabotage my business arrangement with the local
branch of the Cocodrie State Bank here in town, which he could never do. You see, the president of the
Cocodrie State Bank and I were in the same sorority at
LSU, so naturally, I was able to work a deal with her
to borrow at a much more attractive rate. Have been
for years”

I nodded. “Is that when you left?”

Sue’s eyes blazed. “As fast as I could, but he
grabbed my arm and tried to stop me” A sly smile
played over her carefully painted lips. “Being from
Church Point, you have an idea of just how enraged a
Creole woman can become”

With a knowing grin, I nodded, and she continued.
“I was furious. I slapped him as hard as I could.” She
glared at me defiantly, and then a wry smile curled her
lips. “And I didn’t even get one free meal out of the
whole thing.”

With an affable grin on my face, I said, “I heard
you threatened to shoot him if he bothered you
again.”

Her smile froze momentarily, then grew wider. She
stared at me levelly. “And I will if he ever comes on to
me like he did or tries to ruin my business.”

I chuckled. “So then, I don’t suppose he has contacted you since that night.”

Her eyes narrowed. “If he knows what’s good for
him, he’d better never contact me again.” She laid her
hand on her glass-topped desk. I couldn’t help noticing the rings on her fingers. On her ring finger was a simple band with tiny diamonds encrusted in it; on her
forefinger was another, mounted with a diamond the
size of a walnut. “Anything else?”

“Yes. Do you know anyone who drives a red Jeep?”

She arched an eyebrow and stared at me slyly. “A
Cherokee?”

I shrugged. “That’s what I was told. I don’t know
the year or the model.”

“The only one I know of is a local call girl, Fawn
Williams. Her real name is Sophie Mae Brown. That’s
how she’s listed in the directory.”

Nodding slowly, I asked one final question. “Did
Hardy mention anything to you about a trip to the
Bahamas?”

“No.

I rose. “I suppose that’s it then. I do appreciate
your help.”

She smiled warmly. “Good luck. I hope you find
him.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “From what I’ve heard about
John Hardy, he could be anywhere in the world at this
moment.”

“As long as he isn’t here,” she exclaimed, rising and
offering me her hand.

Patchy clouds overhead intermittently blocked the
blistering rays of the sun. Jack had lowered the top
and was sitting behind the wheel with a bottle of Big
Easy beer in his hand. He held it up and grinned. “Bought a case and iced down a half-dozen. Can’t get
these back in Austin. So, where to now? Home?”

“Nope. Nearest phone carrel.”

I got lucky, two ways. The directory had not been
torn from the phone carrel, and second, Sophie Mae
was listed. But my luck soured when I reached her
apartment in the fashionable section of Maida known
as Pirates Landing, a development of upscale apartments, only to discover she was not in.

Her apartment was on the third level. The first level
provided parking for the tenants. On impulse I had
Jack drive through the garage where I spotted a red
Jeep Cherokee. “Stop here.”

“Huh?”

“Stop! Let me out,” I said, climbing from the Cadillac. “Pop the trunk, then drive on out front. I’ll be out
in a minute.”

I fished a slim jim from my bag of tools and ducked
between the rows of parked vehicles and waited, studying the shadowy garage. No one was around. Moving
stealthily I sidled up to the Cherokee, quickly jimmied
the lock, and rummaged through the papers in the glove
compartment.

Suddenly I froze, staring at a handwritten receipt
for a full tank of fuel from Venable’s Convenience
Store, dated August 26. Venables! That was the convenience store across the road from the Kwik Stop
where I had latched on to the bikers.

I jammed the receipt in my pocket, glanced around
the dark garage furtively, then stuffed the other papers
back in the glove compartment.

Two minutes later I climbed into the Cadillac and
nodded at Jack.

With a deep sigh, he asked, “Where to now?”

“North.”

An hour later, we pulled into Venable’s Convenience Store, and I went inside. A wizened little man
with a shiny bald head stood behind the counter, a
half-smoked cigarette clutched between his bony fingers. I glanced around. I was the only customer.

He nodded. “What’ll you have?”

“A couple questions, if you don’t mind.” I handed
him the snapshot of Hardy. “Have you seen this guy
around?”

For a moment, he eyed me suspiciously, then shook
his head. I then unfolded the receipt and handed it to
him. “Did you write this?”

He didn’t move. “You the law?”

I shook my head. “Just a guy trying to find a guy” I
offered him the receipt again.

He studied it a moment, then shook his head.
“Nope.”

His response took me aback momentarily. “Could
someone else have written it?”

The shriveled old man studied it a few more seconds. “That looks like Baptiste’s writing.” He nodded.
“Yep. I say that’s Baptiste writing.”

“Is he around?”

His eyes narrowed. “You say you ain’t the law?”

“No, I’m not the law.”

He shrugged. “Jean Baptiste, he be in the back,
peeling shrimps.”

If possible, Jean Baptiste was even more wrinkled,
more shriveled than old Venable, but his bony fingers
were a blur as he peeled and deveined shrimp. With a
cigarette dangling from his lips, he glanced at the receipt as he grabbed another shrimp. “You bet, that be
my writing. Crazy woman-she don’t pay by the credit
card. She pay cash, and then insist on the receipt,
she He popped the vein from the spine of the shrimp and
grabbed another crustacean. Wielding the plastic deveiner, he shoved it under the shell and into the intestinal canal of the shrimp, removing the waste and shell
in one deft move.

“Can you describe her?”

A leering grin split his corrugated face. He squinted
through the cigarette smoke and his cigarette waggled
up and down as he replied. “You bet. She be a looker,
but don’t go telling my old woman I said that. This
one, she gots red hair.” He chuckled and nodded to the
receipt. “This woman, she be a real looker.” He emphasized his comments by using the deveiner to exaggerate the outline of her curves in the air.

“What about her skin? Dark? Light?”

He pursed his lips and concentrated. “Hard to say. She wear sunglasses and one of them scarves over her
head, but it look kind of halfway betwixt. Kinda dustylike.”

I thanked him and left. Now all I had to do was
meet Fawn Williams and see if “she gots red hair” and
the shapely curves the old man outlined.

“Now where?” Jack asked when I climbed back in
the car.

“Back the way we came”

A disappointed frown wrinkled his forehead. “Back
to Bagotville?”

I sensed the reluctance in his tone. I nodded. “Yeah,
I want to see a man about a card game.”

Traffic was light on Highway 90, a welcome relief
from the congestion on 1-10 and the tortuous curves
on the Scenic Byway. In Bagotville, I planned a brief
visit with Moise Deslatte, and then another one with
Laura Palmo, before driving on down to Maida and
hoping to finally visit Fawn Williams.

More and more I was coming to believe that if John
Hardy had taken a trip, it was one that someone else
had planned for him, and in all probability one he
would not have chosen for himself.

Thirty minutes later we pulled up in front of Deslatte Construction, but Moise Deslatte was at his fishing camp back in the swamps of Bayou Teche. I
smiled at his secretary and promptly lied. “He men tioned something about a fishing camp when we were
hunting turkeys a few days ago down at Benoit’s
Lodge”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Oh, you be down at the
camp too, huh?”

A private investigator is often called upon to think
fast, lie easily, and play innocent. Not to brag, but I lie
and feign innocence with a certain degree of what I
consider skilled accomplishment. However, there are
those who question my ability to think fast. This time
I fooled them.

Figuring he had told her of his confrontation with
Hardy, I replied, “Yeah. I was at the table when that
jerk, Hardy, tried to cheat your boss”

That was all it took to sell my credibility. Within
minutes, I had the location of Deslatte’s fishing camp
and a veiled suggestion of a clandestine date that
night, which I declined.

When we parked in front of Mae’s Boat and Bait
Camp, Jack raised the top and turned on the air conditioning. “You go on. I’m going to stay here where
it’s cool.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. How long will it take?”

I nodded to the aluminum rental boats pulled up on
the shore. “An hour, more or less. If-,” I added, “I
got the directions right.”

Sweat rolled down his plump cheeks that were rosy
red from the heat. “I’ll wait,” he replied, patting the
steering wheel.

“Whatever.” I headed for the office at the same time
two bearded, gap-toothed swamp rats ran up on the
sandy shore in an aluminum jon boat with the motor
wide open, the accepted method of docking a small
boat in the swamps.