Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 12 - Murder Among Friends (10 page)

After leaving Danny’s parking garage, I wove through
downtown toward the interstate. At the corner of Third and
Red River, I spotted a couple of cruisers with their overheads flashing and an ambulance. I started to drive past, but
I recognized one of the officers. I pulled over and rolled
down the window. “Hey, Wehring. What’s up?”

He peered at me for several moments before he recognized me. “Boudreaux! That you?” He ambled over to the
pickup. He grinned at my black eye. “Looks like you got the
short of it, huh?”

“Yeah” I nodded to the ambulance. “Earning your money
tonight, huh?”

He chuckled. “Not really. Just another one of those winos.
Been in that Dumpster a day or so. Someone beat him up
good. Must’ve used a ball bat”

“One of our locals?”

“Nah. Never saw him around. A cowboy type”

My blood ran cold. “Cowboy?”

“Yeah, you know. Black cowboy hat, a denim jacket,
jeans”

Butcherman!

Those two goons had caught up with him, the same two
he’d spotted at the rail yard bending over the dead wino.

Next morning on the way to the credit union, I swung by
the Green Light Parking Garage, a seven-story edifice west
of the convention center.

As always, one of Danny’s soldiers stood at the elevator
doors at the first floor. I asked to see Danny. He called upstairs and, moments later, nodded and the elevator doors
hissed open.

Danny was sitting at a glass-topped table sipping coffee
and slicing into a couple of pieces of French toast soaked
with maple syrup. He wore a royal purple dressing robe with
a black velvet collar. He whistled when he spotted my black
eye. “Jeez. What happened to you? Come on over and have
some breakfast”

I declined. “I’ll take some coffee” I touched the knot on
my forehead. “I forgot to duck”

He laughed. “I bet”

I glanced at my watch. “Yep”

He shrugged and poked a bite in his mouth. While he was
chewing, he announced, “I haven’t looked into the casino
business yet. I’ll take care of it later this morning.”

“Great, and I need another favor. I’m looking for a bozo
with an acne-scarred face. About my height”

“New in town or what?”

I sipped my coffee. “I don’t know”

“Something to do with the credit union?”

“No. He might have something to do with a dead wino a
couple days back”

Danny frowned up at me. “Wino?”

“Cops think my old man might have done it.”

“Oh” He nodded his understanding. He glanced at the
soldier standing by the door and snapped his fingers. With a
short nod, the nattily dressed buttonman stepped into the elevator. “I’ll see what I can find out. Give me a call about noon.
I’ll know something about this Busby dude too,” Danny said.
“Now, you sure you don’t want some French toast?”

I glanced at my watch. I had a few minutes to spare.
“Why not?”

To my relief, Judith Perry was not at her teller window
when I pushed through the doors of the credit union. I hurried to the conference room and waited for my first interviews.

All the information I had about Mary Louise Smith was
that she was a longtime dog and pony fan, and that a few
weeks earlier, she had settled a fifteen-thousand-dollar obligation to Pete Garza at the Juarez dog track.

She paused at the open door. “Mr. Boudreaux?” A petite
woman in her mid-forties, she dressed ten years younger,
and it was obvious she was meticulous in her overall appearance.

She wore a green, what most would call lime, pantsuit
and a plain white blouse with a button collar and a gold
necktie. She didn’t look like a racetrack aficionado, but then,
no one does, for they come from every cultural and economic arena.

I rose quickly. “Ms. Smith. Thank you for coming”

She eyed my black eye suspiciously. “I didn’t have a
choice. Mr. Lindsey made sure of that”

It didn’t take the Psychology for Dummies book to tell
she was hostile. I gestured to a chair across the long table.
“Please have a seat. This won’t take long. All I need is a
little information.”

“About Carl Edwards?” Her tone was defiant.

“Look, we all know he’s believed to have been behind the
robbery. He’s dropped out of sight. His wife and daughter
hired me to find him” I shrugged. “That’s all this is about”
That was a white lie, for I wanted to do a little more digging
than just that. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, perhaps
something to convince me Edwards was indeed innocent.

Reluctantly, she slipped into the chair. She held herself
erect. Her short black hair fell just below her ears. She eyed
me coolly, with wary disdain.

Her opinion of Edwards was the same as the others I had
spoken with. She shook her head emphatically. “The only
way I would believe Carl committed the holdup was if he
told me so face-to-face”

“You worked with him a good while, huh?”

“Over twenty years”

Feigning puzzlement, I replied, “I heard many express
the same feelings, but from what little I’ve heard about the
robbery, he’s the only who could have pulled it off” I hastened to add, “Like I say, all I’ve heard is idle talk”

To my delight, the frozen expression of disdain on her
face turned into a faint sneer. “Personally, I think you’d be
wrong. But as far as I know, Carl might have done it. Or
maybe Frank-or even Raiford. Not that I think either one
did,” she added.

“Frank? You mean Cooper? But he was shot. Edwards
shot him”

Her tone became testy. “Look, Mr. Boudreaux. You asked
what I thought. That’s what I think” She shook her head.
“As far as I’m concerned, Carl Edwards did it. I don’t care as
long as I keep getting my paycheck.”

I grinned. “I don’t blame you” I glanced at my notes.
“Cooper said the head teller was responsible for checking
in the weekly armored car delivery, but on that day Edwards told her he’d check in the delivery.”

She shrugged. “No big deal. Sometimes if the teller
wasn’t available, Edwards or Cooper or one of the loan officers would take care of it”

“Loan officers?” I arched an eyebrow. “You’re a loan officer, right?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Yes”

“Have you ever checked in the delivery?”

Her jaw stiffened. “What does that have to do with Carl
Edwards?”

I watched her carefully, not wanting to miss any significant body language. For a moment, I hesitated, knowing my
next remark would put me on dangerous ground with Chief
Pachuca. Offhandedly, I replied, “Well, it’s always prudent
to find those who have motives for a crime and, to be honest,
Ms. Smith. I know for a fact that three weeks ago, just a
few days after the armored car heist, you paid off a fifteenthousand-dollar debt to Pete Garza down at Juarez”

If I’d hit her in the face with a coconut cream pie, she
couldn’t have been any more stunned. Her eyes grew wide,
and her jaw dropped. She gaped at me for several seconds,
before managing to stammer. “H-How-”

In a patronizing tone, I replied, “Not that I think you had
anything to do with it, but if you could answer my questions, it might help me see this whole situation a little more
clearly.”

Clearly bewildered, she sputtered, “But what can I tell
you? I had nothing to do with it. I wasn’t even at work that
day. Besides, Frank Cooper said it was Carl who shot him.
Why would he lie?”

I studied her. Either she was telling the truth, or she was
an accomplished liar. “Frank Cooper didn’t really see Edwards.” She parted her lips to disagree, but I continued. “He
saw someone wearing a gorilla mask, a herringbone suit,
and gloves. Stop and think about it a moment. Edwards was
a small man. A woman wearing the mask and his suit might
pass themselves off as Edwards, especially wearing gloves
to cover their hands”

Mary Louise stared at me, dumbfounded.

“Now, have you ever checked in the armored car delivery?”

She nodded woodenly. “Several times. Like I said, if the
head teller was tied up, Carl or Frank or one of the loan officers did it”

“You mean Rita Johnson or Marvin Busby”

“Yes, and sometimes Larry Athens. He’s vice president
of Finance.”

I cleared my throat. “Do you mind telling me where you
were that day?”

She shook her head emphatically, her eyes glancing
around nervously. “You’re not going to believe it.”

“Try me.”

“I was in Juarez, at the track”

“By yourself?”

She hesitated. Slowly she nodded.

I prodded her. “Anyone see you there-anyone who
could vouch for you? What about Pete Garza?”

She dropped her gaze to the table, and then looked up
at me, her eyes pleading. “No. No one. But I’m telling the truth. I was there” She paused, and then added enthusiastically, “I still have the stubs from the races”

“One more question, Ms. Smith. Any idea who turned
the video off that day?”

She frowned. “I didn’t know it was off”

“It was”

With a shrug, she replied, “Could have been anyone. The
monitor and recorder are in the employee lounge”

So much for the video.

Take ten years off Mary Louise Smith and you had Rita
Johnson. Both ladies dressed professionally and carried
themselves as such. Johnson was a tall woman and seemed
proud of it, for she carried herself with regal demeanor.

As soon as I saw Rita Johnson, I started to discount her
as pulling the heist. She was about my height, large-boned,
but very graceful and feminine. Her auburn air came to just
below her ears. Still, I told myself, staring down the muzzle
of an automatic could have confused Frank Cooper. He
could have been off a couple of inches in his estimate of
the perp’s height.

Graciously ignoring my black eye and the knot on my
head, she was as pleasant as Mary Louise was curt. “Anything I can do to help, I will”

All I knew about her was her children were grown, and
she and her husband were compulsive gamblers. From what
I had learned, they were not in debt to anyone. As we spoke,
I quickly discovered she felt like the others regarding Carl
Edwards.

When I asked if she had any idea where he might have
gone, she replied, “No. Oh, from time to time, he talked
about fishing down at some place called Lake Falcon, but lately he’d talked about trout fishing up in the mountains in
New Mexico”

I paused, turning the bit of information over in my head,
remembering the fly-fishing tackle on the coffee table in
the Edwards’ living room. “New Mexico, huh? Did he ever
make the trip?” I couldn’t help wondering why he hadn’t
mentioned New Mexico to me that day he invited me to go
on the Falcon trip.

She laughed, a bright animated chuckled. “I suppose so.
You see, we weren’t close friends, but I knew if I ever
needed any help, Carl was always there. He was-” She hesitated, and her cheeks colored with a blush. “He is one of the
nicest people I’ve ever known. Nice to everyone. I had some
personal problems a while back, and he was very understanding” She laughed. “He always stopped by to say hi. I don’t
know. Maybe it was because we’re both southpaws”

I laughed with her. “Did he ever give a name-you
know-a resort that he wanted to visit in New Mexico?”

She hesitated, her forehead wrinkled in a frown. “Yes.
There was someplace he had been before, but to be honest,
I can’t remember. I’m sorry”

“No problem” I held up a hand. “If you do, let me know”
I handed her a card.

She studied the card. “Lost Lake. That’s it,” she exclaimed. “I just remembered. Lost Lake. That’s where he
wanted to visit. He said the trout fishing was fantastic up
there”

After she left, I considered our conversation. Although
the New Mexico mountains were probably still filled with
snow, I couldn’t afford to discount the idea he might have
picked that spot to hide. While I was finding it more and
more difficult to believe Edwards pulled the job, I still had to look at every possibility, turn over every stone, even if
that meant a visit to Lost Lake.

It was almost noon when I took a break. I left by the side
door, avoiding a possible run-in with Judith Perry. I paused
before buckling up and called Danny, who insisted we have
lunch out at the County Line Barbecue off Bee Tree Road.

I didn’t argue. The County Line and its barbecue are
world renowned. If not, they should be.