Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 12 - Murder Among Friends (14 page)

Easing forward, I squinted through the gap. Hymie and Alex were facing a man sitting in a leather office chair with
its back to me. All I could see were his arms on the armrests.
He wore a tan jacket and a gold wedding ring on his left hand.

Hymie wore an angry frown. “Why not now?”

A voice came from the chair. “Too soon”

Suddenly, I heard a cat meow. I glanced down and in the
shadows cast by the glowing neon, I made out a full-grown
calico. She curled around my ankles and purred like the
proverbial motorboat. I quickly picked her up and pressed
her to my chest, gently rubbing between her ears and whispering to calm her purring. “Nice girl, nice girl. Just-”

At that moment, a woman’s strident voice behind me
shouted, “What are you doing here, you pervert?” I spun to
see a woman in a chic dress with a drink in her hand staring
at me. “What-”

Before she uttered another word, I tossed her the calico
and raced down the walk. Behind me came the startled
yowling and hissing of an enraged cat followed by the horrified screams of a terrified woman.

Before I reached the green neon glow, I climbed over the
rail and disappeared into the darkness beneath the slab on
which the Zuider Zee was built.

I glanced at the restaurant next door. Just as I started to
dash for it, a shadow appeared on the limestone slope between me and the crab shack.

From above, I heard a voice. It was Hymie’s. “Check under the building, Alex. I’ll look up here. Something’s fishy.
The dame said she saw somebody at the window”

I darted beneath the Zuider Zee. A dozen huge concrete
beams ran the length of the slab on which it sat. Steel rods
ran between the beams offering storage for canoes, outdoor
furniture, and a dozen various assortments of items.

I managed to swing up above the rods into the darkness, rolled over, and waited. Facing down, my chest and arms
rested on one rod and my knees on another. I had a snug
little hidey-hole that I wasn’t about to give up.

A few minutes later, a shadow stumbled across the limestone slope and into the darkness cast by the slab.

Hymie called out from above, “Find anyone?”

The shadow, which was no more than five feet from me,
replied, “I can’t see nothing down here, Hymie”

“Snap on your lighter, dummy”

“Yeah. I didn’t think about that”

I couldn’t stay put. When his lighter flared, he’d be staring straight into my face. Taking a deep breath, I eased
back, gripped a rod firmly, and then swung down, pulling
my legs up so I could strike Alex in the chest.

He grunted when my feet slammed into him.

With a wild scream, he hit the rocky slope and tumbled
head over heels toward the river. Suddenly, there was a silence, and moments later a splash.

Overhead, I heard Hymie cursing.

Staying in the shadows, I slipped through the hedge and,
my pulse racing, darted into Bernie’s Crab Shack.

Despite the hour, they were busy.

I spotted a vacant table. I hurried to it, picking up a glass
of tea from the waitstaff’s serving table.

Moments later, a young woman wearing a knee-length
apron with crabs embroidered on it sidled up to my table to
take my order.

“Crabs and fried shrimp,” I replied.

She nodded and pointed her pencil to the salad bar.
“Help yourself”

Bernie’s was fast. Before I got back to my table with my
salad, a platter of soft-shell crabs, fried shrimp, French fries,
and rolls were waiting for me.

I wasn’t hungry, but I picked at the platter before me.

A motion from the corner of my eye caught my attention. I glanced up, and then quickly looked away.

Standing in the door was Harlon, the bartender, and
Hymie.

I drew a deep breath and took another bite of crab. I
could feel their eyes on me.

After they left, my imagination ran wild. Now what?
Would they wait until I left and snatch me? Work me over
like they had Sal? Or simply shoot me and dump me somewhere?

My nerves were ready to snap as I left Bernie’s and
headed for my pickup in the Zuider Zee parking lot. To my
surprise and relief, the lot was empty. I climbed into my Silverado and drove away without incident.

The roads were still busy. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a dozen lights behind me. Over the next few
miles, I turned several times, carefully watching the lights
in the mirror, and then I headed for Zilker Park on the Colorado.

After wandering the almost deserted lanes for thirty
minutes, I took Barton Springs Road over to Congress
Avenue and then headed on home.

I couldn’t help wondering about the identity of the guy
talking to Hymie and Alex.

When I parked in the drive, I switched license plates
again. I grimaced when I spotted the box of evidence
Pachuca had permitted me to take. I’d go in early in the
morning and peruse the information.

My old man was slouched on the couch watching soap
opera reruns on TV with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other. “Out of burgers,” he muttered, turning back to
his program.

“No problem” To my delight, he had done as I’d asked,
showered, shaved, and slipped into a clean sweat suit. Of
course, he left his old rags where he’d dropped them, just
as he did the three towels he used. But I was not about to
complain. I’d much rather pick up after him than smell
him.

I dropped the bags of new clothes on the coffee table.
“Here you are”

He paid them no attention.

Although it was almost midnight, I plopped down in front
of the computer and pulled up my e-mail. I grinned when I
spotted the message from Eddie Dyson.

My grin turned to a frown when I read his message.
Usually a couple of days was all he needed, but a few problems had arisen. He promised results the next day.

I lay in bed that night trying to make sense of the last few
days. To just about everyone except his family, it was a
foregone conclusion that Carl Edwards was behind the
heist.

From what personal knowledge I had of him combined
with the opinions of most of his co-workers, I found it difficult to believe he was responsible.

But a searing question remained. If he were not behind
the heist, why did he disappear? Why did he miss the San
Francisco flight? On the other hand, if he were trying to
disappear, why would he use his own name when purchasing the ticket?

Frustrated, I rolled over and closed my eyes, but sleep
evaded me. I couldn’t get Carl Edwards out of my mind.
Then I remembered a hint Al Grogan once gave me after I hit a dead end on an insurance scam. “Kick the envelope
apart. Work out of the box. Turn your theory a hundred and
eighty degrees, and then try to solve it”

The hint worked, not all the time, but often enough to be
effective. I rolled on my back and stared at the darkness
above me. “All right,” I muttered. “If Edwards didn’t pull
the job, then why is he missing?”

He lost money on a flyer in gold in Ghana, I reminded
myself. So he made a bad investment. Surely he wouldn’t
have put everything in it. That didn’t fit the profile of the
man.

If, and I wasn’t sure just how big an “if” the “if” was, but
if he had not lost all his money, why disappear? Regardless
of how much life insurance he carried, no company would
pay off without a body, at least for several years. And I assumed he was smart enough to know that.

I sat up in bed and turned on the night-light. Usually
when I work at night, I go into the living room, but my old
man was sleeping, a state I much preferred.

On a pad, I jotted down the question, If Edwards didn’t
pull the job, who did?

Marvin Busby? I discounted him because of Cooper’s
description. Same with Larry Athens and Raiford Lindsey.
Rita Johnson was too tall, but only by three or four inches.
The only ones who were of similar size to Carl Edwards
were Mary Louise Smith and Elizabeth Romero.

Somehow, I couldn’t see either Romero or Smith pulling
off an armored car robbery.

I muttered in disgust, “Now, Tony, where does that leave
you? Not one soul at the credit union fits Cooper’s description except Carl Edwards”

Then an idea hit, one I had never considered, and with it an outrageous conclusion. What if Cooper deliberately lied
about the description?

But why would he do that, I asked myself.

The answer hit me between the eyes. Maybe because he
pulled the job himself.

I leaned back and stared, unseeing, at my closet door. I’d
never been comfortable with the idea that an intelligent
man like Carl Edwards would pull such a high-profile job.
Of course, I couldn’t explain the intended flight to San Francisco only hours after the heist went down, even though he
didn’t take the flight. Now, I know many criminals are so
dumb they never think about a getaway until they have to do
it. Edwards wasn’t like that. If he had purchased the ticket a
week earlier to escape the police, he would not have used
his own name.

For some reason, he didn’t show up. Why?

I caught my breath as an unwanted answer hit me. If I
took that theory another step forward, logic would suggest
that whoever perpetrated the heist might have killed Edwards. What if the slight man had walked in on the robbery
while it was in progress? I hesitated. He would have had to
blunder in after the robbers had bound and blindfolded the
guards. Otherwise they would have seen him. I jotted a note
to talk to one of the guards, but first I had to get Pachuca’s
okay.

I went back to my notes.

They couldn’t have shot him, for according to Cooper,
only one shot was fired, the one that wounded Frank Cooper, but they could have tied and blindfolded him as they had
the guards. I circled the word guards, telling myself that
they could verify the fact that only one shot was fired.

To my surprise, my old man was up and dressed the next
morning even though I climbed out of bed an hour early.
He looked like a different man with his hair combed and
wearing fresh jeans and a new shirt that still had the wrinkles from being folded. “We going to see the judge this
morning?” He shook his head. “I’m sure ready to shake the
dust of this town from my heels”

I flipped on the coffeemaker and headed for the bathroom,
experiencing a touch of guilt for lying to him, but at least he
was clean. “I’ll call the D.A. when they open and then give
you a ring. I’ve got to get in early to catch up on some work”

When he nodded, I saw a glitter of hope in his eyes, and
I felt like a heel for lying to him.

After depositing the box of evidence the criminalists had
gathered at Edwards’ office on my desk at work, I put coffee
on to perk, and rolled up my sleeves. I glanced at my watch:
7:30. Packard and Packard Accounting opened at 9:00 probably. I made a note to call Debbie around 8:00 to remind her
to give Dillon Packard a call.

Sometimes luck is like a crashing river racing down a
canyon, and sometimes it’s like a Louisiana bayou, moving
slow and smooth. I had the good fortune to find that crashing river for thirty minutes after I opened the box of evidence, as I stumbled across what I was searching for.

On Edwards’ desk pad on February 3 was the notation
Cummings, S.F I grinned and leaned back. Then a frown
erased my smile. At first, I thought that I had found some support for my wild little theory that perhaps Edwards had
not pulled the job. On the other hand, this Cummings joker
could be Edwards’ link to anything, even to the laundering
of half a million bucks.

Just after I reminded Debbie to call Packard, Marty sauntered in, an hour earlier than he usually made it. From his
unkempt dress, I guessed he’d never made it home the
night before, although unkempt seemed to be the style he
favored. He stopped at my desk.

“How’s the Edwards thing going?”

I shook my head. “Slow. If he was planning on disappearing, he kept mighty quiet about it. The only leads I
have are a flight to San Francisco he didn’t take, and the
mention of a resort in New Mexico where he went to fish”

He shrugged. “Check them out”

I slid the folders containing the evidence back in the
box. “I plan on it.”

I don’t know what I expected of Packard and Packard
Accounting, perhaps a sordid little room with half a dozen
sallow-faced men hunched over wooden desks with pencils
in their hands, a la Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol.

Instead, it was an airy office with expansive glass walls
containing a dozen employees behind computers. I stopped
at the receptionist’s desk and identified myself. “I believe
Dillon Packard is expecting me.”

Smiling brightly, she spoke into a telephone, and then
indicated a hall at the rear of the office. “Third door on the
left.”

The name Dillon Packard suggested vitality and strength.
I was surprised to see a slender man about seventy with a white tonsure about his head that was part of the neatly
trimmed white beard and sideburns.