Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 12 - Murder Among Friends (15 page)

He surprised me again when he swiftly strode across the
floor and seized my hand in a firm grip. His eyes twinkled.
“Mr. Boudreaux. I’m happy to meet you. Debbie Edwards
said you were coming” He indicated a chair in front of a
massive desk that sported a Spanish granite top. “Please”

I sat, and he slid into a plush leather chair behind the desk
and leaned back. I couldn’t help noticing how perfectly his
suit coat draped from his shoulders. I glanced sheepishly
at my tweed jacket with the worn leather patches on the
elbows.

He smiled. “Now, what can I do for you? All Debbie said
was that you wanted to talk to me about her father”

“That’s right. You see, Mrs. Edwards and Debbie hired
me to find their father. He’s been missing several weeks”

The smile faded from his face. “I know”

“In trying to find him, I ran into a couple of curious incidents that you, as his accountant, probably have knowledge of”

“Certainly, certainly.” He nodded emphatically, a thin
smile on his face.

“I was told he lost a large sum of money in a gold investment in Ghana”

Dillon studied me a moment, his smile fading. “I’m sorry,
but that’s private information, Mr. Boudreaux”

His conscientious circumspection both impressed and
irritated me. “Look. I’m working for Debbie and her
mother. If you want, I’ll haul them in here and have them
ask the question”

He considered my reply. Finally, he dipped his head.
“That is correct”

“How much?”

The older man hesitated again. I gave him a silly grin as
if to say, Okay, I’ll go get Debbie and her mother. With a
hint of resignation, he replied, “Seven hundred and thirty
thousand dollars”

I whistled to myself. “Will such a loss force him into
bankruptcy?”

Once again, he struggled with his sense of ethics before
answering. “I hope you understand my reticence in revealing Mr. Edwards’ financial status to you, Mr. Boudreaux.
I’ve worked with Carl for over forty years. It’s difficult to
reveal such private information”

I fixed my eyes on his. “If this information will help us
find him, don’t you think it’s worth it?”

He tried to look behind the determination in my eyes.
“Do you think he’s dead?”

With a shrug, I replied, “I don’t know. That’s what his
family wants to know. If you can help them find some closure, one way or another, they’ll forever be grateful”

Finally, he shook his head. “Far from bankruptcy, Mr.
Boudreaux. Carl was a prudent investor.” With a wave of his
hand, he added, “No specific figures, but he has more than
twice that in assets”

A smug feeling of satisfaction came over me. Those last
words convinced me that Carl Edwards had no part in the
robbery. “He booked a flight to San Francisco on February
3 to see someone named Cummings. Any idea?”

His face grew animated. “Oh, yes. J.J. Cummings was
the leading investor in the gold mining venture in Ghana.
He and Carl had a scheduled meeting with the leaders of the
Ghana coup. J.J. felt they could work a deal by cutting the
coup in on the profits” He paused. “He kept calling about
Carl, wanting to know where he was. Finally, he had to
make the decisions himself.”

“And?”

With a wry grin, he replied, “The rebels decided they’d
take all the profits”

“Generous of them, huh?” I paused a moment. “Let me
ask a personal question if you don’t mind, Mr. Packard”

A terse smile tightened his lips. “Certainly.”

“Edwards has been gone over a month. Have you contacted his wife about his affairs?”

The slender man stiffened. I would have sworn his bald
pate turned red. With a hint of disdain, he replied, “Certainly. On three different occasions I contacted Mrs. Edwards and asked if I could visit with her to inform her of the
status of her finances. She refused”

When I arched an eyebrow, he continued, “She insisted on
waiting until he returned” He drew a deep breath. “What
was Ito do?”

“Not much,” I replied, rising and offering my hand.
“Thanks for your help”

A few moments later, I slid into my pickup and sat staring at the expansive glass building. I couldn’t decide if I
should apprise Chief Pachuca of my theory, or continue
digging.

“Don’t be an idiot, Tony,” I muttered. “Pachuca finds out
you’re investigating the robbery, you’re dead meat”

I started the pickup and headed for the police station, ostensibly to drop off the box of evidence and ask the chief’s
permission to talk to the security guards who had staffed
the armored car the day of the robbery.

After dropping the box off to Bob Ray Burros in the Evidence Room, I went upstairs and thanked the chief once
again.

“Find anything helpful?”

“Not much. You know that flight he missed to San Francisco?”

Pachuca shrugged. “What about it?”

“It was to see about an investment that went bad”

He grunted. “Bad investments, huh? No wonder he
pulled the job”

I just shrugged and asked if I could question the armored
car guards to see if they’d overhead anything.

“I don’t see why not” He reached for the phone. “How
soon can you get over there?”

“Anytime,” I replied, surprised at his willingness to help.
“Anytime”

A few moments later, he replaced the receiver and looked
up at me. “Get over to Quad-County Armored Car Services
and ask for Matt Bellows. He’ll put you in touch with the
guards”

Matt Bellows was a bear of a man, standing almost sixeight. I took in his neat uniform. The pleats were sharp and
crisp, and there was no question in my mind that his uniforms
were tailor-made. No way clothes off the rack would fit this
behemoth. In fact, the only Gargantua around larger than
Bellows was Danny O’Banion’s bodyguard, Huey, who, I
mentioned earlier, could serve as a body double for Godzilla.

Bellows indicated a chair in front of his desk and flipped
a switch on the office intercom. “Send Ramsey and Borke
in”

Moments later, two uniformed security guards entered,
nodded to Bellows, and then looked curiously at me. Bellows introduced me. “He wants to ask about the robbery at
Tri-District”

The two looked at each other, and then shrugged. “Shoot,”
replied the smaller of the two.

“Tell me about the robbery”

“From the beginning?”

“Yes”

He glanced at Bellows, who nodded once again. “Go
ahead, Jack”

“Not much to tell. There was a green light above the side
door. That was their way of telling us to come on in. We
figured the teller in the anteroom next to the vault saw us coming and opened it. Eddie and me here carried the bags
in. Two goons in gorilla masks held guns on us. They made
us undress, and then tied and blindfolded us. I heard some
noise-scuffling like, you know? I learned later they put on
our uniforms, and Carmen, our guard in the back of the
truck, thought it was us. They tied and blindfolded her.” He
glanced up at the one named Eddie. “That’s about it, huh?”

Yep.

“So you only saw two?”

“Yeah,” replied the first one.

“Could you describe them?”

Eddie chuckled. “They was wearing masks, remember?”

“Yeah, but I mean size. Tall, skinny, fat, whatever.”

Jack shrugged. “About average. Like me and Eddie here”

I nodded. “Go on “

“Not much more,” Eddie said. “Oh, yeah, before they
went out to the truck, someone else came in. We could hear
them whispering. Then one or two left”

“Did you hear anything that might suggest where they
were headed after leaving?”

Eddie pursed his lips. “Nah. Then we heard someone else
come in.” He hesitated. “Jack and me here have talked about
it. Someone came in and said something like `what’ or something. Then there was a thud and someone fell to the floor.
For a couple of minutes you could hear them coming and
going, and then there was a gunshot, and the door slammed
shut”

Jack shook his head. “Scared the bejeebies out of me. I
thought they was going to kill us right there”

“Yeah” Eddie shook his head. “I was sure praying hard”

I leaned forward. “You said that whoever came in the
second time said something. Can you remember what it
was?”

Jack spoke up. “Nothing really. It was kind of a surprised sort of expression, you know, like `what’ or something like that”

“One thing I remember about the voice, though, is that it
sounded kind of raspy”

I narrowed my eyes and held my breath. “Like laryngitis,
maybe?”

The two guards looked at each other and nodded simultaneously. “Yeah, like laryngitis,” replied Eddie.

I cleared my throat. “Let me get this straight. You said
someone came in and said something like `what.’ Then there
was a thud and someone fell to the floor”

“Yeah. He groaned before he fell to the floor, and then
we heard them leave and come back for a minute or so”

“And then the gunshot?”

“Yeah.19

Bellows spoke up. “Whoever them dudes was, they wiped
the truck clean when they left it in a deserted warehouse in
downtown Austin” He paused. “They knew what they were
doing”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Sounds like it.” Extending my hand,
I thanked them. As they turned to leave, it struck me the
two guards were about the same height as Hymie and
Alex.

An idea popped into my head. Was it possible? Could
Carl Edwards have been the one who walked in on the heist
and was knocked to the floor? I shook my head. Ludicrous.
Impossible. But-

Heading back to the office, I swung by the D.A.‘s, hoping to catch Mark Swain and get an update on my old
man’s paperwork. I was tempted to tell him what I had
learned about Hymie Weinshank and Alex White, but decided against it. I had nothing substantial to prove they
had murdered Salinas Sal or Butcherman.

Mark thumbed through the stack of papers on his desk.
“Nope. Nothing here” He looked up at me. “It’s only been
a few days, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah”

“Give it time. Get hold of me-” He glanced at his calendar pad. “Say next Wednesday. We ought to know something by then.”

Usually, I do my best thinking at home, but with my old
man there, I swung by the office, hoping for a little solitude
so I could untangle the maze of theories bouncing around
in my skull.

The only one in at the office was Doreen Patterson, the
rookie on our staff. I’d help break Doreen in a few months
earlier.

She smiled brightly when she spotted me. “Hey, stranger.
Where you been keeping yourself?”

“Busy,” I replied, sliding behind my computer. “You?”

She reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a digital
camera the size of a deck of cards. “Same old, same old.”
She dropped the camera in her jacket pocket. “Sorry to
rush, but I got a date with a cheating wife.” She patted her
pocket.

I grinned. “Good luck.”

After the door closed behind her, leaving me in the office
by myself, I pulled out my stack of three-by-five cards and
booted up my computer. The last few days had been so hectic, I’d never really taken time to thoroughly analyze all I
had learned.

That probably explained why I felt as if I were going in circles. I had a great deal of information, but very few ideas
on which to hang any of it. And from past experience, I
knew that unless I took time to massage the information, to
ruminate over it, the possibility of overlooking pertinent
details was inevitable.

I created a folder on the Tri-District Credit Union, and
the first file I began work on was Carl Edwards.

Including my personal knowledge of the man as well as
the opinions of those with whom he worked, I was firmly
convinced the slight man had not masterminded the heist,
a conviction that could cause me more problems than a
bayou full of alligators if Chief Ramon Pachuca ever discovered I was prying into police business.

The evidence against Edwards was devastating, especially the eyewitness testimony of Frank Cooper, who recognized Edwards’ voice as well as the herringbone suit the
slight man had been wearing.

In the seedy world of crime, perps usually have three
factors driving them: motive, opportunity, and means.

Edwards had opportunity and means but, to me, no motive.

Sure, Marvin Busby had said Edwards had lost everything
in the gold mining scheme in Ghana, but Edwards’ CPA disputed the statement. Even after the almost three-quarters of
a million the coup commandeered, his estate was still
worth a million and a half.

I studied the screen thoughtfully. No way could I see
motive here. I pushed back from my desk and headed for
the coffee pot. I shivered after the first sip. Talk about clearing the sinuses. It was thick enough to slap on a piece of
bread like peanut butter.

Standing behind my chair, I stared down at the screen.
The next piece of incriminating evidence was the flight to
San Francisco, the one Edwards never made.

To the police, that ticket was the final nail in Edwards’
figurative coffin, but if the investigator had pursued the trail
a tad farther, he would have discovered the true purpose
of the trip, a perfectly legitimate explanation, to negotiate
with the Ghana rebels. But, like much evidence, it was not
thoroughly analyzed, which prompted an erroneous interpretation.