Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 13 - The Diamonds of Ghost Bayou (2 page)

Diamonds?” The word surprised me.

She ducked her head, the ends of her short brown hair falling
down on either side of her face. “That’s what he said, ‘diamonds.”’

“Anything else?”

Lifting her gaze to my eyes, she replied, “No.” She shrugged.
“Well, maybe a few curses.”

Now that sounded like Jack. “Diamonds, huh? That doesn’t
make any sense to me. Does it to you?”

“No,” she said softly, shaking her head.

“What about the police? You notify them?”

Woodenly she replied, “Yes. The sheriff asked the same kind
of questions.” She drew a deep breath and leaned back in her
chair. “Maybe more. I forget. It feels like we’ve been in the hospital for days.”

A wave of sympathy washed over me. I patted her hand. “Look.
Let me take you out to the house. You can get a good night’s rest.
I’ll stay with Jack.”

She squeezed my hand and with a wan smile, replied, “No. I
want to stay with him. You stay at the house tonight.”

I studied her. For a fleeting instant, I wondered if she would
have felt the same devotion toward me when we were married.
I pushed the slings and arrows of envy aside. She and Jack
were made for each other. What do they call it, soul mates?
She and I were opposites. She was a town girl, and I was a
country boy. And even in a small town like Church Point,
there is a cultural difference. While some say opposites attract, my experience has been that whatever the magnetic attraction
is between opposites, it quickly wears off or shorts out. I
learned it the hard way.

“If that’s what you want.”

“It is.”

“All right. Just write down the directions. I’ll stop in to see the
sheriff first and then check things out at your place. I’ll give you
a call later and drop back by. We’ll go grab a bite to eat. Okay?”

She fumbled in her purse. “Here are the house keys.”

Priouxville straddled Highway 87. There were five intersections
in town, all with signal lights, none of which were coordinated
with the others, so it was next to impossible to make it through
the small community without stopping at least three times. In
the middle of the third block sat the courthouse, a gray stone
edifice that reminded me of our Catholic church back in Church
Point. Across the street was the sheriff’s office.

Perhaps a dozen vehicles, mostly pickups, were parked along
the curbs of the five-block-long village. I pulled up beside a
police cruiser outside the sheriff’s office.

A few hundred yards beyond the small village flowed a broad
bayou. I didn’t know if it was part of Bayou Teche or one of the
other numerous bayous throughout this neck of the woods.

All I wanted to do was meet the sheriff and see if he had any
leads on those goons who had jumped Jack.

A tall man in a brown uniform looked up from behind a desk
when I opened the door. I glanced at the nameplate on his desk.
“Sheriff Lacoutrue?”

He looked up at me with intense black eyes; then a broad grin
split his dark face. “At your service, mon ami. Sheriff Thertule
Lacoutrue”

I introduced myself and offered my hand. He gestured to a
chair. “S’il vous plait, have a seat.” He plopped back down in his
swivel chair. “What can I do for you, Mr. Boudreaux?”

“A friend of mine, Jack Edney, was assaulted last night.”

He peered up at me from under his eyebrows suspiciously.
“Oui. What does that have to do with you?”

“His wife, Diane, asked me to come. We were good friends
back in Austin. Jack and I taught school together.” He nodded,
and I continued. “I was wondering if you had any idea who assaulted him.”

For several moments, the dark complexioned man looked me
over. “You still be a teacher, Mr. Boudreaux?”

“No. I work for Blevins’ Security in Austin.”

“A PI, huh?”

“Yeah.” I hastened to add, “And I know enough not to try to
butt into your business, Sheriff. With Jack laid up in the hospital, his wife is by herself.” He lifted a sly eyebrow, an insinuation that bristled the hair on the back of my neck. “She’s a city
girl. Out there on the bayou by herself, she’d go to pieces. You
know what I mean?”

His smile faded slightly. “Oui.”

“If you’re wondering about me, check with Jimmy LeBlanc.
Last year, I tracked a missing man over to Bagotville. I contacted Officer Jimmy LeBlanc at the parish office and asked his
permission to continue the case.”

An amused gleam filled his eyes. “Me, I think you want to look
for the agresseur.”

I frowned. I grew up in a Cajun French community, but the
word agresseur was a new one on me.

“Mugger,” Sheriff Lacoutrue explained.

“Oh” I paused, then added, “I just want to ask a few questions,
like any citizen, that’s all.”

A scowl darkened his face. “Oui, I check with Jimmy, but even
so, me, I think maybe this is something you should leave to us.”

I said nothing, letting the expression on my face ask the question that was on my mind.

The sheriff continued, “Me, I check the house this morning.
I see nothing broken, only the head knocked from the Virgin
Mother. The doors, they locked, and blinds drawn.”

“Vandals, you think?”

He hesitated. He tapped his chest. “Mais non. I don’t believe it be vandals. All they want is to tear up and run away, not stop
and beat this friend of yours.” He paused and then added, “It
might be the agresseur.”

“Mugger?”

“Oui. Over the last few months, we have three murders in our
parish, all by beatings. Last one, he be ex-con” He shook his
head and clucked his tongue. “Thibodeaux, he be my deputy, he
think it the agresseur, the mugger, who be responsible for your
friend’s trouble. He think maybe it be more than one agresseur.
I don’t agree at first, but now .. ” He shrugged. “As much as I
don’t like to say it, I think Thibodeaux, he be right, even if these
agresseurs, they don’t have the same m.o.”

I leaned forward. “How’s that?”

“All the others, they by themselves in secluded areas. They
never come close to houses.” He paused and shrugged. “So why
this time? Who can say? Maybe they become braver.”

“Then why didn’t they finish the job?”

“Maybe because your friend’s wife, she turn on the lights.”

“I understand. So, do you have any objection if I ask a few
questions? Anything I run across is yours first.”

“No. Me, I have no problem at all with what you say you want
to do” He paused, and his face grew hard. “If LeBlanc say the
word.”

I had planned on bringing up Jack’s mention of diamonds,
but I figured I’d better get out of there before the sheriff had a
change of mind.

It was almost six thirty when I left the sheriff’s office. I guessed
there was about forty-five minutes left of daylight, which should
be plenty of time to reach their home on Bayou Fantome. Back
in Austin, when Jack told me the location of the house, I’d kept
my mouth shut. While I am far from glib in the Cajun French
patois, I knew the English translation for Bayou Fantome was
“Ghost Bayou.” And in that neck of the Louisiana woods, there
was a reason for most names given by the old-timers.

The narrow macadam road led into a dark forest thickly
populated with pine and occasional oak, obviously one of the thousands of tree farms throughout Louisiana. The tall pines
formed a canopy fifty feet overhead, giving the impression of
driving through a tunnel.

As dusk drew near, a few rabbits ventured onto the shoulder.
Back off the road, a deer looked up as I passed. I glanced down
the road. I was close. Just around the next curve, according to
Diane’s directions.

A deer leaped out in front of me. I slammed on the Silverado’s brakes. The tires screeched and then hit a stretch of sand
washed over the road from the last heavy rain. I slid into a ditch
on the left side of the road.

I slammed the truck into reverse, but the wheels just spun.
Cursing under my breath, I hopped out and stared at the front
wheel buried hub-deep in the soft mud. I kicked the wheel and
cursed some more, dreading the walk back to town.

Abruptly, the wheezing and rattling of an old truck broke the
silence. I looked around. A hundred feet down the narrow road, an
ancient pickup almost identical to my Grand-pere Moise’s 1949
Chevrolet came out of a dirt road and turned in my direction.

The pickup ground to a halt beside me. The bed was full of
scrap metal and aluminum cans. A cigarette dangling between
his lips, a wrinkled old man peered out the window and cackled.
“Need some help?”

Talk about a rhetorical question. I played the game. “You bet.”

Leaving the sixty-year-old pickup idling and gasping, he
clambered out and shuffled around to me. He was skinnier than
a fence post, and his overalls and denim shirt hung on him like
a scarecrow’s. He paused, looked up at me, and then glanced at
the wheel mired in the ditch.

Without a word, he turned back to his pickup and fished in
one corner of the bed and pulled out a chain. “Put one end on
your tow ball,” he said, glancing at the trailer hitch on my back
bumper. He deftly formed a large loop in the other end of the
chain and draped it around the tow ball on his truck.

Two minutes later, I was out.

I wanted to pay him, but he refused. I knew he would. Those
old-timers always do.

He eyed me warily. “You be a stranger?”

“Yeah. Name’s Tony Boudreaux from up around Church Point.”

The wrinkled old man took a deep drag off his unfiltered cigarette. “They call me Rouly. I got me a place back down that
road-right on the bayou.” He blew out a stream of smoke. “You
looking for somebody?”

I hooked my thumb over my shoulder. “Visiting some friends
down the road.”

His face clouded with suspicion. “Ain’t nobody live there. The
place, it be filled with haints. Has been since old man Prioux sell
it.” He paused, concentrating. “Let’s see, that was-” His face lit.
“Oui. Nineteen fifty. I remember because that one, he sell it the
year after I buy this truck of mine.”

I was about to dismiss the old man as a loony, one of those
who had lived in the woods too long with only alligators and
snakes to keep him company.

He continued, tapping his chest with his middle finger. “Me,
Augustus J. Rouly, I see the feu follet; it play there with the loupgarou. Me, I see lights at night.”

I ignored his fancies. “My friends bought the house. Those
are probably the lights you see.”

And he ignored my explanation. “It good I find you. Just a
couple nights ago, old L. Q. Benoit was walking down this very
road. The loup-garou, he jump him. He turn himself into a horse
and kill Benoit dead by stomping on him.’-‘.

Loup-garou, like the feu follet, was nothing more than an oldtime Cajun superstition. The loup-garou, or werewolf, of Cajun
myth can be any kind of bird or beast. Some are even good
spirits, but most, for whatever reason, are dark and treacherous.
I guessed Rouly’s loup-garou was probably the mugger or
muggers of which Sheriff Lacoutrue had spoken.

Old Rouly cackled. “That Benoit, he didn’t have no time to
get himself even one big drunk.” When he saw the frown on my
face, he explained. “Benoit, he come back from prison. He just
come from the sheriff and the deputy, and he come to my shack,
and me and him, we have a drink to celebrate his parole, and then
he go off to his shack. They find him next morning.”

Like all the old-timers, Rouly could probably talk around the
clock, but I had business at hand. I glanced at the sky, noting
the fading signs of dusk. I shook his hand. “Thanks again, Mr.
Rouly. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

I was still laughing at the odd old man when I rounded the bend
and spotted Diane and Jack’s house. But what really got my attention were the two men running down the stairs and racing toward two boats moored at the dock. One of the goons was bald.

I floored the pickup. The engine screamed. The truck leaped
forward. Another hundred feet and the macadam ended, but a
dirt road continued along the bayou. I shot onto the road and
angled toward the dock. I slammed on the brakes just as the two
roared away in a yellow Stratos, leaving a wide, foamy wake behind them.

I recognized the second boat as Jack’s, a Mako 191 I helped
him pick out at Carrier’s Marine in Austin a couple of months
earlier. I raced down the pier, threw off the stern and bow lines,
and then jumped in behind the center console. I cursed. No keys.

I stuck the throttle into neutral and then dropped to my knees
and peered under the console. One of the questionable skills I’d
developed on my job as a PI was hot-wiring vehicles, and the
Mako was a snap. Fifteen seconds later, the ninety-horsepower
Mercury roared to life.

I jammed the throttle onto full power. The stern dipped, and
the nineteen-foot Mako leaped forward.

Three feet later, the speeding boat slammed to an abrupt halt,
throwing me halfway over the windshield.