Plunder

by Mary Anna Evans

  “What was Steve Daigle’s alibi?”

  “It’s the same for the days of both murders. He’s staying in a motel a few miles from the marina. Steve claims he slept late both days—”

  “Plausible. That’s what drunks do.”

  “True. Then he says he ate an early lunch at the marina both days—which checks out with Manny—then spent both afternoons at some nearby bars.”

  “Any witnesses at the bars?”

  “Yeah, but they’re not real upstanding citizens. And the fact that he moved from one bar to another by himself shoots a big hole in his alibi. It gave him time alone to do both killings, easy.”

  Faye tried to picture Steve as he started getting drunk at one establishment, then moved to another, and then another. “Why do you think he was moving around like that?”

  “Looking for someone, I expect. Maybe Didi or somebody we don’t know about yet. Or maybe he just kept looking for bars with prettier women. We know he was with Didi when the sheriff finally found her and told her about her mother.”

  “He let her come home alone, after news like that? What a gentleman.”

  Who was she forgetting? There must have been others who might have killed Miranda, but who would want an old lady dead?

  “What about Tebo?”

  “Tebo is the least likely suspect among our three drunks. No, make that four drunks—Tebo, Steve, Didi, and Didi’s husband, Stan. On the day of Miranda’s death, he started making a spectacle of himself at a bar several miles from here about lunchtime. When the bartender had enjoyed quite enough of that, he had Tebo arrested—along with Didi’s husband Stan, who you don’t know enough about to wonder where he was. The two of them were within eyeshot of dozens of bleary eyes all afternoon, then they were in jail. I can’t account for their whereabouts all morning, but if somebody killed Miranda that morning, then both Dane and Manny are lying, which makes them better suspects than Tebo and Stan. I think it’s pretty unlikely either Tebo or Stan killed Miranda, but I’m still checking out their alibis for the day of Hebert’s death.”

  Faye nodded abstractedly, because she was still trying to think of more suspects. As if she thought that the list of disagreeable people in her immediate vicinity was somehow too short.

  Manny worked just a few steps away, so the fact that he was on the job from dawn till bedtime that day meant absolutely nothing. He could have walked away, killed Miranda or Hebert, as the case may be, then gone back to work. People would have just assumed he’d taken a bathroom break. But why would Manny have killed a woman who’d been renting a slip from him for years? And what did he—or anybody—have to gain from killing Hebert at all?

  “Help me think through the people who would benefit from Miranda’s death,” she said.

  “I can’t think of any motive other than her possessions. She may have been a voodoo mambo, but she didn’t seem to be active outside her own home, so I don’t think she was out in the world making enemies through her magic. People tend to be a little skittish about killing folks skilled in the dark arts, anyway. And I don’t think she was out there stealing somebody’s boyfriend or breaking some poor man’s heart, either. I think this is about greed. Either somebody wanted to steal her stuff—and they sure didn’t get much, if they did—or they wanted to inherit her stuff.”

  “This is probably a question for a lawyer, but it’s my understanding that the only heirs are Steve, Didi, and Amande. You and Joe are Amande’s alibi.”

  “Like she’s really a suspect?”

  “I was just trying to be complete. Didi’s giving the same alcoholic alibi as Steve: She says she slept late on the day her mother was killed, and then she got up and went drinking, winding up with Steve at the end of the day. She claims to have been alone at the apartment she shared with Stan on the day Hebert died, and nobody has admitted to seeing her around these parts until a day later, so her story tracks. I don’t think that skinny girl stabbed her big ol’ stepbrother to death, nor that she slashed her mother’s throat. Something tells me that Miranda, even pushing seventy, could have taken on Didi, just out of sheer strength of will. But I absolutely believe that Didi could charm a man into doing murder for her.”

  “So it’s possible that Steve and Didi are in cahoots?”

  “Between the two of them, they will control way more than half of both the houseboat and the stock. As Amande’s guardian, Didi could also tap into Amande’s assets a lot easier than we’d hope, so she’s probably looking pretty good to Steve right now. If you were an uneducated alcoholic that didn’t like to work, wouldn’t a free place to live and a small monthly income sound really good to you? Especially if there was a good-looking woman living there who liked scumbags such as yourself?”

  Truth be told, a free place to live and a small monthly income sounded pretty good to Faye right that minute, and she was a highly educated professional who was capable of getting tipsy on a beer and a half.

  Benoit kept dissecting Didi’s and Steve’s motives. “I’m not surprised to see them strike up a romance—”

  “Romance is such a…pretty…word for anything Steve and Didi might do.”

  “Granted. Let’s say instead that I’m not surprised to see them hooking up, and that doesn’t bode well for Amande’s future. But I don’t see how they could have conspired to kill Hebert, if Didi truly wasn’t in town yet and hadn’t met Steve. Her mother? I devoutly hope Didi didn’t conspire with him to kill Miranda. That would be just too terrible.”

  Faye agreed, but she wasn’t sure she’d put it past Didi.

  “Absolutely nothing we’ve said about possible motives applies to Hebert,” she pointed out. “His killing didn’t affect the inheritance of Miranda’s boat and stock one bit. He was never an heir to anything, other than maybe a few of her fairly worthless personal possessions. He had nothing of his own, so nobody killed him for his stuff, either. He seems to have had no contact with any of his family members for years prior to his death. If he has any relationship to Dane or Steve or Manny or Stan, we don’t know about it. So why is the man dead? Is it possible that the deaths were unrelated? Was he really killed in a random bar brawl just three days before his mother was murdered? Or is it possible that we don’t understand the reasons for either killing?”

  “Oh, we don’t understand the reasons, I know that for sure. But I don’t believe that their deaths were unrelated.”

  “Because it’s just too unlikely that the murders happened so close together?”

  “No. It’s not too unlikely, not at all. Stranger things have happened here in these swamps, believe it. No, ma’am, I say I think the murders are related, because I saw both bodies. The murder weapons were different, but they were both sharp implements, and violent people have clear preferences in the way they do their violence.”

  Faye thought that made sense, in a twisted kind of way.

  “The marks on the bodies weren’t exactly the same, but my gut tells me that it was the same person, using the motions that felt the most comfortable. Someone struck Hebert a death blow or three from behind, while he was still standing, which is about the only way to kill a man that size easily, when you’re using a knife. There were abrasions on his throat, from where the killer grabbed him for leverage, and there were marks on his side where somebody kicked him damn hard. But the first deep stab wound was the thing that immobilized him. By the time the third one struck, he was paralyzed and bleeding from his aorta. Dying didn’t take long.”

  Faye really didn’t want to hear the answer, but she asked the next obvious question. “And Miranda?”

  “Killing an old lady the size of a pelican ain’t hard. She had some broken fingers, probably because she’d hidden that basket tool in her pocket, then tried to use it to defend herself. We haven’t found it, and we don’t know where the killing happened, but there’s no blood in the house or anywhere arou
nd. We found the spot by the water where Hebert was stabbed, and there wasn’t a whole helluva lot of blood there, either. The killer was strong and fast. Hebert’s body was in the water before his heart stopped beating.”

  “I laid awake last night wondering if Miranda suffered.”

  “She did.” Benoit’s voice struck just the right note of solemnity. He wasn’t calloused to the death he dealt with every day, but his tone wasn’t cheesy and funereal, either. Faye realized that she liked him.

  After a respectful pause, he continued describing Miranda’s murder. “Since there was no blood or evidence of a struggle, I think she was lured away or kidnapped, then killed elsewhere. Either way—lured or kidnapped—she knew something wasn’t right, because she took that cutting tool with her. When the time came to defend herself, he—and I think it was a man just because he was big enough to kill Hebert—took her weapon and broke three of her fingers doing it. There were some minor cuts on her hands and arms, like she was trying to get it back. There were bruises all the way around her body, like somebody big wrapped his left arm around her, trapping both her arms. And then there were the stab wounds. Three of them, made by a right-hander with a lot of upper-body power. Just like Hebert. Only they were made with the blade her killer had just taken from her. Then he slashed her across the throat, just for laughs.”

  “The same guy.”

  “Yeah, I think it had to be a guy. He had an easier time of it, stabbing the life out of an old lady, but yes. My judgment is that the same man killed both victims. And he is not someone who needs to be walking the same earth as you or your little boy or Miranda’s granddaughter or…well…anybody. I’m going to find him, ma’am. And I do appreciate your help. You’re the best unpaid consultant a man could want.”

  Episode 4 of “The Podcast I Never Intend to Broadcast,” Part 1

  by Amande Marie Landreneau

  A woman aboard a sailing ship brings bad luck. Men have been saying so for many, many years, but that doesn’t make it true.

  Yes, I’m sure that having a woman aboard—or even a few—will bring about jealousy aboard a ship full of men so lonely that they will fight for a woman, any woman. When pirates are involved, then fighting is the same as killing, I’d guess. So unless there’s a woman for every man, I expect there would be trouble, but I wouldn’t say it was the woman’s fault. The bad luck comes when men misbehave, so I’d say it was their fault, wouldn’t you? Regardless of where the fault lies, the “no-woman” rule wasn’t a bad one, when it came to keeping the peace aboard ship.

  Every man who sailed with Gola George knew the rules. No one without a Y-chromosome boards a pirate ship. Actually, come to think of it, George was already violating that rule. He was stealing women, or buying them, at every port in the Caribbean, but they didn’t stay on his ship long enough to cause trouble. That was the point of his island harem—to keep his ships free of women.

  I’m sure he intended to dump Marisol in the hellhole where all the other women lived, and I’m sure you think I’m about to tell you that Gola George was so taken with her beauty that he couldn’t bear to see her go.

  No.

  It was Henry the Mutineer who couldn’t bear to see something so beautiful crushed into the mud. Henry was the one who flouted the pirate code for Marisol.

  Surprised? Maybe you’re wondering what use a gay man would have for the companionship of a pretty woman? If so, then you’re on the right track. The word “companionship” is the key to the story of Henry the Mutineer and Marisol and Gola George.

  Probably, Gola George wanted Marisol, just for her beauty, but what could a gentleman’s daughter have to say to an illiterate man who rose to riches because he was able to kill people well? George was no companion for her.

  I think Henry the Mutineer wanted George for the same reason George wanted Marisol—for his beauty. That is why he stayed on the pirate ship where he so obviously didn’t belong. But what, really, could they have had to say to each other, once the loot from their last voyage had been duly entered into Henry’s account books? Henry was forced to seek companionship with his books and his paints and his music.

  Marisol’s arrival changed all that. She changed everything.

  Marisol was thrilled by the breadth of topics covered by Henry’s library. She shared his tastes in art and music, especially music. Grandmère’s stories all say that Marisol played the lute and that Henry bought her one, so that they could play music in his chamber at all hours. He had a berth built in his cabin, just for her, probably because leaving her alone while she slept on a ship full of lonely, barbaric men would have been just stupid. He bought her silk dresses in every color, which sounds exactly like something an artist would do with a beautiful woman when he didn’t want to sleep with her.

  The descriptions of Marisol that survive sound like they come straight from an artist’s lips: Her hair was golden and red, like sunrise over Barataria Bay, and her deep green eyes were the color of the Bay’s shadowed depths. I don’t know how many times I heard my grandmother say those words, and I still believe that they have come down to us from Henry’s lips.

  Henry taught her to play chess. Marisol taught him to play her lute. He bought her bonnets to shade her fair skin and—this is important—he bought her an intricately carved ivory fan, for those times when a lady must fend off prying eyes.

  Surely George was jealous, but of whom? Was he jealous that Henry’s devotion made Marisol sexually unavailable to him? Many other women were available, but George was the kind of man who wanted what he couldn’t have. So maybe he just wanted Marisol to himself.

  Or was he jealous at having lost Henry’s single-minded attention? None of George’s words have slipped down through the years, so we will never know, but the stories all agree on one thing: George did eventually snap.

  On the day that he grabbed Marisol’s slender body with both meaty hands, she fended off his kiss with a swiftly lifted ivory fan, the way a lady would deter an impulsive gentleman. George was only deterred for the split-second it took for him to shatter the fan against the bulkhead behind him. Marisol’s fate should have been sealed, but Henry the Mutineer was capable of things that George could never have imagined.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  As it turned out, neither Faye nor Joe had to concoct a reason to go check Didi’s trash cans. When Amande left after breakfast, she asked Faye to meet her at the houseboat later.

  “I called my lawyer and told him that a client who had lost three family members in a week deserved more attention than I’m getting. Especially since I’m being forced to live with a woman who’s planning to take everything I have.”

  Faye swallowed, trying to decide how enthusiastically to agree with Amande’s assessment of Didi’s plans. She thought the situation was about as dire as Amande said, but what would be the point of rubbing the girl’s face in it?

  “I also told him that I’d come to him, because I don’t want Didi to be part of the conversation. He offered to pick me up, since he knows I can’t drive, but I don’t even want her to know I’m talking to him. So could you pick me up, pretending like we’re going out to check some more historic sites?”

  Faye had agreed.

  “I wanted to make the appointment early, so that Didi would still be in bed and we wouldn’t have to deal with her, but Reuss couldn’t do anything earlier than eleven. I guess he does have some other clients. Still, even though Didi will probably be awake, she won’t be real sharp. I’ll take any advantage I can get.”

  And then Amande was gone, leaving behind two adults shaking their heads at what the girl had accomplished for herself after they were awake, but before they were real sharp.

  ***

  Dane Sechrist cut his boat’s motor, listening to the shush and grind as its hull slid over the sand ringing the little island where he’d been mooring fo
r weeks now. Now that the motor was silent, he could hear the radio better. The newscaster was saying the same thing he’d said yesterday and the day before. That busted well was still pumping crude into the Gulf, and there seemed to be no way to make it stop. At least, that’s what the oil company responsible for the whole fiasco was saying.

  He was trying to wrap his brain around the idea that a big thick layer of oil could come ashore hundreds of miles from the gushing well, spoiling beaches and marsh grasses and wide-open bays. There was almost no hope that it would fail to reach the secluded coves where he’d learned to fish, nor the bayou where he now sat.

  Fish glinted in the clear water surrounding his boat. Pelicans plunged from high in the sky, scooping breakfast into the sagging pouches behind their bills. In just a few days, everything was going to change.

  What would the oil do to the shipwreck he was hunting? Every instinct told him he’d nearly found it. The Spanish coins—one gold one and two nearly identical silver ones—mocked him. He’d found one of the silver coins here on this island, with a metal detector way more sensitive and expensive than the one he’d seen that sweet little girl waving around.

  He could have thrown a rock into the water and hit the very spot where he’d found the other silver coin and its gold brother. And near that spot had been the great pile of ballast stones that mocked him still. At low tide, he could almost walk to it. The water was so shallow here that the island swelled and dwindled with the tide. An island was a landlubberish thing for a diver to crave, but Dane wanted this one badly.

  Why? It wasn’t just because the logistics of recovering a shipload of gold and silver would be easier and cheaper if he could set up a base camp on a handy piece of solid ground. Although it would.

  Dane had spent some time in legal libraries, and he’d developed an opinion on salvage law and the law of finds. His first opinion was that the United States and her various sovereign states had not been consistent in applying those laws, so there had to be loopholes to be exploited, if he should ever need to defend his right to salvage this shipwreck he believed he had found. Mel Fisher had certainly parlayed the Atocha into a nice pile of money, so it could be done, but Dane thought he’d found a workaround that would keep him out of court altogether.