“Try the refrigerator,” Tracy said. “‘Refrigerate after opening.’ Means what it says.”
He stuck his head in the fridge. “Wish I could get inside the Boudreaux mansion.”
Tracy laughed. “That’d be like a sheep wanting to get inside a slaughterhouse.”
He took out the bottle just as the phone on the wall rang. “Could you get that?” Tracy asked.
I picked it up.
It was Gallagher.
“Haven’t found anybody to get close to the Boudreauxs, but things aren’t as they seem,” he said.
“How so?”
“I have reason to believe Max isn’t dead after all.”
Chapter 17
Was it good news or not? I wasn’t sure.
I put the phone on speaker.
“Listen up, everybody.” All eyes went to me. “It’s Gallagher.”
“Okay,” the voice said, and coughed. “I’ve had the Boudreaux place under surveillance. There’s a compounding pharmacy that hand-mixes Max’s heart medicine. The truck came last night.”
“You watching the mansion yourself?” Stuart asked.
“Yeah. Can’t afford to hire anybody. The family’s announced plans for a memorial service, but nobody’s seen a hearse or ambulance leave the property.”
“Weird,” Stephen said.
“My take is that Angel’s staged a coup. Max is more or less a prisoner in his own house. If that’s true, she’s likely to double down to show who’s in charge.”
“How?” I asked.
“She’ll probably call in all the IOUs from the family’s clients as soon as she can track them down. Stuart’s not the only one who owes big money. But you need to make him the hardest to find.”
“We’ve covered up the car.”
“I doubt that’s enough.”
Marvin raised his hands in a helpless gesture. “What are we supposed to do, bury it?”
“Probably not practical,” Gallagher said.
Marvin rolled his eyes.
I took the phone off speaker. “We’ll keep watching for the Cadillac or whatever the Nameless Girl drives.”
Gallagher grunted. “No telling what they’re driving now. The Boudreauxs can afford to switch vehicles every week if they want. For all I know they could both be on motorcycles.”
I tried to picture Jeremy on a Harley-Davidson. Maybe he was more of a Moto Bike man.
“I’ll let you know if I find a mole who can tell me what’s really going on.” He started coughing again.
“You back to smoking?” I asked.
“Is it that obvious?”
“Either that or you’ve got walking pneumonia.”
“I’m down to a pack a day, alright?”
“There’s a reason they call cigarettes coffin nails.”
“They’re still legal.”
“So is saying they when you’re talking about one person.”
There was a pause. “Is that fatal?”
“So you admit tobacco’s dangerous.”
“Sure. But the way things are going, we may have a pretty short life expectancy anyway.”
I hung up the phone. We sat there in shock.
Finally Stuart spoke. “I can’t do this anymore. It’s not right to put the rest of you in jeopardy. Maybe I should just go to New Orleans and turn myself in at the Boudreauxs front gate.”
“Great idea,” Stephen said. “Nice knowing you.”
I punched him in the shoulder.
“Ow. Quit it. You’re not the boss of me.”
“As a matter of fact, I am.”
He looked away.
“If what Gallagher says is true, all three of us are targets,” I said. “Maybe we should leave Marvin and Tracy to get them out of the line of fire.”
Marvin looked at Tracy, eyebrows raised.
She shook her head. “We’re in this for the duration.”
“Then it’s settled,” I said. “We may be sitting ducks, but we don’t have to take this lying down.”
Tracy turned to me. “If you’re gonna keep using puns like that, I’m taking back the welcome mat.”
That night after dinner, we were sitting in the living room trying not to watch Jeopardy. Apparently, it was Marvin’s favorite show and he was disgustingly good at it. He’d just wagered his imaginary $25,000 on a question about some ancient Roman senator when Stephen looked up from his phone.
“Max’s memorial service is gonna be public. Live-streamed on YouTube. I think we should go.”
“That’s crazy,” I said. The Jeopardy theme ticked and tocked as Marvin bit his lip.
“We could go in disguise,” Stephen added.
“Why should we go at all?”
“Maybe we can plead our case to some family member. Maybe even Angel.”
The Jeopardy theme faded. Marvin leaned forward, listening.
He lost everything. “That ain’t fair,” he growled.
Tracy picked up the remote and shut down the program. “Remember your blood pressure.”
He seemed eager to reply. Then, apparently thinking better of it, he walked out.
“We’ll all be in the open,” Stephen continued. “Even the Boudreauxs wouldn’t be dumb enough to shoot us there.”
Stuart nodded. “Safer than showing up at the front gate and surrendering.”
“Now, about disguises,” Stephen said. “Wearing our Amish clothes would make us stand out.”
“Obviously,” said Stuart. “We’ve got regular clothes now.”
“For a funeral I’d go with black suits and sunglasses.”
“Have you guys got a death wish?” I asked.
“Sometimes I do,” Stuart said.
“I don’t. It’ll be enough to watch the thing on the Internet.”
Marvin came back into the room. “What did I miss?”
“Not much,” Tracy said, looking relieved.
I went to the landline and called Gallagher.
“You again?”
“Are you going to Max’s service?”
“No way. The family’s bought half the cops and most of the politicians in town. They’ll be watching for me.”
“You can see it on YouTube.”
He coughed once more. “Don’t know how to do that stuff. How about you pay my respects for me?”
Chapter 18
About 10:00 a.m. the next day, we stowed the sleeping bags in the closet of Marvin’s office and gathered around his computer.
Marvin sat in his desk chair and pressed the power button on his aging iMac. The chime sounded, and a photo of Yosemite National Park appeared. He picked up the mouse and tried to click on Safari, but the screen was frozen.
“It does that sometimes,” he said. He scrubbed the mouse back and forth on the pad, but the cursor was AWOL.
Stephen tapped him on the shoulder. “May I?”
With a grunt Marvin gave up the helm. Stephen cracked his knuckles and sat.
He tried the mouse. Nothing happened.
Standing up, he reached behind the monitor with both hands and closed one eye. “Ah. There she is.”
“There what is?” Marvin asked.
“Disconnected. Keyboard USB from the CPU.”
Tracy shook her head. “I hate these machines.”
“At least it’s a Mac,” Stephen said, and brought up YouTube.
“We need more chairs in here,” Tracy said. “Can you get some from the kitchen?”
The rest of us hauled in more seats. There was barely room to move.
Things in New Orleans were already underway. We watched as a long line of black-garbed mourners waited to get into the towering stone cathedral.
“Who’s paying for this?” Stuart asked.
“The family, I guess.”
They must have been paying plenty. The picture switched from exterior to sanctuary interior. At least a two-camera production, probably more.
A procession of family members made their way to the reserved seats in front.
The pipe organ was doleful. There was Angel, a couple of young men, a few kids, and two older women. Their names flashed on the screen.
“Anybody see Jeremy?” I asked. “Or the girl?”
I waited. Nobody said “I do,” which I took as a no.
Angel, all in black, had a veil over her face. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw one of those.
“Hmm,” said Marvin. “Closed casket.”
“Something unusual about that?” Stuart asked.
“He supposedly died of a heart attack, not a car accident. Presumably they could make him presentable. I’d expect folks like that to file past, look in, give the sign of the cross, that sort of thing.”
A short, gray-haired priest, in a black chasuble trimmed with silver, mounted the platform and stood behind the podium. He recited something in Latin, my grasp of which is limited to phrases like quid pro quo and illegitimus non carborundum, the meaning of which is widely disputed.
Next came two little girls, not twins but garbed alike in daffodil-yellow dresses and white gloves. They did their best to sing Ave Maria, a hymn that would challenge Pavarotti. They must have been close friends of the family, because they never would have made it past the first round on America’s Got Talent.
Tracy groaned. “Can you turn the sound down?”
Stephen punched the volume key a few times. It made a series of fading boings.
That served us well in what followed. The eulogies were endless. At least four men waxed poetic about what a great humanitarian and father Max had been.
Marvin sighed through most of it, shaking his head at the undeserved plaudits.
After the men came the head of the city council, according to the title on the lower left of the screen. She was African-American, a woman I remembered excoriating the White House during Hurricane Katrina. In tones that soared up and down like those of a National Baptist preacher, she recounted the time Max donated money to rebuild the Lower Ninth Ward.
Finally the priest delivered a homily about the rich man who kept building bigger and bigger barns to hold all his wealth, only to lose it when he died. I couldn’t tell whether he was praising Max or delivering a well-disguised jab. I doubted even he could get away with the latter.
Stephen leaned toward me. “I can’t figure out all the chanting and kneeling and standing,” he whispered.
“In the first place, it’s not chanting. It’s responsive reading. In the second place, you’re not there. You can keep sitting.”
The priest switched from Latin to English. “Private interment will follow the reception.” Back to Latin, he lifted his hand and did what appeared to be blessing the congregation.
It made me glad I wasn’t Catholic. Worship was a lot of work. In my church, all you really had to know was where to buy coffee in the foyer.
The organ played something medieval as the family left the front benches, half to one exit and half to the other. The pews slowly emptied.
Marvin sat back in his chair. “Luke, chapter twelve: ‘You fool, tonight your soul is required of you. The things you’ve prepared—whose will they be?’ Not an exact quote, but close enough.”
He scratched his chin. “That’s what happens when you lay up treasure for yourself and aren’t rich toward God.”
“Amen,” Tracy said.
Stephen was about to shut down the computer when the scene changed again.
“Must be the reception,” I said. I wondered whether cathedrals had basements.
There were no titles this time as Angel greeted guests in the reception line. Her veil was gone.
The embraces were warm, but the look in her eyes was cold. She was guarded on both sides by black-suited gentlemen with large muscles.
Suddenly there was a flash, like a picture being taken. The guards moved to shield her.
A chubby, middle-aged man in a rumpled brown suit, maybe paparazzi, lowered his smartphone. He looked surprised when the guards spirited him away.
“Wouldn’t want to be that guy,” Stephen said.
Everyone on the screen acted like nothing had happened. One guard returned.
Angel got back to the work of grieving. Some of the relatives left. There remained only two—a stone-faced young man and an elderly woman who looked like she’d spent a lifetime denying the obvious.
The picture froze. “Kernel panic,” Stephen said. “I can’t thaw it.”
He switched off the machine and turned to Marvin. “Don’t worry, it’ll come back when you restart. Probably.”
“Wonder what happened to the photographer,” Stuart said. Nobody wanted to speculate.
I stared at the dead screen. “Nice to finally see the person who most wants to kill you.”
Maybe nice wasn’t the right word.
Maybe terrible was a better one.
Stephen seemed unperturbed.
“Seeing the refreshments made me hungry,” he said.
Tracy closed her eyes. “Peanut butter’s in the pantry. Jelly’s in the fridge.”
“Oh,” he said, crestfallen. Probably disappointed she wasn’t whipping up a full-fledged brunch.
I went to the window. A gray day, but the air conditioning’s roar told me it was hot as ever.
“Still not used to the palm trees and waves,” I said to nobody in particular. “But I’d like the chance to if I ever got to retire, which I—”
“Look,” squeaked Stuart.
He directed my gaze to the parking lot, where a car was pulling in.
White Cadillac. New.
I tensed as two people climbed out.
Not the two I was thinking of. An older couple in Hawaiian print shirts and floppy hats.
“Whew,” Stuart said.
I was about to take my chair back to the kitchen when another car arrived, parking at the edge of the lot.
A gray Jeep Wrangler. It sat there a full minute.
At last two figures emerged. One was Jeremy, his arm in a sling.
The other was the Nameless Girl. Both wore sweatshirts and jeans.
I swallowed and faced the others.
“We have visitors,” I said.
Chapter 19
“Where’s the best place to hide in this complex?” I asked, wishing I’d done so before.
Marvin and Tracy looked at each other.
“Laundry room, probably,” she said. “Hardly anybody goes there anymore. Three bucks to wash, three to dry. Most folks use a laundry service. For twenty-eight dollars a month they pick up your stuff, clean and fold it, then deliver it right to your—”
Marvin patted her on the shoulder. “I think they get it,” he said, and dashed into the hallway.
The rest of us followed. After pausing to lock the condo, he led us to the elevator. A handmade sign about TACO TUESDAY, 7 P.M. was taped next to the door, along with a photo of a missing chihuahua named General Douglas MacArthur.
The car was crowded. I hoped nobody could hear my heart pounding.
“First floor,” he said, and pressed the button.
When the door slid open, we all retreated a step. But the hall was empty.
The laundry room smelled like mold and chlorine. No lock on the door. No chairs. A jumbo bottle of Tide sat on the washer.
Stephen looked at the floor, then bent down. “Hey, free sock!” he said, holding up a puffy purple orphan covered with what looked like cat hair. After displaying it like a trophy, he tossed it in a pail under the change machine.
“Please use your inside voice,” I whispered.
“Yes, Ma’am.”
We waited, listening.
Finding a towel on the floor, I stuffed it under the door. My second college roommate had used that trick to keep narcs from smelling her marijuana smoke. Maybe it would block sound waves, too.
Marvin and Tracy, looking tired, sat on the washer and dryer respectively. “There’s a lock on the door,” he said. “Could you push that button?”
Stuart reached out and did so, his finger trembling.
<
br /> Suddenly we heard running footsteps from the floor above. Apparently, Jeremy and the Nameless Girl had started at the top and were working their way down. Or some senior marathoner was practicing for the next Iron Person competition.
Tracy turned to her husband. “What did you say about the IRS?” she whispered.
For a moment he seemed confused. “Oh,” he said finally. “They got Al Capone for tax evasion.”
Tracy turned my way and kept her voice down. “Used to be a bookkeeper. I never did this, of course, but crooks tend to keep two sets of books. One for the government, one with real numbers. If we could get the real one—”
Marvin shook his head. “Baby, that’s a job for Mr. Gallagher’s informant—if he ever finds one.”
We listened again. Two sets of feet pounded down our hallway.
I held my breath. The galloping racket passed.
Steps faded down the stairs. Then nothing.
Nobody spoke for at least a minute.
Until Stephen did.
“That can’t be it,” he said. “Too easy.”
I pulled the towel from beneath the door and strained to hear. A dog barked from somewhere. General MacArthur, perhaps.
Then came a huge THUMP and the sound of a doorframe cracking. “Uh-oh,” Marvin said. “Sounds like our place.”
Tracy shut her eyes. “They’ll trash it.”
“Better without us there.”
There was crashing and banging.
“Searching the cabinets,” Marvin said.
“For what?” Stuart asked.
I backed away from the door. “Us. Or money. Or both.”
After a few minutes the sounds subsided.
But the wail of a siren replaced them.
“Got a silent alarm,” Marvin explained. “First time it’s gone off.”
A door slammed.
I tossed the towel back on the floor. “Let’s take a look.”
They trailed me to the nearest window, at the end of the hall. We looked down on the parking lot.
The Wrangler pulled out, just seconds before a squad car rolled in.
Murder Most Unlucky: A Cozy Mystery (A Carolyn Neville Mystery Book 5) Page 11