Under the Cajun Moon

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “Why are the walls in these rooms pink?” I asked, trying to make conversation. The policewoman gestured toward a chair and shrugged, answering that pink was supposed to be calming according to some psychological studies.

  I didn’t reply what I was thinking, that I felt sure the psychologists weren’t talking about this particular shade of pink, which was hideous and had quite the opposite effect.

  Once I was seated, another person came into the room and the woman left. This guy was older, in his early sixties, with closely shaven hair and the bearing of a cop. He wore slacks and a shirt, rolled up at the sleeves.

  “Hi, Chloe. How you doing?” the man said in a familiar tone, seating himself across from me at the table and sliding a paper bag toward me. “I had a feeling you might be wanting something good to eat about now, so I brought you a muffuletta from the Napoleon House. It ain’t Ledet’s, but it’s better than the mystery meat you’ll get in this place. Sorry it’s a little messy. The guy at the charge desk had to go through it.”

  Even without opening the bag, I could smell the heavenly scent of baked bread and sliced meats coming from inside.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Looks like you don’t remember me. I’m Wade Henkins. I’m a good friend of your father’s.” Squinting, I studied his face for a moment and thought he did look vaguely familiar. “Last time I saw you, you were about nine years old and had a snapping turtle clamped to your finger.”

  I gasped, the memory suddenly flooding my mind.

  “Of course! You saved me! I thought that turtle was going to take my finger off.”

  “He could have, if he’d been full growed. But he was just a young ’un. From what I recall, you were pretty brave about the whole thing.”

  I pictured the entire scene, which had taken place out in the courtyard at Ledet’s. There had been a pond and fountain there, stocked with turtles and fish, and I had always loved them. I remembered that I had come home from boarding school on vacation, and I had been so happy to see my long-lost turtle friends that I had actually reached into the pond to pet one of them, a new one I hadn’t noticed before. I was quite shocked when that cute little turtle whipped open his mouth and clamped it down on my finger. Still, even at the age of about nine, I knew my father’s rule regarding drama in the front of house. Thus, with merely a whimper, I immediately ran to the kitchen for help, the turtle holding on for dear life. Mr. Henkins was working security at the restaurant and had intercepted me in the back hallway and saved the day, somehow disengaging the turtle and telling me that it wasn’t my fault, that my daddy had no business keeping a snapping turtle in a public place that should have only box turtles, and what a brave little girl I was. Looking back at it now, I knew it wasn’t bravery that had kept me from screaming; it was the fact that screaming was against the rules. I was nothing if not a good little rule follower.

  “I’m not feeling very brave right now,” I said, looking at the man across the table. “You’re a policeman, aren’t you? Can you tell me what’s going on?”

  “Yeah, I’m a cop, but I’m here in an unofficial capacity. I was with your daddy yesterday, Chloe, not long before he was shot. I can’t be involved with the case from the police side of things because I’m actually a material witness to some of what went on down there. But when I heard what happened to you, I had to come check on you, see if you were okay, and see if I could intervene any way on your behalf.”

  Relief flooded my veins. I was finally with someone who could help me get out of here, not to mention tell me what had happened to my father down in Paradise. Suddenly, my hunger got the best of me, and with apologies and thanks I took out the big sandwich he had brought and began eating it right in front of him, relishing every bite.

  “I don’t quite understand your situation,” he continued, “but being that I know you and your family, I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

  “The benefit of the doubt, that’s all I ask. I’ve been set up, Mr. Henkins, probably by someone who wants me out of the way. I don’t know who or why, but I’m sure it ties back to whatever is going on with my father. I was drugged last night at Ledet’s, and I woke up this morning in the middle of a murder scene. I know it looks bad, but not only did I not kill Kevin, I don’t even know where we were or how we got there.”

  Mr. Henkins looked at me for a long time, as if he were sizing me up. His steely gaze was a bit unnerving, but I had a feeling it was an interrogation technique he used to make criminals crack. As I had done nothing wrong, I simply returned his gaze without blinking. Then he broke our stare and asked me to tell him everything, from the beginning.

  Thus, for what seemed like the umpteenth time that day, I went through every part of my story. He listened intently, asking a few questions for clarification, but otherwise keeping silent. When I was finished with the whole thing, he shook his head, an angry expression on his face.

  “More than likely, both of you were drugged and carried out of there in some way that didn’t attract attention. I’ve been telling your father for years that he needs to beef up Ledet’s security systems. He has mounted cameras in there, but half the time they’re not even on.”

  “Cameras?” I asked, hope suddenly surging through my veins. “Mr. Henkins, do you think there’s a chance that what happened last night at the restaurant got caught on film?”

  “Call me Wade, please. Sorry, Chloe, I already checked. Detective Walters said no such luck. Turns out the cameras weren’t on because the restaurant was closed.”

  With his words, my flash of hope went up in smoke.

  “But at least the detective went there and checked out my story?” I asked, grasping for more hope. “I’ve been thinking about who was there last night, like Graze or our waiter, or the people outside at the party. At least one of them had to be in on this. Do you know if the detective even bothered to interview them?”

  “Yeah, he did. He said he’s talked to everybody and come up with nothing.”

  My mind racing, I asked Wade about the security system at Ledet’s, if there was anything else there that might help my case.

  “No, and your father’s a stubborn fool. The wine cellar is fully wired, of course, but the main restaurant doesn’t even have a basic alarm system. Makes me nuts, especially when he hires me to come in and work some big event and I see how easy it would be to upgrade security around there.”

  I asked Wade to tell me what he knew about what had happened to my father yesterday morning. As he talked, I took another bite of the muffuletta, relishing the tang of the olives and how they blended with the oily tenderness of the meat.

  “He was down at Paradise, calling around to see if anybody wanted to come over and do a little work for him. A couple of the guys went and helped out, same as they always do. I was there visiting my brother, so I tagged along. We worked hard, but it was fun.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Clearing brush. There’s a bunch of old blackberry bushes up in there, but the area was so overgrown he couldn’t get to ’em. We came in and cleared the way. Took us all morning, just so he could make a pie.”

  “By any chance, did the topic of Alphonse Naquin come up?” I wondered if maybe the guys who were there working had been the ones to convince my father to change his stubborn position over the treasure.

  “Not that I recall. Why?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Keep going.”

  “Okay, well, while we was working we noticed a couple of fellows we didn’t know out on the bayou, making a lot of noise. They were rowdy and drunk and kept passing by in their fishing boat, calling things out and laughing and stuff. Ten o’clock in the morning and they were already wasted. At the time, we didn’t think too much of it. Lot of guys like to drink when they’re fishing.”

  “Hmm.”

  “We finished around noon, and your dad said if we wanted go into town for groceries, he’d whip us up a nice lunch. The other fellows had to get to work, but I was free. Goodness knows, I nev
er turn down a meal from Julian Ledet! I borrowed his truck and went to the store.” Wade’s expression grew more somber. “You sure you want to hear the rest of this?” he asked, and I simply nodded. “Okay, well, I guess I was gone a while, maybe forty-five minutes. When I got back out to Paradise, I couldn’t find your daddy. What I did notice were a bunch of empty beer cans out by the dock, and what looked like blood in the water and on the grass. Oh, and my boat was gone.”

  Taking the last bite of my sandwich, I listened to his tale in rapt attention as he continued.

  “I didn’t know what had happened, but something just didn’t feel right, you know? Especially after seeing those rednecks out on the water earlier. I was hoping your dad had gone out fishing and the blood was just from something he’d caught and skinned there by the dock. I gave him an hour, but when he didn’t turn up I called the police. Turns out, he had just been found ’bout six miles north of there, up in a little tributary. He was on my boat, unconscious, blood everywhere, just floating along in the water.”

  “Who found him? How?”

  “He had called 911 before he passed out. They used the GPS signal from his phone to track him down. He’s lucky they got there as soon as they did. Any longer and he’d have been a goner for sure.”

  “What about the men you had seen earlier? Were they caught?”

  Wade shook his head.

  “Not only were they not caught, nobody else along that waterway claims to have heard or seen them. I don’t know what that’s about, but they were so noisy I can’t imagine we were the only ones who heard them out there. Then again, maybe they weren’t drunk at all. Maybe it was just a show they were putting on for our benefit, maybe as a way to come in close enough to do whatever it is they did to your father.”

  “Was anything stolen? Could it have just been a random crime?”

  Wade shook his head, saying no and no, that there weren’t even any strange footprints in the area, despite the fact that the ground was muddy. His guess was that they never even stepped off the dock onto the grass.

  “What about the other men, the ones who had been there working with you earlier? Could one of them have done something?”

  “No way. They’re good people, Chloe. Your daddy and them have known each other for years. Besides, they all left when I did. Looking back, I wish they hadn’t. ’Cause then Julian wouldn’t have been there defenseless and all alone.”

  Trying not to picture my poor father out in the swamps by himself being ambushed by a group of assassins posing as drunken fishermen, I asked Wade if he had any theories about all of this. He hesitated, glancing toward the two-way mirror. Then, giving me a meaningful look, he simply suggested that we talk again soon.

  From the expression on his face, I knew there was something important he wanted to tell me that he couldn’t say in this setting, where he might be overheard. He wrote down his phone number on a scrap of paper and gave it to me, saying to call him as soon as I was out on bail.

  “Anyway,” he continued in a more casual voice, reaching out to pat my hand, “I don’t know what good it has done for me to come here except to let you know that there’s a friendly face on the force looking out for you.”

  “I appreciate that more than you can imagine. And I look forward to talking with you again soon.”

  As he stood to leave and called for the policewoman to return me to my cell, I asked if by any chance he might have some pull to get my bail hearing moved to today instead of tomorrow. He looked at his watch and let out a low whistle, saying that it was already after three but he’d see what he could do.

  “Depends,” he said. “I’ll try. But whether it’s today or tomorrow, let me give you some advice. When you go up before the judge, emphasize your current hardship. You ain’t even seen your father yet and he could be dying. Given that he’s a local celebrity and all, that should help get you out of here.”

  I thanked him profusely for the advice, the sandwich, and the most important thing he’d given me of all: a glimmer of hope.

  Back in my cell, I was still going over our conversation in my mind an hour later when the guard showed up at the cell door bearing the outfit I had been wearing when I was arrested earlier today.

  “Get dressed,” she said, pushing the crumpled wad of fabric through the bars. “Bail hearing’s in fifteen minutes.”

  TWELVE

  After a day filled with shocking events, terror, and misery, the bail hearing was surprisingly anticlimactic. My lawyer breezed in at the last minute, looking somewhat irritated that the hearing had been so abruptly rescheduled from tomorrow to today. When it was our turn to go before the judge, things happened very quickly. Terms I didn’t even understand were tossed back and forth between the judge, my lawyer, and a woman I assumed was with the district attorney’s office. At one point the judge asked me if I had anything to add, so I simply did as Wade suggested and focused on my dying father and how desperately I wanted to be by his side while he was still alive. In the end, with a single tap of a gavel, I was released on bail, which had been set at five hundred thousand dollars.

  It took nearly another hour of paperwork and legal jargon and the securing of the bail money before I was released, but I didn’t care. I was free, I was out of there, I was not going to have to spend the night in a cold cell next to an open toilet and a drugged-out hooker.

  Before my lawyer and I parted ways, he gave me one small bit of interesting news. He said that there were already two chinks in the state’s case against me, which he was hoping to exploit. Apparently, the hotel room I had woken up in this morning had been rented last night by someone other than Kevin Peralta. The desk clerk on duty at the time couldn’t remember much about the man who came in last night and asked for a room on the first floor, but he was shorter and older than Kevin, with dark hair, a mustache, and a full beard—at least some of which may have been fake. Unfortunately, there were no security cameras there, the man had paid cash, and he had registered under the name “John Doe.”

  “John Doe? The clerk didn’t think that was weird?”

  “As long as his money’s green, I don’t think they care.”

  The lawyer went on to say that there was also something suspicious about the phone call that had brought the police to the hotel this morning on a complaint of noise. Not only had no one else at the hotel heard any noise, but the call itself had come from a cell phone, not from a nearby hotel room. Incredibly, the cell phone in question belonged to Kevin Peralta himself.

  “Not that Kevin called the police himself, of course. He was already dead at that point. But the call was made from his cell phone. We can use that to support our claim that someone set you up. I’m going to contend that whoever drugged you both and killed Peralta then stole his cell phone and used it to call the police, making sure they would discover the scene before you could have had time to wake up and spot the dead man on the couch and run away.”

  “I would never have run away,” I said, appalled that he would even suggest such a thing. Had I woken up on my own, looked around in an attempt to figure out where I was, and discovered Kevin’s body, the very first thing I would have done was call the police. Offended, I moved on to my next question. “Any ideas yet on how the murderer got us into that hotel suite in the first place?”

  “Witnesses at Ledet’s say that none of them saw the two of you leaving but that they did see Sam Underwood once you were gone. He told them that he had cleaned and closed up the private dining room you folks had been using so they didn’t need to worry about it. Then he left. They took—”

  “Wait, what?”

  As that fact sunk in—that Sam hadn’t been drugged as well—the lawyer repeated his words, finishing his sentence this time.

  “They took him at his word, and no one else went into that room until the police got there today. Despite what Sam had said, it had not been cleaned.”

  “Did they get our glasses, as evidence?”

  “There were no glasses on the
table, only plates and silverware and some dirty napkins.”

  What had Sam done? How could he have gone off and left me there?

  What was going on?

  Feeling utterly lost and bereft, I tried to imagine Sam as a killer. No matter how I tried to frame it in my mind, it just didn’t compute. Sam was no killer.

  Then again, neither was I.

  “I know you don’t care, but I really am innocent,” I said.

  “Of course. All my clients are innocent,” he replied, and then he turned and walked away, calling back to me that I should contact his secretary in the morning to set up an appointment for one day next week.

  Taking a deep breath and trying hard to control my irritation, I decided to focus on the fact that I was free, for the time being at least. I hoped that would be one appointment I wouldn’t have to keep, as I was going to do whatever it took to prove my innocence and clear my name in the meantime.

  Right now I just needed to find a way back to the hotel parking garage in the Quarter where I had left my rental car last night. Once I had my car back, the first stop would be the hospital. At some point, I also needed a hot shower and a change of clothes. After that I would regroup and try to figure out my next steps.

  When I had been given back my purse and cell phone, I asked the woman at the pay window if she could give me the number of a local cab service. She told me I probably didn’t need to call anyone as a few cabs were usually lined up at the bottom of the courthouse steps.

  I walked in the direction she indicated, my high heels clicking against the marble floor as I went. Stepping outside, I saw that there were, indeed, some cabs at the curb.

  There were also several news vans and a cluster of reporters milling around in front of them. I tried to duck back inside, but it was too late. They had seen me and were already making a mad rush up the wide stone steps.