The Meriwether Murder

by Malcolm Shuman

  I waited, unsure what to say.

  “So how do you feel?” I asked finally.

  “Fine,” she said. “But you’re a mess.”

  I nodded.

  “You can shower, if you want to,” she offered. “But I don’t have any clothes for you to wear.”

  “I better get home.” I sighed. “And Digger’ll want to be fed.”

  “Little problem,” she said. “My car’s still across the river.”

  It took an hour for the cab to come and another half hour to get to Désirée. Pepper’s white Integra was still parked where we’d left it, but now there was a sheriff’s cruiser beside it on the grass, a bored deputy reading the Sunday newspaper with his door open. After some argument and a call to his superiors, he released the Integra and we drove back across the bridge.

  We passed down Park Boulevard, quiet and shaded in the morning light, and she made a U-turn around the median and pulled in before my house.

  Sudden inspiration hit me.

  “Want to come in for some breakfast?” I asked. “I’m a pretty good cook.”

  “Huevos rancheros?” she asked, opening her door.

  “A snap,” I answered.

  I let us in and turned off the alarm. Digger was pawing at the back door and I let him in. He rushed in to nuzzle my hands and then went to inspect Pepper. She let him sniff her hands and legs and smiled when he tried to jump up to lick her face.

  “You passed the test,” I said. “He likes you.”

  I went to the cabinet, took out a couple of cans of dog food, and started to open them.

  “I’ll feed him,” she offered. “If you want to get your shower.”

  She was offering to feed my dog. A good sign. I nodded and made my way upstairs to my room, the room where I’d grown up, still adorned with some of my airplanes and ships and a baseball autographed by the 1960 Pirates.

  I hummed a little tune as I lathered myself, taking comfort in the warm water as well as in the thought that she was still here, hadn’t left, was even doing one of my chores.

  And I’d always found Digger to be a good judge of character.

  When I came down twenty minutes later she was frying the eggs.

  “Thought I’d get a head start,” she said.

  I put some frozen tortillas in the skillet with oil, and started to slice a tomato. Five minutes later we were seated on the screened back porch, our plates in front of us.

  “You know, this is the first time I’ve been in your house,” she said. “I mean, besides just inside the front door.”

  “An oversight,” I said, lifting my glass of orange juice. “As you can see, the garden could use some work.”

  She eyed the tall grass in the backyard.

  “It has a lot of potential. I like the banana plants. You could put in a deck …”

  “And a swimming pool,” I suggested.

  “In the corner,” she said. “But not so big that it would take away some of the area from the rock garden.”

  “Rock garden?”

  “I love rock gardens. And, of course, the pool would have a hot tub.”

  “I wouldn’t build one without it.”

  She pushed aside her empty plate and wiped her mouth with a paper napkin.

  “Mind if I inspect the grounds?” she asked and went down the steps into the yard. Digger gamboled over and I watched, thinking how she looked almost as if she belonged here. Then the dog whined and ran to the water oak in one corner of the yard.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Pepper asked.

  “He’s been after a possum for the last week or so. It comes down into the yard at night and steals the food out of his dish. I think it’s got young ones.”

  “It’s pretty brave,” she said. “Digger’s a big dog.”

  “Ever see a mad possum?” I asked, walking down the porch steps and into the sunlight.

  “I thought possums just played dead,” she said.

  “When nothing else works. But generally they put up a pretty good fight.” I reached down to scratch Digger’s ear. “The old fellow’s got a scar on his nose to prove it.”

  She patted the dog’s head.

  “Poor Digger: He ought to know not to oppose a female.”

  I followed her to the board fence that divided the back of my yard from the service alley between my house and the neighbors.

  “I like this fence. Did you build it?”

  I nodded. “I like privacy. When I was little the old lady who lived across the alley could see everything I did. I got in trouble a lot because of her.”

  “Is she still there?”

  I laughed gently. “God, no. She’s been dead twenty years.”

  Pepper half turned and looked up at me with a twinkle in her blue eyes.

  “Then there’s nobody who can see us back here now.”

  “No,” I said, my throat suddenly dry.

  That was when Digger started barking. Someone was at the front door, ringing the doorbell.

  “Hell,” I muttered. “I’ll be right back.”

  I went into the house, prepared to kill whoever was outside and couldn’t wait.

  I jerked open the front door and saw Nick DeLage.

  ELEVEN

  “Sorry to bother you on a Sunday,” he said. “I tried calling, but …” He shrugged.

  I remembered then that I hadn’t checked my answering machine.

  “May I come in?” he asked, leaning forward like a vulture.

  I stepped aside. “Sure.”

  “They told me you hadn’t been hurt,” he said, sinking into my sofa. “They said there was a woman with you. Is she all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Pepper said from the hallway and DeLage’s head twisted in that direction.

  He grinned lewdly. “I can see that.”

  Pepper advanced into the room and took a seat out of arm’s reach, as if she half expected DeLage to pounce. I settled into my stuffed chair and waited.

  “What can we do for you, Mr. DeLage?”

  “You can give me some idea why somebody wants to burn down my plantation and kill my caretaker,” he said, one hand playing with his trousers cuff. “I was at the sheriff’s office a little while ago, trying to get something out of those idiots, when the deputy radioed in and said you were there to get your car. I drove over but you’d already gone.”

  “Too bad,” I said. “But the short answer is we don’t know much more than you do. Flowers called me and told me to come see him. When we got there he was already dead.”

  “But why? It doesn’t make sense. Why would Flowers call you? That isn’t like him.” DeLage corrected himself: “Wasn’t like him.”

  “I assume he found something. But why he wanted to see me about it I’m not sure. He didn’t seem like a very helpful sort of fellow.”

  DeLage rubbed his chin. “He must’ve been on to something. And it must’ve been worth killing for.”

  I searched his face, trying to detect some evidence of his lying, but it was useless. A man like DeLage was a master of the art.

  “You know, those deputies didn’t want to give me the time of day. But they asked me a lot of questions, and one they asked was about a piece of paper in the old man’s hand.”

  I nodded.

  “Didn’t make much sense,” DeLage went on. “Something about the law. But it wasn’t in Flowers’s handwriting. Got any ideas?”

  “Not really.”

  DeLage blew out his breath and looked from one of us to the other.

  “Where do you folks stand in your study for the Corps?”

  “We have a little more fieldwork to do,” I said. “And we have to write up the results.”

  DeLage nodded and summoned up a smile. “I don’t guess the Corps wants to get tangled up in murder, does it? And I guess they pretty much restrict you to the area at hand. I mean, except for the historic research, they probably wouldn’t pay for digging at Désirée.

  “Right on both counts.”

&n
bsp; “I figured that. And it’s got to be a bitch working for a federal bureaucracy. All the red tape and regulations.”

  “There’s that,” I agreed.

  “So I was thinking,” DeLage said, leaning toward us, “maybe you’d want to follow up your work for the Corps with some work for me. You do work for private individuals, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” He put on his sincere face. “Alan, I love Désirée. It’s where my family lived for generations. If there’s something there that’s historical, I want to find out as much as anybody. And you seem to be the person who knows the most about it.”

  “You’re suggesting a privately financed survey of Désirée,” I said.

  He nodded again. “Exactly. Without any of the crap you have to put up with from the government. On your schedule, not theirs. And when it’s over, you get the credit, not some bureaucrat in New Orleans.”

  “You make it sound irresistible,” I said. “But these things aren’t cheap.”

  “Of course not. And I’d expect you to be paid what you’re worth. I can raise the money. Don’t worry about that.” He gave his little-boy grin: “Besides, I’ve always been interested in archaeology. Hell, I might want to come dig holes with you.”

  My turn to nod. “Give us a day or two to look at our schedule and talk it over,” I said.

  “Fair enough.” Nick DeLage stood up and stuck out a hand. “But don’t wait too long. I want us to find whatever’s there, not some trespasser.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “And one other thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t want to upset Aunt Ouida. I think it would be better if we didn’t say anything about Flowers to her, don’t you?”

  I walked him out to his car.

  He paused, out of earshot of Pepper.

  “Nice-looking girl,” he quipped and gave my shoulder a nudge. “I knew I should’ve been an archaeologist.”

  I watched him drive away and turned back to the house, fists clenched.

  “Well?” Pepper asked from the doorway.

  “Where’s my roach spray?” I asked.

  “Yeah, he’s pretty slimy. All he wants is somebody to do his work for him.”

  “You got it.”

  “So are you really going to consider it?”

  “I want access to the property,” I said. “But I don’t want his money. In fact, I don’t know if we’d ever get any of his money. He’s not the kind whose check I’d base our payroll on.”

  “All he wants to do is hunt for treasure.”

  “That’s right. It’s what most people’s idea of archaeology is. But this time there seems to be something to it.”

  “Do you think he knows about the box?”

  “I’m not sure what he knows. That’s why I don’t want to make an enemy out of him—just yet. If we do, we may not ever find out who Louis was and whether his box has historic papers in it.”

  Pepper nodded and put a hand on my arm. I got goose bumps again.

  “But he said something else outside, didn’t he? Something that upset you. I could tell from your expression.”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  She frowned. “Did it have something to do with me being here when he came?”

  “The man’s a slug,” I said.

  “Alan, the hell with him. Who cares what he thinks?”

  “I guess I do,” I said. “I won’t have him dragging your name through the mud.”

  She touched my face with a hand. “Did I ever tell you that you were old-fashioned?”

  “A few hundred times,” I said.

  The phone rang then and it was Esme.

  “Alan, thank God you’re all right. I picked up my paper this morning and there was your name and Pepper’s, and a story about this gruesome business in Port Allen.”

  I groaned. My newspaper was still on the lawn, wrapped in its protective cellophane.

  “We’re okay,” I said. “Just a little tired.”

  “Then I’m coming over. I’m going to bring a pot roast. You both need to rest and somebody needs to look after you.”

  I thanked her, knowing it would do no good to argue. When Esme decided to be the Earth Mother there was nothing anybody could do.

  Pepper squeezed my hand. “At least we’ll get a free meal,” she said.

  “Have you ever eaten Esme’s cooking?”

  “That bad?”

  “Worse.”

  Pepper smiled wickedly. “Well, she won’t be here right away.”

  I heard a car door slam and turned, crestfallen.

  “No. David beat her to it.”

  David Goldman came hurrying up the walk, his wife Elizabeth at his elbow. Seconds later they were seated on the sofa listening to our story and David was promising to stay all night, in case the killer came back.

  “You didn’t tell me about this threat business,” he accused.

  “You were out of town,” I said. “And I didn’t take it seriously.”

  By the time Esme arrived with her pot roast, Gator Kelly and Frank Hill appeared with a twelve-pack of beer. Gator grinned toothlessly.

  “Thought we’d make sure you were okay,” he said, popping a tab. “We came for the poker game last night, but you weren’t here.”

  “I was busy getting burned,” I said.

  “We figured it was something like that,” Gator said. “But I brought a deck in case you want company. Never can tell who might be lurking around.”

  “I’m overwhelmed,” I said, as Esme emerged from the kitchen and announced that the pie was ready.

  “Sounds great,” Gator said. “Hey, where’s Frank?”

  “In the study,” David said. “Probably on Alan’s computer.”

  I sighed. “Make yourselves at home,” I said.

  Pepper rose.

  “I think I’ll go see a friend of mine in a nursing home,” she said. “It’s a little less crowded there.”

  I started up, but she shook her head.

  “Call me later if you want.”

  I watched her go and stared around me at my bounty of friends.

  David had already gotten the folding table out of my study and Gator was shuffling the cards.

  TWELVE

  Monday morning I awoke with Digger licking my face. When I staggered downstairs I saw a disaster of beer cans and playing cards scattered on the rug, overturned chairs and table, and, in the middle of it all, a body.

  When I looked closer I saw that the body belonged to L. Franklin Hill. He was alive, if mere breathing counted, and there was a note pinned to his shirt:

  WE HAD TO LEAVE FOR THE FIELD.

  FRANK STAYED TO GUARD YOU.

  WE FED DIGGER THE REST OF THE POT ROAST.

  It was signed, THE GUYS.

  I surveyed the wreckage and then made my way to the kitchen, where I got a can of dog food out of the pantry for Digger.

  “Sorry about the pot roast,” I told him. “Maybe this will make up for it.”

  I dressed, ate a bowl of cereal, and then shook the dead man awake.

  “I fold,” he mumbled.

  “Give me your car keys,” I told him.

  “Didn’t bring it,” he muttered and went back to sleep.

  I threw up my hands, went back to the garage, got out my bicycle, and inflated the tires with a hand pump. What the hell? It was only two miles to the office. Nice day for a ride.

  I needed something to wake me up anyway. Last night, just after eleven I’d excused myself from the commotion and gone upstairs to bed. Elizabeth Goldman had long since dragged David away and Gator and Frank were playing some game that had black cards wild, while they watched Beavis and Butthead reruns on the television. I called Pepper from my bedroom and got her on the second ring.

  “Don’t say anything,” she said softly. “It wasn’t your fault.” A giggle: “I had no idea how much you were loved.”

  “So how was Miss Ouida?” I asked.

  �
�Fine. We had a very nice visit, despite Nurse Krogh. Miss Ouida kept asking for her newspaper and Krogh kept saying they’d run out of copies. But I don’t think Miss Ouida was fooled.”

  I looked over at my clock: eleven-thirty.

  “If I had my car …” I said.

  “Go to sleep,” she said sensibly. “There’s no hurry. And maybe it’s a good idea for us to have some time to think.”

  And now, as I coasted down the hill past city park, I reflected on her words.

  Some time to think.

  It was what I’d been most afraid of. What had happened had been a spur-of-the-moment thing, caused by our being thrown together in the face of death. Now that she’d had a chance to reconsider, she was backing off.

  Right when I was having to face the fact that I just might be in love with the girl.

  Marilyn met me on the porch.

  “What do you mean not calling me?” she demanded. “I called five or six times yesterday morning and all I got was a recording.”

  “I forgot to check the machine,” I said sheepishly.

  “And when I called last night all I got was a drunk who asked if I thought he ought to draw to three of a kind, whatever that is.”

  “Gator,” I said. “He was keeping me company.”

  “I figured that out.” She turned on her heel and preceded me into the sorting room. “And where’s Frank? There’s work for him to do on the Cosway report.”

  “He’s sick,” I told her. “I’m sure he’ll be in by noon.”

  “Well, somebody better get out and get a new answering tape for the office machine, because the police came and took the old one away. Alan, what in the world is going on?”

  I explained about Howers’s call and watched Marilyn’s round little face go from red to white.

  “Jesus Christ,” she cried. “What does she want?”

  I followed her shocked gaze: A woman had barged in through the doorway, followed by a man with a videocam. The woman was about thirty, chunky, with curly black hair and a smudge of lipstick for a mouth.

  I’d seen her on the local news several times over the last year doing exposés, and she reminded me of a pug dog.

  “Dr. Graham,” she said, thrusting out a hand like a challenge. “I’m Sarah Goforth, with Channel 7 news. I’d like to talk to you about your work at Désirée Plantation.”