Cake on a Hot Tin Roof

by Jacklyn Brady

  Étouffée-loving foodies have been known to debate certain aspects of the dish. Is it acceptable to use more than one kind of seafood, or does that make it gumbo? Should étouffée be made with a roux (flour and oil whisked together over heat until it’s perfectly smooth) or without? Does a proper étouffée contain tomatoes or not? Personally, I loved the Duke’s version: single seafood, includes a roux, and excludes tomatoes. It was a well-balanced and flavorful dish with just the right amount of kick to it.

  While I shoveled shrimp, peppers, garlic, and rice into my mouth, Gabriel got to work on the order for the staff. “So I hear Big Daddy Boudreaux met his demise at your party,” he said.

  I stopped eating just long enough to stick out my tongue at him. “It was my party in name only, and I had nothing to do with his untimely demise.” I plied a napkin over my mouth to make sure I hadn’t left any unsightly bits. “What did people see in him anyway? I don’t get it.”

  “You weren’t blown away by Big Daddy’s charm and sex appeal?”

  I pretended to stick my finger down my throat and made a little gagging noise. “Seriously. I don’t get it. What did people see in him?”

  Gabriel laughed and added 7-Up to the whiskey in Ox’s glass. “Money is power, baby. And power is sexy. It’s always been that way.”

  I made a face. “That’s a stupid rule.”

  “It’s not a rule,” he said. “It’s a universal truth. Rules you can break or change. The truth just is. You can’t avoid it.”

  I put down my spoon and took another mouthful of slush. “So you’re a philosopher now?”

  “I’m a bartender. It’s part of the job description.”

  I licked a little salt from the rim of my glass. “Yeah? Well, I sure hope you’re right. Otherwise, my uncle might be paying a very high price for a mighty big lie.”

  Gabriel pulled a couple of beers from the cooler behind him. “What lie would that be?”

  He looked genuinely interested, so I unloaded on him. Bartender, remember? The next best thing to a therapist.

  I told him about Big Daddy’s behavior at the party and, in the interest of honesty, gave him a brief summary of the fight between Uncle Nestor and Big Daddy. I told him about meeting Judd and overhearing his conversation with Mellie. About finding Big Daddy floating in the pool. About the conversation between Big Daddy and Judd that Ox had witnessed and Mellie’s search for Judd later by the pool.

  I topped the whole thing off with a second virgin margarita and an account of the Widow Boudreaux making it sound like Uncle Nestor had killed her husband. By the time I’d finished sharing, I felt much better. “She has to know it’s not true,” I said as I wound down. “Uncle Nestor barely knew the guy. He had no reason to kill Big Daddy.”

  Gabriel had listened to my whole diatribe without interrupting. Now he cocked his head to one side and asked, “If she knows it’s not true, why would she say it?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” I said, yawning again. “Because she’s crazy? Because living with Big Daddy drove her nuts? Because she had to be out of her head to get involved with him in the first place?”

  Gabriel cashed out a tab for a regular customer I recognized by sight and wiped a spill from the bar, glancing at me from the corner of his eye. “You’re not thinking clearly. The woman’s not crazy. She might not be the brightest star in the sky, but she’s not stupid either. I’m guessing either she believes it’s true, or she’s lying to divert attention.”

  I sat up a little straighter and a couple of heavy gray clouds floated out of my head. “You mean, like, from herself?”

  “Could be. My understanding is the Boudreauxes weren’t getting along all that well.”

  I started to say something, but sudden realization wiped whatever it was right out of my head. “Wait a minute. Do you know them?”

  “Sure. Doesn’t everybody?”

  “No, I mean, like really know them? Not just from the TV? That stuff you said about her not being stupid. How do you know that?”

  He dropped a cherry into a tequila sunrise and gave me a half-grin. “I’ve spent some time with them.”

  “They’re friends of yours?”

  “Acquaintances.”

  “From where? How do you know them?”

  He spritzed soda into a glass and reached for a straw. “We’re all members of the same krewe.”

  You could have knocked me off that barstool with a feather. “You’re a member of Musterion? Why weren’t you at the party?”

  “I’m not on the board this year. Not involved in the planning either, thank God. But I’ll be there for the ball and for the parade.”

  “In costume?”

  He grinned. “That information’s on a need-to-know basis.”

  I was getting distracted, so I finished my étouffée and licked my spoon—discreetly, of course. With my stomach pleasantly full, I managed to string a few coherent thoughts together. “Does that mean you also know Ivanka Hedge and Richard Montgomery?”

  “I do. I was on the parade committee with Rich a couple of years ago.”

  My exhaustion fell away and I bounced up in my seat. “Are you serious?”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Would I lie to you?”

  I shook my head quickly. “Not if your life depended on it. Could you introduce me to them?”

  “I suppose I could.”

  “Will you?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On what’s in it for me.”

  Everybody has an angle. “How about my undying gratitude?”

  He did a little shruggy-thing with his mouth. “That’s the best you can do?”

  I shrugged back. “I don’t know. Maybe.” When he didn’t relent, I did. “If that’s not good enough, what do you want?”

  “I’ll think about it,” he said.

  “Come on, Gabriel. You have no idea how important this is to me.”

  He cleared away my bowl, but he didn’t say a word.

  “This could make or break me,” I said. “I really need this.”

  He turned to a middle-aged man on a barstool a few feet away, pointedly ignoring me.

  “Seriously?” I demanded.

  He gave the man a beer and turned toward the kitchen. “I’ll let you know,” he said over his shoulder.

  I stood on the rungs of the barstool to make myself taller. “Seriously? Oh, come on!” I called to his retreating back. But he just kept walking.

  Twenty-six

  When Gabriel didn’t come back after a few minutes, I picked up my glass and carried it across the room alongside the cocktail waitress who carried the tray laden with drinks for my employees. The group hailed me like some conquering hero and lifted their glasses in salute. I laughed, pleased with myself for doing the right thing. My ex-husband, their former boss, had been fun-loving and gregarious. Picking up the tab for a round of drinks had been second nature to him. I had to work a little harder at making those kinds of friendly gestures, so I always felt a little rush of pleasure when one of them worked out well.

  The Duke had a respectable-sized crowd tonight, but it wasn’t so busy that I felt claustrophobic. Laughter and chatter rose and fell all around me, but the group clustered around Zydeco’s tables was by far the loudest. I positioned my chair close enough to Dwight’s to get his attention easily, then waited through two or three songs before I made the effort. “Hey!” I said in the relative silence that fell between songs. “Could I talk to you for a minute?”

  Dwight looked puzzled, but he nodded. “Sure. What’s up?”

  “Not here,” I said. “Outside?”

  He got to his feet and we wove our way back through the tables while the band’s lead singer, an aging man with a graying ponytail and a shaggy Fu Manchu mustache, announced the band’s next selection.

  Outside, I led Dwight toward a park bench barely illuminated by a nearby streetlight.

  He sat next to me, groaning a little from the effort. “I
’m getting old,” he said with a grin. “I’m starting to sound like my old man.”

  I scowled at him. “Don’t say that. We’re the same age.”

  He laughed and stretched his legs out in front of him. “It’s gonna happen to us sooner or later. Might as well accept it.”

  “Never!”

  He laughed again and linked his hands behind his head. “So what do you want to talk about?”

  I didn’t want to keep him away from the others for long, so I launched right in. “Sparkle told me that she saw you talking to my uncle by the pool the night of the murder. Do you remember what time that was?”

  Dwight stretched then linked his hands together behind his head. “A little after midnight, I think. We’d already served the King Cake.”

  That matched Sparkle’s memory and it gave me hope that I was on the right track. We hadn’t discovered Big Daddy’s body until after two. What were the chances that Uncle Nestor had stayed in the same spot for two hours? “Did you see anyone else out there?”

  “Lots of people,” Dwight said, cutting a glance at me. “Are you interested in someone in particular?”

  “Yeah. Whoever killed Big Daddy.”

  Dwight grinned and settled more comfortably on the bench. “Wish I could help you, but I wasn’t around when he was killed.”

  “Kinda figured that,” I said. “Otherwise, you’d have told Sullivan and there’d have been an arrest by now.” A breeze rustled the leaves overhead, a soft, soothing sound. Somewhere nearby a dog barked and music floated out from the Duke as the band began another song. “So what did you and Uncle Nestor talk about?”

  “Nothing much. I asked how long they’d be staying, he asked whether you seemed happy.”

  “How did he seem?”

  “You mean was he agitated or did I think he was about to rush off and kill somebody? No. Neither. He seemed normal. Like a guy at a party he didn’t particularly want to be at.”

  “How drunk was he?”

  Dwight gave me a funny look. “He wasn’t. He might have had a little buzz on, but he wasn’t drunk. In fact, when I saw him, he was nursing a ginger ale. Said it was doctor’s orders.”

  That surprised me, but maybe it shouldn’t have. I should have known that cutting out alcohol would have been on the same list as “take up jogging.” I was just having trouble wrapping my mind around the idea of Uncle Nestor following those orders without argument. But had I actually seen him drinking a lot, or had I just assumed he was drinking because of his behavior? “Did he say anything about the fight he had with Big Daddy?”

  Dwight shook his head. “Nope. In fact, he acted as if it never happened.”

  “I wish it had never happened,” I said. “So that was it? That’s all you two talked about?”

  Again with the funny look on Dwight’s face. “Not exactly.”

  I nudged him in the ribs with my elbow. “Would you just tell me? I’m too tired to pry it out of you.”

  “He’s worried about you, Rita. He’s afraid you’re…how did he say it? Forgetting who you are and where you came from.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said, but I felt something tugging uncomfortably at my heart. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt Uncle Nestor or Aunt Yolanda, and I hated knowing that he felt that way. “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him that you’re cool,” Dwight said. “That you’ve got it together and he shouldn’t worry so much.”

  I grinned and slouched down on the bench so that I matched his posture. “Thanks. Did he believe you?”

  “I doubt it.”

  So did I. We sat there for a moment in companionable silence before I asked the other question that had been nagging at me. “So what did Sullivan want to talk to you about?”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  I snorted a little. “Are you kidding? He hasn’t said two words to me about the investigation. So what was it? And please don’t tell me it was something that makes my uncle look even guiltier.”

  Dwight shook his head. “Nope. He wanted to know about an argument I overheard between Big Daddy and Judd Boudreaux.”

  “What argument? Where? When? Were they upstairs in the clubhouse?”

  Dwight shook his head. “They were outside.”

  So not the secretive conversation Ox had seen them having. That made me sit up a little straighter. “Did you hear what they were arguing about?”

  “Not the whole thing, but enough. Big Daddy was furious about something. He grabbed Judd by the shirt and shoved him up against the wall. Looked like he wanted to rip him apart.”

  The Big Daddy who’d been his brother’s protector for all these years? What was that about? “You don’t know why?”

  Dwight shook his head. “I heard Big Daddy tell Judd that he’d crossed the line big-time this time, but that’s about it.”

  I tried to imagine the soft-spoken Judd under assault from his big brother, and wondered what Judd had done that had made Big Daddy slip from protector to attacker. “What line?”

  “I have no idea. Sorry.”

  “So what did Judd say?”

  Dwight lifted one shoulder. “He was pretty sloshed. Kind of hard to understand. He just kept telling Big Daddy that he’d pay him back.”

  “Pay him back? Like get even?”

  Dwight shook his head. “It sounded like they were talking about money to me. Judd said he’d pay Big Daddy back, and Big Daddy told him he’d better get it together by the next day or their asses would both be on the line.”

  “Judd owed Big Daddy money?”

  “That’s what it sounded like to me.”

  For the first time, I gave some serious thought to what the financial situation was in the Boudreaux family. According to Judd, they’d been members of The Shores since he was a boy, so I assumed they were old money. But how was that money split, and who controlled it?

  “Then what?”

  Dwight shrugged again. “They argued like that for a while and then Big Daddy told Judd he was sending him to rehab. He said this was the final straw.”

  I couldn’t imagine the Judd I’d met getting angry enough to whack his own brother over the head and push him into the pool, but could I have been wrong? “How did Judd react to that?”

  “I don’t know. Estelle asked me for help with something she did to her camera, and I went back inside. By the time I went back outside, they were gone.”

  I sat there for a minute, taking that all in and weighing it against what Miss Frankie had said about the relationship between Judd and Big Daddy and what Ox had already told me about the two of them the night of the party. “What about Uncle Nestor?” I asked when I couldn’t make all the pieces fit. “Did you see him after that?”

  Dwight shook his head. “Sorry.”

  “How late did you stay?”

  “It took me half an hour or so to figure out what Estelle did to the camera. I left right after that.” He got to his feet and stood over me for a moment. “Just do me a favor, okay?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Be careful. If you ask me, all the Boudreauxes are crazy as loons. If one of them did kill Big Daddy, they won’t hesitate to hurt anyone else who gets in their way.”

  His warning sent a chill up my spine, but I nodded. “Don’t worry about me.”

  “I’m serious,” he said. “The police know everything I just told you. Just let them do their jobs.”

  “I’m not trying to get involved in their investigation,” I assured him. “I’m just trying to clear my uncle.”

  He walked away a minute later, and I stood there trying to decide whether to go back inside or head home. I craved some alone time, but Uncle Nestor and Aunt Yolanda had been on their own too much. I was quite possibly the world’s worst hostess. It was time to do something about that.

  Twenty-seven

  I parked three doors away from my house at a little after nine, relieved to see that the lights were still on. I found Uncle Nestor and Aunt Yolanda at the
dining room table, talking about something over a pot of decaf. Aunt Yolanda bounced up when I came through the door and spent the next few minutes warming me up a plate, bringing me silverware, and fussing over me in a way I hadn’t been fussed over in months. Uncle Nestor didn’t say much, but I caught him watching me fondly a couple of times. I hoped that meant that we were okay again.

  After I was finally tucked in with a plate of homemade tamales, chili verde, and tortillas, all my doubts about their feelings for me faded away. I ate quickly, a little embarrassed that I could put away so much of Uncle Nestor’s food after the étouffée at the Duke. In my defense, it had been a small bowl, and the only other thing I’d eaten all day was a blueberry streusel muffin so long ago it seemed like I’d had that in the previous century.

  The chili was perfect, flavorful and garlicky, with a bite from the jalapeños that came with a slow after-burn. The tortillas were soft and warm. I tore off one piece after another, using them to scoop up the chili in the time-honored fashion of my childhood. I peeled away the hot corn husk wrapping from the tamales and enjoyed an entirely different taste sensation as the rich flavor of chili rojo exploded on my tongue. It was spicy without being hot, and the bland masa wrapping acted as the perfect complement.

  If ever a meal expressed love, that one did. My stomach was comfortably full as I wiped up the last of the chili with a scrap of tortilla, and so was my heart. I missed my childhood home and the life I’d had in Albuquerque, but I loved living on my own for the first time ever, and my new career was more satisfying than anything I’d ever done. I suppose there are no easy answers to life’s hard questions.

  They filled me in on their day—a stroll around the neighborhood, a stop at the corner market two blocks down, and phone calls home. I filled them in on mine, minus the stop at the Duke.

  The mood was warm and cozy and I hated to disturb it, but there were too many unanswered questions between us. Besides, Uncle Nestor was in a good mood, and I didn’t want to let the opportunity to ask a few simple questions slip away. While Aunt Yolanda told me about Santos’s oldest son taking a tumble from his bike, I carried my dishes to the sink, rinsed them, and stacked them next to the dishwasher. When she’d finished, I broached the subject uppermost in my mind as gently as I knew how.