Murder in a Minor Key

by Jessica Fletcher

  “Shouldn’t that have been strictly between them?” I asked.

  “Why? I was always the one to run her errands, take her to appointments, do her shopping, escort her in society while her drug addict husband nodded over his needle. And did she ever thank me? Was she ever grateful?” He cursed under his breath.

  As I finished tying up the box for Clarice, I thought about how you never truly knew what went on in families, the unhappy relationships, the shifting alliances, the resentments. Archer considered himself part of the Copely family, not simply an employee. He’d been with Wayne for sixteen years. Yet Clarice was ready to drop him now that she had Alberta. And what about Wayne? Had he really been thinking about letting Archer go?

  “Here it is,” Archer called out. “I knew he had a will.” He unfolded a long legal document, and smoothed it on the table. “He left me the apartment,” he said excitedly.

  “How nice for you,” I said.

  “There are a couple of other bequests. We have to divide up his accounts, his royalties, and his belongings,” he muttered, reading to himself. He put the will down. “There should be a life insurance policy here somewhere.” He eagerly hunted through the papers until finding what he sought. He slipped the policy from its brown envelope. His eyes moved rapidly back and forth across the page, and then stopped, widening in surprise. “I can’t believe it,” he whispered. Reading again, his expression turned to thunder. He slapped the paper down on the table, grabbed his briefcase, and stormed out of the apartment.

  I went to the table, picked up the insurance policy, and read it. The beneficiary was named on page two. It was Clarice Copely Cruz. And the policy was for a million dollars. A million dollars! Two million if double indemnity could be proved.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Doris, does your tape recorder use minicassettes?”

  “No, but my dictating machine does. Do you want to borrow it?”

  “Yes, if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind at all. I’ll drop it off in ten minutes.”

  “You don’t have to do that. I can come up.”

  “It’s no bother. I’m going uptown to have tea with a colleague of mine at Tulane. I’ll bring it by on my way out.”

  I’d walked back to the hotel from Wayne’s apartment. It was another hot, busy day, the French Quarter filled with tourists, and all the taxis and carriages occupied. The red-and-gold box had been cumbersome to carry. Even with my cleverly tied cord handle, the box had bounced against my leg every third step, and holding it in front of me in my arms was no solution; it blocked my view. When I reached the hotel, I immediately gave my burden, along with Clarice’s address, to the concierge, who promised the box would be delivered the next day.

  I called Clarice when I got to my room, explained when the box would arrive, and told her about bringing Wayne’s things back to his apartment. I did not mention Archer’s presence or what he’d found among the papers. That responsibility was his.

  “I found a photograph in Wayne’s wallet I wanted to ask you about,” I said. If she was taken aback by my going through his personal papers, she didn’t let on. “It’s a picture of Wayne and Philippe Beaudin holding up their fishing catch,” I said. “They both look young; it must have been taken some time ago.”

  “Yes. They used to be fishing buddies.”

  “I hadn’t realized they were ever that friendly.”

  “They were for a time, but then they took a dislike to each other.”

  “What happened?”

  “About ten or fifteen years ago, they had a falling out over something—probably political, but I can’t remember now—and they didn’t speak for years.”

  “Years? That’s a long time.”

  “Outsiders always think that way,” she said, “but it’s not at all unusual down here. We look like a big city, but we really have a small-town mentality. People are always squabbling and holding grudges.”

  “Had Wayne and Phil ever made up their differences?”

  “They started talking again recently, probably because the mayor and his wife are my friends. They kept bumping into each other at our social functions and decided to let by-gones be.”

  “I see.”

  “Phil is going to give the eulogy at the funeral, Thursday. Will you be there?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m going to pick out a little something of Wayne’s for you to have as a keepsake. Would you like that?”

  “I would like that very much.”

  My next call was to Detective Steppe. He wasn’t in, but I left a message as to where I was going, and asked him to join me later at the Blazer Pub, if he could.

  I sat on the edge of the bed with all of Wayne’s papers spread around me. He’d already written fifty pages of his manuscript for his next book, but nothing I could see in them held any clues to his death. I sifted through his notes, read snippets of research, and paused at lists of names and phone numbers, including Blind Jack’s. I’d already tried to call him several times to no avail. I spotted a small comer of blue peeking out from under the pile of papers, and pushed them aside to extract what appeared to be a hand-drawn map. 1 couldn’t tell whether it depicted a local area; most of the places on it were abbreviations or initials. On the right side, Wayne had written EW in black ink and had circled the initials. EW. Could the letters stand for Elijah Williams? I folded the map and put it in my purse, thinking I’d show it to Napoleon in the morning in the hopes that he could decipher it.

  I gathered up all the papers and looked for someplace to keep them secure, finally stashing them in the same flight bag where I’d stowed the mystery story by David Stewart, the student who’d interviewed me. I unzipped a side compartment and put in Wayne’s papers, along with the cassette tape from his answering machine, the one containing the threatening message. The irony wasn’t lost on me that here, enclosed in one section of my bag, were symbols of Wayne’s life and death.

  Bobby Pinto’s cottage housed both home and business. It was painted white, with long green shutters covering the windows. The proprietor himself answered my knock. A muscular man of medium height with a gray ponytail, he wore faded blue jeans and a long-sleeved denim shirt unbuttoned over a T-shirt of indeterminate color. It might have been blue at one time. Heavy steel-toed boots were laced over the bottom of his jeans. He looked vaguely familiar; I didn’t know why.

  “This ain’t a tourist attraction, you know.”

  “I’m Jessica Fletcher, Mr. Pinto,” I said, “a friend of Doris Bums. I have some questions about snakes. Doris said you were the expert.”

  He grunted and held the door open for me to enter. I stepped directly into an office area with a battered desk and three tall file cabinets. A glass-front refrigerator contained rows of plastic-covered beakers holding cloudy fluids, which I assumed were venom.

  He sat down at his desk and pointed to a visitor chair.

  “I have the feeling I’ve seen you before,” I said.

  He straightened in his chair. “The TV people did a story on me,” he said, obviously pleased. “Did you see it?”

  “I’m afraid not,” I said, smiling.

  Behind him was a large aquarium tank in which the curved length of a snake seemed to be folded back on itself three times, the brown markings of its thick body pressed against the glass. Pinto followed my gaze. “That’s Oscar,” he said, cocking his head toward the tank. “He’s a pet.”

  “What kind of snake is he?”

  “Boa constrictor. Gettin’ a bit big for his home now.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Sell him to another collector, maybe.”

  “How long have you had him?” I asked.

  “Ten years.” He swiveled in his chair and lifted the rock that held down a screen covering the top of the tank. “Wanna see him?” He didn’t wait for my answer. He dipped his arms in the tank and pulled Oscar out, cradling the snake’s body like a baby. The snake’s tail immediately wrapped around
his arm, and Pinto lifted Oscar’s body over his head and wore him like scarf, gently holding the boa’s head in his palm.

  I was grateful for the desk between us, but resisted moving my chair farther back. I sat quietly and watched the snake. It was beautiful in a way, its tan, brown, and black colors arranged in a pleasing pattern. It moved smoothly, gliding along Pinto’s neck while he directed its head with his hand. Pinto visibly relaxed as he handled the snake, crooning to it, and sliding his hand along the reptile’s belly.

  “Would you like to touch him?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  This is a test, I thought. I hesitated, not wanting to offend him, but not really eager to pet a snake.

  “He’s not slimy at all. That’s what people think, but it’s not true,” he said, leaning forward and extending Oscar’s body toward me, holding the snake’s head away. “Go ahead.”

  Tentatively, I reached out and rubbed along the brown scales. The snake’s body was dry, and smoother than I had expected.

  “See?” Pinto said as I withdrew my hand. He seemed pleased that I hadn’t rejected his offer. He returned Oscar to his tank, and went to wash his hands at a small sink next to the refrigerator. I followed his example.

  “Come on, I’ll show you around.”

  Pinto led me through the office to the next room, where racks of tanks were strung along the walls, from floor to shoulder height, each with a single bulb illuminating its reptilian residents. In the center of the room were three more tanks, one filled with rats, another with mice, half of them moving frantically back and forth. The third held crickets.

  “Dinner,” he said, nodding at the tanks in the center. He flipped a switch to illuminate the overhead lights. “This is my native species room,” he said. “I caught all of these snakes right here in Louisiana.” He rested his hand on the top of one rack. “These over here are nonvenomous. You’ve got your speckled kingsnake, your black-masked racer, your yellow-bellied water snake.” He tapped each tank as he named the snakes. “Those over there are the venomous ones: copperhead, cottonmouth, coral snake. Got the constrictors upstairs, and the rattlesnakes out back.”

  “This one looks familiar,” I said, looking at a red-and-black-banded specimen.

  “That’s a Louisiana milksnake.”

  My midnight visitor.

  “Want me to take it out for you?”

  “No, thank you,” I said. “Touching one snake a day is sufficient.”

  He smiled at me for the first time, revealing a gold-rimmed tooth in front.

  “I’d rather you tell me about your business, Mr. Pinto.” “If you wanna talk business,” he said, “you gotta see my invention.”

  “Your invention?”

  “Got a patent pending on it and everything.”

  We walked through to the next room, which was crammed with piles of packing boxes, shelves of basking lights, and sacks labeled REPTILE BARK and ASPEN BEDDING.

  “See this?” he said, grabbing a tall box off the top of a stack of cartons. “I designed it.”

  It looked like an ordinary box to me. “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s the Pinto Snake Transportation System,” he said proudly. “Guy out in Metairie makes ’em for me. See my mark over here?” He pointed to a red circle surrounding the letters “PSTS” that were stamped in the comer of the box and on its top, and looked at me expectantly.

  “What makes it special?” I asked.

  A big grin spread over his face. “Keeps the snakes nice and comfy between here and their new home.”

  I smiled back. “How does it do that?” I asked, tossing him the question he obviously wanted to hear.

  “It’s divided, see?” he said enthusiastically, opening one end of the box. “This pulls out so you can wedge the snake’s head in here, kind of like a cardboard collar, isolating it in this end of the box. And then the rest of the body can curl up in the bottom of the box. When you get the snake home, you open the bottom of the box and you can reach in and grab the snake behind the head, and it still has this protective cardboard collar on. Keeps you from getting bit.”

  “What happens if you open the wrong end of the box?”

  “Nothing, as long as you don’t stick your hand in,” he said. “The collar prevents the snake from striking.”

  “Very impressive,” I said.

  “Gonna make a fortune on this one day.”

  “I hope you do,” I said. “If you need all these boxes, you must sell a lot of snakes. Who buys them?”

  “All kinds of people. Individual collectors, pet shops, voodoo temples, zoos. I got a website. Starting to get some business from there, too. Plus, I sell the venom to hospitals and drug companies.”

  “What kind of snake do you sell to the voodoo temples?”

  “Constrictors,” he said. “The hand-raised ones are easy to handle, as you saw.”

  I was quiet for a minute, thinking. “You mentioned venom. What kind of venom do you sell?”

  “Mostly rattlesnake,” he said. “They’re in the back.”

  We walked into the last room. It must have been a kitchen at one time; an old sink stood alone on one wall. An oilcloth-covered table and two chairs were set up nearby. One shelf on the wall next to the sink held a few dishes and glasses. Above it, another shelf displayed a dusty collection of rattles, snakeskins, and reptile skulls. A narrow staircase led to the second floor. Straight ahead was a large picture window that overlooked an L-shaped enclosure that ran the width of the back room, and extended halfway down one side of the house. Ten-foot-tall chain-link fencing was covered with a fine metal mesh that reached across the top forming a roof for the area. Twined about large branches set on the ground, curled up in each corner, and slithering in and out of old automobile tires scattered about the area were dozens and dozens of rattlesnakes.

  “Got close to a hundred of ’em by now,” Pinto said, stripping off his denim shirt and hanging it on a peg. The sleeves and half the sides of his T-shirt were torn off, revealing the myriad tattoos Doris had mentioned, covering his biceps, shoulders, and torso. They were all pictures of snakes. “Don’t like to wear sleeves when I’m playing with them,” he said. “Got one caught up a sleeve once, and damn near killed me. Got plenty of scars to show for it.”

  “You’re going to play with them?” I asked, incredulous.

  “They like it. Gives ’em a little exercise.”

  Pinto picked up a long stick with a forked end, and opened a storm door leading to the pen. Most of the snakes shrank back out of his way. He used the stick to toss several others aside, and to pick one off a branch and set it down in front of him. Resting the stick against the side of the house, he pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and dangled it in front of the snake like a matador with a red cape. The snake reared back, struck at the handkerchief—the white cloth fluttering up and out of the way—and flopped down on the ground, recoiling again and readying for another strike. Pinto danced around the snake, forcing it to turn and follow the handkerchief to strike, each time coming closer to the steel toe of Pinto’s boot. The snake tired before the man did, and while a series of rattles sounded around the pen, the other snakes stayed away from their keeper.

  “Are they all the same kind?” I asked, relieved, when he’d come back inside and locked the door behind him.

  “They’re all rattlers, but there’re many different kinds,” he said, pulling on his denim shirt again. “That little guy over there, hanging from the fence, that’s a western pygmy rattlesnake. The one I played with and those three in the corner are eastern diamondbacks.”

  “Do you have any canebrake rattlesnakes?”

  “Most of these are canebrakes,” he said. “They have a tendency not to move too quickly, so they’re easy for me to hook. Trapped one in a cemetery for the city last weekend.”

  “I heard about that,” I said. “Is that usual? Have you caught many in the city?”

  “Lots of snakes in the city these days because of the drought,”
he replied. “Don’t usually see a canebrake out of the country, but there’s always a first time.”

  “Would you recognize a snake you’d caught before?”

  “You mean can I tell them apart?” he said, waving his arm toward the collection of snakes in his enclosure.

  “Can you?”

  “Not really. Even though their markings are different from snake to snake, it’d be like recognizing one sparrow over his brother.”

  “Have you sold any canebrakes recently?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Sold one last week.”

  I pulled out the picture of Wayne that I’d cut from the newspaper and showed it to him. “Did you ever sell a snake to this man?”

  “I was gonna say he doesn’t look familiar,” he said, hesitating.

  “But he does?”

  “I don’t know him, but I’ve seen this picture before.”

  “Oh,” I said, disappointed. “It was in Monday’s paper. You must have seen it there.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t read the paper. But there was a guy in here on Saturday asking the same questions you are. He showed me this picture.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Normal-looking white guy. I didn’t notice anything unusual about him.”

  “Can you describe him at all?”

  “Average height, average build, brown hair. That’s all I remember.”

  I wondered if Detective Steppe had been here before me. I would have described him as heavyset, but who knew what Pinto considered “average.” “Was he a policeman?” I asked.

  “Didn’t say. Didn’t look like a cop, though,” he said. “Dressed too nice for that.”

  It was another late evening when I finally closed the door to my hotel room. The bed had been turned down, and the French doors were secured; I checked, a habit I’d gotten into even though I rarely opened them. Detective Steppe had met me at The Blazer Pub, a neighborhood bar across the street from St. Louis Cemetery Number One. He’d been annoyed that I’d planned to go by myself, and had gotten there early to greet me with a scowl and a lecture.