Plunder: A Faye Longchamp Mystery #7 (Faye Longchamp Series)

by Evans, Mary Anna

  “I heard you’d been asking last night at the bar whether anybody knew how to file for government assistance. Being as how you’re a widow and all,” the manager said, picking a feathery yellow leaf off an aging bunch of carrots.

  Didi forgot to put a quaver in her voice as she quickly asked, “Do you know where I should go to do that? I didn’t know whether to start with the government or BP or what. Or maybe I should just get a lawyer. Somebody should pay for what happened to Stan.”

  “Dunno.” The manager’s gentle fingers explored the skin of a bright red tomato. Judging it to be too soft to sell, he dropped it into the basket hanging on his arm. “I imagine the government got in touch right away with the wives of the men who they knew was dead. Since nobody but you knows that Stan’s dead…missing…whatever…I imagine you’re going to have to go looking for someplace to file your claim. In the meantime—” He put the tired lettuce and aging carrots into the basket along with the tomato.

  The clerk reached under her cash register and pulled out a phone book. “Maybe this’ll help. Usually the government pages are blue. Let me see.” She raked a well-chewed fingernail down the page. “Here’s the emergency management department. I’d start there.”

  Didi reached out an uncertain hand and the clerk plunked the phone book firmly on her palm with an expectant look. The same look was on all the faces gathered around her. They all seemed to expect her to make the call then and there. Unsure why she was doing it, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and started to dial.

  The person who answered the phone for the emergency management department listened as Didi stammered through her request. “I’m looking for help because my—my husband—I’m sure he’s dead. He—he—just had to have been on the rig that exploded and…yes. I can hold.”

  Didi was surrounded by familiar faces of people whose names she didn’t care enough to remember, and they were all looking expectantly in her direction.

  “Did they put you on hold?” the manager asked.

  She nodded.

  “Damn government. If they can’t help widows, then what good are they? ” He held out the basket of not-quite-fresh veggies. “Here. Take this. Who knows how long it’ll take you to get any help?”

  Didi was looking at his offer of charity, without really reaching out her hand to take it, when she heard a familiar voice behind her.

  “And here I thought my wife was cheating on me yesterday, rubbing herself all over anybody that would buy her a shot of anything. Naw. She wasn’t cheating. Not even a little bit. She thought I was dead. I feel so much better now.”

  It took less than a second for a tall, brown-haired man to cross the space between the door and the spot near the cash register where Didi stood. He would have been good-looking if his jawline had been stronger.

  Stan used a single finger to lift her chin, so that he could look directly into her eyes.

  “How long’ve I been dead, Didi? A week? Two? If you’re trying to get your hands on some government money or…I dunno…maybe trying to con some of these people out of their pocket change, you might want to try acting like a grieving widow.”

  He caught the eye of the manager, who gave him a slight smile. The other onlookers exchanged glances that told Didi the truth.

  They knew. They’d known Stan was alive all along. They’d been stringing her along with their sympathetic murmurs and their urgings to get help from the government. And their charity. She took a step back from the manager and his basket of limp vegetables.

  “Barry, over there,” Stan said, pointing at the generous manager, “he called me yesterday when he saw you down to Helen’s bar.” Then he pointed to the elderly “lunchroom lady,” who must have been Helen. She gave Didi an ugly smile and a wave.

  Didi should have remembered where she’d seen that smirking face, but she’d been more focused on the vodka Helen had been pouring.

  “Barry said it took two whole phone calls to find me. I’ve been staying down to Venice with Buster. You remember Buster? My best friend for my whole life? Dontcha think if my wife wanted to find me, maybe she might call my best friend, instead of making like I’m dead so’s she can get some money from the government?”

  He brought his face down to hers, nose to nose. “That’s fraud, Didi. You wanna ask these people what they think of the cheats who collected big checks after the storm? Just how are you different from people that filed on property that wasn’t fit to live in before that bitch Katrina rolled into town, then pretended they was homeless when they was really living in the same nice clean houses they’d lived in all along? What makes you better than people that went all over town from one Red Cross to the next, collecting one check after the other, because none of the people trying to help had time to check up on ‘em?”

  Didi still refused to answer him.

  “Maybe you’ll get something for nothing, now that your poor Mama’s gone. Some of them stocks your old man left…a piece of that crappy houseboat…a set of silverware, maybe. But you ain’t gonna get anything for nothing because of me, because I ain’t dead.”

  He took the basket of vegetables and handed it to Didi, then very deliberately leaned over and spit in it.

  ***

  When he was sure that the automatic glass door had slid shut behind Didi’s skinny ass, Barry-the-manager said, “Bitch,” clearly and to no one in particular. Then, he dumped the old vegetables in the trash can, basket and all. To no one in particular, he said, “I feel for that little girl Miranda left behind. Can you imagine living on that boat with nobody for a mother but that skinny shrew?”

  ***

  Didi wished she could wipe the contemptuous stares off her back. She could still feel the eyes boring into her. This was why she’d stayed away from home. Small-town people never forgot they didn’t like you, and nobody around here had liked Didi since…

  Nobody had liked Didi since ever.

  They didn’t like her when she was a pigtailed girl who taunted the fat kids until they threw up their chocolate milk when they saw her coming. They didn’t like her in her teens when she wore her miniskirts too tight and her mascara too thick. Actually, in those years, it was just the women who didn’t like her. The men had liked her just fine.

  She’d gone through a lot of those men before Stan came along, so the men she’d loved and left didn’t like her anymore. Neither did the losers she’d rejected. Stan had seemed to be a cut above all the other men she’d known. Marrying him had felt like a fresh start. It had been good to move away, even if she hadn’t gone all that far.

  Now, she had the feeling that she might have burned a bridge she hadn’t intended to burn. She felt sure that Stan was finished with paying her bills. It was a good thing she had a houseboat—well, a piece of a houseboat—that would keep a roof over her head while she regrouped.

  She needed to talk to the social worker about whether she’d get money from the child welfare people if she took charge of Amande permanently. And she needed to get clear on how much control she had over the child’s inheritance. Part of the oil company stock that had helped her mother keep food on the table now belonged to Didi, and part of it now belonged to Amande. Some fraction of it that Didi couldn’t cipher out belonged to Justine’s widower, so she wouldn’t be getting even as much income as Miranda had received. Still, if Didi played her cards right, she could spend Amande’s money to run their little two-woman household and keep her own money for herself.

  Didi liked this plan so well that working out the details kept her awake and alert until she was able to find someplace to buy coffee where nobody knew her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Detective Benoit was back, and so was Sally the social worker. Amande knew that Didi was nowhere to be found, because she’d heard her slip out an hour ago. She wondered why the woman bothered to sneak out. Why should Amande care where Didi went or what she did at breakfast time on a Saturday morning?

  Maybe Didi was just in the habit of sneaking off the hous
eboat, since she’d done it so many times when she was a teenager living there. Amande remembered. She’d been a little kid, maybe six or seven, but Didi had made sneaking out at night look like so much fun that Amande had tried it once.

  She remembered standing on the shore, alone under the bright moon, looking around and wondering what to do next. She’d never been outdoors alone so late at night, but the novelty wore thin quickly, so she’d tried to think of something to do that had the extra cachet of being forbidden. The only really bad thing she could imagine was throwing trash in the water.

  It had taken some doing for the little girl to hoist herself into the marina’s dumpster and throw a big pile of beer bottles and cigarette butts out onto the ground. Amande remembered that she’d cut her foot while she was in there. Had she really done that while barefoot? It was a wonder that she hadn’t gotten lockjaw.

  Even at that age, Amande had possessed the presence of mind to pitch a grocery bag out of the dumpster along with the trash. Loading her trash into the sack, she’d hauled it to the water’s edge, pitching the forbidden garbage into the water, one naughty piece at a time.

  The beer bottles had sunk down into the murk, invisible even in the bright moonlight. That was no fun. But the nasty cigarettes butts had floated, bobbing on gentle waves. Amande had enjoyed watching them so much, leaning down ever closer to watch them dance, that it was no wonder that the sleepy child eventually fell in. Had she been brought up anywhere but on the water, Amande might have drowned that night, but she’d floundered among the marina’s moored boats for a timeless time, until she reached a dock and, from there, a ladder.

  Amande never knew how long it took her grandmother to find the moldy clothes stuffed in the back of a drawer, and she never knew if her grandmother figured out how they got that way. Miranda had never mentioned it. But the child was always pretty sure that Didi was having more fun when she left the house at night than Amande had enjoyed on her only nighttime excursion, because Didi always walked away smiling, and Amande’s adventure hadn’t been any fun at all.

  Amande was remembering that long-ago adventure as she squatted on the deck of the houseboat, watching Detective Benoit as he watched a diver work. The diver was plying the water in the precise spot where Amande had fallen in all those years before. Sally, who seemed to be some kind of kin to the detective, was standing beside him. They were murmuring, but Amande could hear them.

  “I thought you already found the murder weapon,” Sally said.

  “One of them. We found the knife that killed Hebert. It was sunk in the water over there. No fingerprints, dammit, and nothing left behind on the shore that we could link to the killer.” He gestured toward a seawall some distance away. “It wasn’t a knife that killed the old lady. It was something shaped like this.” He held up an index finger crooked into the shape of a number seven. “The forensics people could tell because it cut into her throat like—”

  Only then did they notice Amande watching them and eavesdropping. Gangling, awkward Benoit had the good grace to look embarrassed. Amande found herself wondering how old he was. He didn’t seem like he’d been doing this job for long.

  Sally had looked at him hard. “You don’t know what killed her? Have you asked the girl if she’s seen anything shaped like that?”

  “I asked her half-sister. I didn’t want to upset her even more by talking about the way her grandmother died.”

  “Well, that train has left the station, hasn’t it?” Sally jerked her head in the direction of the silent girl. She motioned to Amande to join them. “Besides, the half-sister is a half-wit. This is the person who may be able to help you. If you have questions, you should start with Amande.”

  Amande saw Sally beckon. Sally was a nice lady and Amande didn’t like to disobey but, for once in her life, she didn’t do as she was told. She backed away from Sally and the policemen and the diver who was looking for God only knew what. Scuttling sideways like a crab so that she could keep all those strangers in her sights, Amande hurried into the houseboat and into her grandmother’s room.

  Didi’s things were everywhere, shoving Miranda’s orderly belongings aside. Amande knew already, without looking, that all her grandmother’s jewelry was gone, either taken to a pawn shop or on its way there now. Even Miranda’s clothes would be gone soon, if Didi could find a consignment store that would take an old lady’s unfashionable things.

  The half-finished straw dolls had been cut down from their hooks and piled in a heap near the voodoo altar, but the basket of unwoven straw beside Miranda’s worktable was untouched. Her tools still lay spread across that worktable. They were specialized implements, of value only to people interested in making straw voodoo dolls—which is to say almost no one—so Didi had very little interest in them. Until this moment, Amande had thought that she might want to keep those tools as a memento of the grandmother who had already begun teaching her to use them.

  Amande picked the tools up, one by one, hoping they would all be there. But they weren’t. One was missing, a cutting implement with a blade curved into a shape that could be called a seven. Miranda had kept its inner edge honed to razor sharpness, so that it would make clean cuts in the tough straw. What had that tool and its razor edge done?

  Amande backed away, straight into Sally, who had come looking for her.

  “What’s wrong?” Sally asked, grabbing her by the elbows. “Amande, what’s wrong?”

  Amande wouldn’t tell her. She couldn’t tell her. All she could say was, “Get Faye. I want to talk to Faye. Please. Get Faye.”

  ***

  Joe enjoyed haunting pawn shops. He liked sorting through tools that had been used until they were worn and burnished. He always visited the guitars—and there were always guitars in pawn shops, because guitars were portable, easily sold, and non-essential—but he never bought one, because he’d never learned to play. Faye had once clasped one of his big hands between her two little ones and said, “I’d love to play the guitar, but my little wimpy hands just aren’t made for it. Your hands are big, and your fingers are long and strong. You should make some music with these.” Maybe someday.

  He generally steered clear of the jewelry cases, because pawned wedding rings made him sad. Today, though, he headed straight for those glass display cases, because that’s where small collectible items were stored. Faye had sent him out to look for some very specific objects.

  “Got any old coins?” he asked the owner of the second hock shop of the day. Just as he had at the first shop, he’d watched the man as his hands had gone first to Lucite-encased sets of uncirculated proofs that had never been anything but collectibles. When Joe had shaken his head, saying just one word, “Older,” the man had reached for a black velveteen display stand of silver American money, accented with just a few gold pieces.

  Joe found it interesting that the man didn’t bat an eye when he said again, “Older.” Instead, the pawn shop proprietor had just spread his hands and said, “I wish I had what you people were looking for.”

  So somebody else was looking for something old and spendable. Joe wanted to know more, but he was too much of a fisherman to snatch his bait out of the water while the fish was still sniffing at it. He’d said, “I work for somebody who’d pay through the nose for really old coins. Gold bars would be good. Pieces-of-eight. Emeralds from the old Colombian mines. You know…pirate treasure.”

  Joe reached out a hand and gently lifted one of the gold American coins, safe in its protective case, after first making eye contact and getting a nod that said it was okay for him to pick it up. “Myself, I like these. They look like they’re worth something, but my boss likes the really old stuff. To me, a chunk of silver that’s spent a lot of time on the bottom of the ocean looks pretty much like a rock.”

  “You can restore it.”

  “If you trust the restorer.” Joe held the coin case lightly between his thumb and forefinger and spun it, so that he could look at the coin’s reverse. “Know any good restore
rs?”

  The man wrote down a few names and phone numbers. Joe pocketed the list. He knew the first name, but the others were new to him. This ploy had gotten him some more people whose brains he could pick. He was glad he’d stalled and let this fish play with his bait.

  He kept his focus on the gold piece, hoping that the prospect of an immediate sale would loosen the man’s lips on the subject that was actually important—who else had been sniffing around for very old silver coins?

  Joe laid the coin on the counter, closer to him than to the salesman, signaling that he was still thinking of buying it. Then, speaking off-handedly, as if he were trying to hide his interest in the gold piece by making idle conversation, he said, “I know a man named Leon who’s looking for unrestored silver pieces, too. Not sure who he’s working for. Leon is always a step ahead of me. Everywhere I go, he’s picked over the merchandise. He been here yet?”

  “Last name Sechrist?”

  Joe recognized the name from the note on Miranda’s refrigerator, but he didn’t answer right away, so the man kept talking. “A man name of Sechrist was here more than a week ago. Looking for the same stuff as you. Don’t remember his first name. Only reason I remember his name is that he gave me his card and the name of Christ just jumped out at me.” He crossed himself. “No, wait. I do remember his first name. It was Dane. I remember because I used to have a Great Dane. Sweet dog, but dumb as a bag of hammers.”

  “Still got the card?”

  “Naw. I th’ew it away. I ain’t had the kind of coins he wants, not ever. I can’t keep track of who wants what, for years on end. If people want what I got, they need to come back and look.”

  This lack of salesman-like drive explained the distinctly non-prosperous look of this particular store. The last store, up Plaquemines Highway nearer New Orleans, had been much bigger, so big that there were two people working when Joe arrived. Neither of them remembered anybody looking for Spanish silver, but there were surely others on the sales staff of a place that size. Joe knew he’d need to go back when they were on duty. This guy was a one-man shop, so Joe had been able to ask the right question of the right man on the first try. Sometimes a man gets lucky.