Outside, Silver was heading up the ladder with a caulking gun in his hand.
“Mr. Silver, I’m Detective Franklyn with the NOPD. Could we talk for a minute?”
His face full of questions, Silver came down. He was wearing a camouflage cap, tan work pants, and a tan T-shirt. He was one of those guys whose neck runs straight down to his shoulders from his ears. He had bushy eyebrows and a struggling mustache that rested over thin, smirking lips. “Talk about what?” he said.
“Betty Bergeron. Know who that is?”
“Yeah. She lives in this side of the building.” He pointed at the front door on the right. “What about her?”
“She’s missing. Didn’t come home either Thursday or Friday night.”
“And this concerns me how?”
At this point Kit didn’t even know if Betty had worked her Thursday night shift, so she asked Silver, “Did you spend any time over here Thursday afternoon?”
“No. The guy who employees me has six properties. I was painting the one on Autumn all day Thursday until dusk.”
“Alone?”
“No, I had a helper.”
“Mind giving me his name and phone number?”
“Are you thinking I did something to the girl?”
“Not at all. I’m just trying to get a feel for the situation. That way I’ll know what kind of questions to ask and who could help me.”
“I see.” He then gave her the information she’d requested. Somehow the guy could smirk even when he was talking.
“What did you do after you left here Thursday?”
“Went home, had dinner and a couple of beers, watched TV, and went to bed.”
“Where’s home?”
He gave her his address.
“Are you married?”
“No. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
“What programs did you watch?”
“It all runs together. Everything is so lousy, it’s hard to remember one show from another.”
“Mind if I look at the photos on your phone.”
“Don’t you need a search warrant to do that?”
“If you’re not guilty of anything why would you care?”
“Ever hear of a thing called the US constitution . . . freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures? My phone is none of your business.”
“Point taken.” She closed her notebook. “We’ll talk again.”
“I can’t wait.”
Before hooking up her seatbelt a moment later, she noted the make and license number of Silver’s truck, then called Gatlin.
“Haven’t learned much, but soon as I get home I’m going to run a background check on a man named Leo Silver.” She told him why, and added, “Could you have someone check the DMV for the license number and model car Betty Bergeron drove and then send out a BOLO?” The last acronym meant Be On The Lookout. She wasn’t trying to sound like a detective, she’d just heard Gatlin use it once in conversation and it had simply popped out.
“Oh, you already did? Of course you would. I should have realized that. What about a subpoena for her phone records? I just learned that she kept the tracking function on her phone turned off, but knowing about her calls might . . . That’s in the works too . . .? Good. Talk to you later.”
With Gatlin having already initiated two important facets of the investigation, Kit could have felt like he had intruded into her space. Instead, his preemptive actions just made her respect his abilities even more.
She ended the call, navigated to her web browser, and checked the location of Gator Willie’s. It was about a quarter mile from where she sat. But it was too early to head over there now. Besides, she hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch.
“Twice in one day, chile’,” Grandma O said, twenty minutes later, greeting Kit at the restaurant’s front door. “I’m flattered. The old Cajun gestured to the back, “City boy is here too.”
In the rear, seated at his regular table, his chair facing the front door, Broussard waved her over.
She wasn’t surprised to see him because she’d parked beside his T-Bird.
He stood up and pulled out a chair for her as she approached, something he’d never done before. “Detective Franklyn,” have any epiphanies about Betty Bergeron today?”
“Not so far. But it’s early yet.”
“Sounds like your day isn’t over.”
“Soon as I finish eating, I’m heading over to the bar where she worked and see if I can get a lead there. Does Gatlin have any ideas about who’s responsible for . . .” She hesitated, trying to find an expression that wasn’t cold. “What happened at the picnic?”
Before he could answer, Grandma O steamed over to them and said, “Tonight you’re gonna want red beans and rice or crawfish etouffee. Trust me on dis.” The tower of taffeta looming over them had by now trained all her regulars not to disagree with her about anything.
“Etouffee, and iced tea,” Kit said.
Broussard opted for the other dish, but trying to exercise some independence added, “with extra Andouille.”
“You know I put jus’ da right amount in dere to start with,” Grandma O said. “But because you had a bad day, dis time I’m not gonna make you do what’s right. Remember, dat’s only for today.”
And off she went to the kitchen.
Broussard watched her leave, then said, “You asked about Philip . . . I haven’t heard from him since our meetin’ earlier in my office.”
“He said you were talking to your uncle at the time.”
“About four feet away.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Worse part is, before this mornin’ I hadn’t spoken to him in years. And now, he’s gone.” He rubbed his short beard in thought, then said, “There must have been sixty or seventy people at that party and I only recognized a handful. And most of ‘em there were related to me.”
Kit responded, “I’ve got an uncle that came to our house for dinner every Thanksgiving. He had this big booming voice and could always be counted on to make some off-color joke when we were eating. Everyone tried to ignore it, but it always made my mother blush. My point is that you’ve probably got some relatives you don’t want to know.”
“You may be right, but Joe wasn’t one of ‘em.”
“Changing subjects . . . why’d you pull my chair out for me?” Kit had long wished that Broussard was her uncle but was never sure how he felt about her. So she was always on the lookout for some behavior that would bear on the question.
Above his beard, Broussard’s cheeks took on a rosy hue, much like the color of a fully cooked crawfish, a sure sign he was going to give an evasive answer.
“Ahh,” he said, looking up. “Here’s our food.”
For the next few minutes they ate in silence, each of them glancing at the other to assess the status of the conversational skirmish she’d initiated. Then Broussard said, “So . . . pretty soon we’re gonna have to change your business cards to say Kit LaBiche . . .”
“Well done,” Kit replied, smiling.
Chapter 10
The door opened and Blake Irvin, Uncle Joe’s bodyguard, was standing on the other side with a Heineken in his hand.
“Mind if I come in?” Gatlin said.
“Got a warrant?”
Before Gatlin could respond, Irvin stepped back. “Just kidding.”
Even with the sunglasses he was wearing when Gatlin first talked to him at the picnic grounds after the shooting, Gatlin had thought the man didn’t look very tough. Now, with the glasses off, he looked even softer . . . sure, he was beefy and about six feet two . . . shaved head and a strong chin, but he had thin eyebrows and lots of wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. And his skin was pink.
“I’d offer you a beer,” the guy said, “but if you’re here, you’re on duty and I know you don’t want to drink while you’re working.”
“Got time for a talk?”
“Considering that my client got his brains blown out right under m
y nose, I’ll probably be having a lot of time on my hands now.” He waved Gatlin to a chair that looked like a fabric-covered breath mint on tiny metal legs.
“I sit in that, I may not be able to get up.”
“The sofa then.”
The sofa was equally as ugly as the chair, but did seem like something that wouldn’t hold you captive after you sat in it. Irvin somehow dropped smoothly onto the breath mint and stretched out his legs.
“How much you figure it’d cost to open a McDonald’s?” Irvin said. “Always kind of liked the fast food business.”
“People have short memories,” Gatlin replied. “You’ll probably be okay.”
“You don’t really believe that do you?”
“You want the happy answer?”
“Never mind.” He shook his head. “Who the hell would have expected him to be shot from the swamp?”
“How far in advance did you know about the picnic?”
“He told me the day before.”
“And the location?”
“That too.”
Then you should have arranged for somebody to be out there in a boat hours before your client got there. If you were any good at your job.
Gatlin didn’t say this aloud because he didn’t want to pile onto the guy’s troubles. “Why were you hired? Was it a general concern by your client or a specific one?”
“He’d been receiving death threats in the mail.”
Gatlin was about to ask why Uncle Joe didn’t tell the police about this. But then, even when the force was working at full capacity, they didn’t have a great record at dealing with things like that. “Did he know who sent them?”
“He was pretty sure it was a guy named Howard Karpis. Until Mr. B fired Karpis three months ago, the guy was head of exploration and development at Seabed Petroleum.”
“Why was he fired?”
“Guess he wasn’t finding any oil.”
“So he was incompetent.”
“Or lazy.”
“Why’d Joe think it was Karpis?”
“The guy was fired in front of a bunch of company execs after he gave a report on his department’s dismal accomplishments for the last fiscal quarter. Mr. B could be sharp tongued if he was unhappy about something, so he probably ripped the guy a new one right there in public. Karpis came around the table and knocked Mr. B’s papers onto the floor, then threatened to kill him. When Mr. B and I discussed it, he didn’t go into a lot of detail, like what the guy’s actual words were.”
“Did he show you the written threats?”
“Yeah.”
“What’d they say?”
“Can’t recite them exactly, but I remember one said something like, ‘Pain and death are part of life’.”
“That might not even meet the legal threshold for a threat.”
“How about: ‘The hour of departure has arrived’.”
“Pretty lame.”
“I might agree if Mr. B wasn’t lying in the morgue. I don’t get this line of questioning. You’ve got the killer. Was it Karpis?”
“We don’t have him.”
“What, he shot himself than swam away?”
“I can’t spend time going into all the details except to say that the killer only pretended to shoot himself and yes, he then swam away. Where’d Joe keep those threats?”
“Desk in his study.”
“He live alone?’
“Yeah, wife died a few years ago.”
“Got a key to the house?”
“I do.”
Irvin now had no reason to be in the house, so Gatlin said, “Better let me have it.”
Irvin dug in his pocket, took a key off his ring, and handed it over.
“Did Joe have protection 24 hours a day?”
“Only way to do it. I’ve got two employees. We each took an eight-hour shift.”
“They have keys too, I guess.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll need their contact information.”
While Irvin rattled off the pertinent names and cell phone numbers, Gatlin entered it all in his little black book. “What was the servant situation . . . how many?”
“Cook . . . one maid . . . they were there every day. A gardener who came every other day or so.”
“The cook and the maid, either of them live on the premises?”
“No.”
“How long had each of the three been employed there?”
“The cook . . . three years. The maid . . . two. The gardener, also two years.”
Gatlin nodded and said, more to himself than to Irvin. “All of them hired before the Karpis firing.”
“And therefore, known and trustworthy,” Irvin said.
“You would think so,” Gatlin replied. “Got names and addresses for all of them?”
Given how lax Irvin’s procedures were, Gatlin doubted the guy even knew the last names of the three. Surprisingly, he said, “I’ll get ‘em for you.”
“What about Karpis? Wouldn’t happen to have his address, would you?”
“Considering what I just told you about him, how could I not have it?”
He deftly got out of his chair and left the room.
When he came back a few minutes later, he handed Gatlin a piece of yellow notebook paper. It contained not only the complete names of the three servants they’d been discussing, but also phone numbers. Karpis’s address was there too, but no contact information.
Gatlin folded the paper and put it between the pages of his black book. “You wouldn’t happen to know who handled Joe’s personal legal business would you?”
“Not a clue.”
“Joe had two sons and two daughters,” Gatlin said. “Was he particularly close to them? Did any of the four regularly come to the house, or did he go to see them?”
“His one daughter would come by every week. I think her name was Amelia.”
“She married?”
“No idea.”
If Howard Karpis proved to be a viable suspect, the provisions of Joe Broussard’s will most likely wouldn’t have any bearing on who killed him. But Gatlin had long ago learned that at this stage of any investigation to scoop up every bit of information you can.
“Oh yeah,” Irvin said. “About two weeks back, a pretty blonde came to see him. Young . . . probably early twenties.”
“You get a name?”
“Elizabeth, I think. Seemed to be another relative.”
“Anything else I should know about?”
Irvin shrugged.
Gatlin stood and put his black book in his inside jacket pocket. “Thanks for the information.”
“Yeah, okay. If you need anything else, please hesitate to ask.”
Gatlin cocked his head and squinted at Irvin. “Was that a joke?”
“Apparently not a good one,” Irvin said. “In any event, don’t try to contact me for at least 24 hours, because I’ll be too drunk to talk.”
Chapter 11
Gator Willie’s was so busy Kit could barely get in the door. The clientele looked mostly like college kids trying to be “relevant.” That meant mostly clean cut guys wearing one earring and hair standing up like a spiky rooster comb; girls with a small nasal diamond or streaks of some odd color in their hair. She saw no guys with facial tattoos or girls with partially shaved heads or lip rings. That didn’t mean everyone there was harmless. Some of the most depraved men that ever lived were normal looking or even handsome. There were also plenty of attractive but cold-blooded females now locked up for life. She had the distinct feeling that someone in Gator Willie’s knew where Betty Bergeron was.
At the far end of the big room, about two dozen couples were dancing to a Zydeco song called “Dog Hill” by Boozoo Chavis, her knowledge of the piece coming from years of being around her fiancée, Teddy LaBiche.
Next to the dance floor, surrounded by a clapping throng, was a mechanical gator being ridden by a lanky guy in chinos and a yellow T-shirt. Abruptly the gator gave a wild whirl, then
stopped suddenly, sending the guy flying into a bunch of hay bales. Shouts of approval erupted from the witnesses, almost drowning out Dog Hill, which is saying a lot.
Kit turned and headed for the bar, trying not to inadvertently rub against anyone. Finally, seeing a route open before her, she picked up the pace, only to have her way suddenly blocked by a good-looking guy with the requisite prowling-male two-day beard.
“Hey beautiful, can I buy you a beer?”
Kit held up her hand and wiggled her ring finger.
Instead of backing off, he took her hand and kissed her engagement ring.
“Now go in peace my son,” Kit said pulling her hand back.
His furrowed brow showed that he didn’t get her papal reference.
Just wanting to move on, she pointed at the ring with her other hand. “Engaged.”
He gave her his best smile, and it was definitely a good one. “Engagements are like predictions of rain,” he said. “You should never ignore a chance to have a little fun because of something that might not even happen.”
“Funny you should mention things that aren’t going to happen. That would include me spending another second talking to you.” She turned casually and made sure to give him a little hip action as she walked away.
At the bar, she slid onto the only empty stool; one covered like all the others in what was probably fake alligator skin. Painted on the big mirror behind the bar was a cartoon alligator on its back drinking beer from a bottle balanced on its legs. The three bartenders were female, all dressed the same; denim shorts and a checkered shirt with the tail tied at the waist. A couple of open buttons at the top showed that the management wouldn’t hire anyone who didn’t own a push-up bra.
One of the girls came her way. “What can I get you sweetie?”
Noting that the round white badge on the girl’s shirt said her name was Claudia, Kit flashed her new ID. “NOPD,” she said. “I’m trying to find Betty Bergeron. We’re you working Thursday night?”
The girl’s flashing black eyes lost their luster. “Yeah, I was here. Did something happen to her? She’s missed a couple shifts.”
“We don’t know anything yet. Did she work Thursday night?”
“Yeah, she was here.”
Assassination at Bayou Sauvage Page 6