Assassination at Bayou Sauvage

by D. J. Donaldson

  “Hey, how’s your investigation going?”

  “Terrible. Not only do we have no idea who killed Betty, this afternoon we found both her parents dead.”

  Teddy made a sound that reflected at least three different emotions. “They certainly didn’t start you off on an easy one.”

  “We do have one lead. Betty’s phone records show she recently made a lot of calls to a number tied to a prepaid disposable phone. I think the owner of that phone killed all of them.”

  “Why?”

  “We believe he was angry over something.”

  “How you holding up to all that responsibility?”

  “I’d be doing better if you were still here.”

  “Maybe I’d be in the way.”

  Kit was of two minds on this. Sure, it’d be great to see him, have him hold her in his arms, but could she clear her thoughts and give him her full attention for the evening? Could she partition herself into one compartment for investigator and another for fiancée? Damn it. Where they would live after marriage was not their only problem.

  “Have I lost you?” Teddy said, responding to the gap in the conversation.

  “I’m here. I can’t imagine you ever being in the way. How was your day?”

  “Didn’t get bitten or have to shoot any of the gators to save my life. I’d say it was successful.”

  “Don’t lose any parts. I’d like to keep all of you.”

  “I like that. It’d make a good bumper sticker. ‘Don’t lose any parts.’ Who could argue with that?”

  “I’m sitting in my car in the garage, and the lights are about to go out. So I better go. Love you.”

  “Me too. We’ll talk later.”

  Keeping her key ring and lipstick mace canister in hand, she got out of the car, walked to the pedestrian door, and stepped outside.

  It was nearly seven o’clock and she hadn’t yet eaten dinner. Tonight seemed like a good one for a burger at Bunny’s Bar and Grill near the corner of Toulouse and Bourbon. But first she needed to go home and check on Fletcher.

  When he heard the street gate open, Fletcher shot out of his doggy door and dashed down the outside steps. She found him jumping up and down with his front paws on the fence, his mouth open, and his tongue hanging out.

  Physically, there are two kinds of Westies. One has a longer snout than the other. Though both are cute, the short-snouted ones are impossibly appealing. Fletcher was the latter. Though there was a chance he’d get her dirty if she picked him up, she did it anyway, receiving in turn, his smooth little tongue all over her face.

  She scratched his neck briefly, then put him down and went upstairs to make sure his water and food dispenser were working properly. Satisfied that all was well, she looked at him and said, “All right varmint. I’m going to get something to eat. Be a good boy while I’m gone.”

  Fletcher’s ears flipped up to full alert and he cocked his head, trying sooo hard to understand. For that brief instant, the dark burden of what happened to the Bergerons left her. But as she went down the steps a moment later, Fletcher at her heels, the dingy specter of their deaths returned.

  Rounding the corner at Toulouse and Bourbon, she was hit in the face by one claw of a huge rubber crawfish hat worn by a short guy with a beer in his hand. As she disengaged herself from the encounter and went on her way, she shook her head at the things that could happen to a person in the Quarter.

  Bunny’s was about half full; five guys at the bar and four occupied tables. Seeing her come in, Bunny waved from behind the bar. Over the sound of Garth Brooks singing, “Friends in Low Places,” Bunny called out to her, “Be right with you sweetie.”

  Kit took a table under a poster showing Bunny in full costume, the way the old gal looked when she’d been one of the hottest exotic dancers on Bourbon Street. Back then she was billed as Bunny LeClair, a name she still used even though the years had stolen her beauty so she now looked nothing like she did when she was young. Kit was one of only a small number of Bunny’s friends who knew her real name was Lefkowitz.

  As Bunny came her way, Kit once again admired how Bunny had accepted her changed appearance with good natured resignation, refusing to have even the smallest nip or tuck.

  “Hey girl, haven’t seen you in a while,” Bunny said. “Wait, what’s that on your ring finger?”

  Kit put her hand out to let Bunny take a look.

  “Teddy LaBiche right?” Bunny said.

  “Who else?”

  “I dunno. Women who look like you do get a lot of opportunities.”

  “It’s been Teddy for years and still is.”

  “I like a woman who knows her mind. So what are you havin’?”

  “A double Bunny burger all the way, parmesan fries, and a Fat Tyre.”

  “You must have had a rough day.”

  “I’m trying to forget it for a while.”

  “Then I’ll clam up and get your food.”

  Bunny had the jukebox rigged for free play, allowing each patron to pick up to three songs at a time. Tonight, Kit didn’t want to hear any lyrics about death, so she went over and made choices that were all upbeat.

  As she returned to her table, Garth Brooks ended and her first selection; George Jones’s “I Don’t Need No Rockin’ Chair,” filled the room.

  While waiting for her food, Kit looked around at all the pictures of Bunny when she was young. What must it be like to be defined by your looks and then lose them? Most likely no different than retiring from a career as a death investigator. In both cases, that earlier person no longer exists and you just have to live with it. Not thoughts she needed right now.

  She let her mind shift into cruise control and simply listened to the music.

  The beer that Bunny brought her was ice cold and wonderfully tangy, a perfect complement to the rest of the food she’d ordered. Just as she finished eating, the jukebox began to play, “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” Great, the world’s saddest love song . . . featuring . . . DEATH.

  Suddenly needing the freedom of the streets, she left a generous tip and carried her check to the register, where Bunny took her money and said, “Sometimes I think I should remove that song from the playlist.”

  “I know what you mean,” Kit replied, putting her change away. “Stay out of trouble.”

  As usual after dark, Bourbon Street was full of tourists, many of whom were drunk, half drunk, or wanted to be drunk. But on Toulouse there was much less foot traffic. When she was about ten yards from her courtyard gate, she saw someone who’d been walking ahead of her step up to the gate and pin a piece of paper to it. Then he got a marker from his pocket and began to write on the paper.

  Kit slipped up silently behind him, stepped to the side, and looked at the paper.

  On it was a picture of a dog hanging from a tree. So far he’d written: WHAT WILL HAPPEN . . .

  Seconds later, she put the barrel of her Ladysmith against the guy’s right ear and said, “That’s a .38 you feel. Drop your arms to your side and turn around slowly.”

  She backed up so he couldn’t pull anything funny.

  From the elastic band around the back of his head, she’d already realized he was wearing something over his face. As he turned, she saw that it was a Guy Fawkes mask, the stylized smiling face of the Englishman who famously tried to assassinate the king of England in the 1600s.

  “Take off the mask . . . very slowly.”

  In seconds, she was finally looking at the guy who’d been harassing her. Appearing to be in his early thirties, he had thin, almost manicured brows over eyes half hidden by droopy lids. He didn’t seem to care that he’d been caught, because his fleshy lips were formed into an arrogant sneer.

  “What’s your story?” she said.

  “You need to mind your own business. Let the police handle the crime in this city. Keep out of it.”

  “Give me your driver’s license.”

  His sneer disappeared and his forehead became a washboard of confusion. “Why?”<
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  “I want a souvenir of the occasion.”

  “Or what, you’ll fire that gun? You’re a psychiatrist or psychologist; I don’t know which one, but either way you’re too educated and civilized to shoot me. And there are people around. Look, that guy across the street is on his phone. He’s probably calling 911. Shoot me, you’ll go to jail.”

  “Let me tell you a story about why anybody decides to become a psychiatrist or psychologist,” Kit said. “It’s always because there’s something mentally wrong with the person. They want to study human behavior to find out why they’re like they are. In my case, I’ve always wanted to hurt people.”

  The look on the guy’s face changed.

  “So I’m thinking my gun will just go off by mistake. Oh, I won’t kill you; maybe just shoot you in the foot. You might never walk normally again.”

  The guy dropped the mask and his hand went for his back pocket.

  “Slowly now . . .”

  He got out his wallet, removed his driver’s license, and gave it to her.

  “Okay, you can leave. But now I know where you live. If anything else happens to my car or especially my dog, God help you. Go.”

  The guy took off, running.

  She could have held the guy for the cops, but didn’t want to wait around for them to show up. If she’d done that, there’d be a report to file and a lot of her time wasted. Then they’d most likely let him go. Better he should think she was mentally ill.

  Some of the people who’d seen the encounter unfold had turned around and gone back down the sidewalk. Those that continued toward their destination had done so at increased speed, keeping as far from the action as possible. The guy who’d been on his phone was still standing there.

  She looked at him and waved. “Okay, thanks for coming. See you next time.”

  She tore the picture off the gate and picked up the mask. She then keyed the lock, and went home for the night, throwing the mask in a bin of construction debris she passed on the way.

  Five miles away in the uptown section of the city, Broussard closed The Tall Stranger, and sat for a moment, enjoying the resolution of the story. Rock Bannon had foiled Morton Harper’s plan to kidnap Sharon Crockett and keep her prisoner until he could break her spirit. Now Harper was dead and Rock and Sharon would soon be married. In a way, Broussard looked forward to the time when his memory of these stories would begin to fade a bit, when he could reread them and not remember what was going to happen next. But that day seemed far off because his memory was as sharp as ever. And right now, it took him back to his conversation with Julien a few hours ago.

  Julien believed that death was a door leading to a better existence. That and his refusal to go into hiding made Broussard wonder if Julien had decided he’d rather be dead than alive. Surely not. Even though he didn’t show it externally, it was probably just despair over the loss of his daughter, granddaughter, and father talking. Who wouldn’t be depressed after something like that? Broussard too felt those deaths deep in his bones.

  Beside him his phone rang.

  A familiar number . . .

  “This is Andy.”

  “I’m gettin’ the feelin’ you worryin’ about someone,” Grandma O said. “. . . Maybe two people.”

  “I am.”

  “An’ you should be. Dis could be a bad night for ‘em. Jus’ thought you might want to tell ‘em.”

  Broussard lived daily by scientific principles: Some types of bullets tumble through even the soft parts of a body, others pursue a straight course unless deflected by bone. A burned body with no soot in the lungs means the deceased was dead before the fire. Pooled blood that doesn’t blanch with pressure, if found on the buttocks and back of a murder victim face-down in a field, means the body had been moved hours after death. So at first it had been difficult to accept the fact Grandma O sometimes functioned outside those rules. He didn’t know why or how, but he’d seen too many examples of it through the years to ignore her when she expressed concern over something. Now, he lived with an uneasy compromise between science and whatever it was that lay behind her abilities.

  “Thanks for the advice,” he said.

  “You’ welcome.”

  As he hung up, the ormolu clock on the mantle began to ring out the time: 11:00. The antique timepiece was a death clock, given the name because the process by which it had been gilded used mercury, a toxic metal that regularly shortened the lives of those who worked with it. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have thought much about the fact it had sounded off right after he’d spoken to Grandma O, but the thing hadn’t worked for over a year. Had she somehow been responsible for making it ring? Was it the exclamation mark on her warning? Whatever the cause, he got up and headed for the garage.

  Twenty minutes later, Broussard pulled to a stop in the street outside Julien and Leona’s home. Inside the house, Broussard saw Julien quickly pass by the open space between the swagged drapes in the front window, apparently to switch off a light, because a second later, the room went dark.

  Now that the neighbors were no longer at work, the street was lined with cars, so that the closest parking space Broussard could find was three houses down. Sliding from behind the wheel with surprising dexterity, he left his T-Bird and walked back to Julien’s home.

  After a short wait, Broussard’s finger on the bell brought Julien to the door. Happily, the old philosopher wasn’t in his pajamas.

  “Andy . . . What’s going on?”

  “I just saw you walk past the front window. After what we talked about earlier today, I thought you might be more careful.”

  “Did you really think that?”

  “To be honest, I hoped it, but didn’t believe it. Do you own a gun?”

  “No, do you?”

  “We’re not talkin’ about me.”

  “Sure we are, by mentioning you, I added you to the conversation.”

  By now it was obvious Julien wasn’t going to invite him inside. “I want you and Leona to come and stay with me for a few days.”

  “Look, I appreciate your concern, but we’ve already discussed this. You know my feelings.”

  “For a genius, you can be really dense.”

  “Have you ever convinced someone of your views by insulting them?”

  “I’m just worried about you.”

  “I hereby absolve you of that responsibility.”

  “You don’t get to do that. Only I can.”

  “I need to look over a lecture I’m giving tomorrow. Thank you for coming. We’ll talk again another time.”

  Julien then shut the door.

  As Broussard reluctantly turned and headed back to his car, he heard the click of a lock behind him. At least Julien did that much.

  Broussard’s thoughts rolled the years away. Julien . . . He’d question the meaning of life and then do something inanely stupid because he didn’t stop to think ahead. He once jumped in a puddle that appeared to be only a few inches deep, then discovered it was a hole that almost drowned him. And all his life he’d been as stubborn as a doorstop about listening to what anyone said. Once on a fishing trip when he was using a jig with treble hooks for the first time, he caught a white bass. Joe told him to use the pliers to take out the hook, but Julien ignored him. The fish gave a mighty flip and one of the hooks ended up deeply embedded in Julien’s thumb.

  Broussard wanted to sit out front and keep watch for a while on Julien’s house, but with only a distant parking space available, he couldn’t. Instead, he drove around to the alley that ran behind the house and parked next to Julien’s garage, by the garbage cans, not seeing that he was being as big a doorstop as Julien.

  Broussard had some Tchaikovsky and Mozart CDs he could have played in the car, but didn’t want to mask any sounds that might signal trouble. So he simply sat there with the engine off and windows down, listening to the crickets that started up a few minutes after he got there. About the time he realized he needed to pee, a light attached to the garage came on, illumina
ting the area where he sat. He heard the hinges on Julien’s back door creak. Suddenly, the fence gate swung open and there was Julien, with a bag of garbage in his hand. And he wasn’t happy.

  He came around to the driver’s window of the T-Bird.

  “Damn it Andrew, you’re treating me like a child. You’re not my mother.”

  “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “We’ve already had this debate. Now go home.”

  Given no choice, Broussard fired up the T-Bird, backed into the alley, and drove away.

  When he got near the end of the alley he pulled onto the approach pad to another garage, took out his phone, and called Gatlin.

  “Hey, this is Andy. I told Julien he and his wife could be in danger, but he won’t listen . . . won’t go into hidin’, won’t do anything. He just caught me in the alley behind his house keepin’ watch on him and he ordered me to go home, which I have to do. Any possibility you could have a patrol car cruise by periodically tonight?”

  “I can try,” Gatlin said. “But you know we’re shorthanded.”

  “This is important,” Broussard replied. “And be sure they check the alley on each pass.”

  Chapter 28

  The buttered English muffin halves in Kit’s oven had turned a nice shade of brown. As she reached in with a case knife and flicked the first one onto a plate, her phone rang. Quickly retrieving the second half and putting the plate on the counter, she grabbed her phone. It was Gatlin.

  “This is Kit.”

  “You might want to come down to headquarters ASAP.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “That guy you trailed yesterday trying to get a DNA sample . . . He was pulled in last night on a peeping Tom charge. He’s gonna be arraigned in about three hours. Judge could let him go ROR. We need to have a talk with him before that happens.”

  Kit knew that ROR meant released on his own recognizance, no bail set. “Be there in twenty minutes.”

  “Down here,” Gatlin said, leading the way to one of the Homicide squad interview rooms. “Let me do the talking.”