“Yeah. And what’s with his middle name?”
“Pardo?” Snoozy said. “A pretty common last name up the bayou—Cleoma way, and west of that. Sometimes people put a family last name in the middle, keep it going. Like say my mother’s name was Smith—I’d be Snoozy Smith LaChance.”
“Your middle name is Smith?”
Snoozy shook his head. “Just an example. My middle name is actually Chance.”
“I don’t understand. Your mother’s name was Chance?”
“Nope. Baldwin.”
“So where did Chance come from?”
“Search me.”
“And what’s your real first name, Snoozy?”
“I’ll never tell,” Snoozy said. “As for the wallet, why don’t you just go over to the upper dock and toss it on that boat of theirs—Cardinal or whatever the heck they call it?”
“Wow!” Birdie said. “That’s genius.”
“I do what I can,” said Snoozy.
We walked back up the bayou path, past Trixie’s Café, now closed, and came to a series of boat slips, most of them empty. Late afternoon now, quiet, the air heavy, tree shadows lengthening across the water. There was no one around. We came to Cardinal, a big boat, red and black, lying still in the very last slip. Something moved under the water not far away, making ripples.
We stood on the dock beside Cardinal, a raised dock, meaning we were slightly above the gunwales, gunwales being one of those nautical words you can’t help learning when you live with a family like Birdie’s. Cardinal had a big bench at the stern and two rear-facing fishing chairs. At the bow was the roofed-over cabin with the control console in the middle. Between the fishing chairs and the console was a stretch of empty deck. Birdie glanced around. No one to see. So now was when she was going to toss the wallet onto the deck, as Snoozy had said, right?
Wrong. Well, partly right and partly wrong. First, Birdie did toss the wallet onto the deck, where it landed in very plain slight. But then, after a pause, she turned my way. “No poking around, Bowser. But also, no loose ends. How could a quick look-see do any harm?”
I couldn’t come up with a single answer. We hopped aboard, side by side.
“But quietly, Bowser, quietly.”
Oh, no. Had my landing been less than silent? How humiliating! The only way to deal with humiliation was to forget it at once.
WHAT HAD BIRDIE SAID? A QUICK look-see? As for what we could do after that, I had an idea of my own. How about taking Cardinal out for a spin, seeing what this baby could do? What’s more fun than a boat ride? I leaned in against Birdie, hoping to somehow get my idea across.
“Cool it, Bowser.”
We moved toward the stern. Things were very tidy, the way they should be on a boat, according to Grammy. “No clutter at sea!” I’d heard her say that plenty of times, including once or twice as she flung some knickknack over the side.
Birdie raised the cushions that covered the stern bench. Underneath was for the storage of all the usual stuff: life jackets, ropes, foul-weather gear. She lowered the cushions and we moved forward to the console, with all its dials, instruments, levers. Birdie opened the little cabinet under the panel of dials, took a quick glance inside, and then we continued on to the covered cabin in the bow.
A padlock hung on the door to the cabin. Birdie tugged at the lock but it didn’t give. The door was one of those slatted things, like window shutters. Birdie peered through. So did I. All I saw were shadows, but I smelled Vin Pardo’s limey aftershave. That seemed interesting to me, although I couldn’t figure out exactly how. And what was this? I also smelled Bonnie? Was she in there?
“Bowser! What are you growling about? Didn’t I say we had to be quiet?”
I searched my mind, found a vague memory of that. Quiet? Was that what Birdie wanted? Done! From this moment on I would be invisible, at least in terms of sound. What a confusing thought! I found myself panting.
“Bowser!”
Then there was nothing to do but give myself a good shake, the kind that flaps your ears and rattles the insides of your head. Nothing feels better than that, and as a bonus it sets you up for a fresh start. We walked back to the console and Birdie reopened the little cabinet.
“Maybe there’s a key to the lock,” she said.
She knelt down and studied the insides of the cabinet: suntan lotion, bug spray, charcoal bag, lighter fluid—all their smells constantly in the St. Roch air. But no key. Birdie pulled open a small drawer. Inside were some papers. Birdie looked them over.
“Ownership papers,” Birdie said. Her eyes went back and forth the way human eyes do when reading is going on. “Cardinal, a thirty-five-foot blah blah blah owned by … by the Cardinal Fund? The Cardinal Fund, Bowser? What did Mr. Volk say? Drea’s dad lent ninety-five thousand dollars to something called the Cardinal Fund?”
Birdie’s eyes did some more back-and-forthing. “The Cardinal Fund, president Merv Richelieu, treasurer Miranda Pardo Richelieu—Pardo? Preston’s mother has Pardo for her middle name, too? But don’t women sometimes—” Birdie flipped through some more papers and then something at the bottom of the little drawer caught her eye. She took it out—a photo album with a plastic cover. We had one a lot like it on Bayou Girl, filled with photos of happy customers and their fish.
Birdie opened the photo album. I looked over her shoulder. The photos were kind of like ours—smiling humans and dead fish—except that the smiling humans in these photos were usually Richelieus, sometimes alone, sometimes together: Merv the dad, Miranda the mom, Preston the kid. Lots of smiling, but all their faces had something hard in them, at least in my opinion. Miranda had the biggest smile but also the hardest face. Did she remind me of someone?
Birdie turned the page. And there was Preston standing in the stern and holding up a big fish, so big that another dude was helping him. I recognized that other dude right away. At the same time I felt Birdie holding her breath. The helpful dude was Vin Pardo.
“Oh my god,” Birdie said. Then her gaze went to some writing at the bottom of the photo. “ ‘Fun times! Preston with his uncle Vin.’ ”
Birdie looked at me. “How did I miss this, Bowser? Vin Pardo is Preston’s uncle. That means they’re brother and sister, Vin Pardo and Miranda Richelieu, and her maiden name must have been Pardo.” Birdie leafed back to a photo of Mrs. Richelieu and a fish. “They even look alike, her and Vin. So … so what’s going on? Had Drea already figured all this out? Did she break into both places? But why—”
A car door slammed shut, and not far away. Birdie froze. I heard voices, a man and a woman.
The man said, “You got greedy.”
The woman said, “Look who’s talking.”
Then came footsteps, headed our way, first soft and swishing through grass, then harder and thwacky on wood—wood like the planks of the dock, for example. Birdie glanced around, her eyes wide and panicky. What was she looking for? I had no idea. All I knew was that I’d heard those voices before, the day Birdie and I paid a visit to the Richelieus’ place, where I’d had a pleasant interlude in the backyard, if I remembered right.
Birdie half rose, her heart beating so loud I could hear it. She didn’t want these people to find us aboard Cardinal. I got that part, no problem. For a moment, I thought we were going to jump over the side and swim for it. Then Birdie noticed a hatch cover on the deck, toward the stern. She scrambled over, raised the cover, and hissed, “Bowser.” But I’m a world-class scrambler, had actually reached the hatch at the same time, or even slightly ahead of her.
“Me greedy, Miranda?” the man said, way closer now. “I know when to stop. That’s the difference between you and me.”
We gazed down through the hatch and into the engine well. We had one a bit like it on Bayou Girl, except not so roomy. The engine—a big complicated metal thing—took up most of the space but there was an open area along the side. Birdie and I dropped down into that empty pocket. She grabbed a ring on the inside of the hatch cover and pulled it closed. Everythin
g went black. We huddled in the little pocket of the engine well, pressed close together. Birdie raised one of my ears, put her lips right against it, and very softly, barely a sound at all, whispered a long “Shhhhhhh.”
I wondered what she meant by that. Then, just as footsteps hit the deck right above us, I figured it out. Birdie wanted me to be quiet. Done!
Footsteps—a man in sneakers, a woman in sandals—moved across the deck in our direction. The woman said, “You’ve got greed confused with normal ambition.”
“I’m tired of hearing that line,” said the man—Merv Richelieu, Preston’s dad, if I was piecing this together right. “And you stole it from your brother in the first place. I’m so sick of—”
“Shut up. What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“You’re practically standing on it.”
Birdie’s hand tightened on the fur at the back of my neck. There was some more movement up above, and then Merv Richelieu said, “Huh? It’s Preston’s wallet.”
“Let me see it.” That was followed by a sort of grabbing sound and then Miranda Richelieu said, “What is it doing here?”
“Search me,” Merv said. “Hey! Think he’s on board? Preston! You here?” Keys clinked, sneakered footsteps moved toward the bow, more clinking, and then a door squeaked open. After a pause, Merv said, “Nope. No one here.”
“Why would he be here?” Miranda said.
“Maybe hanging out with Solange Claymore. What does he see in someone like her?”
“Figure it out.” I heard the tack-tack-tack of a sharp fingernail tapping at a smartphone screen. “Hello, Preston?” Miranda said. “Are you missing anything? No? Not that you know of? Well guess what your father and I found on the boat—just lying on the deck in broad daylight.” A pause, and then Miranda snapped, “Watch your mouth! What we found was your wallet. Any idea what it’s doing here?”
A silence.
“No idea?” Miranda went on. “When was the last time you were on the boat? This morning? What were you doing here this morning?”
“I told you the answer to that already,” said Merv.
“Don’t interrupt! What was that, Preston? Out for a run and you took a short break on the boat? Since when do you run along the bayou?”
Now I could hear Preston’s voice, tiny but talking fast.
“Yeah?” said Miranda. Then more of tinny Preston. “Uh-huh,” said Miranda. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, just be more careful in the future. See you at home. Six on the dot. What was that? Her? No, I haven’t. No sign of her around here. Why do you ask? Yes, I know she’s a troublemaker, but is there something specific? No? Okay, see you tonight.” I heard a soft plop, the sound a phone might make getting dropped into a purse.
“He says he went for a run,” Miranda said, “stopped here for a—”
“Caught that part,” Merv interrupted. “Who were you talking about at the end?”
“Birdie Gaux.”
“What’s she done now?”
“I don’t know,” Miranda said. “Preston was just asking if we’d seen her around here.”
“What would she be doing around here?”
“I couldn’t tell you why the little witch does anything.”
Little witch? I knew witches from a horrible Halloween, back in my less happy life before Birdie. Whoa! Had Miranda Richelieu just called Birdie—my Birdie—a little witch? I did not care for that, not one bit.
“What’s that sound?” Merv said.
“I don’t hear anything,” said Miranda.
But I did: a kind of low growl, very near and—I felt Birdie’s hand, gentle but firm, right over my muzzle. A double realization hit me at once: The growler was me, and this was not the time. I got a grip, and fast.
“Sounded like something down in the engine well,” Merv said. Footsteps moved closer. “Hope it’s not rats down there.” Knees cracked, like someone was bending down, right over our heads.
“Not when I’m around, for heaven’s sake,” said Miranda. “You know I can’t bear the sight of rats.”
What was this? Rats, down here in this pitch-black well with me and Birdie? I wasn’t fond of rats myself, but I smelled none. Witches and now rats. My takeaway was that the Richelieus were wrong about all sorts of things.
“In fact,” Miranda went on, “I’ve changed my mind—I don’t even want to go out now.”
“No boat ride?”
“I’m not in the mood.”
“Okeydoke,” Merv said. “But you’ve got no one to blame but yourself.”
Miranda’s voice went icy. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The pearls,” said Merv. “There was no need for the insurance play. That’s what I mean by greed. And now the sheriff thinks we tried to pull off a scam.”
“How dumb can he be?” Miranda said. “We took back the claim the moment Vin told us what he’d found on the little witch’s camera.”
“Dumb, maybe, but he’s figured out the sequence of what went on—that was clear from his questions.”
“So? What can he do? There’s no claim. The pearls turned up in the laundry hamper, oh how embarrassing.”
“But it got the sheriff thinking about the break-ins. Your brother always goes one step too far.”
“You owe everything you’ve got to Vin. Who ponied up that cash injection when you were about to lose everything?”
“He did it for you. And then there’s the matter of what he did to get that money.”
“Toughen up,” Miranda said. “Thirty-percent interest—Bolden got what he deserved.”
At that moment, possibly distracted by the thought of ponies, I opened my mouth real wide. Sometimes when I do that, a little squeaky sound comes out.
“Hey!” said Merv. “You musta heard that—rats for sure.” Footsteps, followed by a grunt, right on top of us. The hatch cover started to rise, letting in a narrow shaft of light. My eyes, used to the dark, couldn’t see a thing. Then they could. And there were Birdie’s eyes, so close, so terrified.
“Some other time, Merv,” said Miranda. “I’m leaving.”
Merv sighed. The hatch cover banged shut. Blackness returned. Footsteps moved away, off the deck, across the thwacky dock, through swishy grass. A car door slammed. Then another. An engine started up, made sounds that got fainter and fainter and faded away. After that the only sound was Birdie’s heartbeat, light and fast.
We stayed where we were for what seemed like a long time before Birdie raised the hatch cover. Light came flooding in, weaker light now, and reddish, meaning sunset was coming. We clambered onto the deck, saw no one around, hopped onto the dock. Birdie looked at me. I looked at her.
“You’re so brave,” she said.
I licked her foot, all I could think of to do. She was wearing her blue flip-flops with the silver stars on the straps, the best human footwear I’d ever seen.
“I feel like I’m so close to understanding the whole thing,” Birdie said. “I just need a little help.” She got a faraway look in her sky-blue eyes. “Like … like from my dad.”
Her eyes got misty. Poor Birdie, whatever this was about. I licked her other foot, and then we were good to go.
We headed down the bayou path, the water now reddish gold and thick-looking, and came to Gaux Family Fish and Bait. Snoozy was locking up.
“Hey, your mom’s been calling.”
“What about?”
“She’s got a seven a.m. interview in Lafayette tomorrow, so she’s staying there overnight. With Grammy’s cousin Zinnia, heaven help her. And what with Grammy stuck on the boat, she wants you to sleep over at Nola’s. She already called Mrs. Claymore. It’s all set.”
Back in our bedroom, Birdie started packing. We were going on an overnight trip to Nola’s place? I could hardly wait! We’d had an overnight at Nola’s once before. This time there’d be no gnawing on the legs of the Claymores’ heirloom piano, whatever heirloom happened to be. You can trust ol’ Bowser! Birdie was sticking a treat
or two into her backpack, when someone knocked at the door.
Whoa! A man—I could tell from the sound of the knock—had managed to get right to the door without me knowing? And me in charge of security? I barked an angry bark, angry at myself, mostly.
“Shhhh.”
Birdie went to the window, drew back the curtain a tiny bit, peeked out. I crowded in and peeked out with her. The sheriff’s cruiser was parked out on the street. We backed away from the window.
“Shhhh,” Birdie said again, just before a second knock, more powerful than the first.
“Hello? Anyone home? Aside from Bowser, I mean. Birdie? You in there?”
Birdie stood by her bed, totally still. I stood beside her, the same way.
“I’d like to talk to you, Birdie. If you’re home, I’d really appreciate it if you let me in.”
Birdie’s hand, not quite steady, rested on my back.
“Maybe I’ve mishandled things when it comes to you, Birdie. As for whupping Rory, nothing like that ever happened. Not what you’d call whupping, maybe just the occasional spanking. But my fault for leaving the police radio where he could hear it. Too much to expect for the boy to … In any case, that’s not why I’m here. Are you inside, Birdie? Hearing any of this? I’ve come about Drea. There are some new developments.”
The trembling in Birdie’s hand ramped up. In fact, her whole body was shaking. But she stayed where she was.
“Maybe you’re not there. Maybe it’s just Bowser, uncharacteristically on his own. But, Birdie, you’ll want to know that your instincts about Drea were right. I heard from the medical examiner an hour ago. Let me in and I’ll tell you.”
We stayed put.
The sheriff sighed. Maybe sighs from outside the house are impossible for Birdie to hear, but I caught them. “Drea had no water in her lungs, Birdie. That means she didn’t drown.” The sheriff cleared his throat. “She was killed on dry land. Murdered. The ME found a very thin indented mark on her neck. He thinks she was strangled, possibly with a guitar string. I … I thought you’d want to know. I expect you have some questions.”
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