But Not Forlorn: A Clint Wolf Novel (Clint Wolf Mystery Series Book 7)

by BJ Bourg

  “Holy smokes!”

  CHAPTER 21

  Justin dropped his metal detector and rushed to my side. “What is it?”

  I pointed to the center of the muddy mound in the ground. “Look down in the crawfish hole.”

  Justin craned his neck to see and then gasped. “A cigarette lighter!”

  “Yep, the arsonist must’ve lost his lighter during the attack on Lance and then came back for it.”

  “And Officer Saltzman interrupted him—or her.”

  I nodded, straightened to retrieve my camera and measuring tape. Once I’d photographed it and then measured the location, I pulled on some latex gloves and carefully removed the brass lighter—it looked like a Zippo—from the crawfish hole. It was faded and there was mud smeared on the side, but I didn’t attempt to clean it. This was a job for the crime lab. I needed them to process it for prints and DNA, because this might be the best chance we’d have of identifying the killer. I doubted they would be able to recover DNA or prints from the small pieces of glass we’d recovered, so this lighter was now our best piece of evidence.

  “Do you want me to bring it to the lab?” Justin asked. “I can be back by noon if I leave now, and I can get them to put a rush on processing it.”

  I didn’t even stop to consider the offer. There was still so much to do around here and I didn’t have time to take a trip to Baton Rouge. I signed the chain of custody label on the evidence package and handed it right to him. “I’ll keep you posted on what happens with the search.”

  He nodded and hurried away, cradling the evidence package like it was gold. If it contained the evidence that would lead us to the killer, it was better than gold.

  I picked up my gear while the tow truck hooked up Melvin’s cruiser. “Where to?” the driver asked.

  “The police department. You can follow me, but wait just a second.” I walked over to where I’d seen Melvin sitting on the tailgate of a sheriff’s office water patrol truck. “Ready to go?”

  He looked up from his phone. “Yeah, as ready as ever, I guess.”

  Once we were in my Tahoe and the wrecker truck was following us out of the neighborhood, I asked if he needed anything.

  “Nah, I’m fine.” He stared out the window, never making eye contact with me. “I just need some rest.”

  I remembered how I’d dealt with my inability to sleep when I’d lost my wife and daughter and what it had done to me, so I cautioned him against turning to alcohol.

  “I’m not that upset about it,” he said. “This is nothing compared to losing your wife and child. It’s just that I doubted myself for a bit and I wondered if I’d done everything I could, but I feel better knowing that the doorknobs were melted off.”

  “Well, if you need someone to talk to, don’t hesitate to call me—and I don’t care what time of the day or night it is. You ring my phone, and I’ll be there.”

  He forced a grin. “I appreciate that, I really do.”

  Once we’d led the wrecker to the police department and had secured Melvin’s truck under the building—the place was constructed of solid concrete to withstand hurricanes and it had been raised twelve feet off the ground to avoid possible floods—I brought Melvin home. Claire was sitting outside on the steps when I pulled into their driveway. She rushed to my Tahoe and nearly tackled Melvin at the door. She was crying and the words that gushed from her mouth were jumbled and incoherent, but I caught an apology somewhere in the midst of the chaos.

  “It’s okay,” Melvin said. “Everything’s fine now.”

  “But you could’ve been killed!”

  “I could be killed on any given day, Claire. It’s the nature of the job.”

  She pushed off of him and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  “No, but this will…” He scooped her up in his thick arms and dipped her low, planting a kiss on her lips.

  She giggled through the tears and fussed him for doing that in front of me. I just sat there in silence, watching the two of them interact. I knew there was no way in hell he’d ever cheat on her—not with Pauline, and not with anyone else. I frowned, stared at my hands on the steering wheel. Pauline had apparently cheated with someone and she had definitely lied to me, so she had some explaining to do. First, though, I had to pick up Lance’s dental records and get them over to Doctor Wong for the sake of completeness, and I had to check on Susan.

  When Melvin finally turned and grabbed his gear from the back seat, I waved to him and Claire and drove away. Traffic was heavy, so it took longer than I liked to make it the few blocks to the dentist office. When I told them what I needed, they informed me they would contact Doctor Wong and send the records to her electronically—something about privacy laws—so I thanked them and left. Before driving away, I called Susan.

  “We still haven’t found anything,” she said, sounding frustrated. “He either slipped away or drowned. Either way, I’m about to call off the search. I think we’re just wasting time at this point.”

  “Okay, I’m heading to meet with Francis Allard. He’s the only private investigator in town, so it’s got to be him.”

  There was a long pause. I thought we got disconnected.

  “Susan, are you there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “Oh, I thought I lost you. I said I’m going meet with Francis Allard.”

  “I heard you.” She sighed. “Who do you think Pauline was sleeping with?”

  “I’ve got no clue, but I have a feeling I’m about to find out.”

  “Let me know, will you?”

  “Sure thing.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Francis Allard lived off of Coconut Lane. I found his small white house with the manicured lawn on the left side of the street. There was a camper parked on the side of the street in front of his house, and I wondered how often he used it. I’d heard of him and knew he was an ex-homicide detective from New Orleans who had retired after twenty-five years of service. He’d moved to Mechant Loup ten years ago and opened a private investigations business to supplement his pension. I’d never met him, but that was about to change.

  I walked up the narrow sidewalk and knocked on the door, studying his yard as I waited. From the looks of it, Francis spent his time cutting the blades of each grass with a scissor. I was far from retirement, so I had no clue what I’d do once I got there, but it appeared that keeping a manicured yard was a requirement.

  “Clint Wolf,” said Francis when he opened the door. He extended his hand. He was a short man, barely rising to five-foot-five in his shoes, and his gray hair and moustache betrayed his age, which had to be barreling down on sixty. Despite his age, he was wiry and he appeared to still have some fight in him. “What the hell can I do for you?”

  His accent was thick and sounded like most cops I knew from New Orleans. “Can I come inside and talk?” I asked.

  Shifting the collar on his button-down fishing shirt, Francis glanced over his shoulder. “My wife works nights. She just got to bed, so we’ll talk in my office.”

  He pulled the door shut and walked around the eastern end of his house and I followed him down a long driveway that extended toward the back yard. At the end of the drive, there was a shed-looking building that had an a/c unit in the window and a padlock on the door. A small faded sign that read, “F. Allard, PI”, hung over the door.

  I didn’t expect much when Francis pushed open the door, so I wasn’t disappointed to find a small desk, a chair on either side of it, and two large filing cabinets against the wall to the left.

  “Please,” he indicated with his hand toward the chair in front of me and scooted around the desk, “have a seat.”

  The air in the confined space was stale and smothering. As we sat across from each other, he leaned back and turned on the a/c, then apologized for the heat. “Had I known I’d be having company, I would’ve turned it on earlier to cool off the place. So, what’s this all about?”


  I shot a thumb toward the front of his house. “How often do you take the camper out?”

  “Is that what this is about?” He chuckled. “You want to make me an offer on that old thing? I tell you this; I’d be committing a theft if I took five grand from you. That damn thing hasn’t moved in two years. We keep it clean for when we get the money to get it running again, but so far it doesn’t look like that’ll happen this year, or the next. I don’t know if you realize it, but when you retire, you’re stuck on a fixed income. No more overtime, no more extra details. Thank God I have a wife who’s a nurse. Otherwise, I’d probably be sleeping under a bridge somewhere.”

  “Nah, I don’t want to buy it. I was just wondering how often you took it out.”

  “I get it.” He waved his hand between us. “There’s no need to work on establishing a rapport. I don’t know if you know it or not, but I’m retired law enforcement. You can get right to it. We’re already past the rapport building bullshit. Cop to cop, I’m pretty sure I know why you’re here.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  He nodded. “I’m sure you’ve discovered that I’ve done some work for Lance, and you’re probably hoping I can help you.” He paused and frowned. “I’m sorry to tell you, but I can’t be of help. His murder came as much of a surprise to me as it did to anyone. I’ve got no idea who would want him dead.”

  “Let’s start with the work he hired you to do. What’d he request of you?”

  “Well, you do know that information’s privileged. When a client pays me to investigate a case, they own the information I obtain and I can’t dispense it without their permission.” He shifted in his chair. “I do understand this case is a little unique, considering the client is dead. I don’t mind sharing information that I believe will help catch his killer, but I won’t reveal things that might compromise him or his reputation. After all, I have my own reputation to maintain.”

  “Fair enough.” I stared him right in the eyes. “Who was he paying you to stalk?”

  Francis was a good poker player. He met my stare. “I don’t get paid to stalk people. However, I have been paid to conduct surveillance operations. In fact, most of what I do is surveillance. One spouse will suspect the other spouse of cheating and they’ll pay me to follow the offending spouse. Sometimes they’re right, sometimes they’re wrong. Insurance companies pay me to—”

  “Lance Beaman wasn’t married to Pauline Cain, so why was he paying you to follow her?”

  He smiled and the action made his moustache curl up around his nostrils. “Come on, Clint, it’s an election year. You know why he was paying me to conduct surveillance on her. Politicians are on their best behavior when they think the cameras are rolling, but if you can catch them when they think no one’s looking, well, that’s when you find out who they really are.”

  “And who is Pauline Cain—really?”

  Francis took a deep breath. There was a cackling in his chest when he exhaled. “Well, it turns out Pauline Cain is exactly who she pretends to be. Try as I might, I couldn’t catch her doing anything wrong. The woman doesn’t even spit her gum out the window.”

  I wanted to sigh in relief, but I didn’t respond in any way to what he’d said. And although I was relieved he hadn’t found any dirt on my boss, I was still concerned about the lie she’d told me, and I was just a little confused. “That’s odd, because Mrs. Beaman said you uncovered evidence that Pauline was sleeping with a married man.”

  “I don’t know why she would say that.” He scowled and it was then that I noticed the yellowish stains on the hairs along the bottom of his moustache. “I submitted my report to Lance about a month ago. In it, I clearly detailed everything she did during my surveillance, and that didn’t include any adulterous relationships. I’m telling you, the woman’s clean as a whistle.”

  “You’d better quit smoking,” I said when he took another deep breath and his chest cackled again. “Those things will kill you.”

  “I quit two weeks ago. If they’re gonna get me, they already have.”

  “Do you have a lighter?” I asked it as casually as I would ask about the weather. He immediately pushed his chair back and pulled open the top drawer. As he rifled through it for a few seconds, I wondered if he would’ve had time to shoot at Melvin, run away from him and Amy, somehow escape, and then be back home and cleaned up by the time I knocked on his door.

  Finally, he produced a red plastic lighter from the drawer. He handed it to me with a quizzical expression on his face.

  “What about an old brass Zippo?”

  “God, no.” He waved his hand in the air. “I’m always losing lighters, so I buy the cheap ones. Same thing with sunglasses. I’d be sick if I paid a hundred bucks for a lighter or a pair of sunglasses and then lost the damn thing. Remember…fixed income.”

  We talked briefly about smoking and how much money he was saving since he quit. Since I didn’t have a good reason for asking for the lighter and I couldn’t make up a convincing one on the fly, I simply plopped it on the desk. I turned the conversation back to the case.

  “I’m a bit confused. Mrs. Beaman was positive her husband had information about Pauline sleeping with a married man, and she even said he was going to make that information public if Pauline didn’t drop out of the race. If you didn’t give him that information, where’d he get it?”

  Francis shrugged. “I can’t answer that, but I can tell you she was clean. The woman’s spotless. If she would’ve been having an affair, trust me, I would’ve uncovered it.”

  “How long did you follow her?”

  “About six months.”

  “And you found nothing?”

  “Nothing. In fact, I gave him back most of the money he paid me because I felt bad for not finding anything—and for breaking my promise. When we first talked, I assured him I would turn up something embarrassing that he could use. I always do. Look, everyone’s got dirt, even Mother Theresa, but”—he shook his head—“Pauline Cain is beyond reproach.”

  It was my turn to scowl. How on earth would Lance blindly stumble upon that kind of information when Francis had followed her for months and not known anything about it? Did Lance make it up? Was he going to straight up lie about her? I knew lying was not unheard of in politics—in fact, it was more common than not—but who was he going to name as the mystery man?

  “Is it possible Lance hired another investigator after you were done?” I asked. “Or maybe Lance began following her himself? How else would he have found out about the affair?”

  Francis was a good poker player. His facial expression was like granite and his body language was relaxed, but I detected a telling change to his heart beat. While we’d been talking, I’d noticed his carotid pulse beating at a slow, steady rhythm under the loose skin beside his windpipe. When I asked about the possibility of another private investigator, the skin had jerked violently and his heart was now beating faster. It told me he’d never considered the possibility of another investigator, or the possibility of Lance following Pauline himself, until I mentioned it. This led me to thinking something else.

  “So, you gave back some of the money because you felt bad that you didn’t produce any results?”

  He nodded. “You can ask any of my clients. If I don’t feel like I’ve produced enough results to justify the pay, I usually give them a discount. It’s why I keep getting repeat business. Service after the sale…that’s a rare thing nowadays.”

  “You know, Francis, a man gets hired to follow a woman like Pauline…” I let my voice trail off and whistled. “That’s a dream assignment.”

  “It’s certainly better than watching some overweight dude swimming laps in a bikini bottom at the Y and waiting to catch him meeting his girlfriend.” He leaned back in his chair and nodded for emphasis. “I’ve had to do that more than once. I don’t know how guys who wear bikini bottoms get girls, but I should charge their wives hazard pay for those types of assignments. I swear, I couldn’t eat for a week after seeing th
at crap.”

  “But watching Pauline in her bikini was a perk, right? Isn’t that why you gave back some of the money?”

  I noticed a subtle change in his expression. It was almost as though the outer layer of his face was slowly beginning to melt. “No, I gave back the money because I didn’t give him information he could use against her. Seeing her in a bikini was lagniappe.” He forced a smile and a wink, trying to regain his composure and take command of the conversation.

  “Was having sex with her lagniappe, too?” I could almost hear his blood grind to a complete halt in his veins. It took him a half second to process and respond to what I’d just said.

  “If you’ve got something to say, Clint Wolf, why don’t you just go ahead and say it?”

  “I think Lance knew you fell in love with Pauline. If he hadn’t realized it before, he certainly knew it when you returned his money. No one does that unless they feel guilty about something, and you must’ve felt pretty damn guilty about sleeping with the woman you were paid to expose.” I leaned closer, rested my forearms on his desk. “For an investigator and a former cop, you sure got sloppy, though, didn’t you? You let an amateur catch you having sex with a mark you were paid to investigate.”

  “Lance didn’t know shit! He was bluffing when he told Pauline he had evidence that she was having an affair. He was trying to use my investigation to scare her into dropping out of the race.”

  “Is that what Pauline told you?”

  “Pauline didn’t tell me anything, because we’re not having an affair.”

  “Then how’d you know about the confrontation outside the debate hall?”

  “Everyone knows about that.”

  Everyone didn’t know the details like he did, but I decided not to argue that point. I already knew what I needed to know and I knew he wouldn’t say more than he already had. Still, I had a couple of more questions for him. “Where were you Sunday evening?”