AHMM, July-August 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  At a two-story building with a wraparound balcony, a portly man in a blue ban-lon golf shirt and red and black Bermuda shorts answered the doorbell of a recessed door beneath a sign reading, schroeder's photo studio.

  "You're early,” the man said.

  "Schroeder,” Frenchy barked as he breezed past the man, “meet Lucien Caye, a private eye.” I shook Schroeder's soft hand. So this was the police artist Frenchy had long bragged about. He was about to draw portraits of the couple from the rain with my help.

  Frenchy led the way upstairs, halting at the top to fire up another cigarette. Schroeder eased past him and I followed, stopping as a pretty blonde got up from a red velvet sofa and stepped behind a curtain.

  "The hell is this?” asked Frenchy.

  "Bikini,” I explained. “French design. Bathing suit small enough to pull through a wedding ring."

  Schroeder hustled to move a box camera on a large tripod. “Yes. That's a bikini, but I'm not sure Pontchartrain Beach is ready for it yet."

  Frenchy leaned close. “Thought she was in her bra and panties."

  The bikini was white. I shook my head. “Bra and panties cover more."

  Schroeder waved us to a table at the far end of the studio. He hustled around, gathering an artist's pad, pencils, an easel, two stools, and motioned me to one while he perched on the other.

  The blonde woman came out dressed in a blue shirtwaist that matched her eye color and high heels. She smiled and said, “Hello, tall, dark, and handsome . . . You don't remember me, do you, Mr. Caye?"

  Frenchy wheezed and started coughing one of those long smoker coughs.

  "He all right?” she asked.

  "He'll live,” I said as she came right up to me, smiling wider now. Her perfume was nice and subtle. My Sin, I thought.

  "A year ago. You threw a man off the streetcar."

  Oh, yes. I remembered.

  "I'm Evelyn Woodard,” she said, flipping her hair from her eyes. She turned to Frenchy and patted his back as he coughed. “A drunkard was bothering my aunt and me on the streetcar and Mr. Caye told the driver, but the driver wouldn't do anything, so Mr. Caye came back and picked the man up by the ear.” She turned to Schroeder now. “He twisted the man's ear so hard the drunk came right out of his seat, and Mr. Caye marched him to the back door and kicked him off the streetcar."

  She winked at me. “Then he came back and gave my aunt his business card. That's how I know his name."

  I remembered a bunch of women, all dressed up on a Sunday, and the drunk, of course.

  Evelyn smiled coyly and said, “I'll see you tomorrow, Mr. Schroeder.” Then she said to me, “And you can call me anytime. I'm in the book under J. Woodard."

  We watched her turn away.

  "What's the J for?"

  She looked over her shoulder. “James. My husband. If he answers just hang up and call back later."

  Frenchy looked like he'd just sucked on a lemon. He whispered, "And you can call me anytime?"

  "Hey, it isn't easy living my life,” I told him. “Women expect a lot out of me."

  "You're callin’ her?"

  "Nope. She said the magic word. Husband."

  "You suddenly got morals?"

  "I got brains. Plenty of single women around."

  Schroeder opened a drawing pad and said, “Okay. We'll start with the woman. Did she had a round face, lean face, pixie face?"

  The man looked like a buffoon, but he was a magician with a pencil. When he'd finished the illustrations, as he called them, it was as if the pair from the Packard had spent an hour and a half posing for him, rather than me describing them. I stared at the woman's portrait for a minute, at the dark eyes staring right at me as she'd done in real life. She looked pretty, maybe too pretty. It was supposed to be a police identification drawing, not a portrait. For a moment I thought of the movie Laura and the portrait of Gene Tierney, hanging above the fireplace. The girl from the Packard was that pretty.

  "These'll be in the morning paper,” said Frenchy as we left the studio and stepped out to the familiar sounds of squealing tires and blaring horns of the French Quarter. Someone tickled a saxophone up Royal Street as Frenchy fired up another cig. We crossed the street, but Frenchy moved past his prowl car.

  "Where we headed?"

  "Gumbo Shop. You're buying lunch."

  "Hey, I brought you the lead on your case, didn't I?"

  He blew smoke at me. Who was I kiddin'? A P.I. without good contacts with the local gendarmes was fairly worthless. So I was springing for lunch.

  "Meant to ask you, pretty-baby, what were you doing out on Highway 90 at three a.m.? And don't tell me it was a woman."

  "It was a woman.” I had to dodge a kid with a football, chased by two others. “But not what you think. A probate case."

  A horn tapped and a passing cabbie waved to Frenchy.

  "Ever meet Abner Kenwood?"

  "Oil man? Didn't he die?"

  We rounded a corner and paused for a flock of pigeons rising from a balcony across the narrow street. A woman stood with pigeon food in her outstretched hands.

  "Abner was married for six weeks in 1910. Marriage annulled, only he had sired a female child. I found her last night in Gulfport."

  We moved around an old man hosing down the banquette.

  "You found her all by yourself?"

  "Just good detective work."

  He shook his head and I waited for it, but he didn't tell me again—I wasn't a detective, I was a private eye. The strong scents of filet gumbo flowed from the Gumbo Shop as we approached. Inside the picture window I saw it was already crowded. I would have suggested another place, wanting to get home to the radio and game two of the Series, but once Frenchy had something in mind, there wasn't much chance of changing it. We had to wait to sit.

  "This bikini, what do you know about it?"

  "Designed by two Frenchmen. A fashion designer and an engineer."

  I wasn't about to mention I glanced through women's fashion magazines on occasion. I picked up the habit on a stakeout case at D. H. Holmes department store, but that was a whole other story.

  "Designer got the idea watching women roll up their bathing suits to reveal more skin to tan,” I volunteered as we watched busy waitresses scurry between the small tables.

  "You said an engineer too."

  "Women's bodies are complicated."

  I got the lemon look again.

  * * * *

  I didn't turn to the sports page first the next morning, figuring I'd check it out later; after all, my Yankees took game two, ten to three. I stayed with page one. The illustrations, each about three by five inches, were right there under the banner that read, do you know these two?

  A light rain peppered my office windows. I glanced out at the oaks of Cabrini Playground across the street and the brick buildings beyond. The French Quarter always looked older in the rain. The sun shined on my DeSoto out front and glimmered on the windshield. I recalled the old saying that if it rains while the sun is out, the devil's beating his wife.

  I went back to the article, which detailed how a private investigator had come across the two people in the illustrations near the Rigolets, and reported more about the murder, the green Packard, the yellow dress, and the neighbor. They spelled my name correctly, but managed to turn my friend's into the feminine version, “Frenchie.” That would frost him, for sure. They even mentioned I had an office on Barracks Street, which would bring in business, no doubt.

  I didn't think it would bring the woman in yellow, but just as I finished the article, she walked through the smoky glass door of my office and crossed the long room to my desk. She wore a dark blue dress with a wide white belt, her white mules echoing on the hardwood floor. Her face glistened with rain and her long brown hair lay damp around her face. In the light her brown eyes looked as dark as chocolate and were just as wide as they'd been on Highway 90. Her lower lip quivered again as she held out a wet newspaper to me, illustrations showing.


  I stood, stretched, and said, “What's with you and rain?"

  Tears rolled down her cheeks and I went around, put her wet paper on the edge of my desk, took her white clutch purse to make sure there was no gun in it, only there was, a snub-nosed, five shot Smith & Wesson thirty-eight with a recessed hammer, a bodyguard model. I opened the cylinder and three of the cartridges had been fired.

  "This it?” I asked.

  She started crying. I hung on to the roscoe and handed her purse back.

  "Come on,” I said, leading her to the bathroom at the side of my office. I pulled a towel from the cupboard and handed it to her, closing the door on the way out. Thought about calling Frenchy right away but decided I'd wait to hear her first.

  She came out rubbing the towel through her hair. She'd wiped her face and reapplied her scarlet lipstick, and walked slowly and cautiously up to me, like a wary feline, as I stood in front of my desk. She dropped the towel next to her newspaper, and I had to admit she looked quite fetching with her hair all ruffled. She stuck her hand out to shake and her grip was firm. She was petite, maybe five three, and shapely, smelling nice. My Sin, again. Popular stuff.

  "I'm Judy Wells,” she said. “Judith, actually, Mr. Caye.” She finally let go of my hand.

  "Lucien,” I said, moving around to sit back in my captain's chair. She took the chair on the right in front of my desk and crossed her legs. No stockings, not that she needed them.

  She nodded to the newspaper. “Looks like we posed for it."

  "That what you came to tell me?"

  She took in a deep breath. “I came to turn myself in. Hoped you could help."

  "You have a lawyer?"

  She shook her head.

  "I work for a few. Depends on how much money you have."

  "None."

  I called an old Holy Cross classmate whose office was two blocks away. It took a few minutes to get past his snooty secretary. Met her once: She was dead ringer for the Wicked Witch of the East, or was it the West?

  "Jim? Lucien Caye here. Did you see the morning paper?” He started to rib me about headline grabbing, but I cut him off, telling him who was sitting in my office, adding, “I can't help on this, but she needs a lawyer."

  When I hung up, Judy said, “Why can't you help?"

  I pointed to the paper. “I'm a witness for the prosecution."

  "I still don't have money for a lawyer."

  "He'll do it for the publicity."

  I let Jim Long take Judy to turn herself in, figuring I'd just be in the way. I got my second surprise of the day shortly after, when Frenchy called and said, “She wants to confess, but only to you."

  Jim Long got on the line. “We're all here waiting for you. You comin’ or what?"

  Newsmen crowded the hall outside the Detective Bureau on the second floor of the criminal courts building, that cold concrete hulk at the corner of Tulane and Broad Avenue. Someone recognized me and called out my name as I tried to slip by. A big Irish cop named Rooney kept the reporters from following me in once Frenchy gave the okay for me to enter.

  Most of the faces in the bureau were familiar, most glaring at me. I should have changed from my silver suit and navy blue tie. I followed Frenchy to the rearmost interview room, the room only slightly larger than a broom closet, where Jim Long stood in a corner (all six feet four inches and two hundred fifty pounds). Judy Wells sat across a small table from Sadie, the veteran court stenographer. Sadie's been one since the turn of the century. Seriously. Sadie was closing in on seventy with cotton candy white hair and the disposition of a house spider. I nodded to Sadie, went around the table to the chair next to Judy. Sadie's shoulders went up and down as she snapped, “'Bout time."

  Frenchy sat next to Sadie and across the table from us and Sadie slapped his hand with a pencil. “Don't you even think of lighting a cigarette! You gotta smoke, take your Cajun butt outside or you can play steno."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  Judy turned to me, took in a deep breath, and said, “I'm ready."

  Frenchy started with, “This is Thursday, October second, 1947, twelve forty-five p.m.” He gave Sadie the names of everyone in the room, getting around to Judy last. “. . . and Judith Cathleen Wells, white female, twenty-two years old, of—” He looked at his notes. “—one ten Carmen Road, in Livonia, Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana."

  Frenchy looked at Judy. “How did you come to be here in the detective bureau, Miss Wells?"

  Judy closed her eyes, her right hand reaching for my sleeve, and said, “We saw our pictures, um, drawings in the paper. Me and Steve and read the story. Steve took off, said no one would listen, but I walked over from le Richelieu to Mr. Caye's office to turn myself in. I knew it wasn't no use to run."

  "Steve who?"

  Judy's eyes opened and she stared at me. “Steven Swindon. He's my boyfriend. He's from Opelousas. We met at the Acadia Parish Fair in May."

  "You were at Le Richelieu?” Frenchy went.

  "We've been staying there since we got to New Orleans, Monday night. We met Luke in the lobby the next afternoon. Well, I met Luke first. Sitting in the lobby. I had a run in my stocking and just noticed it when Luke walked by. He noticed too."

  "That was Dr. Lucas Waddell."

  Judy said they didn't know he was a doctor. She told me the story. Frenchy asked the questions and she looked me in the eye and told me what happened with very little emotion until she got to the shooting. It was sort of creepy, those large brown eyes staring at me all the time. Judy didn't blink much and when she did it was slowly.

  Apparently the good doctor tried to pick her up in the lobby, then tried to withdraw gracefully when her boyfriend showed up, but Steve Swindon didn't go “crazy-nuts” like she thought, and Luke offered to buy them supper, offered to drive, but Steve insisted. He liked to drive and was proud of his Packard.

  They went to a lakefront restaurant, sounded like Fitzgerald's to me, one of the places up on pilings out on Lake Pontchartrain at West End. They ate seafood and drank enough beer that Steve and Judy were “tipsy,” as she put it.

  She remembered going to the house on pilings. That would be the doctor's place off Highway 90. They played jazz records, danced a little, and drank more, until Judy got dizzy and passed out. When she woke, all three were in their underwear.

  "I woke Steve up and we got dressed and decided to see what we could take. We found money in Luke's wallet and more cash in a desk drawer. A gold ring, too, and a blank checkbook, only when we were leaving, Luke came out the house pulling on his pants and shirt, and we tried to get away only . . .” She took in a deep breath, blew half of it out, and said, “It was an accident."

  She wiped a tear from her cheek and told us how she'd bought the gun at a pawn shop in Opelousas after the drugstore where she worked was robbed back when she was sixteen, kept the gun with her always and shot it enough times to know she could hit what she wanted to.

  "It was in my purse, but Steve took it out when we were robbing the place and was giving it back to me when Luke came rushing out."

  Frenchy tapped the tabletop, fidgeting from lack of nicotine, and said, “Who shot the doctor?"

  "Steve.” Judy covered her face with both hands and sobbed. Frenchy went out for a cigarette. Jim Long got a police matron to escort Judy to the ladies’ room. Sadie took a break, too, muttering on her way out something about young people's foolishness.

  Jim shook his head at me. “I tried my best to talk her out of this. But she insisted.” No lawyer wanted his client to give evidence to the police. And nothing pleased a D.A. more than a confession.

  When we'd resettled, Frenchy had her go over the shooting in detail. She went over it three times and never deviated from the story. Steve was shoving the gun back into her purse when the doctor came out and Steve pulled out the gun, warned Luke, then shot him three times. They “high-tailed” it but ran over something at the edge of the driveway. Didn't go far when their tire went flat. Then I came along.


  Frenchy's next question was, “When was the last time you fired your gun?"

  "Monday. We stopped at a diner outside Baton Rouge and I saw a cottonmouth basking on a log in the ditch next to the highway so I shot it. I hate snakes."

  Frenchy looked at me and I knew what he was thinking, even if I was just a private eye and not real detective. A paraffin test was out. What good was a gunshot residue test when she admitted she'd fired the gun less than a day before the murder?

  "So, where is this Steve Swindon?"

  * * * *

  According to the morning paper the following Tuesday, October seven, Steve Swindon was picked up by two Texas Rangers just outside Amarillo. The article was titled fugitive nabbed in texas. Subtitle: “Gungirl's Accomplice Claims Innocence.” Swindon was in the green Packard and still had the gold ring with Dr. Waddell's initials inside. Not much else to the story. Apparently the Packard had another flat. He was arrested without incident and was being held in isolation, awaiting his return to Louisiana. There was a picture of the two Rangers, in white Stetsons, and a young man with his head bowed being led into a jail.

  I flipped over to the sports page to read the article on yesterday's game seven of the Series. The Yankees spotted the Bums two runs, then roared back for five. Winning pitcher was Bucky Harris. Rizzuto went three for four, two RBIs, and scored twice. The Brooklyn fans were at it again: “Wait till next year.” Yeah. If the Yankees take the year off.

  As I folded the paper, the smoky glass door opened and Miss Bikini herself strolled in. She wore a smart-looking, tan skirt-suit with a fitted jacket, her blonde hair up in a bun, and carried a brown clutch purse to match her brown high heels.

  I pulled my feet off my desk, stood, and said, “Evelyn Woodard. It's been a while, hasn't it?"

  She pointed to the newspaper and said, “You'll only see my byline in the society section.” She stuck out her chin. “I need you to help me change that."