Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 13 - The Diamonds of Ghost Bayou

A Tony Boudreaux Mystery

Other Books by Kent Conwell

Angelina Showdown
Atascocita Gold Bowie’s Silver The Crystal Skull Murders
Death in the Distillery
Death in the French Quarter Extracurricular Murder
Galveston

Grave for a Dead Gunfighter Gunfight at Frio Canyon
A Hanging in Hidetown
Junction Flats Drifter Llano River Valley
Murder Among Friends
Red River Crossing The Riddle of Mystery Inn
Shootout on the Sabine
Texas Orphan Train The Puzzle of Piri Reis
An Unmarked Grave
Vicksburg

THE DIAMONDS
OF GHOST BAYOU

.

Kent Conwell

(THOMAS & MERCER

To Kenli, my first granddaughter. May she grow to be a strong and independent
woman like her mom.

And to my wife, Gayle.

Even after a week back in sunny Austin, I was still shivering,
not only from the frigid days I had spent in the snow-covered
peaks of the Sangre de Cristos Mountains, but from trying to
dodge three goons intent on burying me under a hundred feet
of snow.

I decided it was time to take some vacation. The last several
months, with exotic maps and crystal skulls and saving my old
man from a murder rap, had kept me busier than a Sixth Street
wino hustling quarters for a bottle of Thunderbird.

My wishes were not to be.

Strange, how what a person wants and what he gets are almost never the same. I’ve often wondered if this was some
sort of cosmic law designed by the gods just to keep us in our
place.

My first day back, I toyed with the idea of a skiing trip to
Colorado, but my time in New Mexico had cured me of even the
slightest proclivity for snow and wet and cold. About that time,
my old friend Jack Edney and his wife, Diane, my ex-wife, invited me to visit their new vacation home on Bayou Fantome,
just off the Bayou Teche Scenic Byway in Louisiana.

Naturally, I’d refused, not because she was my ex-wife, but
because a few months earlier, when I was trying to locate a missing map down in San Antonio, she’d made a pass at me. Of
course, at the time, she was angry with Jack and had had a tad
too much to drink. Still, I was kind of antsy around her.

I finally decided simply to play the vacation by ear. I’d get up
in the morning, spin a bottle, and just head in that direction. I might even visit a few Civil War battlefields, a journey I had
long pondered, and I could start at Vicksburg.

There was nothing keeping me in Austin; my significant other,
Janice Coffman-Morrison, was on a cruise with her Aunt Beatrice,
owner and CEO of Chalk Hills Distillery; my cat, A.B., never
returned after taking off on a courting trip; my old man had hit the
rails again; and my boss suggested some time off.

So, I was free and unfettered, and the road was calling. I felt
like a schoolboy when that last bell rang dismissing school for the
summer.

That’s when I got the phone call. It was from Diane. She was
crying. She was in Priouxville, Louisiana. Jack had been beaten
severely. He was in the hospital. “He needs you, Tony. Please. He
needs you. I need you.”

Talk about mixed emotions running rampant in both directions. I stammered, “Calm down, Diane. What happened? How
bad is he? Can I talk to him?”

“No. He’s in a coma,” she replied hurriedly, one word tumbling
over another. “I don’t know what happened except he went outside
to check on some noises, and someone beat him up something
terrible, terrible.”

Drawing a deep breath, I hesitated for all of two seconds. “No
problem. Where are you now?”

“At the hospital with Jack.” She hesitated and then, her voice
beginning to tremble, added, “I don’t know the address. It’s the
Bayou Teche Hospital here in Priouxville.”

Trying to calm her, I said, “Look, Jack’s tough. He’ll be all right.
Just pull yourself together, you hear?” I glanced at my watch: ten
o’clock. “I ought to be there around four this afternoon. Just get
hold of yourself. I’ll see you later.”

I stared at the receiver after hanging up, wondering if I had
made the right decision.

If it had just been Jack, I would have had no second thoughts.
Diane was the problem. Still, Jack and I went way back to Madison High School in Austin, where I taught English and he coached
football and track.

Literature and sports. An unusual combination, but we’d hit it off from the first. Over the years, he’d helped me out of some
jams, and I had done the same for him. The one time I didn’t help
him when perhaps I should have was when he told me he was
going to marry my ex-wife.

Instead, I kept my mouth shut, reminding myself I was as
much to blame as Diane for the divorce.

It was amicable and fair as divorces went. I got my pickup, my
clothes, and Oscar, a brain-damaged Albino Barb in a fortygallon aquarium. She walked away with her car, clothes, all the
furniture, and our meager savings account. Diane was one of
those unfortunates with the proverbial Champagne taste on a
beer budget.

In fact, Jack even asked me if I minded if he proposed to her.
That’s the kind of friend he is. Not eager to dredge up old
aches and pains, I gave him my blessing.

Taking a deep breath, I told myself it was the right decision
but maybe not the most prudent.

I dialed the office and cleared the next couple of weeks with
my boss, Marty Blevins, owner of Blevins’ Security.

Fifteen minutes later, I was on Highway 290 in my Chevrolet
Silverado, heading east for Houston and the 1-10, on which I
would stay to Lafayette, Louisiana. From there, I’d cut south,
straight into the heart of Acadiana.

During my drive, a thousand questions bounced around my
skull. Jack, by his own admission, was a lover, not a fighter-a
wise decision, since he was as broad as he was short. Personally,
I fully supported his philosophy, although not by any stretch of
the imagination could I consider myself a lover, nor a fighter,
even though I’d been in more than my share of brawls.

I always looked for an alternative to physical violence, but
sometimes it didn’t exist. I’d learned the hard way that “fair fight”
was the ultimate oxymoron. I never fought fair. I fought to win.

Now, I knew from experience just how locals along the bayous felt about newcomers invading their domain. They resented
outsiders and made their feelings known in various ways. Jack
was the kind to overcome those prejudices.

When he’d mentioned the idea of a vacation home on a Louisiana bayou, I told him some of the problems he might face, such
as resentment among the locals, an abundance of snakes, squadrons of vicious mosquitoes, floods, the distance from civilization, an almost alien culture, and half a dozen other drawbacks.

Diane wasn’t crazy about the idea, but he was not to be
swayed. The locals he would win over; he contracted with a pest
company to spray repellents for snakes; he put out mosquito zappers; and he came up with answers for the other redundant downsides.

Turning off at Lafayette, I stayed on Highway 90 instead of
taking the more scenic route. Actually, most highways south of
1-10 could be considered scenic; they are lined with drooping
oaks laden with swaying Spanish moss, harkening back to
antebellum days of tiny-waisted young debutantes in billowing
gowns swirling round and round at gala cotillions.

Diane hurried toward me when I eased open the door to Jack’s
room. She hugged me and pressed her cheek against mine.
“Oh, Tony. I’m so glad you’re here.” Other than her dress being
slightly rumpled and a couple of wisps of her brown hair out of
place, the only way you could tell she’d been under a strain was
her red-rimmed eyes. She had always been meticulous about
her appearance, and since I was the consummate slob, the handwriting was on the wall even before we married; we were just
too much in lust to bother to read it.

I peered at the bowling ball covered with a sheet. An IV
dripped slowly into a purple-splotched arm. “How is he?” His
face was a mass of bruises and swelling. His jaw was wired
shut. One forearm was in a cast.

“Stable,” she whispered. “The doctor just left.”

Wincing as I stared down at my old friend, I asked, “He still
in a coma?”

She hesitated. “It isn’t a coma. I thought they said that, but I
don’t think it is. He woke a couple of hours back, then went back to
sleep.”

I glanced sidelong at her, skeptical of her explanation. After all, I’d been married to her. She was sort of flaky. I looked back
at Jack. He seemed to be resting as peacefully as possible. I whispered, “Let’s get some coffee. You need a break.”

She smiled up at me weakly.

In the small cafeteria, I got us coffee from the vending machine
and doctored hers with sweetener and cream. Taking a chair
across the table from her, I said, “Tell me what happened.”

She sipped her coffee and then set it down. “I don’t know a
lot. We were in bed. We heard noises out on the porch, which
goes all the way around the house. Jack thought it was probably
raccoons or possums, so he went out.” She began wringing her
hands. “I told him to turn on the light, but he said there was no
need. I heard some thuds and groans. I figured he was chasing
whatever it was around the porch. Then he screamed. I hurried
to the living room and switched on the floodlights, but there
wasn’t anyone out there”

“Then what?”

She continued wringing her hands. “I-I was scared, but I
pushed open the storm door and saw Jack lying at the bottom of
the stairs.”

I grimaced. The flights of stairs leading up to the porches of
those bayou houses were at least ten feet or higher. “What about
Jack?”

“He was on his back, groaning.”

“Did he say anything?”

She stopped wringing her hands and looked up at me. “Yes.”

I leaned forward. “What?”

She replied hoarsely, “Diamonds!”