Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 14 - Murder in a Casbah of Cats (16 page)

Henry marveled. “He’s big enough.”

“Yeah. He is that.”

As we were pushing back from the table, Edna announced an after-dinner dessert in the library. She had mixed up some Tahitian coffee, a mixture of rum, West Indies spices, and whipped cream, to top off such a delectable dinner.

I suppressed the urge to question them about Watkins and his supposed involvement with drugs, instead joining in the lighthearted chatter. I figured Frank Creek, over a couple of glasses of peach vodka, was the one most likely to give me some answers.

The front door banged open. As one, we looked around, and through the open doors of the library, we saw Karla storm in, her
eyes red, her cheeks flushed with anger. She slammed the front door and hurried up to her room.

Gadrate rolled her eyes. “Here we go again.”

Her words heavy with sarcasm, Edna said, “Looks like her and Kevin had some problems. Never fails. Those two can’t go one hour without fighting.”

Henry held up his coffee in a toast. “Who cares?”

We all joined him in his toast.

Later, when I went upstairs, I glanced at the armoire by my door. Sure enough, Hercules was curled up on top, sleeping. I could just make out his back.

I plopped down at the desk and jotted the day’s events on my note cards. One thing any successful investigator knows is that information must be continually massaged, turned over, examined from different perspectives. Filling out note cards was one way I carried out the process.

Pausing at the card regarding the jerricans in the storage shed, I couldn’t help wondering about the one lying on the workbench.

Out of curiosity, I flipped back through my cards until I ran across notes about Frank loading the cans. I leaned back and visualized the incident, remembering how abruptly he had refused my help.

I rose and peered out the French doors. The drizzle continued. I guessed an inch, perhaps two had fallen. I turned back to the desk and glanced at my cards.

Danny’s stunning revelation still haunted me. I couldn’t absorb the idea that Watkins was a drug broker, yet the money was easy, and at his level, there was little danger as long as the right palms were greased. His partner, Collins, was still in the drug business.

On impulse, I called Dutch Weiman and relayed the information about Watkins and Collins to him. “Do a little snooping. See what you can come up with.” I paused. “Keep it quiet, though. I don’t want to mess up the old man’s name.”

He hesitated. “I’d heard talk about the old man, but I never gave it any credit. Just figured that was all it was, talk.”

“Well, check it for me, and Collins too, OK?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

I replaced the receiver. If, as Danny had said, Collins was dealing, how was he receiving, then distributing, the goods? However he did it, he had carried out the job right under the nose of the law.

A tone sounded on my laptop, signaling an e-mail message.

It was from Eddie—my background checks on the staff here at the mansion.

I skimmed them, finding nothing unusual at first glance.

Henry was born in San Francisco. His parents, Lerner S. and Kerry J. Perry, still lived there on Social Security in a modest apartment for which Henry paid. As Edna had said, he had served with a relief agency and was taken prisoner by insurgents in Sudan. Upon returning, he had a couple of arrests for drug possession. After hiring on with the Watkinses, his record was clean. His checking and savings accounts as well as his investments totaled well over a million, which was not so surprising given the fact his annual salary was fifty-three thousand dollars with no living expenses and very limited clothing expenses to worry about.

I guessed Henry was good for another twenty years, and by that time, his million-plus interest plus additional income would probably put his holdings close to $3 million when he retired.

I shook my head. I shook my head. No motive there.

Edna had no family. Her sister had died fifteen years earlier in Trenton, New Jersey. Edna was hired by the Watkinses out of the Golden Tree Home for Children, in Dallas, where she had been apprenticed to the orphanage chefs. I reread the report. Trenton, New Jersey. That must have been where she was when Mr. Watkins was murdered, I told myself, remembering Henry’s remark that the slender cook had almost fainted when she returned and heard of the old man’s death. She had almost three hundred thousand stuck back in investments, more than enough to take care of her own retirement.

Frank Creek’s only living relative was Marshal Edward, his seventy-year-old brother in a Billings, Montana, nursing home. The gardener’s bank account held less than thirty thousand. I shook my head. Nursing homes were getting more and more expensive.

Gadrate, although she’d been employed only ten years, had almost twenty thousand stuck back. According to Eddie, she regularly sent money to her brother, Placide, and sister, Emerente, in Louisiana.

I pulled out my note cards and dutifully recorded the information, one incident per card.

I heard a door close across the hall. The room was empty, or had been. Curious, I opened my door and glanced down the hall as Henry descended the stairs. Padding across the carpeted hall, I peered over the railing and watched the lean butler as he disappeared into the library, closing the door behind him.

Edna emerged from the kitchen and started up the stairs. Quickly, I drew back from the banister and eased to the side of the armoire so I could see just the top of her head as she ascended to the third floor. At the top, she turned down the hall away from me and entered the room at the opposite end of the floor.

Hiding in the shadow cast by the armoire, I kept my eyes on the door she had closed behind her. Without warning, something touched the top of my head. I jerked around and looked up.

It was Hercules, his paw dangling off the armoire.

I shook my head. “Leave my head alone, cat. That’s a good way to lose a paw.”

He just glared at me, unconcerned, as if to say, “Oh yeah?”

At the far end of the hall, the door opened, and Edna came out lugging an armload of bed linens. Peering around the corner of the armoire, I mumbled to myself. “Linens? Why?” I had been the only one sleeping on this floor. Henry’s and Gadrate’s rooms were on the second floor, as was Karla’s.

Ten minutes after she descended the stairs with the bundle of linens and disappeared down the hall leading to the kitchen, the lights in the mansion began to go off. Clearly puzzled at the events of the last half hour, I continued watching. A few minutes later, the hall light went off. Figuring Edna had gone to bed, I had started back to my room when I spotted Gadrate descending the stairs.

I shook my head in disbelief. Didn’t anyone ever sleep around here? She disappeared down the hall leading to the kitchen.

After a few minutes, the house grew silent. I kept waiting for her to return. When she didn’t, I tiptoed downstairs and into the kitchen, which was lit by a small bulb over the stove. A string of light glowed from under the door to the laundry. I put my ear to the door. I could hear Gadrate humming. The linens Edna had brought down were in a clothes basket beside the door.

I remembered Edna saying how particular the slender maid had become in the last few years, so I just figured she was tidying up and making certain everything was back in its place.

Taking care to make no sound, I slipped from the kitchen.
When Hercules saw me coming down the hall, he leaped to the floor and darted into my room. “Hey,” I said, “where do you think you’re going?”

I spotted him under the desk, looking up at the underside of the small table. When he spotted me, he dashed under the bed. When I dropped to all fours to shoo him out, he bounced over the bed and leaped to the top of the armoire just inside my door.

I stared at him in frustration. I had neither inclination nor energy to chase that beast. Deliberately, I left the door open a crack before turning off the light. “This room ain’t no litter box, cat. Do your business down the hall, you hear?” I hit the switch, plunging the room into darkness except for the night-light casting its dim glow from the bathroom.

Outside, the drizzle continued. I’d had little sleep the night before, and the day had been long. I closed my eyes and waited for sleep to come, but like the
feu follet
of our Louisiana swamps, it evaded me.

The events of the last few days clattered around inside my head like an out-of-tune piano. About the only thing that made sense to me was Karla’s explanation of why she asked me not to take the job. At first, she’d given me the garbage about the place being crazy, which it was, and she hated to see me bored out of my skull, which had also come about. When I pinned her down, she had admitted she was afraid I’d stop Kevin from slipping into her room.

Nothing else made much sense.

I don’t know how long I lay there, turning the pieces over and over in my head. The last thought in my mind before falling asleep was the same prayer I’d offered up the night before, that no one else would get themselves wasted tonight. I could never explain three in a row to Lieutenant Fenster.

Later, my eyes popped open. I had no idea what time it was or what had awakened me. Then I heard Hercules with that deep throat growl that is almost inaudible.

I squinted at the armoire just as a ghostly figure stepped into the dim glow of the night-light. His arm was raised over his head. The dim light glittered off the double-edged blade of the knife clutched in his fist.

He took a step toward me.

Out of desperation, I grabbed the wasp spray. “Hold it, buddy. I’m armed.” I felt stupid saying that, but it was the first thing that came to mind.

He cursed and lunged at me.

I squirted the spray and rolled off the far side of the bed. The spray struck him in the face. He dropped the knife and screamed in pain, scrubbing at his eyes. That was the very moment Hercules decided to launch himself at the perp, and launch he did, slamming into the man’s head and wrapping his legs about the surprised killer’s head, digging his claws into the poor slob’s face.

The bedroom erupted into a melee of agonizing screams and curses punctuated by the infuriated yowling and hissing of an enraged cat.

Flailing his arms at the beast gnawing on his head, the killer burst from the room, all the while trying to pull Hercules off.

Blinded, the wannabe assassin charged across the hall. I heard a terrifying scream, followed by a couple of seconds of silence, and then a thud.

I raced for the door. I might have taken three steps before the rear leg of the bed got in the way of my right foot. I smashed my toes and sprawled on the floor. Cursing at the top of my lungs, I grabbed my toes and squeezed them in a futile effort to stop the pain.

From the corner of my eyes, I saw lights flashing on in the hallway. Grimacing, I pushed to my feet and hobbled to the railing, just in time to see Hercules dart into the library.

Below, Henry hurried down the stairs, almost stumbling in his rush to reach the fallen man. “Boudreaux,” he shouted at the prone figure. Moments later, Gadrate followed him.

Henry stared down at the unmoving body. Blood pooled around the wannabe killer’s head. Henry looked up, and when he spotted me, he sighed in relief. I nodded, then hobbled down the stairs.

By the time I reached the first floor, Edna had appeared, bundled in a pale-blue terry-cloth robe, her eyes wide with consternation. She almost gagged when she saw the blood. “Who is he? What’s going on?” She looked at me.

I was wondering the same thing as I knelt beyond the pool of blood and felt the man’s carotid. He was Hispanic, and he was
dead. Over my shoulder, I said, “No idea. I woke up, and he was standing in the door with a knife. Thanks to Henry’s wasp spray and Hercules, the guy didn’t get a chance to use it.”

All three looked at me like I was crazy. I pushed to my feet. “Hercules? It’s the truth. He was sleeping on the armoire in my room.” I indicated the library. “He’s in there now.”

Henry cleared his throat. “You want me to call the police?”

At that moment, a scream sounded from the second floor.

Wearing a sheer housecoat snugged in at the waist, Karla stood at the railing, her eyes wide, her hand over her lips.

I gestured her down.

She shook her head and took a step back.

“Either now or when the cops get here.”

She disappeared into her room, then returned moments later. Slowly she descended the stairs.

Henry asked again, “What about the police?”

“I’ll call. I’ll use the phone in the library.” As an afterthought, I added, “If you go upstairs, don’t go in my room. The criminalists will want to get in there. The knife’s where this guy dropped it.”

Edna followed me into the library. She sat by me, wringing her hands as I dialed. “What a terrible night. That’s three nights in a row that someone has been killed out here. What on earth is going on, Tony?”

While waiting for the police department to answer, I shook my head. “Like I said, no idea.”

And I really had no idea other than that I must be close to something someone didn’t want me to find.