Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 14 - Murder in a Casbah of Cats (4 page)

Gadrate returned with four packages. She set two each in front of Edna and Henry. I stiffened when I heard the paper crinkle. “Here’s your linens.” She looked at me. “I’ll carry yours up, seeing as how you’re our guest.”

Quickly I extended my hand. “Too much trouble. I’ll take them.” I gave her a big smile.

She hesitated, shrugged, and handed me the package. “I don’t mind taking it up there.”

“I know, but thanks anyway. I can do it.”

Upstairs, I hastily unwrapped the towels and washcloths. I held the paper in my hands, crinkling it and listening to the sound. It appeared to be the same as the paper wrapped around the rock that had come through my window.

Retrieving the original paper from my sports bag, I compared it with the linen packaging. Identical! I stared at the closed door, wondering just what sort of intrigue was going on beyond it. Someone didn’t want me here, but why, and who? All four had access to paper identical to that on which the warning was written.

I stared unseeing at the door. All I could do was go about my business and wait for someone to make the next move.

Throughout the day, I ran across cats every time I turned around. Being felines, they slept most of the time. To be honest, I felt guilty because I had so little to do.

I spent time wondering about who might be behind the rock incident. When I wasn’t pondering that, I was playing with my new USB wireless modem on my laptop.

I’m no computer whiz, but I’ve noticed there’s no standing still with computers. Seems as soon as you get comfortable with one program, it upgrades, and it’s been my sad and frustrating experience on more than one occasion to discover I could not access a site because my software was a few generations too old.

By noon, I was bored to tears. The job was so mind-numbing I even called Marty late that afternoon just to pass the time. “Why don’t you give me some skips and traces to keep me busy out here.”

I was his best man at running down missing persons. I developed the skill my first few years with him, and I refused to reveal the methodology. It was my process, and after two or three arguments, he agreed to let it stay mine.

“OK, Tony. I’ll e-mail you some stuff. But, if I was you, I’d enjoy the vacation. Sometimes you wish for something, and what you get ain’t what you expect.”

I rolled my eyes. “Thanks for the philosophy course, Marty. Just send me something to keep me busy.”

I hung up, having no idea I would never once look at the files of missing persons he would send me.

I prowled the mansion, hoping to run into Karla. I never spotted her, but I got a good look at the house.

Eight bedrooms, each with its own bath, made up the third floor where I bunked. Two of the bedrooms, the largest, belonged to the cats. Four bedrooms and baths, two family rooms, and one film room made up the second floor. I learned later that one of the bedrooms was Karla’s.

The first floor was foyer, living area, library, den, parlor, dining room, kitchen, and laundry.

The library was filled with classic literature, my kind of stuff. I hesitated at the door, catching the sweet aroma of honeysuckle. I glanced around, noticing a couple of air fresheners in electrical sockets around the wall. I chuckled. Not a bad idea with a fireplace, old books, and cats around.

The redbrick fireplace covered almost an entire wall from the floor to the ten-foot ceiling. Above the thick oak mantel hung an artist’s rendering of an old gentleman replete with slicked-down gray hair and matching bushy muttonchops.

He stood in front of the wood rack beside the very fireplace upon which his image hung, one hand in his vest, the other
braced against the side of the fireplace. I paraphrased an old homily, “Vanity, thy name is man.”

“That’s the first Mr. Watkins,” a voice from behind said.

I looked around as Henry came to stand beside me. “Herbert Adam Watkins. He was the one who built the mansion.”

“Impressive-looking guy,” I replied.

“That’s the only picture the family has of him.” When he saw the frown on my face, he added, “There are many paintings and pictures of his family, but that’s the only one of him.”

“Why?”

“Story is he just didn’t like his picture taken or painted. He had many made of his family, but not himself. Mr. Watkins, his grandson, was like that too. He never talked about himself or his business, just family.”

I remained silent, studying the picture.

Henry continued. “But he had a sense of humor.”

“How do you mean?”

“Take another look. See the painting above the mantel in the picture?”

I looked more closely at the canvas. Above the mantel in the picture was a smaller painting.

“Yeah. So?”

“Take a closer look. That picture is the same as the large one.”

Not quite understanding, I stepped up on the hearth and squinted at the image in the picture. Sure enough, the painting within a painting duplicated the original.

“Yeah. I see what you mean.”

“Now, look again, at the small one.”

I squinted at it. “A third painting?”

“Yes. Like looking into mirrors until everything vanishes into infinity.”

Shaking my head, I studied the canvas again. “I see what you mean.” After a moment, I said, “Makes you wish pictures could talk, huh?”

He grunted. “Sure solve a lot of problems.”

I looked around at him. “How’s that?”

He nodded to the old man’s gray eyes. “Those eyes saw who killed his grandson, Mr. Watkins—the third.”

I hesitated. “I see what you mean. In here’s where it happened. Must’ve been rough, for everybody,” I added.

Reluctant to answer, he shrugged. “All of us. Edna almost fainted when she got back from her sister’s funeral and heard about…” He hesitated and drew the tip of his tongue across his lips. “You know, about the death.”

I could tell he didn’t want to talk about it. I glanced back at the picture. “Like you say, the first Herbert Watkins had a sense of humor.”

As awkward as it is to say it, I got along fine with all the cats except one. Now he was probably a registered feline from Australia or New Zealand, but as far as I was concerned, he looked like one of the thousands of mackerel-colored back alley cats you see in—well, all the back alleys.

He hated me. Of that there was no question. First time I leaned down to pet him, he beat me to the punch and laid open three parallel red lines on the top of my hand. With a warning hiss, he backed away, dropped into a crouch, and laid his ears back.

I glanced around to see if anyone was around. They weren’t, so I hissed back. “Do that again, buster, and I’ll put tacks in your litter box!”

After a light lunch, I wandered the grounds, spotting Frank Creek sitting in the shade of a white gazebo, eating the lunch Edna had brought him. I gestured to a chair. “Mind if I join you?”

“Be glad for some company,” he exclaimed. What little hair he still kept was gray. His blue denim shirt was sweat stained under the arms and down the middle of his chest.

“Hot out today.”

“Yep,” he said around a mouthful of ham-and-cheese sandwich. “Be the dickens if we didn’t have the shade from all them trees.”

I surveyed the yard. Fern moss covered the ground in the shade beneath the live oaks, separated from adjoining beds by a manicured lawn of St. Augustine grass. “You must spend most of your time on the yard.”

He chugged down some iced sweet tea, spilling some on either side of his lips. “Takes time. Four days a week during the season, and here, the season is almost all year.” He laughed.

For a few moments, neither of us spoke. I was enjoying the breeze in the shade and the sweet smell of honeysuckle coming from somewhere.

The old man broke the silence. “No offense intended, Mr. Boudreaux, but how come Miz Watkins hired you to look after her cats?”

“No offense at all, Frank. And call me Tony.” I had no intention of revealing Skylar Watkins’s opinion about unsupervised domestics. “As far as why, I don’t know. Like I told Henry, seems to me they, and you, do the job just fine.”

He took another bite of sandwich and chewed for a few moments. Switching his bite to the other cheek, he said, “Miz Watkins, she’s got the money. She can afford it, but it don’t make a whole lot of sense.”

Leaning forward, I said, “It’s my turn now, Frank. No offense, but the others all call her Skylar. You call her Miz Watkins.”

He washed his bite down with another gulp of tea. “Way I was brought up. Respect them what you work for. Miz Watkins is a fine woman. Maybe kinda odd, but her heart’s in the right place. She’s the one what wanted to bring the two nieces to live here.” He nodded emphatically. “Yes, sir. She’s a good and decent person.” He paused. “And the others here, they’re good folks too. Henry, he’s a fine man. Kinda hard to get to know, I suppose you’ve noticed.”

“Yeah. I’ve noticed.”

“His folks was them flower children of the sixties. Henry grew up like that. Edna, she come here when Miz Watkins was fifteen. She’s kinda like a second mother to Miz Watkins.”

“Second mother?”

He shot me a furtive look. “Mr. and Miz Watkins, Skylar’s momma and papa, they was nice folks, but they was rich. Skylar always had a chaperone, you know? A nanny. When Edna came, the girl just kinda flocked to her. Edna was the one that Skylar went to when the old man was killed. Her mother died a couple of years later.”

“I heard about that.”

“Yep. Hard on the girl so soon after her daddy was murdered.” He shook his head. “Terrible thing. Real bad around here for a mighty long spell. I really liked that old man. He treated me like—well, like I was something better than just a gardener. You know what I mean?”

I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination or not, but I picked up a hint of resentment in his voice. “Yeah, but there’s nothing wrong with being a gardener. My grandfather was a farmer.”

“I know, but people are funny that way.”

“Never did find the killer, huh?”

“Nope! Cops hounded an old boy by the name of Bill Collins. He’d paid Mr. Watkins a lot of visits. Nobody never really knew why. Sometimes they argued, but the night the old man was murdered, Collins had hisself a solid alibi.”

His words piqued my curiosity. “What happened?”

Another delivery van pulled up behind the mansion. The logo said it was from Phelan Landscaping.

Frank glanced at his watch. “Uh-oh. There’s the fertilizer. Time to get back to work.”

I spotted the deliveryman unloading bags of fertilizer into the garage. “Need any help?”

“Naw. Thanks. Willy yonder loads them into my small trailer that I hook up to my John Deere, and I haul them back to the storage shed.” He pointed to a trim little cottage at the back of the grounds. Beside the cottage was a storage shed twice the size of the neat bungalow. “That’s my place. Come on down after supper, and I’ll tell you about that night…” He paused, and with a sly twinkle in his eyes, said, “I’ve got a half-full bottle of peach vodka to help us along.”

As I headed back to the mansion, Frank unhooked the gang mower, and the tractor roared to life. I watched as the old gardener pulled into the garage and reappeared moments later pulling a small trailer with four bags of fertilizer.

A general myth is that cats can’t be trained. I have a neighbor on Payton-Gin Road who puts up her cats every night in a roomy kennel behind her house. As soon as she walks out the back door around five or six o’clock, the six of them fall into line behind and, like the children of Hamelin, follow her into the kennel.

It was the same at the mansion. Around six that evening, I noticed a stream of cats of all sizes and shapes heading upstairs. Feeding time, I guessed. Still bored, I followed them upstairs, standing in the open door as each went to a bowl, the side of each imprinted with a name.

Gadrate was busy filling each bowl.

“They all got their own bowl, huh?”

Bent over, she looked at me from under her arm. “They got ’em, but they don’t use them all the time.” Straightening up, she gave me a crooked grin. “Cats, they do what they want.”

“You have family over in Morgan City?”

“Some,” she replied, going to the next bowl. Without looking at me, she said, “Mama and Papa, they be dead, ten years now. Brother and sister live there.”

“How’d you end up over here?”

“How come you ended up over here?”

“Touché! My mother moved here when I was in high school. Went to college and all that. Never felt quite the same going back home, you know?”

She replied, “I know.”

My stomach growled. She remarked gaily, “Won’t be long. Dinner’s at seven.”

At least she’d looked at me this time.

I’m a supper person; they were dinner people, probably because Skylar Watkins was a dinner person. Regardless of what you would call it, dinner that night was a simple, rib-sticking meal of chicken and dumplings with corn on the cob and a dessert of cherry cobbler with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

I glanced out the window in the direction of Frank Creek’s cottage. “He isn’t eating with us?”

“I usually take him lunch,” explained Edna. “Sometimes he’ll come up for a meal, but most of the time he whips up his own. Said he was getting fat from my cooking.”