Keepsake Crimes (14 page)

Brass bands blared, the flambeaus twirled their torches and handfuls of shimmering blue, purple, and pink doubloons were flung into the crowds.

And even though the entire Vieux Carré seemed caught up in the grip of Mardi Gras madness, Carmela wasn’t. Heresy as it might be for a native New Orleanian, her heart simply wasn’t in it.

She had allowed herself to be dragged along tonight by Ava Grieux on the pretext (Ava’s) that it would be
good
for her.

It wasn’t.

Try as she might, Carmela just couldn’t seem to make walk-around drinks and catching beads and shiny candy-colored souvenir doubloons her A-number-one priority. And when Ava confided to her that she had a serious
in
with one of the bar owners who could get them
upstairs
to one of the coveted second-floor wrought-iron balconies, that was the final straw. Because cavorting on a wrought-iron balcony, being urged on by hundreds of leering, drunken men on the street below to
pleeease
waggle her bare ta-tas just wasn’t the kind of evening she had in mind.

No, while everyone around her carried on with wild abandon, Carmela’s mind was running through the
other
things she could be doing if she’d stayed home tonight. Like defrosting her refrigerator. Hemming that silk skirt she’d bought on sale last fall. Wrestling Boo into a half nelson and trying to clip her pointy little toenails (what Baby would no doubt call a
pet
icure). Maybe even phoning that dirtbag Granger Rathbone and telling him to back off, to take a hard look at a couple of
other
suspects.

Like the illustrious newspaper columnist Bufford Maple, who just
happened
to be the owner of her building. And who might be, for whatever reason, trying to ease her out even as he used his newspaper column to cast nasty suspicions upon her soon-to-be ex.

Or how about the standoffish Mr. Dace Wilcox? Dace had just happened to conveniently forget that he and Shamus had been in the Pluvius krewe together. And Dace had been seen talking with Jimmy Earl Clayton just before Jimmy Earl gasped out his final breath. She had it on good authority from Gabby.

Carmela grabbed Ava’s arm as they pushed their way through the crowd inside the Blind Tiger. “Ava, I’m going to duck out,” she told her friend.

Ava stopped in her tracks to stare blandly at her. A waiter with a tray of drinks held over his head had to quickly divert with a minimum of rum and bourbon sloshing. “Please tell me you’re leaving me because you’ve got a hot date,” pleaded Ava.

“I am,” said Carmela. “I have.”

“Liar,” snorted Ava. “You’re just pooping out on me.” But when she saw the look of real worry on Carmela’s face, she immediately relented. “All right, you’re excused for tonight. Go directly home, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.”

“I am going home,” said Carmela.

“It’s probably a good thing,” said Ava. “I don’t mind telling you, you’re not exactly a barrel of belly laughs tonight.” She put her arms around Carmela, pulling her into a gentle hug. “Poor girl, feelin’ so sad.”

“I’ve got to figure a couple things out,” said Carmela. She had to shout at the top of her voice to make herself heard in the noisy bar.

“I know you do,” said Ava, shouting back. “Be careful, though. Play it safe, okay?”

Carmela nodded, then headed out the door. Once she found herself on Bourbon Street, it was a palpable relief, even though the crowds that milled about were still overwhelming. Strangely enough, Bourbon Street had been named for the French family of Bourbons and not the drink itself, like most people assumed.

When Carmela was finally a good five blocks away from all the pandemonium, she ducked into a little neighborhood grocery store.

“Going to the parade?” the man behind the counter asked her. He was dressed in a Robin Hood costume, complete with tunic, loden green tights, and a jaunty cap with a pheasant feather stuck in it.

“Eventually,” she told him, dumping her groceries on the counter.

“Party hearty,” was Robin’s parting shot as she pushed her way out the door.

When Carmela got to Governor Nicholls Street, she saw that Ava Grieux had wisely covered her store windows with a grid of chicken wire. She’d done the same thing at Memory Mine a couple days ago. Neither of their shops were on the parade route per se, but that didn’t mean that Mardi Gras revelers were immune from flinging the occasional liquor bottle or getting into skirmishes and shoving each other around. It happened, and it happened with regularity in the French Quarter.

Arriving home, Carmela snapped the leash on Boo, the leash she’d bought at the Coach store back when she’d had money. Then she took the little dog for a brisk walk around the block. Boo, with her canine sensitivity, must have picked up on the Mardi Gras mood because, much to Carmela’s consternation, Boo seemed to make a huge production out of staring pointedly at every costumed person who walked by.

Finally arriving back home, Carmela got around to putting her groceries away, then slumped into her wicker chaise.

Walking Boo hadn’t really cleared her head at all. In fact, it had just served to make her feel more nervous and apprehensive. On the other hand, one thing
had
crystallized in her mind. And that was that maybe the police should be hassling Dace Wilcox instead of Shamus.

Should she call Granger Rathbone? He probably wasn’t in his office this time of night, but she could leave a message on his voice mail or something.
Hey Granger, why don’t you take a good hard look at Dace Wilcox while you’re at it.

Because the thing of it was, old Dace Wilcox
had
been hanging around Jimmy Earl Clayton the other night. And even though this fact was predicated on Gabby’s recollection being correct, Carmela knew that Gabby rarely misspoke. If Gabby said Dace was there, Dace had surely been there.

That could mean that, hopefully, Shamus
was
innocent. And that maybe, just maybe, if Dace
hadn’t
had a hand in offing Jimmy Earl, he still might know considerably more than he let on.

Carmela looked up the central number for the New Orleans Police Department. She punched in the digits, then asked to be connected with Homicide. When a very bored, gum-snapping secretary came on the line, Carmela asked for Granger Rathbone and got his voice mail instead.

When the beep sounded, Carmela mustered up all her courage and outrage and left a message that, to the best of her recollection, went something like, “Hey Granger, you sack of shit. Why don’t you take a look at Dace Wilcox while you’re at it.”

While it probably wasn’t the most friendly or eloquent of messages, Carmela figured it would do the trick in at least garnering Granger Rathbone’s attention.
And that was the whole point, wasn’t it?

Now, what was she going to do about Bufford Maple?
Is he a member of the Pluvius krewe?
That she’d have to find out.
And is Bufford Maple trying to ease me out of the building he owns?

Good question. For now she didn’t have an answer. But she’d find one. Sooner or later, she’d find one.

Shucking out of her blue jeans and poppy red cashmere sweater, Carmela pulled on a comfy oversized sweatshirt that came down to her knees. The front of the voluminous shirt proclaimed
Voulez Bon Ton Roulez.
Let the Good Times Roll.

That’s right, she thought. And that was exactly what she was going to do tomorrow. Roll. She’d fire up her ’88 Cadillac Eldorado and blow out the carbon as she barreled down Highway 23 to the Barataria Bayou.

She’d tote along that six-pack of Dixie Beer she’d bought at the little grocery store tonight, then stashed in her refrigerator to chill. She’d see what she could find out from Shamus. And try to hold his feet to the fire so she could get some real answers to her questions.

I
N the murky depths of the Barataria Bayou, saltwater intrusion from the Gulf of Mexico has created a primordial tangle that yields a frightening but amazing habitat for animal and plant life. Among lurking, waterlogged trees, alligator, opossum, and nutria flourish. So do the dreaded cottonmouth and water moccasin.

But the Barataria Bayou is also a fisherman’s paradise. Redfish, black drum, sheepshead, speckled trout, and black bass are easily caught here. No wonder herons with six-foot wingspans, Mississippi kites, and magnificent bald eagles wheel casually overhead, scanning the brackish waters intently.

Shamus was ostensibly holed up in or near his family’s old camp house at the far end of the Barataria Bayou just east of Baptiste Creek. So, early this morning, Carmela had loaded Boo and her cooler into her trusty Cadillac, Samantha, stoked up with Premium at Langley’s Super ette, then pointed the broad nose of her gas guzzler south-west down Highway 23. Passing through the towns of Port Nickel, Jesuit Bend, and Naomi, Carmela continued on down some sixty miles or so to Myrtle Grove. From there she maneuvered her way over fifteen twisting miles of seashell roads through dank swampland and the occasional dark piney forest until she arrived at the tiny village of Baptiste Creek.

Truth be known,
village
might have been putting it kindly, for the term conjured up romantic images of quaint shops and picturesque vistas.

Baptiste Creek was more on the order of a rough-and-tumble fish camp. Rough because most of the inhabitants were fishermen and trappers by trade. Tumble because that’s what a lot of the buildings seemed to be in the process of doing.

Carmela didn’t have any trouble locating Toler Boat and Bait. Their international headquarters consisted of a ramshackle, once-canary-yellow building that was now weathered mostly silver gray and featured a motley collection of old fish nets, alligator hides, and antique tin signs nailed to its roof and outside walls. It was what an avant-garde installation artist might call an architectural
objet trouvé
, a treasure trove of found objects.

From the rear of Toler Boat and Bait, a rickety dock extended out into a dank slough. Roped to this dock were a half-dozen boats that creaked and rocked as they tugged gently at their moorings.

On one side of the shack, a skinny man wearing overalls, a blue T-shirt, and a straw hat was painting foul-looking brown stuff onto the bottom of a boat that had been hoisted up onto two sawhorses. Carmela saw immediately that the boat was a pirogue, a shallow, flat-bottomed boat used for travel in the bayou. In fact, before the advent of fiberglass and aluminum, Cajuns had traditionally hollowed out pirogues from cypress logs.

“Ned Toler?” Carmela called.

The man stuck his brush in the can of brown goo and gave her an appraising glance. Brown as a nut, his face careworn and lined from a life spent outdoors, Ned Toler appeared to be in his early sixties. Interestingly enough, Ned Toler also had one brown eye and one blue eye. A half-dozen spotted hounds lay snoozing on the ground around him.

Carmela hoisted her six-pack of Dixie Beer and dangled it provocatively in front of him.

A wide smile suddenly creased the man’s face, revealing a glint of white teeth. “Carmela?”

She nodded.

Ned Toler’s big paw swiped at the six-pack. It was, Carmela thought to herself, much like a brown bear effortlessly grabbing a jar filled with honey.

“Thought you might show up,” Ned Toler told her as he cranked the cap off one of the long necks. The
whoosh
of the twist top coming off was followed by an appreciative
“Aaah”
from Ned as he tilted the amber bottle back and let malty brew roll down his throat.

When he had drained half the bottle, Ned wiped at his mouth and flashed Carmela a contented smile. “He ain’t here.”

“Do you know where he is?” asked Carmela, her hopes of finding Shamus and really talking to him suddenly dashed.

“Nope.” Ned Toler glanced over at her car. She’d pulled it off the gravel road and parked it halfway in the weeds. “Nice car.” He squinted at it again. “Eighty-seven?”

“Eighty-eight.”

“That your dog inside?” Boo was jumping about excitedly, lathering up the rear windows and making a general mess.

Carmela nodded. “Yes.”

“What the hell kind of dog is it?”

“She’s a Chinese shar-pei,” said Carmela.

“You don’t say,” said Ned, starting toward the car. “Exotic breed, huh? Looks a little like a crissy-cross between a boxer and a basset hound. You know, ’cause of all that wrinkly skin.”

Carmela walked over to the car and opened the rear door so Boo could jump out. She immediately gave Ned Toler a tentative slobber, then turned her attention to the pack of leggy brown-spotted hounds that were edging toward her.

“Play nice,” Ned admonished his motley band of dogs. “She’s a little lady from the city.”

Boo, who was suddenly in seventh heaven to be cavorting with a passel of other dogs, bounded off energetically with her newfound friends.

Ned Toler wandered back to the boat and the six-pack. Picking up his brush, he resumed his painting or waterproofing or whatever it was he was doing.

“I’d still like to go out to the camp house anyway,” Carmela told him.

Ned Toler bit his lower lip as he worked. “It’s your choice. Boat rental’s five dollars an hour.”

Carmela considered the twisting maze of swamp, the purple water hyacinth that was so rampant it often choked off entire channels, and the towering stands of bald cypress that enveloped Baptiste Creek and stretched beyond it for many dark miles. The journey to the camp house could be a daunting one. And then, of course, one could always run into
el lagarto.
Literally translated as “the lizard,” it was what early Spanish sailors had called the alligator.