Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 04 - Vicksburg (12 page)

I had no choice but to speed up with them.

In less than a minute, we were hitting ninety.

Finally, after a couple of miles, the rig behind me began
backing away. I breathed a sigh of relief until from the corner of my eye, I saw the Peterbilt on my left edging into my
lane, forcing me off the road.

At ninety miles an hour.

“Better think fast, Tony,” I mumbled, keeping one eye on
the rig in front, one on the eighteen-wheeler at my side, and
the third on the one behind.

Suddenly, I realized what they had in mind. Except this
time, I wasn’t dodging a bag of cement. I had to move fast
before they could carry out their plan. That was my only
chance to beat them at their own game-if I wasn’t already
too late. I had no idea what lay ahead, but I had no choice.

Abruptly, I jerked my pickup onto the shoulder and
slammed on the brakes. The rigs shot past, but I didn’t have
time to pay them attention. Directly ahead, an old pickup
was parked on the shoulder, the one someone had put there
just for me. To my right was a shallow drop off, just deep
enough to send me tumbling end over end.

Clenching my teeth, I did my best to stomp the brake
pedal through the floor. The sixteen-inch tires screamed in agony as the graveled shoulder peeled away layers of rubber
in a cloud of smoke.

The rear of the pickup loomed ever larger.

“Hang on, Tony,” I muttered through clenched teeth.
“Hang on” I squeezed the wheel so tightly my knuckles
turned white. I quickly calculated, then hastily rejected trying to squeeze between the pickup and ditch. No way I could
make it.

The needle on the speedometer swung down to seventy,
dropped to fifty, then thirty.

By now, the pickup was no more than forty feet in front
of me. There was no way I could stop in time. In desperation, I cut the wheels sharply to the left, sending the
Silverado into a broadside slide.

I closed my eyes and braced for the impact.

Mercifully, it never came.

When I opened my eyes, I was still alive. Shaking, I
climbed from the Silverado and walked unsteadily around to
see how much room I had to spare. I whistled softly. “That
was close,” I muttered, staring at the three-inch space between
the rusty bumper and the door on the passenger’s side.

At that moment, a Louisiana Highway Patrol cruiser
pulled up. A tall, beefy man stepped out and nodded to the
Silverado. “Trouble?” He eyed me suspiciously.

“Not now, Officer.” I didn’t have time for delays, so I
shaded the truth. I pointed to the rigs now disappearing
around a curve. “One of those rigs up there accidentally ran
me off the road. I don’t think he even knew he did it,” I
explained. “I was lucky I stopped when I did.”

He continued to eye me suspiciously. “May I see your
license and insurance, sir?”

He studied them, then looked back at me. “You been
drinking?”

“No, sir.” I hooked my thumb over my shoulder, grateful
I had left my .38 back in my room. “You can look through
the pickup if you want.”

He wanted.

He searched the pickup thoroughly, then he opened the
tool chest in the bed. He pulled out a black satchel. “What’s
in here?”

“Tools of the trade,” I explained. “I’m a private investigator in Austin, Texas. There’s a tape recorder, camcorder, various bugging devices, flashlight, bugs, sweepers, odds and
ends.”

He rummaged through the satchel, then returned it to the
tool chest. His eyes grew wide. “Well, well, well,” he muttered, holding up a half-empty pint of Jim Beam bourbon.

My eyes almost popped out. I shook my head adamantly.
“Look, Officer, that isn’t mine. I don’t know how it got
there”

He nodded, a disgusted look on his face. “That’s what
they all say. Would you step over to my cruiser, please?”

By now, I was getting worried. Louisiana jails were notorious. Louisiana police even more so.

Rumor had it that confiscating vehicles was such a popular hobby among many of the law officers that some had
even considered mounting them on their walls. Of course, I
didn’t believe that, but I sure didn’t want to take a chance.
“Why?”

“You have any objection to a sobriety test, Mr.
Boudreaux?” He slipped my driver’s license and insurance
form in his shirt pocket.

“Of course not,” I replied in what I hoped was a firm, confident tone.

“But you do drink?”

“No longer. I’m in AA. I’ve been sober for three years” I
conveniently left out the time I’d had a few sociable drinks
at the family reunion on Whiskey Island in the Atchafalaya
Swamp. Family reunions didn’t count.

I accompanied him to his cruiser where he pulled out the
Intoxilyzer for the breath test. I did as he instructed. His eyebrows rose as he read the results. “Well, Mr. Boudreaux, you were right.” He returned my license and insurance. “That
was a close call.”

“I promise you one thing, Officer. If I’d been drinking, I
would never have been able to stop”

For the first time, he smiled. “You get the license number
on the rig that ran you off the road?”

I hesitated, then decided to keep the information to
myself. “Sorry. I had other things on my mind. Staying alive
mainly.”

Ten minutes later, I found the road leading to Wilson
Jenkins’ place. He lived in a neat cottage on a slope overlooking the Mississippi River. I had been one hundred and
eighty degrees off in the image I had conjured up in my head
about Abigail Collins, so I was somewhat surprised when
Wilson Jenkins turned out to be exactly what I imagined a
male birdwatcher to be: Slender, thinning hair, soft-spoken,
an amiable grin on his face. Like a tiny sparrow.

He invited me into a sunroom facing the river where he
poured us each a glass of lemonade. We sat on a comfortable
leather couch facing a broad span of windows overlooking
the river. Pictures of every imaginable bird covered the
walls, from tiny bluebirds to diving hawks with outstretched
claws ready to rip and tear.

I explained the purpose of my visit. “You and Mr. Edney
had known each other for years according to Miss Collins,
who by the way asked me to tell you `hi and not to be such
a stranger.’

A slight blush colored his cheeks. He ducked his head.
“She’s a fine woman” He cleared his throat. “Now, how can
I help you?”

“You knew him for a long time, right?”

“All our lives. We grew up together. We often talked about
a preserve for the endangered birds.”

“I suppose you heard about the new will?”

His gentle smile faded. “I couldn’t believe it when Abby
told me. She called me last night. Poor thing was in tears.
JW had never in his life gone back on his word” He shook
his head. “I was stunned, Mr. Boudreaux. Stunned”

“I’ve seen the new will. It differs in two places from the
old one. In the new one, the land was bequeathed to his children, and Annebelle Edney is included. Did he ever mention
either of those changes to you?”

“Never. Last time anything was said about the will was
when he gave it to us ten or eleven years ago. JW was funny
like that. Eccentric you might say.”

I arched an eyebrow. Eccentric! An understatement if I’d
ever heard one. “Why would he give the society a copy of
his will? Abby said it was because he wanted the society to
know that he was serious about what he had promised”

Jenkins hesitated, his thin face screwed in concentration.
He rose and walked to the window and stared out over the
river. “I never could figure out why he was so obsessed with
proving to people he meant what he said he was going to
do” He turned back to me. “Does that make sense?”

His meaning evaded me. “Not really.”

He scratched his head. “It was something more with JW.
He could have simply told us he was bequeathing the land to
the society, but he took it a step forward and gave us a copy
of the will. Like I said, eccentric. You see what I’m trying to
say?”

“Sorry. I suppose I’m just dense”

He returned to his seat on the couch. “Ask anyone who
knew JW. If he told someone he was going to-” He paused,
then shook a thin finger at me. “I remember several years
ago. He wanted to buy an old Model T from a farmer near
Jackson-a little Runabout if my memory serves me correctly. I was with him when he told the man over the phone he would be out the next week to buy it. As soon as he hung
up, he sat down and wrote the same man a letter stating
exactly what he had said on the telephone.” He paused.
“Would you do something like that?”

I shook my head, remembering the sheath of letters in
JW’s personal files, letters that confirmed commitments he
had made to various individuals.

“Nor would I,” Jenkins replied. “You see what I mean by
eccentric?”

For a few moments, I pondered his question. Slowly, I
began to see the point he was trying to make. “What you’re
trying to say is-”

“I’m not trying to say anything except that for him to
make such a change in the will and then not follow up on it
with a letter or note of confirmation to those affected was
not at all like JW. Not one bit.”

It was my turn to rise and cross the room to the window.
The muddy waters of the Mississippi churned slowly past.
Even from our location on the crest of a hill half a mile distant from the river, I could make out the giant swirls generated by the violent currents below the surface.

I felt as if I was caught up in its vortex, helpless in my
struggle against the rips and whirlpools of intrigue while I
tried to nail down solid evidence.

Still, I had more to go on now than I did only a few hours
earlier.

“More lemonade? Perhaps some cookies, oatmeal cookies? I’m not much of a baker, so I use ready-mix, but they
are tasty. I usually bake sugar cookies, but oatmeal goes better with lemonade.”

Turning back to him, I declined. “You baked them yourself, huh?”

“That’s one of the penalties of being a bachelor, Mr.
Boudreaux”

I looked around the neat cottage. On impulse, I reached
for a cookie. “I think I will try one.” Despite ready-mix, they were, as Jenkins said, tasty. “How come you never married?”
I asked around a bite of oatmeal cookie.

“Never found the right woman,” he said, his voice so soft
I had to strain to hear him.

“Well,” I replied with a good-natured grin, “what about
Abigail Collins?”

He blushed. “Oh, dear me no. She is much too young, and
too pretty.”

“She thinks highly of you”

He gave me a surprised look. “I didn’t know that.”

Suddenly, I felt a tinge of sorrow for the shy, quiet little
man who had probably lived his entire life in the shadows of
the Neanderthal Beach Bully, missing out on life because of
a reluctance to risk embarrassment by the rejection of a
woman.

I remembered the blush that had come to Abby’s cheeks
at the mention of his name. “Trust me. Go see her.”

When I left, I had a bounce in my step. It’s a good feeling to think that perhaps you’ve made someone’s life a little
better.

On the other hand, I reminded myself growing sober, a
second attempt had been made on my life.

Before driving away, I faithfully jotted my notes on threeby-five cards, pausing to reassess what I believed to be the
salient points of my visit with Wilson Jenkins.

First, the preserve had been the subject of many discussions over the years by Jenkins and Edney. Second, JW
Edney had made no mention of the two changes in the new
will. And third, Edney was obsessive about following up
promises with a letter of confirmation.

Why the latter?

I had no idea. And aberrant behavior always made me
wary of any theories or conclusions I might draw.

But now, the only logical conclusion I could construe
from the interview with Jenkins was that the changing of the
will with no follow-up was indeed out-of-character behavior
on the part of JW Edney.

Quickly, I glanced back over the growing stack of note
cards. For some reason, I had the feeling I had overlooked
some detail, but what?