Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 04 - Vicksburg (9 page)

The grandfather clock struck 11.

Jack jumped. “Hey, Tony, about tonight. You are staying
here aren’t you?”

I started to refuse, but the pleading look on his face got
the better of me. Reluctantly I caved in. “I suppose”

He grinned in relief. “Then you better check out of the
motel before they charge you for another day.” He nodded to
his cast. “And look, see if you can find me another feather.
I’ve got to have something. This fly swatter is rubbing me
raw.”

Before I returned with my gear to the old house, I took a
run south of town. Twenty miles down, after inquiring at a
Mom and Pop convenience store, I found the property, and
to my surprise, a realtor’s sign prominently on display. I read
it aloud. “Bayou Realtors, Vicksburg.” In the lower corner
was the realtor’s designation, “Property #38” Pulling to the
side of the highway, I jotted the telephone number as well as
the property number. This was one real estate agent I wanted to visit.

On the way back to Vicksburg, I called Bayou Realtors for
directions to their office.

A white-brick building with picture windows spanning
the front housed Bayou Realtors. The neat office sat on a
well-manicured lot adjacent to the Vicksburg Battlefield. A
Ford Taurus was parked in front.

For several moments, I studied the building. Someone
didn’t want me snooping. He, or she, had made that abundantly clear. As far as I knew, the realtor might be part of
whatever was going on. Just to play safe, I decided to be an
out-of-town land speculator searching for cheap land to
develop.

Inside, the young woman behind the receptionist’s desk
looked up and smiled warmly. “Yes, sir, can I help you?”

“I hope so,” I said, falling into the pretext role of a
prospective buyer. “I was curious about a piece of land
south of town, Property Thirty-Eight. It could fit the bill for
some developments I’m working on. What’s the asking
price on it?”

She turned to her computer on her right, input the information, then nodded when it flashed on the screen. “That
piece consists of one thousand and ten acres”

I could see the screen over her shoulder. I skimmed it as I
asked, “What kind of price did the owner put on it?”

“Let’s see” She ran her finger across the field of data.
“Here we are. Fifteen thousand an acre.”

My jaw dropped open, but I don’t know if it was because
of the price or the fact I spotted the name of the property
owner in the top left-hand corner of the screen, Stewart
Edney!

She turned to me and frowned when she saw the surprise
scribbled across my face. “Are you all right?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” I hastily replied, trying
to recover the role I was playing. “What did you say they
were asking for the property?”

“Fifteen thousand an acre,” she said sweetly. “And
according to Mr. Charbonneau-he’s the office managercheap at that price.”

I whistled softly and gave her a smile. “Maybe so, but
that’s a little more than I had in mind. Thanks anyway.”

Thirty minutes later I was back at the house, presenting
Jack a flexible plastic rod with tiny fingers on one end,
specifically designed for slithering under casts.

While he was contentedly scratching away, I deposited
my gear, along with my .38, in an upstairs bedroom of the
old mansion’s second addition that was supposed to have
been constructed in 1836. There were two doors to the bedroom, one opening to a narrow stairway that led below to a storage room adjoining the dining room. The second door
opened onto the side gallery on the second floor, which led
to the door opening to the circular stairs leading down to the
lobby.

The bed was a four-poster with the requisite mosquito
netting of the period, which fortunately was unnecessary
because of the air conditioning unit fitted snugly in one
window.

I placed my laptop on an ancient writing desk, one so old
the scars were dark.

A grin played over my face when I spotted my e-mail
from Eddie Dyson. The grin faded when I read his charge,
three hundred dollars. I shook my head. “Doesn’t look like
much, Eddie. Not for three hundred bucks,” I muttered as I
read through it, then printed it on my portable ink jet.

I read back over the information as it emerged from the
printer.

WR owed almost a quarter of a million on his business,
half of which was in arrears. On top of that, he and his wife,
Dorene, had divorced each other twice and remarried.
Currently, they were divorced for the third time.

Stewart, gay as the sky is blue, owed the same bank over
a hundred thousand, twenty of which was in arrears. In addition to regularly attending gay conventions in New Orleans,
he sported a lengthy arrest record in the City of Sin, but
strangely enough, none in Vicksburg. The former record
must have been the shame to the family to which Annebelle
had referred the day before; the latter, or lack thereof, a tribute to the power of money in a small city.

Of the three, money did not appear to be a motive for
Annebelle. She owned her home, a small, neat brick in Old
Town, and possessed a modest bank account. Still, there are
some who are not content merely to possess a simple home
and modest bank account.

Maybe she was one of those.

I leaned back and studied the report, disappointed in the lack of substance. Still, it provided me another avenue to
explore, the debt of the older brothers. As far as Annebelle
was concerned, I could see no glaring financial motive for
killing her father. Her brothers? Well, that was a different
matter.

From the obvious acrimony displayed the day before
between the three, there was no question in my mind that if
Annebelle Edney spotted either of her brothers lying dead in
the street, she would not hesitate to simply step over him and
go on her merry way.

And neither was there a shred of doubt in my mind that
they would gleefully reciprocate, leaving her behind without
a thought.

Without warning, the patter of gently falling rain sounded
on the wood shake roof. The rain grew heavier. Rain gusted
across the gallery outside my door so I took the back stairs
and cut through the dining room to the parlor.

As I passed the dining room table, I spotted the sympathy
cards I’d opened for Jack the day before. I paused long
enough to scoop them up. No reason I shouldn’t talk to some
of them. Perhaps they could provide me with some useful
information.

I was skimming over them when a severe voice demanded,-“-May I help you?”

Glancing around, I saw a slight woman in a dark dress
with a white lace collar. Her thin face wore a frown, and her
gray hair was pulled back into a severe bun on the back of
her head. She was prim personified. I nodded. “You must be
Alice.”

She pursed her lips.

“I’m Tony Boudreaux, a friend of Jack’s. I’m the one who
drove him over from Austin.” I glanced at the ceiling. “He
put me in the upstairs bedroom”

Her face softened. “I didn’t know Mr. Jack had a guest”

“Sorry. We should have let you know.” I don’t know why
I felt the urge to apologize, but it just seemed the thing to do.

With a brief nod, she said, “Would you care for some tea,
Mr. Boudreaux? Fresh made. I’m getting some for Mr.
Jack.”

For a moment, I started to decline, but despite it being the
middle of the summer, the drizzle running down the outside
of the windows sent a chill through me. “Sure. Sounds
good”

She nodded. “I’ll bring it to you in the parlor with Mr.
Jack’s.”

I stopped her. “Alice, can I talk to you a few moments
first?”

She nodded, a puzzled look on her face. I guessed her to
be in her seventies or so, but she had aged well. “Certainly,
sir.”

“You probably knew more about John Edney than anyone”

She cast a sidelong glance at the parlor. “I knew him very
well. Probably better than his own children.”

I picked up a nuance of resentment in her tone. Then I
remembered the will. I tried not to push too fast. “How long
had you been with him?”

Her response was instantaneous. “Eighteen years, six
months, and fourteen days. Never sick once. I always had his
meals on time, kept his house clean, and his clothes fresh.
Not once did Mr. Edney ever complain.”

“He must have been satisfied. He included you in his will.”

Her eyes narrowed. “How did you know that? What business is it of yours?”

“Jack and I are old friends. I’m a private investigator back
in Texas. Jack couldn’t believe his father was so careless that
he killed himself in an accident. He wanted to look into it.”

Her glaring suspicion turned into a frown. “Look into it?”
Her frown deepened as she absorbed the implication of my
remarks. “You think it wasn’t an accident?”

With a shrug, I replied, “I can’t say. Any information pertinent to Mr. Edney’s death, I have to turn over to the
Vicksburg Police Department. They make the call.”

She drew a deep breath, then slowly released it. “Yes, he
included me in his will. I haven’t seen it, but that’s what he
told me.” Her brows knitted in anger and her words reeked
with sarcasm. “He said I was in his will for the grand sum of
ten thousand dollars.” She shook her head, her words
exploding in anger. “Can you imagine, Mr. Boudreaux? I
took care of that man for eighteen years, six months, and
fourteen days-better than his worthless children have ever
done, and all he leaves me is ten thousand dollars.” She
shook her head. Tears welled in her eyes. “You know, I could
have taken some of the silver or other valuables and sold
them on eBay or at some flea market. Nobody would have
known”

I felt her hurt, and her anger. “No. They probably
wouldn’t.” ”

She gave me a rueful grin and wiped at the tears in her
eyes. “Don’t misunderstand. I’m not crying because of him,
but because I’m mad at myself, and I don’t know why. I guess
it’s because I feel like I’ve wasted eighteen years of my life.
You know, I don’t guess I should have, but I expected more.”
She drew a deep breath and slowly released it. “Mr. Edney,
well, he was the only family I had. I just expected more from
him.” She drew another deep breath, then sighed in resignation. “Well, there’s nothing I can do about it now, is there?”

I suppose not, but you could answer a few more questions for me”

Pulling herself erect, she nodded. “Certainly. What do
you want to know?”

“Tell you what, Alice. Bring me the tea in the parlor.
Bring some for yourself too. We’ll have us a little visit.”

A look of alarm showed in her face. “But, Mr. Jack. He’s
in there”

I winked at her. “He was the one who started this whole
thing.”

She nodded. “If you say so. Just you go up in the parlor,
and I’ll be right back”

Jack looked up from a rerun of “I Love Lucy” when I
entered the parlor. His face wreathed in ecstasy, he was
scratching under his cast with the slender rod. “Well, you get
settled in?”