by Julie Smith
“Shit, you met the guy? Got a cute little earring in his ear and a shaved head. What more ya gotta know about him? Probably shaves his legs too. Him and that Champagne boy’s what we used to call asshole buddies. Go over and watch ’em in action.”
Now that Talba thought about it, it was possible. They hugged a lot, but then, they’d suffered mutual tragedy. They behaved more or less like parts of a machine, too—or parts of a couple. And then there was that locker room story of Izaguirre’s—maybe Brad had been the grabber instead of Mike. But where all that got her she didn’t know.
“Tell me something,” she said. “In your opinion, who is really responsible for Jimmy’s death? Buddy or Brad?”
The Dorands looked at each other, maybe weighing the effect their answer could have on their lawsuit. Finally, Billy said, “Buddy, no question. Had to know better. Leitner’s only crime’s bein’ a moron. That and a fudgepacker.”
Talba kept her face steady: wincing wouldn’t win her any points. “Mrs. Dorand? You agree?”
Faye nodded, slowly. “Buddy. Family still owes us. This thing’s not goin’ away.”
Well, I am, Talba thought. And the sooner the better.
But she still had a question or two. “Y’all home the night Buddy was shot?”
Again, they looked at each other. Finally, Fay shrugged. “We don’t go out a lot. Must have been.”
“You didn’t hear the shot, did you?”
“I’m not sure we didn’t,” Billy said. “Heard somethin’ funny.”
“What?”
“Some kind of noise.”
“How can you remember that if you’re not sure you were home?”
Billy flared. “You callin’ me a liar, girl?”
“No, sir.” She turned her palms up to signal she wasn’t armed. “Just asking.”
“Well, get on down the road now. I’ve ’bout had enough of the likes of you.”
She got on down the road. Happily. No matter that the kitten was nowhere in sight.
Still hiding, she figured. And hoped it wouldn’t decide to go exploring while she was driving.
She wondered what Jimmy had been like. Lucy’d said she liked him. In that case, he must have resembled his parents only in having two arms and two legs. “Simple,” Ben Izaguirre had called them. A serious understatement.
Clearly they were racist, homophobic, and prejudiced against anyone better off than they were. They’d seen Buddy’s house and that had probably whetted their greed. She wasn’t sure she could believe a word either of them said.
Chapter 14
“Eddie, you got connections in the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s office?”
Eddie couldn’t believe Ms. Wallis sometimes. “I been in business thirty years, or what?”
“I take it that’s something like ‘Who de man’?”
Eddie sighed, feeling weary. “You got it, Ms. Wallis. Criminal or civil?” Because of a separation of jurisdictions after the Civil War, Orleans Parish had the only criminal sheriff in the country, whose main duty was to run the jail.
“Criminal.”
“Whatcha need?”
“Royce’s best friend used to be a deputy. Might have gotten fired.”
Eddie raised an eyebrow. “Ya gotta piss somebody off to be fired from that job. It ain’t civil service. You can be fired at will.”
“Ah. Even more interesting. Can you find out what happened?”
“What’s the matter, it’s not online?”
“Well, the guy’s not in rapsheets.com, but even a baroness can’t get personnel records.”
“Hang on there—forgot to wear my shock-absorbing tie today.”
“You should let Audrey pick out your ties.”
That annoyed Eddie. Audrey didn’t like the damn tie, either. What was up with women? Were they telepathic or something? “I’ll make some calls,” he said.
“Good. I’ve got to get going. I’ve got a kitten in the car.”
“Ya got a what?”
“Rescue kitten. For Raisa.”
“Darryl know about that?”
“He’ll love it—it’s a really sweet little thing.”
“Oh, boy,” was all he said, thinking about the time Audrey’d brought home a rescue kitten for Angie and her brother, Tony. He hadn’t loved it.
Instead of making calls, he decided to go over to the sheriff’s office, shoot the shit a little to keep his hand in. He asked at the receptionist’s desk for Chief St. Pierre, then waited till his old buddy St. Bernard came to get him—they didn’t let you roam the halls here. The guy’s name was Bernard St. Pierre, but anybody who’d ever met him understood the doggy thing—he was a big, shambling, broad-backed, slow-moving guy, loyal to a fault, who didn’t seem all that smart at first glance. Eddie’d had more than one glance.
“Eddie, my man, how ya been keepin’?” The Saint wore a slow canine grin that hid the fact that he’d probably taken in all the data Eddie offered by his mere presence. “Let me guess,” he said, “ya gave up desserts for Lent.”
Eddie had. “What makes ya think that, Saint?”
“Put on a few, haven’t ya? And ya not gon’ give up beer.”
“Pound or two,” Eddie shrugged. Ten, in fact. And he had given up desserts. The Saint was starting to bug him already. “Came by to ask about a former employee.”
“Ya know I can’t talk about that.” The Saint favored him with a wink that was more like a tent door flapping. “Come on into my office.”
Eddie followed. “Guy named Brad Leitner. Ever know him?”
“Oh. Him. Got rid o’ his sorry ass.”
“Uh-huh. I knew there was somethin’.”
“Queer as a quacker.” The Saint had his own language.
“Ya mean he’s an odd duck? Or ya mean he’s gay?”
“Oh, he’s an odd duck, all right. Kept to himself when he was here. Never one of the boys. I think some judge got him the job. And also queer as a quacker.”
“What judge?”
“We don’t say that name here anymore. FBI might be listening.”
“Ah. The one that was just in the news? Pals with Harry Nicasio?”
“The one Harry offed.”
“Harry offed!” Eddie hadn’t thought of that one. “Why would Harry off him?”
The Saint shrugged. “Knew too much. Kill the witness, ya kill the messenger. Nobody to testify, Harry stays out of a cage.”
“I don’t want to get too personal here, but seems to me some of your guys might make pretty good witnesses. Whatcha gonna do, keep ’em under guard?”
“Hell, they’re armed.”
“Ya really think Harry offed him?”
“Just a theory. But, my opinion? They don’t call Harry the Old Nick for nothin’.”
“I didn’t know they did.”
“Eddie, Eddie—ya been out of circulation too long. Sit down. Take a load off.”
The Saint sat in his own chair and picked up a mug of coffee. He didn’t offer Eddie any.
Eddie sat, too. “So about my queer duck. Ya sayin’ he is gay?”
“Gay as a blade. That don’t go down too well around here.”
“What, did he grab the other guys or something? How would anybody know?”
“Hell, he didn’t hide it. Talked about it all the time. Real popular dude.” The Saint rolled his eyes.
“Last I heard it wasn’t a firin’ offense, though.”
“Naah. He roughed up one too many prisoners.” Here, the Saint paused, pregnantly. “But, hell. You been around, Eddie. You know how it is. Assholes get out o’ line, somebody’s gotta control ’em.”
The Saint was subtle, but Eddie thought he was getting his drift. “Meaning he didn’t do anything that wasn’t standard procedure.”
“Usually, one deputy don’t report another.” The Saint’s eyes were hooded, his voice low. “Like I said, real popular guy.”
“Come on. The guy had juice. Didn’t Buddy Champagne pull any strings?”
> “Nope. Just let it happen.”
Eddie wondered what that meant. He said, “Think there was any kind of falling-out with the judge?”
The Saint just shrugged. “Buddy was a big boy. He knew how things work here.”
“So what you’re sayin’ is, Leitner was more or less drummed out.”
“We gotta have some standards here.”
“No quackers.”
“No quackers who brag about bein’ quackers. Ya see what I’m sayin’”
Eddie saw. There’d been a time when he’d been perfectly in sync with what happened to Leitner. He was surprised to find himself annoyed with the Saint’s smugness. “I musta moved on,” he said. “Hell, I’m a paragon of tolerance these days. Got me a black female associate. Young, too.”
“God help ya.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not the bad part. This one’s a college graduate and smarter’n your whole staff put together, which wouldn’t take all that much. And got a mouth on her.”
The Saint laughed. “Know what I’d do with that one? I’d fire her ass.”
Eddie stood up. “Can’t. Audrey and Angie’d fire me. Besides, she does all the work anymore.”
He thanked the good Lord Ms. Wallis would never find out he’d bragged about her to the sheriff’s main man—and then he thanked the sheriff’s main man. He left to report his findings, secretly chortling that he’d learned a new phrase to annoy Ms. Wallis with.
For once, she was in her office, doing the employment and prenuptial backgrounds (which she called “sweetie snoops”) that he loathed with every fiber of his sixty-six-year-old Luddite being. Give him a good insurance fraud any time. What he loved was to be out there with his camcorder, snaring some bozo who was supposed to be half-crippled building himself a new addition he intended to pay for with his insurance windfall. Guy like that deserved what he got. Eddie found it highly gratifying.
“What’d ya do with the kitten?”
“Took it home. Koko and Blanche weren’t pleased.” Her own two cats had been inherited from another job. Animals were sticking like lint to her lately.
“Had a talk with the Saint,” he said, helping himself to a seat.
“Who? Oh. St. Bernard. At OPP.” Orleans Parish Prison. “What’d he say?”
“Says Buddy got Leitner the job.”
“Big surprise.”
That annoyed Eddie, but it gave him the opportunity to use a word he thought she’d really hate, coming from his mouth. “You dissin’ me?” he said.
Instead of being annoyed, she laughed. “Eddie, how does a guy like you learn a word like that?”
“Hey, I’m as hip as the next guy. Ya want to hear the rest of it or not?”
“Spill, as they say in your generation.”
He decided to let that one go. “The Saint says he’s as queer as a quacker.”
He waited for her to go on for twenty minutes about homophobic bubbas. Instead, she only nodded. “I get it. Walks like a duck, talks like a duck.”
He’d overlooked that possible meaning, but he didn’t let on. “Specially talks like a duck,” he said. “He’s queer and he’s here, and he doesn’t care who knows—a real no-no down at OPP. Saint says they drummed him out on some kind of trumped-up charge.”
She pondered that one. “What kind of trumped-up charge?”
“Some kind of bullshit unnecessary roughness thing.”
“Ah, so he’s a sadist.”
Eddie was disgusted. “Ms. Wallis, ya usually smarter than this. The Saint said he didn’t do anything anybody else doesn’t do.” He wasn’t sure whether that was proper grammar or not, but he was pretty sure she’d tell him if it wasn’t. “They just didn’t want a queer in the ranks, get it?”
“You never heard where there’s smoke there’s fire?”
“Look, say what you want about the Saint, but he’s a fair guy. He says it, he means it.”
“From what I hear about that jail, they’ve got a lot of sadists down there. If Leitner got fired, he was probably worse than most.”
“I didn’t get to the good part yet. He thinks Harry Nicasio whacked Buddy.”
“Eddie, I know you didn’t tell him what we’re working on. Are you saying he just volunteered that?”
“Well, yeah. Yeah, he did. But I’m not a hundred percent sure he was serious. Said it was a witness protection thing, with a kind of a twist—protection from the witness.”
“Possible.” But she seemed dubious. “Lots of other witnesses out there.”
“That’s what I told him. You know what, though? I got an idea—what about Leitner as the perp? The Saint says Buddy didn’t lift a finger to help him when it went down. Maybe he didn’t trust him. Maybe he thinks Leitner was behind the newspaper story, and he asks for a meeting at the marina. They get in an argument, and Leitner kills him.”
“Heat of passion kind of thing?” She seemed doubtful.
Eddie shrugged. “Guess it’d have to be. Anyhoo, just a thought. How come you didn’t react to Leitner being gay?”
“Someone else told me that—said he and Royce Champagne are an item.”
“Thought Royce was married.” Too late, he realized his mistake.
“EdDEE! How naive can you be?”
Nothing to do but ignore her. “Know who I think you should be talking to?”
“The night watchman, right?”
Eddie stood up and glowered at her. “Yeah. If you think you can find him.” It pissed him off when she acted like she was one step ahead of him.
Talba had backgrounded Wesley Burrell in Arabi, but the most interesting thing she found about him was that he didn’t live in Arabi. He used to, that wasn’t hard to figure out, but he was living in Westwego now. Perhaps Burrell had had to put former addresses on his employment form and Royce had read it wrong. Surely he hadn’t tried to misdirect her deliberately—what would be the point? Childishness, she decided. And it could as easily be directed at Kristin and her great idea as at Talba and her investigation.
Burrell was a retired postal worker, which might not augur a towering intellect, but you never knew—by all accounts, the Saint was a pretty smart dude for the sheriff’s office. The good part was, if the guy worked as a night watchman, he ought to be home sleeping. She liked talking to sleepy people—they let things slip.
What she found was a dapper, well-built sixtyish guy in shorts, setting out spring begonias, now that it was getting warmer. Westwego was a working-class white town and this guy, despite his absence of beer gut, was probably a bubba who’d pretty naturally be suspicious of a black chick in the neighborhood. She pulled out her badge and license as she approached.
“Mr. Burrell?”
He stood up from his planting, his bony knees caked with dirt. “You FBI?”
She grinned. “Not nearly so bad as that. I’m a humble P.I.—you expecting the FBI?”
“I was involved in a murder—thought they might come around.”
“Well, they haven’t yet. I’m Talba Wallis.” They shook hands.
“You want to come in and have some iced tea?” This guy was no bubba.
“Sure,” she said, and followed him into a tiny white bungalow so neat she thought at first he was one of Brad’s gay friends. It wasn’t capital-f Fabulous, but it might be the Westwego equivalent. However, Burrell evidently wasn’t gay. A very neat, short-haired woman who looked a good ten years older than Burrell was working at a laptop on a table that clearly doubled as a desk in a dining room that clearly doubled as a library and office. It was completely lined with books.
“This,” he said with a flourish, “is my wife, Mary Ann. Mary Ann, this is Miss Wallis. She’s a private eye, come to call on us for some reason. You haven’t been up to anything you shouldn’t, have you?”
She made to stand, but Talba said, “Don’t get up.”
Mary Ann ignored her and stood up. “Sorry the place is such a mess. We’re putting in a little garden—just moved here last fall.” Talba saw that th
e laptop (which was wireless) was connected to a gardening site. Seed catalogues covered the table.
“We’re newlyweds,” Wesley Burrell said proudly. “I work contracting jobs from time to time. Came to remodel Mary Ann’s kitchen, and it was love at first sight.”
Talba said, “I thought you were a postal clerk.”
Both Burrells laughed. “I was, I was. Been most everything. Bartender, waiter, night watchman, you name it. Let me get you that iced tea.”
He bustled off, giving Mary Ann a chance to lead Talba into a living room that seemed to have been furnished by Pottery Barn. Obviously, Mary Ann was a great catalogue shopper. “Had to buy all new stuff,” she said. “My husband got the furniture.”
You little devil you, Talba thought. Carrying on with the contractor. If anybody didn’t look the type, she was it. “All but the books,” she said.
Mary Ann laughed. “I’m afraid I’ve got this little habit. I’m a retired librarian. But those are mostly Wesley’s. We bonded over The Lovely Bones—neither of us could stand it.”
“Why not?” Talba asked. “I kind of liked it.”
Mary Ann shivered. “All that heaven stuff. Gave us the willies. My ex-husband,” she added, “isn’t much of a reader. It’s true what they say—you can’t break up a happy marriage.” She held her hands apart like parentheses, containing her words. “And the kids were grown, so why not? Matter of fact, the grandkids are almost grown. We were both marking time. Lenny married his secretary the minute the divorce was final.”
“A win-win situation,” Talba said, and Wesley came back with the iced tea.
“Let’s sit down, shall we?” he said, handing Talba a tall cool glass. “If I can coin a cliché, to what do we owe the honor?”
“It can wait a minute,” Talba said. “You piqued my curiosity. Did you say you were involved in a murder?”
He nodded. “Client of mine was killed. It’s probably what you’re here about, right? I mean, Mary Ann and I lead kind of a blameless life—but not every day does a client get killed on my watch. And everyone else has been here to talk about it—I figured the FBI was next. Instead, I bet it’s you.” He gave her a shrewd look. “Besides, you discovered the body—we saw you on television.”
