The Devil Close Behind

by Janet Dawson

“Sounds like it was a major hassle,” I said.

  “Oh, Lord, it’s been nothing but a mess.” She threw her hands in the air. “Almost as much of a mess as what I went through after Katrina. The unit that burned is part of a fourplex, at the back. The other apartments had some fire and smoke damage and the guy next to the unit that burned already gave notice and moved out. And the people in the front units, they’re talking about leaving, too. It has been such a hassle. Like I said earlier, I’ve been fighting with those insurance people. They act like I torched the place myself. Believe me, I would not have done that. That was a good rental property, four units, and now I’ve got all that fixing up to do. Filling out paperwork and dealing with the police and the fire department. Then to have somebody die in the fire. It’s just too much.”

  Chapter Eleven

  According to the rental application Pat Doucette gave me, Slade had been employed at Melancon Supply. The company was located in a warehouse on Tchoupitoulas Street, in an industrial district not far from the Mississippi River. I parked near a funky-looking corner bar called Shorty’s and walked to the address, an L-shaped building surrounded by a tall chain-link fence. Across the driveway was a wide gate on wheels, accessed electronically, judging from the square black metal box on one side. It was open now, during business hours. Beyond the gate was a paved lot, with cars and trucks parked in slots on the left side. Directly in front of me were side-by-side metal roll-up doors. Both were open and led into the warehouse itself. I glimpsed tall shelves loaded with supplies, with aisles in between, and heard a beeping sound as a forklift lumbered into view. A tan pickup truck had pulled up near one of the doors and two men were loading cartons into the bed.

  The short end of the L pointed toward the street and it looked like a business office. I walked through the gate and turned right, heading for the door that led into the office. It was utilitarian, with concrete floors and off-white walls, bisected by a counter. The woman seated at the desk looked to be in her forties, with strawberry blond hair and a pale, washed-out complexion. She was on the phone. While I waited, I studied one of the brochures arrayed atop the counter, learning that Melancon supplied paper and janitorial products, selling everything from office supplies like cartons of paper, to paper plates and cups, cleaning products, supplies and equipment.

  The woman ended the phone call and looked up at me as she put an invoice back in its file folder and set it aside. “Can I help you?”

  “I’d like to get some information on a former employee.”

  She looked doubtful. “There’s not a whole lot I can tell you. Privacy rules and so forth. I can just confirm whether the person was employed here. What’s the name?”

  “Eric Slade.”

  When she heard the name, she narrowed her blue eyes and looked me up and down. “What is this about?”

  Pay dirt, I thought, noting her expression. That was a sign she knew plenty. Now to get her to talk.

  I flashed my best friendly, non-threatening smile. “Hey, it’s not official or anything like that. I’m just doing a favor for a friend, trying to find out more about the guy. He’s dating her sister and my friend doesn’t like him.” Which was true enough.

  The woman was nodding, a sympathetic look on her face. “I get that. I really do. I’d like to help, but I don’t want to get in bad with the boss, you know.”

  “I do know. And I understand.” I decided to lay out a plausible story. “It’s just that Slade told my friend that he worked here for a while and then he quit. Because it was interfering with his gigs. Because he’s a musician, plays the guitar. My friend is not sure whether to believe him.”

  She pursed her lips and gave a derisive snort. “Quit? Is that what he said? Oh, honey, they fired him.”

  “Oh, yeah? Given what I’ve heard about him, that doesn’t surprise me.” I leaned forward, elbows on the counter, as though getting settled for a long chat. “So, why did they let him go?”

  She hedged again, having second thoughts about dishing up some dirt. “I don’t know if I should tell you.”

  “I don’t want you to do anything that would get you in trouble. Can you put me in touch with his supervisor?”

  She thought about it and happily passed the buck. “Yeah, better you should talk to him. Stan Hollis, that’s his name. He’s the warehouse manager.” She glanced at the clock on the wall, which showed the time as nearly noon. “He should be going to lunch about now. Let me see if he’s in the building.”

  She picked up the handset and punched a couple of buttons. I heard her voice echoing over an intercom, somewhere deep in the warehouse. “Stan, line three. Pick up line three.” A few seconds later, she said, “Hey, it’s Ella. Glad I caught you before you went to lunch. Say, I got a lady here in the office. I think you need to talk to her.” She hung up the phone. “He’ll be up in a minute.”

  A short time later, a big man came out of the warehouse and walked briskly across the lot, opening the office door. Stan Hollis was over six feet tall and he had broad shoulders and a muscular frame. There was a lot of gray in his black hair, and his coffee-colored face was round and friendly, with laugh lines. “Hey, Ella. What’s up?”

  Ella pointed at me. “This lady here has some questions about Slade.”

  All vestiges of friendliness vanished from the man’s face. I had a feeling that if I could get him to talk, I’d hear plenty. “Why?” he asked me.

  “My name’s Jeri,” I told him. I launched into the same story I’d given Ella, that I was tracking down information on Slade for a friend. “Ella seems to think you might have something to tell me.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I can tell you plenty. Your friend is right to be concerned. I sure as hell wouldn’t like it if Slade was involved with any woman I know.”

  “Great. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?” That was my go-to for collecting information. Surely the corner bar I’d seen had coffee.

  “No place around here to buy coffee except Shorty’s,” he said. “And their coffee tastes like sludge. But it’s my lunch hour and I’d sure take a beer with my burger.”

  “Lead the way.” I turned to Ella. “Thanks for your help. Bring you something?”

  “Why, thank you,” she said with a smile. “I’d take a nice cold root beer.”

  Stan and I walked down to Shorty’s. It looked the way I expected, like every dive bar I’d ever been in, with red vinyl booths and a scuffed black-and-white checkerboard linoleum floor. There was a TV attached to the wall over the bar, with the sound thankfully lowered and replaced by captions, showing some news program. On the jukebox, Irma Thomas was singing “I Wish Someone Would Care.” The place was doing a brisk lunch-hour trade. The air was redolent with the smell of grilled meat, onions and grease.

  Stan and I slid into a vacant booth near the front. “Don’t let the funky looks fool you,” he said. “They make great burgers here.”

  “Sounds good to me.” It had been a while since breakfast and I was hungry. I reached for the plastic-covered menu propped up between bottles of ketchup, mustard and the inevitable Louisiana Tabasco sauce, and consulted the short list of offerings.

  A woman wearing jeans and a red T-shirt came over to our booth. Her long dangling earrings jingled as she moved. “Hey, Stan. Your usual?”

  “Absolutely. Cheeseburger with grilled onions, medium rare, with fries. And bring me an Abita Turbodog.”

  “Make that two Turbodogs,” I said. “Bacon cheeseburger, with cheddar, cooked medium. I’ll try those sweet potato fries. And I’ll take an ice-cold Abita root beer to go later, on my way out the door.”

  “You got it,” she said and headed for the kitchen.

  It was the kind of place where you drink your beer out of a bottle rather than a glass, I thought, and I was proved right when the server delivered our Turbodogs. I raised the bottle to my lips and drank. It went down easy and now the odors coming from the kitchen were enticing.

  Stan took a long pull from his own bottle and set
it on the table. “Hits the spot. So, Jeri, is this on the level?”

  “It is.” I took two business cards from my bag, mine and Antoine’s. I laid them on the table. “I’m a private eye, but I’m not local. I’m in town on vacation and one of my friends from the Bay Area calls me, tells me her sister disappeared with her boyfriend, a guy named Slade. The sister quit her job, gave up her apartment, the whole nine yards. She and Slade loaded all their stuff into an SUV and vanished. She hasn’t gotten in touch with her family. My friend is worried and so are her parents. I contacted another private eye here in town. That’s his card. He’ll vouch for me if you want to call him.”

  Stan examined the cards, then he looked up at me. “No, I’m good. I believe you.”

  “Great. And thanks.” I stopped as the server placed our lunches on the table. Melted cheddar oozed from beneath the bun. After doctoring the burger with condiments, I took a bite. Stan was right, the burgers were terrific. “So, you were Slade’s supervisor. Ella says you let him go.”

  “I fired his ass.” Stan set his burger on the plate and pulled paper napkins from a dispenser on the table. He wiped his hands and mouth, then reached for the fries, popping a handful into his mouth. “That guy Slade, he was a slacker. He never showed up on time, took off early, sometimes he just wouldn’t show up at all. And he was mouthy. Always had something to say. Better at running his mouth than he was at doing his job.”

  “Which was?”

  “Stocker,” he said, picking up his burger again. “He was supposed to keep the shelves stocked after we got deliveries, keep on top of inventory, that sort of thing. But Slade didn’t do a lick of work unless I dogged him. And I had to dog him all the time. I don’t think he ever held a full-time job in his life. I bet you dollars to doughnuts all that stuff on his job application was a work of fiction.”

  “I don’t suppose you could let me have a look at that application,” I said, a hopeful note in my voice.

  He shook his head. “I don’t suppose I could. Who I talk to on my lunch hour is my business, but letting you have a peek at company paperwork wouldn’t go down too well.”

  “I understand. But it was worth a try.” I took another bite of my burger.

  “So yeah,” Stan continued, “I fired him. January, right after Christmas. He’d worked here since October. During that time, I gave him a couple of warnings, telling him that number three would be termination. Came the time he messed up again, I fired him. The boss backed me up. We told him to clear out his locker and get off the premises. He was pissed.”

  I considered this, setting down my burger in favor of the sweet potato fries. “Is he the type to get even?”

  “Oh, yeah. He did. He started a fire.”

  Fire? That got my attention. I leaned toward Stan. “Are you sure it was Slade?”

  “If you mean, did I see him do it, no. But it was him. Had to be.” He took a swig of beer. “A fire in a place like that, all the paper and chemicals we’ve got in that warehouse. Somebody could have been hurt. Hell, somebody could have been killed.”

  I thought about the fire at the apartment Slade had rented. Somebody was killed there. Slade had a whiff of smoke about him and that was disturbing.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “It was two days after I told Slade he was fired. We work eight to five, sometimes later. The place empties out by evening and this part of town is deserted. Shorty’s closes by midnight. So it was about one in the morning when I got the call. Got here in time to watch the fire department put out the fire. It caused a lot of damage. Not so much from the fire itself, but the sprinklers. Everything in that part of the warehouse was soaked. I don’t have a dollar figure, but I know Mr. Melancon was upset, big time. The fire department guys said it was arson. Slade got in and piled up a bunch of stuff, doused it with some kind of liquid, they said, and set it off.”

  “How would Slade get into the place? I assume you terminated his access when you fired him.”

  “We certainly did. The employees get access by swiping a card on a key pad.”

  “So he came over the fence,” I said. “It looks like it’s eight feet tall.”

  “Yeah, I think it is. I couldn’t climb it, but it would be easy enough for a young guy like Slade to climb over. There’s no razor wire on top.”

  “How did he get into the building itself? Did he break a window? Would that have triggered an alarm?”

  Stan shook his head, his burger in midair. “He didn’t break a window. There’s one door on the back side of the warehouse that opens with a key. I figure Slade must have swiped that key and had a duplicate made. It’s got do not duplicate stamped on it, but locksmiths have been known to ignore that. At least that’s my theory. I sure as hell can’t prove it. And at that time of night, it should have triggered an alarm. But the damn thing had been jimmied. He planned it. He got that key made and disabled the alarm, then he went inside and started that fire. The son of a bitch.” Stan frowned and went back to work on his burger.

  “Security cameras?” I asked.

  “Yeah, we got them. I heard they picked up a blurry image of a guy wearing a hoodie. Not much help.”

  When we’d finished our lunch, the server delivered the check, along with the root beer, the bottle icy cold to the touch. I grabbed the check. “This is on me, Stan. You’ve been very helpful.”

  I covered the check with bills and slid out of the booth, picking up the root beer. Ella was delighted when I delivered it to her in the office. Stan headed back to the warehouse and I walked to my rental car.

  I checked my phone for messages. Antoine had called, twice. I called him back. “I have plenty to tell you,” I said.

  “Same here,” he said. “Let’s meet at my office and compare notes.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Fire and brimstone,” I said. “It can’t be a coincidence. Slade gets fired from his job at Melancon Supply in January. Two days later, there’s a fire in the warehouse. Slade gets evicted from Pat Doucette’s apartment building in February. Two weeks later, that particular unit goes up in smoke.”

  “With Ray Brixton inside,” Antoine said.

  We were at his kitchen table and he was eating an oyster po’ boy, the ubiquitous New Orleans sandwich served on French bread. After my burger and fries at Shorty’s, I wasn’t even tempted to snatch a bite, although the sandwich was bursting with fried oysters.

  “It’s looking more and more like Slade set those fires, first at the warehouse, then at the apartment, to get back at Pat for evicting him. But why was Brixton there?” I was thinking out loud. “Was he an accomplice? Did he come along to help Slade set the fire? Or is something else going on? Something we’re not seeing yet? We have to talk with Cindy Brixton.”

  Antoine nodded in agreement. He set his sandwich on the array of paper towels that served as a plate, then wiped his mouth with another towel. “She’s not returning my calls. My contact at the fire department says she travels for work, so I’m thinking she’s out of town. I say we go over to where she lives. I’ve got her address. In the meantime, we’ve got two leads to check out, the car dealership and the other musician.”

  Between bites of his po’ boy, he had told me that his sister, Daisy, had called him earlier in the day. She’d been asking around and had come up with the name and phone number of another guitar player who knew Slade. The guy had a day job, like many of the local musicians. We’d called and left a message, hoping that he’d return the call.

  “What about Laurette’s car?” I asked. “You found out something?”

  Antoine got up from the table, wrapped up the rest of his sandwich and stashed it in the refrigerator. As he washed his hands at the sink, he said, “Yeah. My buddy at the Office of Motor Vehicles came through. We help each other out now and then.”

  “A little quid pro quo never hurts. What did you find out?”

  “Laurette went back to the same dealership where she bought the Civic. Which makes sense. That’s what
I’d do if I was going to trade in my car.”

  “Great. Let’s take a ride over there.”

  He jingled his key ring. “I’ll drive.”

  The Honda dealership was in Metairie, in Jefferson Parish, on the other side of the Seventeenth Street Canal. We located the salesman who’d handled the deal. He was a round-faced man in his forties, wearing a lightweight gray suit and a name tag that said his name was Ron. At first, he didn’t want to give us any information, citing privacy concerns. We told him why we were there and offered to give him the Tedescos’ phone numbers, so he could verify our story.

  He shook his head and pointed us toward his office, a glass-enclosed space looking out on the showroom. “I’m sorry to hear that Ms. Mason is missing. I can’t show you the paperwork or anything like that. But ask your questions and I’ll answer them if I can.”

  “I just want to make sure we’re talking about the same person,” Antoine said. “She traded in a green Honda Civic.” He consulted a slip of paper and rattled off the license plate number.

  Ron took a seat at the desk and his fingers played over the keyboard. He squinted at the computer screen, then nodded. “That’s right. That’s the plate number on the Honda she traded in. She and the young man with her picked out a Ford Escape, red, with a gray interior.”

  “What’s the plate number on that Ford?” Antoine asked.

  Ron grabbed a slip of paper and a pen, jotting down the number. He handed it to Antoine, who showed it to me. Bert, the manager at Laurette’s apartment, had been right about the double fours in the license number.

  “What can you tell us about the man she was with?” I asked.

  “I didn’t talk with him,” Ron said. “I did the transaction with her. She had the trade-in and the cash. The Civic was in her name. I assumed he was a friend of hers, along for the ride, so to speak, to help her pick out another vehicle. He went on the test drive with her and it came down to a choice between the Ford and another Honda. They talked it over. I heard a bit of that conversation. He was pushing for the Ford, because it was bigger.” The salesman leaned back in his chair. “The guy was talking on a cell phone most of the time. In fact, at one point he got so loud one of the other dealers asked him to step outside. He acted as though he was going to get belligerent about that, but Ms. Mason talked with him. Eventually he did go outside.”