by DJ Donaldson
The air filter of the T-Bird and a small tool chest were lying on the grass. A few other pieces of the engine were resting on an orange rag spread out on the fender. Bubba was hard at work under the hood with a socket wrench. In addition to his tools, he’d brought along a jumpsuit, which he was now wearing.
“You plannin’ on pullin’ the engine right here?” Broussard joked.
Bubba looked up and grinned. “Not unless Ah get a lot more money.”
“Kit and I are gonna take a little ride in her car.” He looked at his watch. “We all been invited to lunch at noon. So, we’ll be back no later than quarter till to pick you up.”
Bubba saluted with the wrench and went back to work.
*
At the Texaco station, Kit parked off to the side so she wouldn’t block the entrance to the work bays. In one of them, a mechanic was using an air wrench to tighten the lugs on a car up on the lift. There was a sheriff’s car with the hood up in the other.
Broussard headed toward a skinny lad wearing a Texaco cap and a baggy Texaco shirt with the tail out. Oblivious to their approach, he was leaning on a windshield-wiper display and gazing off into the distance while he worked two fingers around in a red and silver tobacco pouch.
“Scuse me,” Broussard said.
The kid pulled a clump of shaggy fibers from the pouch and packed them into his mouth. “Watcha need?” he asked, his words slurred by the sludge in his cheek. Kit hoped she wouldn’t have to see him spit.
“Scotty, is Sheriff Guidry here?”
Kit wondered how Broussard knew the kid’s name, then saw it herself in a red stitched patch on his shirt.
“In there,” the kid said, jerking his head toward the bay with the sheriff’s car. His tongue licked at a brown trickle oozing from the corner of his mouth.
Kit followed Broussard inside, where they found someone leaning so far into the car’s engine that his feet were off the ground.
“Sheriff?”
The man grunted and worked himself free. Kit couldn’t imagine anyone looking less like a lawman. He was wearing a black Mickey Mouse T-shirt with black pants whose cuffs were stuck into the tops of badly scuffed black boots. His wiry gray hair was pulled back in a ponytail held in place by a leather thong. On one arm, he had a professional tattoo consisting of the word courage lettered across a pair of wings. On the opposite bicep, an inept friend had stenciled him with a dagger dripping blood.
Kit suspected that his three-day growth of beard was simple neglect and not an affectation. As derelict as his overall appearance was, his black eyes were quick and sharp. He dipped his fingers into a tin of degreaser and worked it into both hands, his narrowed eyes sizing Broussard up.
“This is Kit Franklyn and I’m Andy Broussard, medical examiner for Orleans Parish,” Broussard said.
Guidry’s long fingers did a slippery dance over each other, the muscles in his forearms rippling. “You’re a long way from home,” he said coldly, wiping away the degreaser with a clean orange rag.
Guidry offered his hand and Broussard took it without hesitation. Seeing how the old pathologist’s stubby fingers were barely able to get a purchase on the other man’s huge mitt, Kit understood why Guidry had such a smug look on his face. Broussard didn’t have a chance.
Guidry’s fingers wrapped around Broussard’s hand like the petals on a Venus’s-flytrap sensing dinner. His hand whitened with pressure and the veins in his arm began to bulge. Under the strength of Guidry’s grip, Broussard’s fingers also went white. Kit looked hopefully for the veins in Broussard’s forearm but saw no sign of them. To Broussard’s credit, he was maintaining a stoic demeanor, taking the pain well.
The two men stood quietly, locked in combat, for what seemed like a very long time, Guidry’s sweaty forearm reflecting light off muscles that looked as though they were carved out of stone. Did Broussard even have any forearm muscles? There was no evidence of it. Still Broussard showed no expression. On the other hand, Guidry no longer looked so smug. He, too, had reverted to a poker face.
On the struggle went, pearls of sweat popping out on the forehead of both men. Kit felt as if she should wipe Broussard’s brow. Then, hardly believing what she was seeing, a tear welled up in Guidry’s eye, spilled out, and mingled with the sweat on his face. His muscles relaxed and his fingers opened. When Broussard released him, the sheriff cradled his combatant hand in the other and massaged it.
“Maybe Orleans Parish ain’t so far away, after all,” Guidry said. “What can I do for you?”
“What can you tell me about the murder of Homer Benoit?”
“Dunno who did it, if that’s what you mean. Probably a drifter, long gone before we ever found the body.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Nobody around here had any motive.”
“He have a wife?”
“If he did, I’d have been all over her like grease on a ball joint.”
“Was he carryin’ any money?”
Guidry’s face darkened. “That’s the part that bothers me. He had fifty dollars and a coupla credit cards in his wallet.”
“So why would a drifter kill him, especially so brutally?”
“You ever notice how much easier it is to come up with questions in a murder than answers?”
“The courthouse still in Breaux Bridge?”
“Last time I looked. Why you so interested in Homer Benoit?”
“Could be whoever killed him did three more in New Orleans.”
“Before or after?”
“After.”
“Then I was right, wasn’t I? Guidry gave Broussard a satisfied look.”
“Maybe… maybe not. Could be you’re tryin’ to put a size-eleven shoe on a size-six foot.”
“Meanin’?”
“It’ll go on, but so will a lot of other sizes. Trick is to find the one that fits snugly.”
“Well, if you come up with a better fit, I’d like to hear about it.”
“Oh, I expect your explanation is the right one. I just like to move facts around and see how many ways they can be arranged and still make sense. Kind of a hobby. Exercise for the mind. Guess we ought to let you get back to work. Not good to have the law without transportation.”
On the way back to the car, Kit said, “How’d you do that?”
“Do what?” Broussard said.
“Best him in that handshake.”
Broussard put on a hurt look. “You sayin’ you doubted my ability goin’ in?”
“Do you always answer a question with a question?”
“I don’t think so. Do I?”
“Forget it.”
“Forget what?”
Kit jabbed her finger at him. “You are cracking up.”
A sound like distant thunder rolled up from some hidden grotto inside the old pathologist and he began to chuckle with his whole body. Kit tried hard to look stern, but her face wouldn’t cooperate. And once the smile started, it couldn’t be stopped.
CHAPTER 14
When they arrived at the Duhons’, the butler, Martin, was down by the boat dock spreading white clouds of smoke from a wand attached to a pack on his back. From that direction, they could hear a sound like a Model T: putt, putt, putt.
“Schefenacker,” Broussard said.
“I beg your pardon?” Kit answered.
“He’s wearin’ a Schefenacker. It’s what folks around here use to keep the mosquitoes down.”
“Martin and the Schefenacker,” Kit said. “Sounds like a group that could sell a million records.”
Broussard scratched his beard and shook his head. “And you think I’m crackin’ up?” He glanced back at Bubba, who was admiring the house with his mouth open. “Bubba, you better get up here. Hungry as I am, I get in the house first, might be nothin’ left for you.”
When Kit saw the lunch Olivia had prepared, she understood why Broussard had been concerned about Olivia fussing over them. At the same time, she was glad to be there.
The table was set with ornate gold-plated trays and tableware, crystal with a gilded tint, and little decorated fans that matched the ivory linen tablecloth. In addition to a blood-red tomato aspic surrounded by parsley on an elevated crystal pedestal and a huge crystal bowl of oysters Rockefeller on a bed of rock salt, there were individual salads, seafood maybe, in crenelated pastry shells. At each place setting, there was a large turquoise and rose plate piled high with another kind of salad resting on a crepe and topped with a red sauce.
“Olivia, what am I gonna do with you?” Broussard said, in awe at what she’d prepared.
“You’re going to sit down and have lunch,” Olivia replied.
“How did you manage all this so quickly?” Kit asked.
“I’ve had plenty of practice, dear.”
“Claude, you’re a lucky man,” Broussard said, patting his old friend on the back.
“Don’t let this fool you,” Claude said. “I get frozen dinners when we’re alone.”
“Mr. Oustellette, why are you standing way over there?” Olivia said to Bubba, who seemed afraid to come close to the table.
“It jus’ don’ seem like Ah oughtta be here,” Bubba said, holding his cap in his hand. “Everything is so fine.”
“Nonsense,” Olivia said, going over to him and guiding him by the shoulder. “You shall sit next to me.”
The food was all as good as it looked, and Bubba soon relaxed and seemed to be enjoying himself. But when the oysters were passed, he helped himself to a few pieces of rock salt along with the oysters. Kit could see what was about to happen but could do nothing to prevent it. As he popped a large piece of rock salt into his mouth, she did what she could.
“These fans are quite unusual,” she said, picking one up and spreading it. “I’m sure I’ve seen this scene in a museum painting somewhere. Do you know who the artist was?”
With this cover, the look on Bubba’s face when he tasted the salt went unnoticed by his hosts and he was able to get rid of the piece in his mouth and the ones on his plate by putting them in his pocket. Broussard, of course, saw everything.
Dessert was a scoop of chocolate ice cream surrounded by a rosette of tiny ladyfingers. Despite her fear that the Frigi-King plant in New Orleans might ship this far, Kit managed to finish it all. At Olivia’s suggestion, they took their coffee into one of the parlors, where Claude finally got around to asking the question that must have been on his mind since he’d seen Broussard in Burke’s office.
“Andy, what exactly did you mean when you said you were here on official business?”
“Claude!” Olivia spoke his name in a shocked tone.
“Liv, everybody knows that people in small towns are busybodies. I’m just upholding an old tradition.”
“Nothin’ classified in what we’re doin’,” Broussard said. He related the whole story, then added something even Kit hadn’t heard. “And now that Olivia has fed us in such grand style, we’re goin’ to the courthouse in Breaux Bridge to get an exhumation order for the body of Homer Benoit.”
“To see if Burke was right about his throat wounds?” Claude asked.
“Exactly. And if we expect to make any progress today, we’d better get a move on.”
“Are you expecting to get all that done before dark?” Kit said. “I mean, including the exhumation?”
“Kit’s right,” Claude said. “Wheels don’t move any faster here than they do in New Orleans, maybe slower. Why don’t you plan to stay the night. We’ve got rooms enough for all of you.”
“On one condition,” Broussard replied. “I take you out tonight for dinner and you keep breakfast simple.” He looked hard at Olivia.
“Agreed,” she said.
After Broussard called his office and told them where he could be reached, they all thanked Claude and Olivia one last time and left. As Broussard was getting into the T-Bird, which Bubba believed had been successfully repaired, Kit said, “If you don’t mind, there’s something I’d like to do while you’re in Breaux Bridge.”
“Feel free,” Broussard said. “You goin’ with us tonight?”
“I’m not sure. Probably.”
“Let me know if we should wait for you. I expect we’ll be goin’ around seven.”
Kit followed the T-Bird out of town, but at the sign pointing to the Bayou Coteau Alligator Farm, they parted company. Two miles from where she left the town road, the pavement ran under a large cypress sign attached to poles on each shoulder: BAYOU COTEAU ALLIGATOR FARM. T. LABICHE, PROP. Below Teddy’s name was the same logo she’d seen on the door of Teddy’s truck: a cartoon alligator with big round eyes, emerging from an egg.
Beyond the entrance, on the left, a series of long cement-block buildings with corrugated metal roofs were arranged perpendicular to the road. On the right was a parking lot paved with oyster shells, beside it, a much larger version of the small buildings. Beyond that was a trailer up on concrete blocks, and then another row of the long buildings. Though clean and neat, the operation could hardly be described as attractive.
She parked in the lot, which already contained two impeccably clean cars heavily decorated with pinstriping. There was also a muddy pickup with tires mounted inside out and bearing a vanity plate that read FITCH.
Fitch.
Wasn’t that the guy she’d seen beside the road with Teddy on her first trip here? Seeing no one around and hearing noises from the building beside the parking lot, she went inside.
From behind a green canvas that blocked her view of what lay beyond came the intermittent chug of a motor and staccato bursts of rushing air.. She parted the canvas and saw Fitch in a rubber apron, leaning over an alligator carcass on a stainless-steel table. He briefly worked a knife at the carcass’s throat, then, without looking up, reached for the rubber hose hanging in front of his workstation. He placed the hose where the point of the knife had been. There was a rush of air followed by a loud pop as the scaly hide of the alligator came loose from the underlying tissues. He let go of the hose and began to remove the hide over the belly with his knife.
Behind Fitch and stretching across the room to disappear behind sheets of canvas on each side was a long track fitted with metal rollers. Scattered along the track were several blue plastic bins that, judging from the scaly tails sticking out of them, each contained an alligator carcass.
To her left and behind the track, two other men were working with their backs to her. The first was using another suspended hose attached to a nail or staple gun to produce the bursts of rushing air she’d heard. He held up his work to inspect it and Kit could see that he was tacking each hide to a wooden frame. Apparently satisfied with his efforts, he filed the frame in a long wooden box on wheels sitting beside him. Farther to her left, another man was cutting off slabs of tail meat and tossing them into a bin in front of his table.
When Fitch finished cutting the hide free, he grabbed the carcass by the legs and was swinging around to drop it in a bin on the rolling track when he saw Kit. He flicked a switch on his table and the chugging motor that supplied the compressed air stopped.
“This area ain’t open to the public,” he said, scowling.
“I’m looking for Mr. LaBiche,” Kit said.
“He ain’t here. Went to New Orleans to get some feed.”
One of the other men looked as though he wanted to say something, but a glance from Fitch silenced him.
“When will he be back?”
“Didn’t say.”
“Suppose I wanted to buy all the alligator hides you could supply?”
“Then you’d have to get in line. Findin’ buyers ain’t our problem. Keepin’ nosy tourists where they belong is.”
“No, Mr. Fitch, I believe your problem goes far deeper than that.” Before he could reply, Kit turned and stalked out. Fitch could have been telling the truth about Teddy being in New Orleans, but she doubted it, especially when she looked down the road and saw Teddy’s truck at the far end of the cluster of buildings beyond the trailer.
A few minutes later, when she opened the aluminum and glass door to the building closest to Teddy’s truck, she was nearly floored by the heat and the stench. Inside was a small room containing clouds of flies and an industrial water heater that looked like a spaceship. Behind the next door was a long, gloomy chamber even hotter and smellier than the first room. And there was music—“I Get Around” by the Beach Boys—coming from a portable radio wired to a roof support. On each side of the central walkway that ran from front to back, the room was divided into a series of cement-block enclosures.
Peeking into the nearest enclosure, she saw that it was a concrete-floored pit, filled with small black and yellow bodies: little alligators about ten inches long. In one of the pits at the far end of the walkway, she caught a brief glimpse of Teddy’s head and shoulders. Then he disappeared.
Each pit had a low central area in the middle flanked by raised areas front and back. Running from side to side in the low area was a grate set into the floor. She found Teddy working on one of these grates with a screwdriver. All the little alligators in that pit were clustered in a tight mass in the far corner, as far away from Teddy as they could get. Kit was surprised to see that they were so shy.
As she was about to speak, one of the alligators left his frightened companions and set out in a direct line for Teddy, who was down on one knee. When the little fellow was no more than a foot away, it opened its mouth and hissed at him. Then it turned and scuttled away.
“Looks like a born leader to me,” Kit said.
Teddy looked up. “Kit!” He got to his feet, slipped the screwdriver into his back pocket, and joined her at the pit’s wooden gate, where he took hold of her hand and sandwiched it between his own. Despite the oppressive heat, his flesh was refreshingly cool. Oddly, she no longer felt repulsed by the place.
“You never struck me as a Beach Boy fan,” Kit said.
Teddy’s brow wrinkled in confusion, then he got it. “Oh, the radio. It’s not for me; it’s for them.” He motioned to the huddled alligators, leaving her hand disappointed at the loss of his touch. “If it’s too quiet in here, they get nervous when we go in and out. We tried classical music, but that makes it worse. Hard rock kills their appetite, mine, too, for that matter. Golden oldies are the best.”
