The driver looked at his partner, who nodded and pushed his sunglasses back against the bridge of his nose with his middle finger. “Sure we’ll take a look,” the driver said.
“I’ll get out a description in case you miss him. If you boys ever need a city favor, call me.” The driver gave him a slow two-fingered salute and backed out.
As he went to where Kit and Broussard waited, Phillip was so excited and pleased that even the mud in his shoes felt pleasant. “Andy, my daughter’s home. I’ve got to go.”
Broussard clapped both hands to Gatlin’s shoulders. “I’m glad, Phillip. I really am.”
“Thanks, Andy, but I’ve got to leave.” He leaned closer and whispered, “Don’t worry about Vogel. We’ll get him when he comes onto dry land.” Then in a more normal voice, said, “Could you ride back with Dr. Franklyn, that way I…”
“Sure, you go on.”
While Phillip was talking to the state police, Kit had begun to tremble uncontrollably. Try as she might, she couldn’t stop. Now, in a quivering voice that she could not believe was her own, she said, “I’m afraid I have a flat… and I’m not sure I have a jack.”
Despite his desire to be quit of the place, Phillip took her keys and opened her trunk. He made a point of showing her each piece of her jack as he assembled it. When he and Broussard finished changing the tire, Phillip jumped into his car and backed up the path at a furious pace. With Broussard at the wheel, the Nissan followed at a more cautious speed. Kit was still shaking and Broussard was concerned that she might be about to go into shock. As they turned onto the highway and headed for town, Kit fought the trembling and said, “How did you know where I was and that I might need help?”
“Phillip followed up on what you told him and found some evidence in Vogel’s garage that proved he was at my house the night my air conditioner was rigged.”
“What kind of evidence?”
“Whoever tried to do me in left part of a taillight in my garden. Phillip found the car it came from in Vogel’s garage. When I couldn’t find you or Vogel, I called David. He told us where you’d gone and why.”
“What’s the rest of the story? What does it all mean?”
Broussard shook his head. “Beats the stuffin’ out of me. But I’m gettin’ a real strong urge to snoop around Vogel’s house myself. I’m gonna call Phillip a little later and see if he’s willin’ to take me over there tonight. But right now, I’m gonna get you home.”
As they drove, Kit had time to reflect on what had taken place. Not only had she walked willingly into Vogel’s trap but she was standing there like a chump, with her eyes closed, when help arrived. And now, here she was, shaking so badly Broussard was afraid to let her drive her own car. Some example of independence and self-sufficiency she was.
“If you think you’re going to Vogel’s without me, you’re mistaken,” she said abruptly.
Broussard took a quick look at her and said, “We’ll talk about it later, after we get cleaned up and you have a chance to relax.”
*
The two patrolmen quickly located Vogel’s car at a boat dock two miles from where he had set his trap for Kit. They backed in behind a row of boats that were sitting upside down on sawhorses and waited for him to appear. Two hours later, as their shifts drew to a close, they drove off, believing that he did not intend to return.
*
After Phillip had seen for himself that his daughter was unharmed and had spent a little time with her, he was willing to leave her for awhile to comply with Broussard’s request. Thus, nine o’clock found Kit, Broussard, and Phillip on Vogel’s back porch.
“Not gettin’ much from this flashlight,” Broussard said as Phillip fiddled with the lock on Vogel’s back door. As he said the words, the pale beam died completely and Phillip was left to work by touch alone. Broussard put the useless flashlight on the porch rail and waited quietly for Phillip to get them inside.
Being here was not something Kit particularly wanted to do but felt that it was something she had to do. By placing herself in the most intimate surroundings of the man who had come so close to taking her life, she hoped to rid herself of the fear that even now was blowing its cold breath on the back of her neck and making her legs feel like they had run a marathon.
Phillip pushed the back door open. “The department better hope I never turn burglar,” he joked over his shoulder. “Wait here until I locate the lights.”
Phillip found the cool air inside a welcome respite from the soggy New Orleans night, but the musty smell, like old newspapers, was something he could do without. In the gloom, he saw the dim outline of a light switch and reached for it. He beckoned for the others to join him, then took a good look around.
Even now, after years of seeing that it doesn’t work that way, he wanted all lawbreakers to be dirty, shiftless, and of low intelligence—people who spit on sidewalks and put a little extra in it when they fart. He was therefore disappointed to find that except for a bowl and a spoon in the sink, and a box of cereal on the counter next to the sink, there was nothing out of place. He noted with irritation that Vogel ate the same kind of high-fiber cereal he did.
There were two doors off the kitchen, both almost featureless from untold layers of paint that had built up over the years on their decorative beading. Philip felt smug in the knowledge that had he owned the house, those doors would have been stripped and painted properly. He wrapped his fingers around one of the painted doorknobs and gave a pull.
The door groaned open and he thumbed another light switch. “Look here,” he said. He felt Broussard’s soft stomach against his elbow and heard Kit’s rapid breathing behind him. Here was the clutter he expected.
“A laboratory!” Kit exclaimed.
The two men went inside, where Phillip picked a beaker up off a bench that ran the length of the room and sniffed the oily contents.
“You keep that up and we might be carryin’ you out of here,” Broussard warned.
Clearly unnerved, Phillip quickly put the beaker down.
Kit waited in the doorway, her arms folded to still their quaking. On the way to Vogel’s house, she’d felt reasonably calm and in control. Now, in the very bosom of his existence, the shaking had returned. The image of Vogel’s cold blue eyes swam before her and she could again feel swamp muck in her shoes.
Phillip went over to a fume hood and pressed all the buttons. The sound of an exhaust fan was heard and he felt the hairs on the back of his hand tingle as air was sucked from the lab into the hood. Annoyed by the sound, he turned it off.
Broussard reached into the wastebasket and pulled out a sheaf of dried foliage.
“Something meaningful?” Kit asked.
“Could be,” Broussard replied. “Seems like he was only interested in the roots.”
Phillip idly felt the tip of a soldering iron hanging on a clipboard with a lot of other tools and junk. Broussard’s eyes locked on a calendar a few feet away on the wall over an antiquated black double sink and Kit wondered with amusement whether he was looking at the girl of the month; a big-breasted bimbo with the nozzle of a gas pump in one hand and wearing a shirt open to the waist.
He walked over and tapped the calendar where a date was circled with a red grease pencil. “Somethin’ important comin’ up next week,” he said. “Let’s have a look at the rest of this place.”
Where Phillip had been their leader at first, now Broussard took over and it was he who led the small party through the other door off the kitchen.
They were now in a part of the house that appeared much older than the kitchen. Here, the ceiling loomed high over a floor laid with large wide boards, ancient with dark scars. The walls were soft, old brick with crudely mortared joints, and were dotted with second-rate landscapes in simple gilded frames. There were no carpets and the only furniture was a primitive pine dining table and a sideboard. Beside the far doorway, two coarsely carved brackets held up a rough plank on which stood a row of plain pewter cups.
/> “Remind me never to use his decorator,” Kit said.
“Look at this,” Phillip said. He was peering into the opening in a circular wall of bricks about four feet high. Joining him, Kit and Broussard saw that it was a well that went right through the floor. Light from flood lamps halfway down reflected off the red-and-white patches on a half-dozen fat Japanese Koi suspended in the crystal clear water.
“Big goldfish,” Phillip muttered.
The two men moved off toward the front of the house and Kit followed. The next room was a parlor, not unlike the dining room—same high ceilings, brick walls, and planked floors. The furnishings were again sparse and simple. A pair of spindle-backed settees with thin cushions faced each other in front of a fireplace with no mantel. Over the fireplace was another rough plank, like the one in the dining room. On this one, there were two hurricane lamps and a small bronze casting of a sleeping dog. Between the settees was a low pine table. On the floor beside the fireplace, a fake Boston fern had been jammed into a black iron kettle.
“That’s what I’m lookin’ for,” Broussard said, heading for a two-tiered pine secretary against one wall. He lowered himself into the ladder-backed chair in front of the secretary and began to open drawers.
While Phillip disappeared up the stairs that led to the next floor, Kit sat on the edge of a settee and watched Broussard paw through an accordion file. Finding nothing of interest in the file, he put it back and began to ransack the little drawers and compartments above the writing surface. After thoroughly searching them, he sat back in his chair and slapped the tops of both legs. “Nuts.”
With a hand still on each leg, he saw something of interest on the floor near Kit’s feet and he bent forward for a better look. He came over and kicked the rug up.
“What is it?” Kit asked.
“That floorboard’s been screwed down, not nailed.”
He disappeared back toward the kitchen and reappeared with a screwdriver and a broom.
Phillip came down the stairs. “Look’s like Vogel’s getting ready to take a long trip. There’re a couple of big trunks…” He saw Broussard on his knees. “What are you doing?”
“Ruinin’ my back,” Broussard said, pulling on the loosened screw with his fingers. “Kit, move that table over a little, will you?”
With the table out of the way, Broussard rolled the rug back a little more and went to work on the other screw. When it was out, he forced the screwdriver under one end of the suspect board and pried it up. Phillip grabbed the raised end and pulled the board free, opening a black hole in the floor about eight inches wide and two feet long. Kit leaned over and peered into the darkness.
“Step back!’ Broussard said sharply.
Puzzled, she watched Broussard put the handle of the broom in the hole and move it around. It clanked against something metallic.
Satisfied that it was safe to do so, he thrust his hand in the hole. While he was feeling around, a glistening cockroach ran up his arm and perched on his neck, its antennae probing the air. Shuddering, Kit knocked it off him and watched it disappear through a crack in the floor a few feet away. Broussard pulled his hand out. In it, Kit caught a glimpse of a metal box just before everything went black.
“Great,” Phillip muttered. “And no flashlight.”
With the windows tightly shuttered, they were clothed in a void where eyes were a useless luxury. In the dark, Kit’s anxiety at being in Vogel’s home mushroomed to outright terror. They had left Vogel in the swamp hours ago, more than enough time for him to have found his way here before they did. He might even be in the room with them now.
A floorboard creaked and fingers went around her arm. She screamed.
“It’s only me,” Phillip said.
Before she could scold him for frightening her, they heard a distant sound, like a marble rolling across the floor, at first faint and faraway, then louder. Disoriented by the total absence of light and confounded by the slight echo in the sparsely furnished room, Kit could not tell from which direction the sound emanated.
Relentlessly it came, slowly and steadily, closer and closer, mixed with the sound of her own ragged breathing and that of her two colleagues. Together, they waited expectantly.
Abruptly, on the floor a few feet from where she stood, twinkling lights appeared like a sparkling jewel in the darkness—a small exquisitely detailed carousel. Slowly, it began to turn and a tinny calliope played its first brave notes.
Fascinated, they watched the tiny toy gain speed, its brightly colored horses moving up and down to the music. Faster and faster it went, the music speeding up as well. The detailing on the canopy became a blur and the music ran together.
Broussard heard a rustling and someone brushed past him. His nostrils filled with a heady aroma.
Something hit the floor hard and the carousel vanished, leaving behind only its music, now muffled and faraway. A heartbeat later another sound, like rice being thrown into a metal bowl, drowned out the muted carousel. Then the room became as quiet as the inside of a coffin.
By now, Broussard had realized that the metal box in his hand had probably been holding down a button that regulated the lights. He lowered himself to his knees, felt around for the hole, and put the box back where he had found it. The lights returned.
The room was just as it had been before the lights went out except that the fake fern lay in the fireplace and the kettle that held it was now upside down on the floor where the carousel had stood.
Phillip picked up the kettle. There was the carousel, surrounded by a glittering carpet of tiny objects. He reached down.
“No!” Broussard shouted, struggling to his feet. “Don’t touch them.”
With his American Express card, Broussard coaxed a few of the objects onto his driver’s license and took them to the secretary. There, he examined them with his pocket lens. Satisfied, he handed the lens to Kit. “Look, but don’t touch,” he warned.
“Little metal spheres,” she said. “With tiny points on them.”
“A trap, set off by picking up that box,” Broussard said.
Kit handed Phillip the lens. “Doesn’t look very dangerous,” she said, “… unless of course the points have been poisoned.”
“Not much doubt about that,” Broussard replied.
“Damn quick thinking to use that pot like you did,” Phillip said, returning the lens to its owner.
“I’ll say,” Kit added.
Calmly, Broussard folded the lens and said nothing, giving no indication of how his head was spinning. He had been about to congratulate one of them for quick thinking. Who the devil had brushed past him in the dark? He remembered the rustling sound as they passed and the aroma they left behind; the smell of… gardenias.
He put the lens in his pants pocket, then unbuttoned the pocket on his shirt and fished for a lemon ball to help him think. Instead of candy, his fingers found something else.
“What’s that?” Kit said as he drew a vinyl drawstring bag from his pocket.
“Nothin’ important,” he said, stuffing the bag into the pocket with his magnifying lens. He didn’t have to look in the bag to know that inside was the luck ball Grandma O had given him. In his mind, he saw her as he had on his last visit, the wooden dock at her home shaking with her step, her black taffeta dress rustling as she walked, the scent of gardenias heavy around her.
He forced his thoughts from things he couldn’t understand to those he could. Picking up the bronze of the sleeping dog, he carried it to the hole in the floor. “Phillip, you get the box that’s down there and I’ll put this where it was. That ought to keep the lights on.”
The exchange was made so swiftly that the lights didn’t even flicker. Phillip took the box to the secretary, where Broussard brushed the carousel shrapnel to one side with Vogel’s utility bill.
Eyes burning with curiosity, Kit and Broussard watched Phillip work on the lid with the screwdriver. Finally, the lock gave way and the lid popped open.
Insi
de, on a stack of papers, was a TWA ticket folder. Phillip flipped the folder open and read the destination. “Rome… one way.”
“When’s it leave?” Broussard asked, reaching into the box.
“Week from today.”
“Same day as that circle on the calendar.” He took a sheet of paper from the box, examined it, and gave it to Phillip. “Two weeks ago, Vogel leased a building on Rampart Street,” he said, reaching back into the box.
The rest of the papers in the box were held together with a black spring clip. Broussard thumbed through them and handed them to Phillip. “Guess who Weston’s boss is.”
Phillip glanced at the papers and offered them to Kit. Among the documents he gave her were profit-loss statements for CCI and ownership papers for the plant itself made out in Vogel’s name and dated long before Shindleman had had his trouble out there.
“What does he do with all his money?” Kit said.
“Guess you haven’t priced real estate in this part of town lately,” Phillip said.
“And this is all authentic period furniture,” Broussard added, unzipping a flat leather bag he had found in the bottom of the metal box.
In the bag was a book bound in worn and cracked red leather, its two covers held together by a tattered spine. Broussard put the empty metal box on the floor and gently placed the book on the secretary. He probed his shirt pocket and popped two lemon balls into his mouth. Carefully, he lifted the book’s cover and laid it flat.
Kit could see that the first page was water-spotted and yellow with age. But with Broussard hunched over it, that was all she could see.
“I’m going to find the can,” Phillip said, wandering off.
Kit went back to her settee and waited for Broussard to share the contents of the book. After an eternity in which the only sounds were the clacking of lemon balls against Broussard’s teeth, the old pathologist stood up and began to pace, his fingers stroking his nose.
Kit went to the secretary, sat down, and eagerly opened the book, noticing now its sour smell. On the first page, written in a beautiful flowing hand in ink that had faded to the color of a tea stain, was the name Albair Fauquel.
Cajun Nights Page 20
