Sleeping With the Crawfish Page 6

  “Well, Ah hope you washed your hands.”

  “Excuse me, are you the owner of this restaurant?” a man who’d come up behind Grandma O asked.

  “After a few hundred more payments to da bank,” she replied.

  He flashed a shield. “I’m Special Agent Willis, state Fish and Wildlife. Did you know it’s illegal to kill a pelican?”

  Grandma O glanced at the mounted pelican on the shelf over the bar, which also displayed a couple of stuffed armadillos and a nutria. “Ah didn’ kill it,” she said. “Ah bought it jus’ like you see it from an antique shop on Royal Street.”

  “Well, it’s also illegal to possess a pelican carcass. I’m going to have to confiscate it.”

  Grandma O pulled herself up to her full height, seemingly also to increase in circumference. “How come you didn’ confiscate it before Ah bought it?”

  Inflated like that, she was a magnificent sight, towering over the Fish and Wildlife agent by at least six inches and vastly outweighing him. Unlike most who were confronted by this wall of defiance, the agent never faltered.

  “You are required to appear in court, where it is quite likely you will be assessed a hefty fine.” He pulled an envelope from his back pocket and handed it to Grandma O. “You can find all the details of your appearance and the charges in there. I’ll be back in thirty minutes. That should give you time to get the pelican down from its shelf. Please have it ready.” He turned and made his way between tables, heading toward the door.

  For the first time since Broussard had known her, Grandma O was speechless. “That’s a bit of bad luck,” he said. “I’ve heard those fines can run in the thousands.”

  “Is dat fair? Ah didn’ kill da bird. Though Ah wouldn’ mind gettin’ mah han’s on dat agent.”

  “Don’t you see,” Broussard said, “by buyin’ it, you create a market for stuffed pelicans. Havin’ sold it, the dealer you bought it from will buy another to replace it. The person he bought it from will do the same and so on, until somebody goes out and kills another pelican to satisfy the demand. As much as it hurts me to see a good friend in this kind of trouble, I’m afraid the law is correct.”

  Grandma O dropped her chin and looked menacingly at Broussard from the tops of her eyes.

  “Yes, I’d have to agree,” Gatlin said.

  “Ah didn’ know about any of dis.”

  “They can’t let you off for that,” Gatlin said. “The burden for being properly informed has to lie with the people.”

  “Open the envelope,” Broussard prodded.

  Her face wrinkled with disgust, Grandma O tore open the envelope. She removed the single sheet of paper inside and unfolded it to read, “Not everyone who says he’s a Fish and Wildlife Agent really is.” It was signed “Andy.”

  Growing even larger than when she’d tried to intimidate the fake agent, Grandma O turned on Broussard. “Well, ain’t you a million laughs. You two mus’ like to live on da edge, doin’ somethin’ like dis to someone who could put jus’ anything dey wanted in your food.” She smiled angelically. “Now, what can Ah get you?”

  “Roast beef po’ boy, alligator chili, and iced tea,” Broussard said quickly.

  Gatlin hesitated, apparently considering what she’d said.

  “Come on, funny boy, Ah ain’t got all day.”

  “A muffaletta, gumbo, and tea,” Gatlin said. “And hold the strychnine.”

  “Dis ain’t Burger King,” Grandma O said. “Here, you have it my way.”

  After she was out of earshot, Broussard said, “I was afraid I was gonna get here too late to see the show.”

  “She was kidding about putting something in our food, wasn’t she?”

  “Of course.”

  “But you know she’s going to get even somehow.”

  “Wouldn’t be any fun if she didn’t.”

  Thinking the joke didn’t seem as funny now, Gatlin began playing with a sugar packet. Noticing that Broussard’s expression had grown serious, he said, “She’s got you worried, too, huh?”

  “Who?”

  “Grandma O.”

  “It’s not that. I sent Kit up to Angola yesterday to work on resolvin’ the identity of that John Doe I’ve got. She was to take a picture of the inmate in question, print him, and come back. Shouldn’t have taken more than a day. I expected to hear from her this mornin’, but I didn’t. I called the photo gallery where she’s been workin’ and learned she’s been in a car accident. The gallery owner said she called him last night. Apparently, her car went into a bayou. He said she didn’t sound hurt.”

  “She wasn’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  He pointed toward the door. “There she is.”

  Broussard turned and, sure enough, there was Kit, heading for their table. Both rose to greet her.

  “I heard you had some trouble,” Broussard said.

  “Who told you that?” Kit replied.

  “Owner of the gallery.”

  “He told you right. I don’t know where to begin. . . .”

  Broussard pulled a chair out for her and they all sat.

  “I can start by giving you these,” Kit said, handing Broussard a manila envelope and the metal cylinder.

  “What are they?”

  “I’ll get to that.”

  “Hello, Kit darlin’,” Grandma O said, arriving with the food. “Ah ain’t seen you in awhile. You doin’ okay?”

  “No, I’d have to say I’m not.”

  Grandma O put her tray on the edge of the table and started setting out its contents. “Soun’ like you got a story.”

  “I was just about to tell it.”

  “Oh, chil’ Ah’d love to siddown, but Ah got to keep movin’. Will you tell me some other time?”

  “If you like.”

  “What can Ah get you?”

  Kit looked at Broussard’s sandwich. “That looks good. I’ll have one of those and a Coke.”

  “Comin’ up.” Grandma O looked slyly at Broussard. “Course it won’t be exactly like his.” Then she was gone.

  “What did she mean by that?” Kit said.

  “It’s just a game,” Broussard said. “She’s tryin’ to make us think she’s gonna poison us for a prank we pulled on her. It’s nothin’. So what happened?”

  Gatlin lifted the top of his sandwich and poked suspiciously through the contents.

  “First thing is, the warden doesn’t let me in, but he comes out to meet me. And he says Ronald Cicero died of a heart attack night before last.”

  Hearing this, Gatlin suspended inspection of his muffaletta and listened harder. Broussard’s interest, too, sharpened.

  “But that didn’t keep you from photographin’ and printin’ him,” Broussard said.

  “It wouldn’t have, except that due to a miscommunication, the body had been cremated by the time I arrived.”

  Gatlin’s heavy eyebrows jigged together. “That’s two.”

  “Two what?” Kit asked.

  “Pieces of bad luck,” Gatlin replied. “I’m just keeping track.”

  “At this point, I didn’t know what else to do, so I went over to the funeral home where the cremation took place, thinking I could at least bring back Cicero’s remains, for whatever good it would do.”

  “That’s not him in the metal cylinder, is it?” Gatlin said.

  “I guess that’s what we have to find out.”

  The old couple at the next table had been trying hard to eavesdrop. Hearing they were having lunch next to the remains of a dead man, they pushed their plates back and began waving for the check.

  “How were you treated at the funeral home?” Gatlin asked.

  “Pretty well. The owner had to check with his brother before he’d release the cremains.”

  “Who’s his brother?” Gatlin said.

  “The warden.”

  “Tidy little arrangement,” Gatlin remarked.

  “But they did turn the cremains over to me.”

  Grandma O
arrived with Kit’s food and put it in front of her. She eyed Gatlin’s and Broussard’s untouched meals. “You know you two ain’t leavin’ here ’til you finish dat.”

  “We’re just caught up in Kit’s story,” Broussard explained. “We’ll eat.”

  “You better.”

  Grandma O then went over to deal with the two eavesdroppers.

  Gatlin raised his sandwich and took a small bite.

  “I was ready to come back to New Orleans, but when I left the funeral home, my car wouldn’t start.

  “That’s three.”

  “The owner took me to a garage and the mechanic there put in a new battery while I had dinner at a restaurant across the street. When I finally got on the road after dark, a car with its brights on came up behind me and hit my bumper. I lost control and flipped over in a bayou.

  “I must have hit my head, because I was knocked out for a few seconds. When I came to, the car was sinking. Everything was black. . . . I couldn’t tell up from down. . . . I managed to get out of my seat belt and open the door, but the water rushing in knocked me down and I got disoriented. I thought that was it for me . . . that I’d had it. But I was able to get out. I’ll tell you, whatever troubles you think you’re having, they don’t seem very important when you’ve just escaped death.”

  “Don’t suppose you got a look at the car that shoved you off the road,” Gatlin said.

  “Its lights were too bright.”

  “That’s four.”

  “I flagged down a car that turned out to be the sheriff’s.”

  “Any other cars pass you before that?” Gatlin asked.

  “No, why?”

  “Nothing. Go on.”

  “Not much more to tell. The sheriff took me to his home and he and his wife put me up for the night.” She paused, wondering if she should mention Hubly’s odd behavior about the window. Deciding that it hadn’t amounted to anything, she skipped it. “In the morning, they pulled my car out. The guy at the garage, the one who fixed it earlier, thinks it’s a total loss.”

  “Were you present when they retrieved your car?” Gatlin asked.

  “No.” She waited for him to reply, but he said nothing.

  “They found my handbag and the cremains, but the photo and the prints the warden gave me were ruined. The sheriff drove over to the prison and got me another set. I know they’re not what you wanted, but I felt like I should bring them. I wish I could have replaced the camera you gave me as easily. It’s ruined, too, I’m afraid.” Not wanting to give Broussard time to think about the camera, she hurried on. “The sheriff took me to a place where I could rent a car, and here I am.”

  Still worried about losing the camera, she tried to cover it up by putting Broussard on the defensive. “Thanks for sending me on such a simple assignment.”

  “Who could have known it’d turn out like that?” Broussard said. He picked up his sandwich, took a big bite, and chewed thoughtfully.

  Kit had awakened that morning with no appetite and had politely declined Beverly’s offer of breakfast. Now famished, she turned her full attention to her food.

  They all ate for a few minutes without talking. Finally, Gatlin broke the silence. “Kit, you know everything that happened to you was choreographed, don’t you? Your car not starting when you came out of the funeral home was intended to keep you in the area until dark, so you wouldn’t be able to get a look at the car that forced you off the road. Whoever was responsible probably pulled one of your battery cables off or loosened it. . . . And let me guess, the guy who sold you the new one had to go somewhere to pick it up, right?”

  Kit nodded.

  “And the first person you encounter when you need help is the sheriff? Unlikely.”

  “That all crossed my mind,” Kit said. “But why . . . why’d they do it?”

  “I don’t think they necessarily wanted to kill you,” Gatlin said.

  “Well, they almost did.”

  “That would have been a bonus. Running you off the road to kill you is like that crap they do in those James Bond films—put a snake in his hotel room and hope it bites him, when it’s just as likely to go under the door, down the hall, and look for mice under the ice machine. No, it’s more likely—”

  “They wanted her separated from the cremains they gave her,” Broussard said.

  “I know I’m saying this a lot, but why?” Kit asked. “If they hadn’t wanted me to have them, why give them to me in the first place?”

  “They didn’t want to appear uncooperative,” Gatlin suggested.

  “So why not just tell me the cylinder was lost in the bayou? They gave it back to me. Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Gatlin said. He looked at Broussard, who could often fill in the blanks when blanks were about all they had. Kit, too, waited for a sage pronouncement.

  “I think that . . .” Broussard began.

  His two companions waited expectantly, the detective side of Gatlin wanting an answer, the competitor in him hoping Broussard hadn’t beaten him to the explanation.

  “. . . we should go back to the morgue and examine those cremains.”

  6

  Kit had parked her rental car near Charity Hospital, where Broussard had his offices. She’d walked to Grandma O’s after learning from Broussard’s secretary that he was there. Going back, she rode with him in his T-Bird. Gatlin followed in his aging Pontiac, which he preferred over a departmental car because it was home to fewer cockroaches.

  Nothing had happened on Kit’s Angola trip to change her mind about her competence to conduct an investigation, unless it was to undermine it further. Some triumphant return—ruined the camera, lost her car, and never even got a look at Cicero. Better she’d stayed at the gallery.

  She glanced at Broussard, molded against the T-Bird’s interior like foam-fill insulation, wondering how this man had gotten to her so thoroughly that she’d once lived only for his approval. It had been her shameful secret—a grown, self-sufficient woman with an advanced academic degree pining for a pat on the head from her boss. It was absurd even when she’d believed herself to be self-sufficient and valuable. Now, realizing the truth, it was simply sad.

  She should just go back to being a clerk—but not yet. She hadn’t wanted to be involved in this puzzle, but now that she was, she couldn’t walk away, especially if there was a possibility the Guillorys and the sheriff were responsible for nearly killing her.

  Ten minutes later, they were all in the morgue. Guy Minoux, one of Broussard’s morgue assistants, had used a soldering gun to free the top on the metal cylinder and it was now open.

  Gatlin looked inside. “Jesus, how are you going to tell anything from that?” He crossed himself for saying “Jesus.”

  “Maybe we can’t,” Broussard replied. “First thing to do is X-ray it. Any bits of metal will show up clearly on the films. Often there are clues there—an eyeglass screw, a surgical clip, or a piece of a dental fillin’ . . . that’s really the best. If you can match an object in the cremains to a fillin’ on a set of dental X rays, that’s as good as it gets.”

  “Fillings don’t melt during cremation?” Gatlin asked.

  “Amalgam does. Porcelain crowns just sag a little. Dental gold and silver aren’t affected at all.”

  “And being nonferrous, they wouldn’t be picked up by the magnet funeral homes use on the cremains before packaging them,” Kit said.

  “Exactly.”

  “You got any dental films of this guy Cicero?” Gatlin asked.

  “Arrived this mornin’ from the military records depository in St. Louis.” Broussard looked at his assistant. “I need a chest X-ray cassette and a piece of posterboard about the same size.”

  When Kit had worked for Broussard, the morgue was a place she avoided. She was there today only because she just had to know who was in the metal cylinder. During the interlude, while Minoux rounded up the requested items, the faint odor of Clorox crept up her nose and tickled her throat. Looking now at the morgue’
s stainless-steel benchtops, sinks, and human-sized drain boards, she saw that washable was the watchword here, right down to the ancient yellow tile on the walls. And they kept it uncomfortably chilly, at least for those still capable of feeling. But it probably did keep the odors down. She looked at the pitted concrete floor with its coat of shiny green paint and wondered if it was slippery when wet. Broussard had once said that when two surfaces come in contact, something of each is transferred to the other. What would she carry away from the morgue on the soles of her shoes?

  Minoux returned with the things he’d gone to find.

  Broussard put the cassette on a stainless gurney and laid the posterboard on top of it. He donned a plastic apron and a pair of rubber gloves and picked up the cylinder holding the cremains. Taking the cylinder to the gurney, he poured the contents onto the posterboard and carefully spread them until they were evenly distributed.

  Understanding what Broussard wanted next without being told, Minoux rolled a portable X-ray machine over to the gurney and swung the arm holding the X-ray source over the cremains. He adjusted the height of the arm and looked at Broussard, who nodded his approval.

  Minoux briefly turned the power on, then off.

  “One more to be sure,” Broussard said.

  He lifted the posterboard so Minoux could turn the cassette over and expose another film. When that was done, Minoux took the cassette away to develop the pictures.

  “This is gonna take a few minutes,” Broussard said. “Might as well wait down by the snack machines.”

  The vending machines were just inside the entrance where bodies were delivered. For seating, it contained four dingy orange vinyl sofas. On one cement-block wall was a faded print of a flower-filled mountain valley.

  While Gatlin and Broussard perused the offerings of the vending machines, Kit found the cleanest cushion on the sofas and sat down.

  “Didn’t you two just eat?” she said.

  “Window-shoppin’,” Broussard replied.

  The elevator doors opened and Charlie Franks got off. “Look at this,” he said, “the whole brain trust in one place. What’s going on?”

  “It’s a long story,” Broussard replied.

  Franks looked at Kit. “Does this mean you’re coming back, I hope?”