Читать книгу Murder Jambalaya - Lloyd Biggle jr. - Страница 6

CHAPTER TWO

Bert, whose full name was Bertram Comereau, took some finding. We sloshed from one end of the village to the other, finally locating him in a garage playing poker with three characters who looked very much like him—wiry, weathered-looking chaps with blue eyes and dark hair.

They laid their hands down and looked at us inquiringly when we walked in. Tosche asked his question. Bert, the youngest by a number of years, nodded his head and said, “Yeah. Old Jake did have someone with him, but that was quite a while ago.”

One of the other men nodded. Tosche later identified him as Jacques Deslande—not even a close friend would have dared call him Jack. “It was week before last,” he said. “I saw them, too.”

I passed the photo to Bert. He squinted at it the same way Eva had. “Could be. Guy was wearing one of those caps with a long bill, so he didn’t look exactly like this. But—sure. This must be him.”

Bert handed the photo to Jacques, who glanced at it and nodded. “That’s him. I saw him with his cap off. It was a hot afternoon, and he was sweating. He took it off and mopped his forehead. He was looking for property to buy, Old Jake said. There isn’t any for sale, but they walked up and down the road looking at places. Then they went in the store.”

One of the other men, Ed, who had the unlikely surname of Smith, said, “I saw Old Jake about that time with someone in his boat.”

I offered him the photo, but he shook his head without looking at it. “They were way out in the channel. Old Jake’s beard ain’t hard to recognize, and anyway, I know his boat, but I never got a close look at the other guy. City slicker on his day off, I would have said. Wasn’t anyone who belonged down here.”

“Is anything wrong?” Bert asked.

“He’s missing,” Tosche said. “Someone said he was seen here, so we’re checking.”

“Oh.” Bert shrugged. “Well—he certainly was seen here, but that was a couple of weeks ago. Tuesday or Wednesday, I think. It don’t put no label on where he is now.”

“Right,” Tosche said. “But at least we know where to ask about him. Maybe Old Jake can tell us something.”

He turned to me. “Do you want to talk to Old Jake?”

“Where can we find him?” I asked.

“He’s got a cabon,” Tosche said. “Little place over on Squirrel Bayou. It belongs to an Orleanean named O’Harran, he used to use it as a fishing and hunting lodge, but he hasn’t done much of that for years. He lets Old Jake stay there for keeping the place up.”

“Old Jake don’t do much up keeping,” Bert said with a grin. “Fact is, he don’t do any. He didn’t even replace the glass when he broke a window. I suppose if the roof blew off, he might do something about that.”

“How far is it?” I asked.

“Half an hour in a motor boat,” Tosche said. “If we can find a boat.”

“Take mine,” Ed said. He tossed a key to Tosche, who thanked him and the others, gave me a nod, and marched out. I paused to add my own thanks and then squished after him.

The rain had let up—which was just as well, because the boat lent to us was not a cabin cruiser. It was an open boat with an outboard motor that seemed to produce more sound than movement. As we headed out into the channel, we were passed by a sizeable ship Tosche identified as an offshore crew boat, one that took workmen and supplies to the oil platforms in the Gulf. Pointe Neuve slipped astern, and on one side of the bayou a forest closed in. On the other were occasional buildings—a house or two, a cluster of warehouses, a dock with boats and a derrick. Tosche pointed out the trading post where the Cajuns sold alligator hides and furs during hunting seasons.

Eventually the forest took over both sides of the bayou, but even that didn’t shield the place from civilization’s corrosive touch. We passed one wreck after another—old barges and ships that were half sunk in the shallows and rusting to oblivion, which unfortunately was a slow process.

We turned into a smaller bayou lined with tall live oaks. These are evergreen oaks, a beautiful, massive tree of the American South that puts out enormous branches close to the ground. Festoons of Spanish moss added their own touches of hoary beauty to the grayness of the day. This was Tosche’s natural habitat, and he relaxed and became almost articulate as we penetrated further and further into it. Several times he shouted remarks above the din of the motor about something we passed. Once he pointed out an armadillo burrowing along the bank. Another time it was a tree stump that marked an alligator den.

Sitting there a foot or so above the water, it suddenly occurred to me that our small boat offered very little protection against a rampageous gator.

I called to him, “Is it possible to outdistance an alligator by swimming?”

“Not unless you can do better than twenty-five miles an hour,” Tosche shouted back with a grin. He added, “You can’t outrun one, either. They’ve been clocked up to thirty-seven miles an hour on land.”

“If one gets you in its sights, you’re done for, eh?” I asked lightly.

“Naw. All you have to do is jump out of the way. They have short legs and can’t turn sharply. Anyway, they can only travel twenty-five feet or so before their legs give out. They don’t often bother people in the water, but it’s probably wiser not to share a swimming hole with one. Snakes are a lot more dangerous than alligators. They can drop into boats from trees.”

It hadn’t occurred to me to look for danger overhead. This sounded like a gag someone thought up to scare a tenderfoot with, but Tosche seemed serious enough.

It was a land of brackish water, freshwater mixed with sea water, and both fresh and salt water fish were taken here. On the shore in an occasional clearing, low palmetto palms could be seen. Tosche called them swamp cabbage and said Cajuns used them like coleslaw. A shallow backwater was crowded with the flower-tipped stalks of arrowroot plants, whose roots were another important Cajun food and medicine source.

Finally we turned into a bayou as narrow as a creek. Trees lined the shore, and arching limbs trailing strands of Spanish moss formed a roof over us. The water was absolutely still until our boat passed. Civilization seemed unimaginably remote, but even this charming place hadn’t completely escaped the corrosion. I counted three beer cans floating near the bank.

When Tosche cut the motor, the silence had the same impact as a door slamming. We drifted around a bend, and ahead of us on the right was a dock. When we came closer, the roofline of Old Jake’s cabon could be made out through the trees.

Tosche seemed puzzled. “Old Jake’s boat is gone,” he remarked. “His pirogue is gone, too.”

“Pirogue?” I echoed.

“Cajun canoe. It’s a small, flat-bottomed boat, doesn’t draw much water, so it’s useful in a swamp. Old Jake may be out fishing, but I don’t know why he would take his pirogue.” He hesitated. “I suppose there’s no point in calling on him if he isn’t there.”

“Might be a good idea to find out whether he has a house guest,” I suggested.

Tosche seemed doubtful, but he used a paddle to turn us toward the dock. I jumped out and tied the boat to a post. Tosche watched disapprovingly but said nothing. Together we went up the path to the cabon.

It was built on a hump of high ground between the bayou and a swamp—a weathered wood shack on high posts with a corrugated iron roof that was in the process of rusting away completely. We mounted the steep steps to the open porch. An old wreck of a lounging chair stood in one corner. The battered table beside it had a couple of charred tobacco pipes, a large coffee can that served as an ashtray, and a clutter of empty beer bottles. I paused and read the labels with raised eyebrows: Blackened Voodoo Lager Beer.

“Local brand?” I asked Tosche.

I thought I was joking, but he said, “Yeah. Dixie Brewing Company.”

He called loudly, “Ho, Jake!” Then he banged on the warped door. There was glass in one of the two windows that looked onto the porch. That one was closed. The other was opened permanently, no glass, but there was a new screen tacked into place over the opening.

Tosche banged on the door again. Then he opened it. “Ho, Jake!” he called. “Anyone—”

He broke off and halted. The stench hit us an instant before we saw what was on the floor. A man lay face down in the center of the room with the end of a long, gray beard showing beside his head. Tosche started forward, but I grabbed his arm and very firmly moved him back out of the way. In the presence of a corpse, he was no longer the expert guide.

I knelt beside the man on the floor. Obviously he had been dead for weeks. To be exact, two of them. If the cabon hadn’t been so well ventilated, the stench would have kept us from entering.

I got to my feet. “I don’t want to turn him over,” I said. “I’m assuming it’s Old Jake because of the beard.”

“Also, the clothes,” Tosche said. “Also, that scar on his hand.”

“What does this area use for police?”

“The Parish Sheriff’s Department.”

“I’ll wait here while you get help. How many hours away are they?”

“They have cars on the road. One drives through the village a couple of times a day. Figure half an hour for me to get back there and telephone, fifteen minutes to half an hour for them to respond, and another half hour to get back here.”

“Make certain they understand the situation—use the word ‘murder.’ I’m sure they would send a doctor in any case, but they’ll also need technicians and lab work.”

“Are you sure it’s murder?”

“That dent in the back of his head wasn’t self-inflicted,” I said.

“Maybe he fell.”

“He had to land on something to acquire a dent like that, and there isn’t anything here. Also, a man who bangs the back of his head badly enough to kill himself usually isn’t found lying on his face. Call it murder. It’ll put them in the proper frame of mind. If they want to correct your spelling later, that’s up to them. One more thing.”

I got out my memo pad and wrote down the telephone number Raina Lambert had given to me. I added Lieutenant George Keig’s name and ripped out the page. “After you call the sheriff, call this number,” I said. “Ask for the lieutenant. If he’s not there, tell whoever answers that this information is for Miss Lambert and Lieutenant Keig. Several people claim to have seen Marc DeVarnay in Pointe Neuve two weeks ago with Old Jake, and we found Old Jake lying on his face with the back of his head bashed.”

“Shall I tell the lieutenant it was murder?”

“No. Miss Lambert likes to draw her own conclusions, and the lieutenant probably does, too. Does Old Jake have a last name?”

He thought for a moment. “I think it was Hemlie or Harmlie or something like that.”

“On your way,” I said. “This is going to be a long day for both of us.” He left in a rush.

As the motor started up, I began my own quick inventory of the cabon’s two small rooms. The one I stood in served as a combined living room, dining room, and kitchen. The old stone fireplace had the charred remnants of a log on the grate, but it had been used for heating only. Old Jake did his cooking on a propane camp stove that stood on a rickety table in one corner. There was a covered, new-looking pan on the stove. A straight-backed chair stood nearby. An old bureau served as a cupboard; on its scarred top were half a loaf of moldy bread in a wrapper, some cans, a couple of pans that were minus their handles, some cracked plates, and three cracked mugs, also without handles, one of which was ornamented with the message, “Sands Hotel Casino Las Vegas.” The only other furnishings were an old sofa and a battery radio.

A cardboard carton packed with groceries had been left on the floor under the table. On top of the carton was an unopened pizza. Old Jake had been dead for two weeks, and the fact that he hadn’t unpacked the groceries DeVarnay bought for him probably meant he had been murdered shortly after they returned to the cabon.

I looked again at Old Jake’s bashed head. If he had been alive when his skull was dented, the blow certainly killed him. I couldn’t learn more without turning him over or going through his pockets, and that might mess things up for the homicide technicians. If I waited patiently, they would tell me more than I could find out myself.

Walking carefully, I moved to one side of the room and followed the wall until I reached the doorway to the tiny back room. The floor was far from clean. Old Jake, or someone, had scattered burnt matches around and ground out an occasional cigarette, and there was spilled food in the kitchen area, but there was no months-old coating of dust to take footprints. Old Jake had swept the floor not too many days before he died. Or his visitor had.

The back room was the bedroom. It contained two new-looking camp cots, each with a new sleeping bag. Near one cot was a wreck of a chest of drawers. Near the other was a suitcase on a rickety chair. Through the window I could see an outhouse in the rear and an open shed with a stack of wood.

The suitcase was an expensive leather job, and this was the wrong address for it. In those shabby surroundings, it was as unlikely as a new forty-inch TV set would have been. I took one step through the doorway, which moved me close enough to identify the initials on it—MDV. I had never seen it before, but I recognized it at once. I had tracked it—and Marc DeVarnay—across half the country before the trail fizzled out in Seattle. How it had got back here, and why, would supply food for cogitation while I waited.

I retreated cautiously, again following the wall. As I passed the kitchen corner, the pan on the camp stove caught my attention. It was a sturdy, stainless steel container with a copper bottom and a curved designer handle, and it looked brand new. It was another unlikely item for that address. Out of curiosity, I used my handkerchief and lifted its lid. The contents were covered with a mass of mold. A large spoon that lay on the table near the stove also was covered with mold; obviously it had been used to prepare the food. I took my pen knife and cleared the mold from a small surface area in the pan. I recognized the dish immediately from previous visits to New Orleans. It was a seafood jambalaya. I was able to identify shrimp and crawfish, rice, celery, and green pepper without stirring the contents.

For all I knew, every backwater Cajun had a personal repertory of favorite jambalaya recipes. The dish also can be thrown together without a recipe using whatever is at hand—ham or sausage instead of, or in addition to, seafood; a few chopped vegetables; rice; and all of the cook’s favorite spices. Even so, it seemed like an overly elaborate dish for Old Jake’s table, and that gave me one more thing to meditate.

I swiped three bottles of Blackened Voodoo Lager Beer from the carton of groceries, handling them with my handkerchief so as not to offend the fingerprint gurus. I managed to convince myself that Old Jake was a hospitable coot who would have approved. In any event, he wouldn’t be needing them himself. I took the beer outside, where I sat on the porch in Old Jake’s chair and sampled a bottle. It was heavy, dark, and full-flavored. It matched my mood perfectly. I was feeling heavy and dark myself. I had never experienced a case with such a damnable twist to it.

The MDV on the suitcase had to stand for Marc DeVarnay, the suitcase matched the description I had been given of the luggage the missing man had carried with him from New Orleans to St. Louis and then to Seattle, and there were at least three witnesses who had seen him with Old Jake. I sat there for a time sipping beer and trying again to imagine what Marc DeVarnay, a millionaire businessman who had no interest in either fishing or hunting, could have been doing down here in the swamp and bayou country. How had he managed to get acquainted with Old Jake? More to the point, why did he get acquainted with Old Jake? What business, either professional or personal, could a prosperous antique dealer have been conducting in Old Jake’s cabon? If his curiosity about Pointe Neuve real estate had been genuine, DeVarnay would have gone to a Realtor. Wandering about the area with Old Jake and asking passersby if any property was for sale would have been totally out of character for him.

As an exercise in deduction, this was like trying to work through a maze of one-way bayous, each of which wandered off into a swamp and vanished. They not only took me nowhere, but I kept losing my starting point. I could see only one certainty about the case. If I were to have the quiet, confidential conversation with Marc DeVarnay I so desperately needed, I would have to find him quickly. His mother was furious because the authorities were investigating his disappearance with what she considered ineptness and indifference. That was why she had hired expensive private detectives.

Even if it were true, it was no longer relevant. The moment the police learned DeVarnay had been seen with Old Jake, they would start looking for him in earnest. He would still be missing, but he also would be wanted for murder.