Baton Rouge Bingo (16 page)

“May I see that diary?” I asked before Frank could say anything. I gave him a warning look as I took the diary from Rev and opened it to the back. The last third of the book was blank, but I thumbed through until I found the faded, spidery handwriting on the last entry.

September 10, 1935

Huey just called me and wants me to come up to the capital tonight. I didn’t want to leave New Orleans tonight, but I don’t see as I have a choice. Enid won’t be happy that I won’t have dinner with her and the children tonight, but she knows I have to go whenever Huey wants me, and I am the only one he trusts. He wants me to bring it with me, and I know he must need it for something. This was the responsibility I agreed to when I took it from him, and I must not let him down.

That was all there was to the entry. I turned back and read the last few days’ entries before it, but there wasn’t any other mention of Huey Long or whatever “it” was that Porterie was talking about on September 10.

“There’s nothing in here about the deduct box,” I said, closing the book and putting it back on the desk. “Just some ‘it’ that Governor Long wanted him to bring back up to Baton Rouge that day.”

Rev smiled wickedly. “Don’t you think that’s what he was talking about? What else could ‘it’ have been?”

“Where did Veronica get this diary?” I asked, thumping it with my hand. “The story says it’s been missing ever since her grandfather died. Isn’t it kind of weird that she was the one to find it when she needed money?”

“It’s authentic,” Rev replied. “I had it authenticated before I gave her any money. The handwriting is Gene Porterie’s, the age of the book is pretty accurate, so I had no reason not to believe her. She didn’t tell me where she found it.”

“Gene Porterie died on his way to Baton Rouge, didn’t he?” I asked. “A car accident?”

Rev nodded.

I pulled out my phone and opened the web browser. I typed “Eugene Porterie obituary” into a search engine and stared at the phone as the little rainbow-colored wheel spun and spun until finally a list of links popped up. The first was from the Louisiana State Archives and was a PDF from the old
New Orleans States-Item.
I read through it quickly, and there it was.

Mr. Porterie lost control of his car on his way to Baton Rouge, and it flipped into a ditch on Highway 20.

In 1935, Highway 20 was
not
on the way from New Orleans to Baton Rouge.

The causeway bridge across Lake Pontchartrain wasn’t built until the 1950s. For that matter, in 1935 not only hadn’t I-10 been built yet, but neither had I-59.

For Gene Porterie to drive to Baton Rouge from New Orleans via Highway 20 in 1935, he’d have had to cross Lake Pontchartrain at the Rigolets Bridge—a good seventy miles out of the way.

Gene Porterie wasn’t in New Orleans when he got the summons from Huey.

He’d been at the hunting cabin on the north shore near Lake Maurepas.

And really, what better place to hide something than a hunting cabin out in the marshes on the north shore? No one would ever think to look there
. Now it was just a matter of figuring out where.

I felt an adrenaline rush.

I got up and started pacing. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. But why wouldn’t someone have found it before now?

I remembered Mom saying that Veronica had spent a lot of time at the cabin when she was younger. It was a place of refuge for her—even after she’d masterminded the ridiculous idea to steal Mike the Tiger, that’s where she went to run the plan and hide out. She’d even died there.

Maybe she’d found the diary out there when she was younger.

And if Rev hadn’t kidnapped my father—he’d said there was someone else looking for the deduct box.

I heard Donnie Ray’s voice in my head again.
There are a lot of Porteries on the north shore, believe you me, and not many of them want people to know they’re related to Veronica.

“Rev,” I said slowly. “I believe you. I believe you didn’t take my dad, and I also don’t believe you killed Veronica or had her killed.”

Frank was staring at me, his mouth open.

“But this is all starting to make sense to me now,” I went on. “I think I may know where to find the deduct box—or at least where to start looking. But the longer we sit here, the harder it’s going to be to find it—the other people looking for it might be just as close to figuring it out as I am.” I rather doubted that, but I didn’t have to believe it—I just had to make Rev believe so he’d let us go. “You say your men are rescuing my dad right now?” He nodded. “Then we don’t need to be here when they bring him here, do we? I think Frank and I should go and see if we can find the deduct box.” I picked up the diary. “And we’ll need to take this.”

“All right, Scotty.” Rev stood up. “I know I can trust you. I’ll have your daddy call you once he’s here.”

“Come on, Frank.” I started walking toward the door. “Let’s get out of here.”

Frank didn’t say anything until we were safely in the car. Once he started the engine, and had pulled away from the curb, he said, “Do you really know what you’re talking about, Scotty?”

I shook my head as my phone started ringing again. I pulled it out, holding up one finger to Frank, and answered. “Scotty Bradley.”

“Scotty, hey! This is Taylor. Where are you and Frank?”

“Taylor!” I said out loud with a glance at Frank. “Your uncle and I are out doing some investigating, trying to find my dad. Did you sleep well? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” He sounded irritated. “I’m not really happy you two took off and left me behind, for one thing. I think I deserve better than that, especially after yesterday.” He sounded more than a little bit pouty, and I reminded myself that he was only eighteen. “I think I proved myself pretty well. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know something I found out online.” He sounded a little dubious. “It might just be a weird coincidence, but it’s interesting.”

“I’m sorry we left you behind,” I said, rolling my eyes at Frank. “What did you find out?”

“Well, you remember all that talk about how big the Porterie family was? I thought I’d look them up, you know, on ancestry.com? I mean, after I figured out you guys were gone, I thought I’d find a way to help, and if it didn’t help, well, it would help me kill some time, especially since your note said for me not to leave the house.” His voice got a little whinier on the last few words.

I was beginning to understand why people got so impatient with me when I was telling a story. “Get to the point, Taylor.”

“Oh! Yes, sorry about that. Anyway, I looked up the Porteries, and you’ll never guess who I found out is a Porterie. Just like Hope, his great-grandfather was Eugene Porterie. And when I saw it, I laughed, you know, because it’s just so weird—”

I sighed. “Get to the point, please.”

“Troy Dufresne!” He laughed. “Isn’t that weird? The guy your mom got arrested for slugging on Monday, he’s a Porterie, too! His grandmother was Eugene Porterie’s oldest daughter! Isn’t that a funny coincidence?”

“Yes, yes it is,” I said absently, my mind racing. “Look, Taylor, I have to go, okay? Stay inside until we get home.” I hung up the phone and put it back in my pocket.

Troy Dufresne was a Porterie.

Troy Dufresne was from the north shore.

I heard Rev saying,
Someone pretty damned powerful here in Louisiana is the one who did take your daddy. I don’t know who he is, but he’s got some pull in this state.

The state’s attorney general would certainly fit that description.

And while we were busy finding Veronica Porterie’s body at the hunting cabin, Troy Dufresne was busy having Dad kidnapped.

I was exactly sure how that all worked, but the attorney general was really in charge of enforcing the law in the courts for the state, so didn’t that mean he was in charge of the police?

How could someone kidnap Dad in broad daylight and get him out of the apartment in the middle of the French Quarter without anyone noticing?

If the people taking him were from the state police, Dad wouldn’t have made a scene. He would have gone quietly. Mom would have screamed and yelled and been dragged kicking all the way down the back steps and into the police car—

And the state police also have access to unmarked cars.

I was starting to feel a little sick to my stomach.

“Frank, can you step on it?” I said in a very small voice.

“Are you okay?” He glanced over at me as we headed up Calliope to the on-ramp for I-10.

“I don’t know.” I took a few deep, cleansing breaths, but somehow, I
knew
I was right. I filled Frank in on what I was thinking and what Taylor had found. Frank listened, without saying anything, but I noticed that muscle jumping in his jaw as I kept reasoning it all out for him.

I finally finished talking after we passed the causeway exit on our way out of town. “So, do you think I’m crazy?”

“No, it makes sense.” The corners of his mouth twitched a little bit. “In a crazy sort of way, of course, but it makes sense. Now, how do we get out to this place?”

“We have to take I-55 north to Jackson when we get over the lake estuary,” I said. “And then once we’re on dry land again, we take the Highway 20 exit. I’m pretty sure I can find it again once we’re on 20.”

I held on to my phone for dear life as we passed the last few exits for New Orleans and were out over the lake marshes again. I had no reason to trust Rev Harper, but then again he’d proven himself to be a man of his word back when I dealt with him the last time. I had to believe his men could rescue my dad, and that Dad was going to call me. Frank was speeding, expertly weaving his way in and out of traffic, sometimes getting so close to cars before passing them that my heart leaped up into my throat. I didn’t bother looking at the speedometer because I really didn’t want to know how fast we were going. As we sped along the bridge, I flipped the diary open again to read that last entry again—

—and that was when I noticed something.

The last entry was on the back side of a page, but Porterie had never started a new date and entry on a new page. He’d always simply written the date below the last entry and started the new one.

The last entry seemed…
incomplete.

I held up the book and looked carefully at the binding between the last entry and the next page.

A page was missing.

It wasn’t that noticeable, actually. If you didn’t look closely, you’d never notice it was gone.

Frank hurtled onto the on-ramp for I-55, shooting around an eighteen-wheeler like it was standing still.

The question was, had Veronica removed the page before selling it to Rev, or had Rev removed it before giving it to me?

Or did Eugene Porterie himself tear it out before he died?

I looked at the blank page that came next, and remembered something I’d learned in a forensics course I’d taken.

I reached into the glove box, pulled out a pencil, and lightly ran it over the next page in the journal.

And words began to take shape.

So, I have taken the papers Huey wants out of the box—I don’t know what they are, they are sealed in envelopes and it is not for me to open them or question what they are. The box remains hidden, of course, Huey is right—his enemies, who are also the enemies of progress and the future, who want to drag Louisiana back into the old ways of the oligarchs who cheat and rape the poor every day, are everywhere, and if they could get their hands on the box and its contents, they would be unstoppable.

The bearer bonds must always be safe. But the box is safe, for now—even if I were to die right now, the box would be safe from wind and rain, from hurricanes and flood waters.

I know that it is bad luck, as my grandmother always used to say, to talk about your own death; but I have been dreaming a lot about death lately, so I have to believe that my own time on this planet is drawing to a close. This diary is the only record of where the deduct box has been hidden; if I should die before I am able to return it to Huey’s custody, Huey must be given this diary, for he is the only one who will be able to decipher it and find what it is his.

And that was all it said.

I couldn’t believe it.

Huey must be given this diary, for he is the only one who will be able to decipher it and find what is his.

“Motherfucker!” I swore, slamming the book shut.

“What?” Frank asked, looking over at me in concern.

“Just keep your eyes on the road,” I said, unable to conceal my irritation. “How’s this—I figured out that not only was a page missing from this stupid book, and how to read what was written on it, but good ole Gene Porterie’s only clue to where he hid the fucking deduct box—well, the only person who could figure it out would be Huey Long himself.” I counted to ten and took some deep, cleansing breaths. “So, if Rev was wrong and he can’t get Dad away from the kidnappers…”

“Don’t even go there,” Frank said as we left the bridge and hit dry land again. “He didn’t strike me as the kind of person who would say he could do something and then not be able to do it.”

“He isn’t.” I concurred. “Mom should be calling at any moment to tell us Dad’s home, in fact.” I sighed and leaned back in the seat. “The exit for Highway 20 is coming up—we want to go west.”

Frank slowed down for the exit, and I slumped down farther in the seat, putting my knees up on the dashboard while I thought some more.

Who’d torn the page out of the diary? Rev hadn’t noticed it was gone—he certainly would have never paid for the diary had he been aware it wasn’t complete. The other question, and perhaps the most important one, was
why
was the page torn out? If that was all it said, it was completely useless to anyone besides Huey Long himself, and Huey had been dead for almost eighty years. The secret of where the deduct box was hidden had gone into the grave with Eugene Porterie.

So why was Troy Dufresne so determined to find it? To the point where he’d kidnap Dad?

Of course, I had no proof, but I knew in my heart I was right. Troy Dufresne was the leader of the other gang looking for the deduct box, and undoubtedly, he or one of his men had murdered Veronica. But why? That didn’t make any sense—then again, Veronica was the person most likely to have torn the page out of the diary. She’d had an interesting sense of morality, after all—thinking it was more humane, for example, to kill dogs and cats rather than find them homes. She’d think nothing of selling the diary after removing the only thing of value in it.

It was a wonder someone hadn’t killed her years earlier.

“Turn here,” I instructed Frank as we approached the dirt road into the swamp. It all seemed kind of familiar to me now—the places where reeds and flowers grew out of stagnant water, the clouds of gnats swarming over something dead and rotting, the massive live oaks with Spanish moss hanging down from the branches. The sounds were much the same, too—the cicadas and crickets, the occasional squawk of a diving bird, the splash from a fish jumping. At one point I saw the beady eyes and round dark-green head of an alligator floating in the murky water alongside the dirt road. The way its yellowish eyes didn’t blink made it look like it was dead, stuffed by some taxidermist and set afloat in the water to scare off birds or something. Yet it was beautiful out there in the marsh, a wild, stark kind of beauty with the blue sky above and the rays of the sun beating down relentlessly. Deeper and deeper we went into the marsh, Frank driving slowly so we didn’t miss the driveway to the Porterie cabin.

“It’s coming up here, on the left,” I finally said as we went around the last curve I remembered, and sure enough, just ahead was the driveway—but this time there was a chain stretched across it from two metal poles that had been driven into the ground on either side. Frank turned into the driveway and stopped just outside the chain.

“Let me check it out,” I said, opening my car door and climbing out. I walked over to the chain, which hung loosely between the two poles. It had been looped around both, and the ends pulled together and attached with a shiny new silvery padlock. I rolled my eyes. The Tangipahoa Parish sheriff’s department meant well, but this was ridiculous. I shook my head at Frank as I walked over to one of the poles. I grasped the chain and with one swift yank was able to put it up and over the top. I took a big swing and tossed the chain to the other side of the driveway, where with a slinking sound it slid down into the ditch. I climbed back into the car. “I guess it was just for show,” I said as I fastened my seat belt again. “Do you think I should put it back up after we go in?”

Frank thought for a moment before putting the car in drive. “I don’t think it much matters—I can’t imagine there’s much traffic out here, do you? And like you said, that chain’s not going to stop anyone else who wants in any more than it stopped us.”

The Jag crept slowly forward along the narrow drive, and I found myself holding my breath with anticipation until we came out into the clearing where the cabin stood on its cinderblock columns.

The same old rusty car was still sitting where it was when Mom and I had been here. Yellow crime scene tape fluttered around the door to the screen porch. I got a weird feeling as Frank put the car into neutral.

“Pull the car around back, Frank,” I suggested. I didn’t know what the weird feeling was about, but the thought of leaving the Jaguar out in the open in front of the house just seemed wrong somehow.

Frank didn’t argue with me, just put the car into gear. He drove even more slowly around the side of the cabin. When we reached the back corner of the cabin, I gasped in surprise. We’d not had time or reason to look behind the house the day Mom and I had found Veronica’s body, so I was seeing it for the first time. There was no grass, just dirt and a big silver propane tank. About ten yards beyond the cabin’s back door was a wide bayou, maybe six feet across, with a little pier jutting out a couple of yards. A rusty little fishing boat with an outboard motor was tied up to it.

Frank pulled the Jag around so that the front faced the back door of the cabin, and turned the engine off. “Now what?” he said in a whisper, which made me smother a laugh.

I got out of the car again and had to admit, it was weirdly quiet. I walked up the steps to the back door and tried to open it, but it was locked. I motioned for Frank to come with me and headed around for the front. I ignored the crime scene tape, opened the warped screen door, and stepped into the shaded porch. The body was gone, but the chalk outline of the body remained, and no one had bothered to clean up the blood. It had now dried, but there was a sickly sweet smell hanging in the air. I gagged and stepped across the porch as quickly as I could, hearing Frank’s footsteps behind me. The front door was closed, but when I turned the knob and pushed, it opened.

The window unit was still running, so there was a blast of cold air as I stepped inside. I flipped on the light switch, and flinched at the bright light cast from the chandelier/ceiling fan, which was attached directly to the ceiling. The room smelled dank, and it looked like there was black mold on the walls in the corners near the ceiling. The walls had faux-wood paneling, and the floor was covered in old linoleum that in some places was curling up in the corners. A brown corduroy couch was pushed up against one wall, and the little coffee table in front of it was slanted to one side. A rusty coffee can sat on it, with cigarette butts floating in the murky water inside. I shook my head. It didn’t look like the sheriffs had bothered searching for evidence inside the house—no fingerprint dust anywhere, and they never clean up after themselves.

I walked over to a door on the left wall, figuring it led into a bedroom, and was right. There was another window unit running there. The bed was old, the frame dark wood that looked like it had seen better days; it may have been new during the Eisenhower administration. But the bed wasn’t made, so I had to assume this was the room where Veronica had been sleeping. I walked over to the bed and looked at the nightstand. There was a half-empty plastic cup with water in it, and next to that, a pill bottle. I picked it up.
Alprazolam .5 mg tablets, Veronica Porterie.

I knew what alprazolam was—I’d had a prescription for it after Katrina.

I whistled. I waved the bottle at Frank, who was standing in the doorway. “Veronica was taking Xanax,” I said. “I wonder how long she was taking it?”

Frank shrugged. “Probably ever since they killed that security guard twenty years ago.”

I opened the closet door. Three pairs of jeans and a floral print polyester dress were hanging there, and there was an open, empty suitcase on the floor. I checked the shelf, but there wasn’t anything there other than a pair of cheap faux-leather pumps. Frank was going through the chest of drawers, but there was nothing in it other than some socks, underwear, and T-shirts.

After the bedroom, we walked back into the kitchen and back into the heat. There wasn’t a window unit in the kitchen—which didn’t make much sense to me; why wouldn’t you have an air conditioner in the room where you cooked? There was a pot on the stove with congealed spaghetti noodles floating in starchy water, and an opened jar of hardened spaghetti sauce on the counter. There was also some packaged hamburger in the sink, which had turned brown and smelled pretty bad.

Hamburger?

What kind of animal rights activist eats
hamburger?

“Frank—” I started to say, but cut myself off when I heard the sound of another car pulling up the driveway. Frank and I exchanged glances—we had technically disturbed a crime scene—and I hurried back through the kitchen and peered through the blinds on one of the living room windows. The car was a small, dark blue Nissan, and it stopped right next to the rusted old car. I gasped when the car door opened and a young woman got out.

Hope Porterie.

I’d never seen her outside of on television, and I was surprised at how small she seemed in person. She had white-blond hair that hung to her shoulders, her forehead covered with bangs. She was wearing a purple LSU T-shirt and a pair of white denim shorts. Her skin was tanned a golden brown and she couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. She was wearing Nikes, and a white canvas purse hung from her shoulder at her side.

“What is she doing here?” Frank muttered. “Returning to the scene of the crime?”

I didn’t bother to remind him that she was being hijacked by AFAR around the time her mother was being murdered. But it was weird.
Fuck it
,
I decided, and walked out the front door.

Startled, Hope reached for her purse when I opened the screen door. “Hi.” I smiled ingratiatingly at her. “We’ve never met, but you know my mother, Cecile Bradley? My brother Storm?”

She relaxed a little bit, but I also noticed she didn’t let go of her purse—which was more than a little odd. “Hi,” she said hesitantly, forcing a smile.

I walked down the steps, holding my hands up so she could see I wasn’t a threat. Mom had always taught me to do that in situations where I was somewhere alone with a woman who didn’t know me—to let her know I wouldn’t hurt her. I didn’t hear Frank behind me. “So, what are you doing here, Hope?”

She licked her lower lip. “I—I, um…” She paused again, apparently not sure how to continue. Her eyebrows came together. “What are
you
doing here?”

I’ve always found honesty to be the best policy, primarily because I’m a lousy liar when put on the spot. I sat down on the steps. “My father was kidnapped, Hope, on the same day your mother was murdered.” I spread my hands. “The only thing the kidnappers want is Huey Long’s deduct box.”
In for a penny, in for a pound.
“Now, I’ve come across your great-grandfather’s diary—which is supposedly the key to where he hid the box for Huey. Did you know your mother sold the diary to a Houston millionaire over twenty years ago?” I reached into my shorts pocket and held up the little book. “He gave it to me a little while ago so I could try to find the box myself. But lo and behold, the page where Eugene Porterie tells where he hid the box is missing.”
No need
,
I figured,
to tell her I was able to read what was written on that page anyway.

She bit her lower lip and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Yeah. I know. My mom told me all about it when she called me last week.” She took a deep breath. “She told me the deduct box was her insurance policy, but I really didn’t know what she meant.” A tear slid out of her right eye. “Does that make any sense to you?”

I shook my head. “No, it really doesn’t.” I heard Frank’s phone’s ringtone—“Knowing Me Knowing You” by ABBA—going off behind me.

“So, why did you get in touch with your mother after all those years?” I asked, moving forward until I was standing very close to her. “I can’t imagine your grandmother was too pleased about it.”