Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 14 - Murder in a Casbah of Cats (15 page)

“Before I came out last Wednesday, I did some research on the mansion. I saw a couple of references to the Watkins who built the place, and that it was part of the Underground Railroad during the Civil War. Herb ever mention anything about that?”

“Herb was proud of his grandfather. He claimed the old man helped over five hundred runaway slaves reach Mexico and go on to the Caribbean.”

I leaned forward in my chair. “Given the circumstances at the time, they could only travel at night, so they had to be put up during the day.”

Frank pondered my words. “Yeah. Suppose you’re right.”

He ever mention where they stayed during the day? He couldn’t afford to keep them in the house in case Confederate troops or anti-abolitionists showed up.”

The old gardener removed his pipe and drew the back of his hand across his lips. “Nope. He probably had a hideout back out in the forest.”

Frank’s phone rang. It was for me. Edna decided to take me up on my offer to whip up a meal. “Lunch is almost ready,” she said. “Tell me then what ingredients you need for dinner tonight, and I’ll get it together for you.”

Glancing through the storm door at the steady rain, I decided a belly-warming gumbo would do. Chicken and sausage would be simplest if I could find some properly smoked sausage. “I’m for it. We’ll be right up for lunch.”

“Fine. And tell Frank that Gadrate wants him to bring her his dirty linens.”

I passed word on to Frank, who hesitated, then disappeared into the shed, returning moments later with the bulging bag I had seen beside the jerricans.

He refused when I offered to carry it to the house for him. “No trouble,” he said, throwing it over his shoulder and grabbing a battered black umbrella. “Let’s go. Edna said she was going to bake an apple pie.”

I always keep a couple of boxes of smoked sausage in my freezer, picked up from my visits to Church Point every couple of months.
I circle by Mowata, Louisiana, and stop at Thibeau’s, makers of the world’s greatest smoked sausage.

Those delectable links add a piquancy and flavor beyond description to any meal.

But, my place was an hour away. I’d trust Edna to find a couple of links of heavily smoked sausage.

To tell the truth, I looked forward to whipping up a steaming pot of gumbo. Sometimes when I was in the middle of a case and my brain was bamboozled, flummoxed, and bewildered (which happened more than I like to admit), it always did me good to push my questions aside and occupy my time with other endeavors, ones that would call for my complete attention.

And believe it or not, Cajun cooking was one way for me to accomplish that task, for often, when I was dicing onions, a simple answer I’d failed to see would pop into my simple head.

Over lunch, I told Edna the ingredients I needed, all of which, other than the smoked sausage, she had on hand in her well-stocked pantry. I couldn’t help thinking, if Armageddon or some natural disaster forced us to shelter for years, Edna’s kitchen and larder would be more than enough to take care of us.

After lunch, I whipped up a chocolate-colored roux, the Louisiana secret of delicious gumbos, jambalayas, and étouffées.

Roux

4 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 sautéed large chopped onion

Stir CONSTANTLY over flame until chocolate colored. If it’s black, it’s burned. Then, add 8 cups water to the mixture and stir and stir and stir and stir until you think your arm will fall off.

Back home, we always mixed up considerably more roux, for it was part of our daily diet. Since it takes almost an hour
to properly prepare it, we’d make enough to last a couple of weeks.

After the roux was ready, I added:

8 cups water

chopped bell pepper, celery, tops of one bunch green

onions, and 2 bay leaves

1 large chicken, breasts cut into chunks

18 inches smoked sausage, cut into bite-sized pieces

1/2 cup chopped parsley

salt and pepper to taste

I sniffed the two links of sausage Edna provided. They were smoked, not as much as I would have preferred, but they would have to do. After a few minutes, the rich aroma of gumbo filled the kitchen and spread through the house.

“Now what?” Edna asked when she saw me add the last ingredient.

“Now we let it cook. A couple of hours, low flame, just below a boil.” I sniffed the familiar, rich aroma of the gumbo once again, remembering the frigid winter days back on the windswept Louisiana prairies and how I looked forward to a couple of bowls of Mama’s belly-warming gumbo. No cuisine in the world can match Cajun cooking. I licked my lips when I thought of savory stuffed pork roast, delectable chicken and gravy, or a sinful pot roast in aspic, all over steaming rice, the result of which would be a full stomach and clear sinuses.

Edna looked up at me. “That’s it, huh?” She held her pencil poised over the pad in her hand on which she had made notes of the recipe. “What about Cajun
filé
? It’s supposed to add flavor.”

“We might have to add some. If the sausage is smoked enough, there’s no need to add flavoring. You ever heard of red beans and andouille?”

“Yes, but I don’t know exactly what it is.”

“Andouille is a special sausage smoked over pecan wood. That’s where it gets its flavor, from the smoke. With sausage, the flavor comes from the wood that smokes it.”

I glanced out the kitchen window. The drizzle continued unabated.

“Dreary day,” Edna muttered. “The kind to stay inside and curl up with a good book.”

I looked down at her in surprise.

She beamed. “I read everything. I love mysteries, and maybe with a little touch of romance thrown in.”

Henry pushed through the kitchen door and looked at me askance. “There’s a man at the door who wants to see you—a big man.”

Frowning, I followed the slender butler.

I did a double take when I spotted a behemoth in a Nicky Hilton suit. Huey! He was Danny O’Banion’s bodyguard, who could serve as a body double for Godzilla. Puzzled, I said, “Huey?”

The first time I had seen the behemoth was one night on a narrow road west of Austin. At the time, his square face looked like a chunk of chipped granite: square, solid, with no distinguishing features other than a couple of fissures for eyes, a square knob for a nose, and a third crevice that was probably his mouth. His face hadn’t changed over the years, still full of knobs and fissures.

A grunt escaped his thin lips. He dipped his head over his shoulder. “Danny wants to see you.”

I had to bend sideways to look around him. Danny’s black limo sat in front of the porch. “Let’s go,” I said.

He opened the back door, and I slipped in. After Huey closed the door, he remained outside so no one would interfere with our conversation.

Danny grinned at me, the freckles on his fair-complexioned face running together in one big blotch. “Hey, Danny.” I stuck out my hand.

His grin grew wider as he took my hand. “Good to see you, man.” An amused smiled played over his lips when he saw the knot on my forehead. “Rough job, huh?”

“My own fault. Ran into a tree limb.”

“Man can hurt himself like that.”

“Tell me about it.”

He glanced at the house, where Henry and Edna were standing in the doorway looking on. “Looks like you got something going on out here, huh? I mean besides running into trees.” He tapped on the window, and Huey moved a step to his left to block Henry’s and Edna’s view of the backseat. I chuckled to myself.

I shrugged. “If you can call house-sitting cats, ‘going on,’ yeah.”

“House-sitting cats?” He looked at me in disbelief. “Go on.”

“Nope. That’s it. House-sitting cats. Twenty of them.”

Danny shook his head. “Jeez, you PIs will do anything for a buck, huh?”

I forced a laugh. That was the third or fourth time, I’d heard the comment. I knew they were joking, but it was starting to get on my nerves.

He gestured to the house. “Got time for a sandwich out at the County Line Barbecue?”

“Not today. I got a pot of gumbo going in there. Hang around and get some.”

“Naw. Don’t have the time. I just got in. Haven’t even been to the office, but I heard something about what you were asking. I figured you’d like to know.”

I grew serious. “Like what?”

“You know much about the old man who lived here, Watkins, Herbert something Watkins?”

“Adam. Herbert Adam Watkins.” I shook my head. “No, except he was rich, and his daddy, and his daddy, were rich. He was some sort of philanthropic icon in Austin. Man of the Year, giving money away, that sort of thing. Why?”

Danny grunted. “I don’t know how those others got their money, but this one was big into the drug scene. What citizens like you call a broker. He brought in the merchandise, then distributed it through subcontractors.”

I stared at Danny in disbelief. “Watkins? Herbert Adam Watkins the third. You sure you got the same one?”

Danny said, “You said he was mixed up with a guy named Bill Collins, right?”

His announcement stunned me. I had just assumed the old man was an industrialist, or an investor, or, well, half a dozen other things. But a dealer…Finally, I managed to reply, though not very coherently. “Yeah. Bill Collins. Right. Yeah.”

“He’s the one. Him and Collins were in it together. Collins did the old man, but the cops couldn’t prove it. He got nailed a few months later for dealing. Ended up with ten years’ hard time at a federal pen.”

Slowly, my dysfunctional brain was shifting into gear. “Collins. Yeah, he works over at H&H Laundry now.”

“That’s his sideline.”

“You mean—”

“Yep. That’s the word I pick up. Oh, he isn’t nosing in our stuff, if you know what I mean. So we don’t worry about him.”

I knew what he meant. Leaning back in the corner of the seat, I studied him a moment. “Thanks. But I have some bad news for you. Your boy said you wanted to see Willy Morena.”

“I heard he bought it.”

“Yeah.” I pointed to the hedge at the east end of the mansion. “Out there. I was trying to find out about Collins, and someone wasted Willy-boy. And that’s not all.”

“You mean Guzman?”

I shook my head. “You don’t miss anything, do you?”

“Hey, pal, I can’t afford to. What about Morena? You learn anything from him?”

“No. If he was to be believed, he’d tried to get back with Collins but didn’t have any luck. Guzman was stabbed by two others, right out there in the middle of the yard,” I added, gesturing to the grounds near the fence. “The only one of the bunch left except Radison, who’s in Angola, is Chippy Alberto.”

Danny shrugged. “Word came in last night poor old Chippy ran his car off the road. Must’ve been drunk or something. They had to get the Jaws of Life to get him out. Unfortunately, he had passed on.” He shook his head. “Tragic.”

I stared at him, reading the message behind his twinkling eyes.

A slight smile played over his lips. “So, tell me. Why you so interested in Collins and the old man?”

I shrugged. “No big deal. Just playing around, really.” I quickly outlined what few details I knew of the night of Watkins’s death. “Most figure Collins pulled it off. To be honest, house-sitting cats is number one on the list of the ten most boring jobs in the world.
I was just passing the time, and then somebody took me seriously.”

“Seriously? What do you mean?”

I told him about the rock through my apartment window, and then the spiders. “Now you tell me, what is it about this place that someone wouldn’t want me, or any PI, around?”

Danny grinned mischievously. “Well, for one thing, you’re ugly as sin.”

I threw an appropriate curse at him. “But you see what I mean?”

“Yep.” He grew serious. “Listen, you know if you need anything, just give me a shout.”

“I know. Thanks.”

Everyone, even Frank Creek, bragged on the gumbo, not only with the fleeting flimsiness of words but with the robustness of multiple helpings. And on a drizzly, depressing night, the gumbo hit the spot even though Danny’s announcement about Watkins’s involvement in drugs still staggered me.

During dinner I fielded several questions about Danny and Huey. I lied about Danny, saying he was the owner of a new computer-chip company coming to Austin, and Huey was his driver, valet, and bodyguard.