Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 14 - Murder in a Casbah of Cats (18 page)

“Then just calm down.” I guided her back to the couch. “Just sit down and wait.”

A sly grin twisted Lieutenant Fenster’s lips as we all took a seat. “Looks like everybody knows the drill, huh?” He stared at Karla.

Smiling sheepishly, she cleared her throat. “Before you start, Lieutenant. There’s something I want to tell you. Last night—”

“About Stotts?”

She glanced at me. I nodded. She continued. “Yes. He wasn’t in my room the whole time.” She told him the same story she had told us.

When she finished, Fenster replied. “I know. That’s just about what he told us last night.”

She exclaimed. “He what?”

Before Lieutenant Fenster could answer, the two detectives returned, one carrying a plastic bag containing small white rocks, the other a bag bulging with prescription pills. “Here they are, Lieutenant. Right where he said.”

Fenster stared at Karla. “You’re lucky, young lady. If those had been moved, you’d have been in big trouble.”

A frown knit her brows. “I don’t understand.”

“Stotts didn’t want you to get in trouble, so he told us where he’d stashed the stuff. If they hadn’t been there, we’d have arrested you as an accessory.”

“Me?”

He looked around at me. “Even the scummiest have a conscience, I guess.”

“I guess.”

Edna spoke up. “But what kind of drugs are those?”

“This is crack,” he replied, holding up the bag of white rocks the size of pebbles. “And this,” he added, shaking the bag of multicolored pills, “is a little bit of everything: Nembutal, Valium, Vicodin, Xanax, and a dozen other prescription drugs.”

“Did he have anything to do with last night, Lieutenant?” I asked.

“I don’t know. He seemed straight with us, but with that kind of scumbag, you can’t be certain. By the way,” he added, “the guy last night, his name was James Luis Vega. They called him Jimmy Vega. You ever hear of him?”

“No.”

He looked at the others. “What about you? The name sound familiar?”

They shook their heads. “No, Lieutenant,” Henry said.

Fenster’s gaze dropped to the butler’s T-shirt. “You always that optimistic, Mr. Perry?”

After the lieutenant left, Karla went to her room and the rest of us headed for the kitchen and a cup of hot coffee.

As Edna poured, she remarked, “I hope Karla learns her lesson from this. Her grandfather would die with shame if he knew she was running about with drug dealers.”

I had been looking for a way to broach the subject, and the slender little cook who was always worried about her waistline handed it to me on the proverbial silver platter.

I sipped my coffee. “He hated drugs, huh?”

“Yes, siree,” she exclaimed. “Big-time.”

“You can ask anyone who knew him,” Henry said. “Mr. Watkins, he gave generously to the YMCA and the Boy Scouts.”

“Girls too,” Edna reminded him.

“Yeah, girls too. The YWCA and the Girl Scouts. He even built the Girl Scouts their own meeting lodge on an acre of land next to Zilker Park, and then the Boy Scouts one on an acre right next to it.”

“Sounds like a nice guy.”

Both nodded. “As good as there was,” Edna said.

I stared at the black surface of my coffee, trying to reconcile their words with what Danny and Dutch had told me about the old man.

Both Karla and Frank had said the old man was tight-lipped about his business. How tight, they had no idea.

Back in my room, I called Dutch and gave him Vega’s name, then made a few calls of my own in an effort to find out about Jimmy Vega. While waiting for answers, I went online. Within thirty
minutes and at the expense of fifty-three dollars, I found detailed information about the dead man.

He had a list of priors that filled a whole page, small stuff at the beginning, but escalating over the years. In his thirty-seven years on this planet, eleven had been in prison and six in juvenile, mostly for B&E, possession of, petty theft, and burglary. He was a regular choirboy.

His parents were dead. He had four brothers and five sisters. His sisters were Mary, Alice, Jean, Carrie, and Wanda, all sharing a common middle name, Elinana. His brothers, Robert, William, Frank, and George, also shared a common middle name, Luis.

They were all born in San Antonio. Alice, Robert, and William had moved to Austin.

Jimmy’s work history was spotty, beginning with security jobs, where he could steal clients blind. After his first conviction, he turned to car washes, where he could rip off items from customers’ vehicles.

I leaned back and shook my head. The dumb slob was probably better off now. He would have never made old age, and if he did, he’d have probably ended up living under a bridge and learning the sophisticated ins and outs of dumpster digging.

I reread the data I had pulled up, pausing when I read off the names of the brothers. When I read the last name, George, I hesitated, turning the information over in my head. George. That was the name of the man who delivered the laundry. He was Hispanic. I shook my head, wondering of his surname. What were the odds it was Vega? Of course, Vega was one of the most common of Hispanic surnames.

Still, he was Hispanic, he worked for the same laundry as Bill Collins, and the old man had once been Collins’s partner. Coincidence?

A PI wears many faces, which in everyday parlance means he lies a lot. Not to hurt individuals, but to gather information to ultimately help a client.

I was curious if Frank Creek knew anything about the alleged involvement of Herbert Adam Watkins III in the drug trade, so I fibbed to Edna, getting her to prepare my lunch along with Frank’s. “I told him I’d bring it to him. Save you some legwork, and get me out of the house for a while.”

She didn’t argue.

Before she finished packing the basket, the laundry delivery arrived. George smiled broadly at us. “Morning, everyone. Get enough rain?” He laughed.

“Too much,” Edna replied as Gadrate swept in and took the armload of packages from the amiable deliveryman. She disappeared through the swinging door into the laundry and returned with three bulging bags of laundry.

George hauled them out to the truck and returned with a load of bed linens. Sweat beaded his swarthy forehead.

“How about a nice glass of iced tea, George?” Edna reached for the pitcher.

He glanced at me. “Sounds good, but I’m running late. Next time, maybe.”

The day was steamy after the rain. Despite the soft ground, Frank had begun mowing. Muddy tracks of the tractor and the gang wheels crisscrossed the lush St. Augustine grass. I held up the basket as I approached. “Figured you were ready for a break.”

He dragged the back of his arm across his sweaty brow. “Wouldn’t complain.” He pulled into the shade and climbed down. He gestured to his cottage. “It’s shady under the porch, and I got me a big fan going to blow some of this humidity away.”

Behind us, the H&H delivery truck backed around. George spotted us and waved. We waved back, and I saw a chance to learn a little more about him. “George seems like a nice guy.” I faked a grimace. “He told me his last name, but I forgot.”

“Mendoza, I think,” Frank offered. “George Mendoza.”

“Yeah. That’s it, Mendoza.” I shook my head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with my memory. I can’t remember a thing.” I paused, then asked. “What does he do, deliver a couple of times a week?”

“About that. Sometimes three if Miz Watkins is throwing some kind of shindig.”

“I couldn’t help noticing some of the stuff he delivers is packaged.”

He shook his head and rolled his eyes. “That’s Gadrate. A few years ago, she got jumped about keeping the place clean.”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “Edna told me about that.” But Karla’s words came to mind. “Skylar wouldn’t jump on anyone. Not at all.” Someone was either lying or royally confused.

“Anyway, all the kitchen and bathroom towels and cloths that come in are packaged so they won’t pick up no germs or dirt until she puts them out.”

No one but the very rich, I told myself.

On the porch, he pulled two wicker chairs up to a round table. Despite the humidity and heat, the fan kept us cool as we dug into sandwiches of roast beef and melted provolone on wheat, quartered pickles, and crispy potato chips, washed down with Edna’s sweet tea.

Around a mouthful of sandwich, the old gardener chuckled. “You ought to hang around a spell, Tony. There hasn’t been this
much excitement around the place since Miz Watkins got her toe caught in the bathtub spigot.”

I almost choked on my roast beef. I looked at him in disbelief. “What? You’re joking.”

He shook his head. “No, sir. It was about eight or nine years ago. She was soaking in a tub of them sweet-smelling bubbles and stuck her toe in the spigot. Talk about a sight. There she was, in the bathtub, naked as the day she was born, and the plumber outside the door waiting to get in.” A paroxysm of laughter hit him, doubling him over. “Edna and Gadrate got her in a robe, then draped a blanket over her. She looked like one big cocoon with a toe sticking out.” By now, tears were rolling down his cheek. “Yes, sir,” he managed to gasp out. “That was some excitement.” He paused to catch his breath. “And we ain’t had nothing like that until you come along.”

With a wry twist to my lips, I replied, “It’s not the kind of excitement I like.”

He grew serious. “Yeah. Know what you mean.”

“That was some stash of drugs Kevin left in Karla’s room, huh?”

He took another bite of his sandwich. “Yep. Of course, we all knew the girl experimented with drugs. Everyone does nowadays, you know?”

I didn’t want to argue with him. “Just about. Wasn’t that way a couple of generations back though.”

“Yeah.” He took another gulp of tea.

“You know, I’ve heard a lot about this old boy, Bill Collins. Did Mr. Watkins know Collins was mixed up in the drug business?”

“No. Not him. He was the kind that wouldn’t tolerate drugs in his house. When Miz Watkins was just a kid, a teenager, he
caught her and her sister smoking—not a joint, just a cigarette. He tore up their behinds and didn’t let either one of them girls go anywhere except to school for a whole month.”

“You figure drugs is what they were arguing about when everyone heard him and Collins the night he was murdered?”

Poking the last of the sandwich between his lips, Frank said, “That’s what we all figure. Somehow, Mr. Watkins found out about him.”

I bit off a chunk of pickle. “What kind of business was Watkins in?”

“Investments, stocks, bonds, that sort of thing. He inherited a family fortune, and I suppose it took all his time to manage it. Herb never said, but I figure Collins was a partner in some of the investments.”

“Umm,” I sighed, leaning back and feeling the cool air rushing over my face. I’d picked up the answers to the questions I had in mind except they weren’t the answers for which I had hoped.

Dropping off the lunch basket in the kitchen, I wandered the mansion, counting off my wards, all twenty of them. I found Hercules perched on the armoire outside my door. I looked up at him. “All right, buddy. I didn’t thank you, but thanks for last night.”

For the first time, he didn’t growl at me.

I took a quick shower and donned fresh clothes, at the same time trying to make some sort of sense out of the last few days.

That the old man was neck-deep in drugs was a given; that Collins whacked him was a given; hidden access to the library had to be a given; and that someone was trying to stop me from nosing around was the only explanation for the rock through my window, the spiders, the murder of Willy Morena, and the attempt on my life the night before.

With the exception of the stabbing death of Al Guzman, each of the other incidents convinced me that I was close to something that someone didn’t want me to find. That was the only explanation for the drastic measures they had taken the night before.

And it had to do with the library! I was convinced that somewhere in that room was the secret that would give me the answers to all the confusing questions tumbling through my head.

And the only spot in the library that had not been thoroughly probed, punched, cut up, or shoved aside was the brick fireplace, although it had seen its share of scrutiny.