Murder Jambalaya. Lloyd Biggle jr.
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MURDER JAMBALAYA
A J. PLETCHER & RAINA LAMBERT MYSTERY
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2012 by Kenneth Lloyd Biggle and Donna Biggle Emerson
Edited by Kenneth Lloyd Biggle
and Donna Biggle Emerson
The following business firms and places are wholly fictitious: Pointe Neuve; Gator Inn; Hotel Maria Theresa; Club Edie; L’Endroit Bar; Ently and Company; Forsythe Galleries; Storril’s; DeVarnay’s; Golden Sunset Motel; MidAmerican Airline; Sierra Western Airline; Pacific Northern Airline; Nusiner and Company.
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
DEDICATION
To the courageous citizens of New Orleans, whose pride in their beautiful city
inspired a visiting author
CHAPTER ONE
I knew something was wrong the moment I stepped out of the arrival gate at the New Orleans International Airport. It was a dreary, drizzly morning in mid-November, and Raina Lambert was there to meet me. Even in good weather, she doesn’t make a practice of meeting airplanes or anything else, and I rarely see her when we are working on a case together. She had her red hair piled up in a new style that would have seriously interfered with her halo if she’d had one, and at seven in the morning, in a situation where beauty and glamour were entirely irrelevant, she managed to look both beautiful and glamorous, not to mention stylish. Stepping off a plane after a night of cramped travel, I was none of those things.
“What is it now?” I growled.
She took my arm and walked with me to the baggage area, and we talked in low tones along the way.
“There’s a rumor that Marc DeVarnay was seen by someone a few days after he disappeared,” she said.
“Where was he seen?” I asked.
“In a little fishing village called Pointe Neuve. This has to be verified at once. A man named Charlie Tosche is waiting outside for you. He’ll take you to your hotel so you can check in and leave your luggage, and then he’ll drive you down to Pointe Neuve.”
It was an order. In the firm of Lambert and Associates, Investigative Consultants, Raina is the Lambert and I am one of the associates. She is not merely the chairperson of the board; she is the board.
Even so, I consider it my duty to temper her more irrational edicts with logic. “According to Confucius, or maybe it was Karl Marx, the best rumor is half a lie,” I said. “Who claims to have seen DeVarnay?”
“Maybe no one. A family friend who knew DeVarnay was missing heard it from someone and told DeVarnay’s mother. We’ve got to find out quickly whether there’s anything in it.”
“Who is Charlie Tosche?”
“A local man I hired. A game warden. He knows the area and the people there, and he’ll give you any help he can.”
“I’ll tell you what I think,” I said. “I don’t believe there is any such person as Marc DeVarnay. He’s a figment of everyone’s imagination. I’ve just finished the most preposterous wild goose chase you’ve ever involved me in, and now you’re sending me down to the swamp and bayou country to start the whole thing over again.”
She gave me a severe look. “You did a good job in Savannah. Even the client admitted it. What are you groused about?”
“All the time I was there, I was counting on a few free days to enjoy the place. Instead, I’ve been slogging across the country to no effect whatsoever, and now I’ll be mucking around in a God-forsaken fishing village where it’ll start raining pitchforks and alligators the moment I arrive. That’s today’s official Southern Louisiana weather forecast—pitchforks and alligators. I’ve checked it. The forecast for Savannah calls for pleasantly warm temperatures and bright sunshine. I’ve checked that, too. Ten to one Pointe Neuve won’t even have rudimentary modern conveniences like sidewalks and indoor plumbing, and it’ll be thirty miles to the nearest McDonald’s.”
“You can go back to Savannah when this is finished,” Raina said. She added apologetically, “I’m not through in Minneapolis. I’m flying back this morning. Hopefully, another day or two will do it. By then you should be able to tell me how you’re going to find DeVarnay and how long you expect it to take. If you turn up anything at Pointe Neuve, use this phone number and tell Lieutenant Keig about it. That’s Lieutenant George Keig. He’s the New Orleans police officer in charge of the DeVarnay case. It shouldn’t take you more than a couple of hours down there.”
“If it’s a fishing village, it can’t be very large,” I said. “Forty-five minutes should do it.”
“It’ll be spread out along a bayou. Better allow two hours. Maybe even three. When you get back to your hotel, remember you’re not here to play. You have no excuse for investigating anything at all on Bourbon Street. DeVarnay never went there.”
“Poor boy,” I said. “His mother must have kept him in a straight jacket.”
My suitcases arrived, and we went outside to meet Charlie Tosche, a tall, lank, sunburned man with disconcertingly blue eyes. He was wearing a khaki jacket, khaki trousers, and a khaki billed cap that bore the motto, “Cajuns Are Better Lovers.” His natural habitat was the swamp and bayou country, but his battered jeep looked like a relic from Desert Storm.
Raina introduced me. “This is J. Pletcher, one of my investigators.”
Tosche nodded politely and shook my hand. He said nothing. When I got better acquainted with him, I learned that he usually said nothing. He was invariably polite and soft-spoken when he did speak, but that was seldom.
I took my leave of Raina, and Tosche drove me toward downtown New Orleans.
I marveled, as I had on previous visits, that a city with such a variety of fascinating places could look so humdrum along its main traffic arteries.
Since there was nothing worth seeing, I occupied myself with trying to imagine what a fugitive New Orleans millionaire and businessman could find to do in a tiny fishing village—except, perhaps, fish, and there had been nothing in his dossier to suggest he had the slightest interest in that. I couldn’t even hazard a guess.
At least I was able to do my imagining without interruptions. Between the airport and my hotel, Charlie Tosche didn’t utter a word.
We reached Canal Street, whose 171 feet of width accommodates four lanes of traffic on either side of a tree-lined center strip reserved for an additional two lanes of busses, all of which gives it high ranking among the world’s broadest main streets. Locally, it isn’t even the widest street in New Orleans, but it certainly is one of the most important. It marks the boundary of another dimension. Beyond it one encounters different architecture, different people, different kinds of businesses. Crossing into the French Quarter is like going from one country to another. Even the streets can’t pass that Canal Street frontier without changing their names.
The French Quarter, the Vieux Carré or old square, is the city’s premier tourist attraction, a fascinating blend of residences, businesses, entertainment establishments, historical monuments and legends, and artistic and musical activity, all housed in lovely old buildings that are Spanish in origin rather than French. At that hour of a damp, gloomy morning, however, it looked bleak and deserted and as unlike a mecca for tourists as a back alley in New York City. Its streets, cluttered with the debris of last night’s merrymaking, badly needed the washing they were about to get. The tourists were still in bed nursing hangovers.
Hotel Maria Theresa, a small, family-run establishment, had a lovely, gallery-surrounded courtyard—balconies are called galleries in New Orleans—and, since I had no idea when I would see it again, I gave myself a treat and stood on my own private, second-floor gallery for all of ten seconds to admire the view. In the courtyard below, amidst a stylish arrangement of potted tropical plants, there was a heated swimming pool surrounded by a clutter