Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 09 - The Crystal Skull Murders (4 page)

Though I didn’t particularly care for Doreen’s curt
manner, I had to admit she was as cooperative as a
puppy chasing a stick. She caught up with me. “Where
are we going?”

“Morgue, then the Blackhawk Towers”

I paused at my pickup. “You want to ride or follow.”
I nodded to her Jag. “You got a good parking spot there,
and old Buck is watching the car. You might not get so
lucky when we get back.”

Pursing her lips, Doreen eyed my pickup, then blew
noisily out through them. “I swore I’d never ride in one of
these things again, but well, okay” After she slammed
the door behind her and buckled her seatbelt, she looked
over at me. “What are you going to do if there’s no parking spots when we get back?”

With a chuckle, I pulled away from the curb. “I got a
secret”

“What?”

“You’ll see” I hesitated, then asked, “Why don’t you
like to ride in pickups?”

For a moment, she didn’t answer. Then she replied
vaguely. “I just don’t. So, what’s at the morgue?”

“You ever been to one?”

She hesitated, then shook her head. “No”

I could see the trepidation in her eyes. I gave her a
crooked grin. “Don’t worry. We aren’t going to see any
stiffs. I’m curious about that claim ticket.”

“I don’t understand.”

I flexed my fingers about the wheel. “Stop and think
at what we learned. Rosey finds something. He sells it.
Then the place where he sleeps burns, and he’s hit on
the head” I tried to sort and catalog my thoughts. “Like
Goofyfoot said, Rosey’s not going to burn his house, so
if we discount the idea that he did, then what we have
left are a couple little theories.”

“Such as?”

“First, he stumbled on the arsonist and was killed to
keep from identifying him. Second, what if for some
reason, someone took whatever it was that Rosey hadmaybe the pawn ticket-and killed him. Then the unknown killer burned the bar thinking Rosey would go
up with it. But the old man managed to crawl out of the
building. And then third, what if for some reason, the
killer didn’t get what he was looking for?”

Doreen arched an eyebrow. “Sounds like to me you’re
just guessing.”

With a chuckle, I grinned at her. “I am, big time. But,
we got to have us a starting place. Besides, we’ve got
an hour to kill before Getdown Joe shows up”

Doreen pulled out a small pad and scribbled some
notes.

I frowned. “What’s that?”

With the same dour expression on her face, she
replied, “I’m making notes.”

Despite my mixed feelings toward her, I muttered,
“I’m glad to see that”

She looked up, a puzzled frown replacing the sour
expression on her face.

I pulled up to a red light and opened my cell phone. I
called Billy Joe Martin at the morgue. He and I went
back years at Sam Houston University in Huntsville.

I explained I knew the identity of the old wino they
had autopsied last week, and that I was looking for a
pawn ticket in his effects.

“Come on over, Tony. I’ll see what I can find out.”

I dropped the cell phone in my pocket.

“Friend of yours?” Her tone didn’t have as sharp an
edge as earlier.

“Yeah. We were in the Criminal Justice program up
at Huntsville until I changed majors.”

She arched a curious eyebrow.

I chuckled. “I decided to teach English.”

Her eyes grew wide.

“Hey,” I added with a grin. “It takes all kinds.”

“An English teacher, huh?”

I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I caught a fleeting
smile over her lips. “Yeah” I sighed and flexed my
fingers about the steering wheel. “English in a school
where kids didn’t want to learn and where every administrator’s mission in life was to please the parents.”

For a moment, I figured that maybe we were beginning to communicate. “What about you? How’d you
end up here?”

Her face grew hard, and the tone in her voice indicated she didn’t want to talk about it. “Let’s just say it
was a choice I made”

I glanced at Doreen as we pushed through the glass
doors at the Travis County Morgue. Against the far wall
was a semicircular counter behind which sat three mature women in front of computers. I nodded to the first
and smiled. “Could you tell Billy Joe Martin that Tony
Boudreaux is here?”

She reached for the phone and indicated a row of
leather chairs against one wall. “You can wait over there”

As we waited, Doreen scribbled a few additional
notes in her notepad. After she dropped it back in her
pocket, she looked around at me. “From what you said
earlier, I assume you take notes also, huh?”

I nodded. “Yeah” I pulled out several blank 3 x 5
cards from my pocket. “This is what I keep my notes on. Each card details a single factor: a comment, an act,
anything pertaining to the case. Detailed note taking is
essential. You’re smart to do it.”

To my surprise, she smiled. “Thanks”

“Hey, Tony.”

We looked around as Billy Joe pushed through the
door and let it swing shut behind him. I jumped to my
feet, my eyes fixed on his hands, which held nothing. A
wave of disappointment washed over me.

He hurried over, and we shook hands. I introduced
him to Doreen. “Sorry, Tony. All the old man had on
him was thirty-six cents in change and a bag of Bull
Durham tobacco”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it. By the way, you said you had his name”

Disappointed, I nodded. “Yeah. Chadley Beauregard
Collins, nickname, Rosey”

Billy Joe whistled. “Hey, I think if that was my
name, I’d go by Rosey too. You know where he came
from?”

“No. I met him on Sixth Street a few years ago. You
finished with him?”

“Yeah. We’ll plant him tomorrow.”

I glanced at Doreen, then leaned toward Billy Joe. “I
want to give this old man something better than Potter’s
Field. I’ll make arrangements with Maxton Funeral
Home to pick him up”

A perplexed frown played over Billy Joe’s face and
then an expression of understanding replaced it. He winked at me. “If you need a few extra bucks, let me
know.”

“Thanks, buddy.”

Back in the pickup, Doreen looked at me curiously
and then buckled herself in. Her eyes fixed on the road
ahead, she said, “What was that all about, the funeral
home business?”

With a shrug, I brushed her question off. “Nothing.”

She eyed me a few moments, then asked, “Did we
find out anything important back there?”

Pulling out of the parking lot, I headed back to the
Red Rabbit on Sixth Street. “Sometimes, it isn’t what
we find, but what we don’t find.”

Her brows knit. “You lost me”

“Remember my little theories. One of them was that
perhaps the killer had not found the pawn ticket?” She
nodded, and I continued. “But since it wasn’t in Rosey’s
effects, then I think we can say the killer did get it. Follow me?”

A confused expression knit her brows.

I explained, “All that means is we’ve got one less
theory to research.”

She shook her head slowly. “That isn’t much”

A chuckle rolled off my lips. “No, but it’s more than
we had a hour ago”

We rode in silence for several moments. Finally, she
cleared her throat. “I get the feeling you don’t want to
talk about it, but that was a nice thing you did back there”

I looked around at her. “What?”

“Burying the old man.”

I didn’t know her well enough to explain about my
own father, and how, if sometime, somewhere, he were
found dead in an alleyway in Dallas or the park in Tucson, someone would give him a decent burial. I flexed
my fingers about the steering wheel. “Thanks”

At that moment, we pulled up in front of the Red
Rabbit. There were no parking spots. Doreen looked
around at me with a smug grin on her face. “No parking
spots, so what’s your secret?”

I whipped into a loading zone behind her red Jag and
hopped out.

“You’re begging for a ticket.”

“Think so?” I grinned at her and tilted the back of
the seat forward. I rummaged through a dozen magnetized signs until I found the one I wanted. I pulled it out
and slammed the door. “Here’s the secret,” I said with a
smug grin of my own.

The sign read, Blevin’s Brewery: We Deliver. And I
promptly stuck it on the side of the door.

Doreen arched an eyebrow. “Who’s going to believe
that?”

I laughed. “Everyone”

As we entered the open door of the bar, I spotted
Getdown in the rear of the room. Seated across the
table from him was a light-complexioned black man
with a shiny bald head.

At that moment, a cockroach the size of a rat scurried
across the worn wooden floor in front of us. Doreen
stiffened. “Ugh.”

I chuckled. “Steady there,” I quipped. “I’ll defend
you.”

She didn’t laugh. I rolled my eyes.

At seventy-four, Getdown Joe Sillery had successfully managed to stay aboard the roller coaster ride of a
business that teetered precariously on the brink between the law and the lawless. Rumor had it Getdown
had solid mob connections. Rumor had it he was big time into drugs. Rumor also had it that if you sent a particular e-mail to five hundred people, Dell Computers
would give you a laptop.

I shouldn’t admit it, but I know for a fact they do not.

That’s why I never paid any attention to rumors.

The fat man was cleaning up a platter that, if it were
his usual brunch, had once held four cheeseburgers,
fries, and two apple turnovers. As we drew near, the
light-complexioned young man rose and disappeared
down the hall to the rear of the building.

Getdown Joe barely topped five feet, both in height
and width. He rolled when he walked, but he was
rightly labeled as the biggest proponent of Hip-Hop in
Austin. His club was routinely jammed with customers,
all more than willing to pay the exorbitant prices his
club demanded.

Licking the grease from his sausage-thick fingers, he
looked up at us. “You the ones Blevins’ sent?’

“Yeah” I introduced Doreen and myself. “We’ve been
doing a little snooping around” The leftover aromas of
the greasy cheeseburgers floating above the table were
mouth watering. Behind me, I heard Doreen’s stomach
growl.

He gestured to the chairs at the table. He shook his
head. “Don’t it figure. Take off a couple days and things
always go down the tubes” He nodded down the hall
into which the younger man had disappeared. “Even
them that work for you don’t care just as long as they
get their bread every week”

“You’ve been gone, huh? Vacation?” I asked casually
as I slipped in at the table.

“In a way. I wanted to catch a new rap group up in
Dallas at the Somalia Sunrise Club.”

Buck stopped at the table. “You want anything?”

Before I could reply, Doreen answered. “No. Nothing.”

Unlike many who attempt to hide their girth with
garish clothes, Getdown’s dress was much more fashionable than mine. Of course, just about any mode of
dress is more fashionable than washed-out jeans, running shoes, and a sports coat over a Polo shirt. He
grunted. “Fawn had some good things to say about you,
Boudreaux.”

Of that I wasn’t surprised. Fawn Williams was a
high-class escort out of Lafayette whom I managed
to clear of a murder earlier that year. “Good. Now,
about the fire. The cops figured Rosey was the one who
set it.”

His rotund face froze. He stared at me in disbelief,
the white of his eyes accenting the surprise in his
pupils. “Rosey? Was that who that old man was? The
cops said they couldn’t identify him.”

“That’s who it was. Goofyfoot told us”

He muttered a soft curse. “He was a harmless old
bum. Sometimes in the winter, he slept in the back room
of my club” He paused. “So, what do you think?”

I gave Doreen a warning look. “I think whoever
torched your place didn’t want Rosey to identify him,
so he killed the old man.”

Getdown Joe gulped a swallow of beer from an icy
mug and waved to Buck for a refill. “So you think
someone else torched it, huh?”

“Yeah.”

He grunted. “That’s what I think too”

“I haven’t talked to the insurance company, but from
the looks of your place, it was a total loss.”

“Yeah. And I had a backroom full of beer and wine
plus all of my cloth goods.”

“Cloth goods?”

“Yeah, you know. Towels for the bar and restrooms,
tablecloths, and new uniforms for my people.”

“Uniforms?”

A wide grin split his face, his brilliantly white teeth
a striking contrast to his blue-black skin. “Yeah. The
laundry had a supply of uniforms they got stuck with
when the Elegante Club shut down. I ain’t seen them,
but I figured they would give the Hip-Hop a little more
class.”

For a fleeting moment, a random thought nagged at
me, but I couldn’t quite pull it out. I continued. “My
boss said you had an idea someone was trying to teach
you a lesson”

“Yeah” He grunted. “In the last two months, I got
me four offers on the place.” He paused as Buck slid the
beer on the table. After Buck left, he continued. “And I
wasn’t even hustling the place. It’s a money maker.” He
laughed. “It’s like printing my own money”