“It’s a fine rifle. Did you leave yours behind in New Orleans?” I said.
“No, it’s in my house in New Iberia. You want to see it?”
“I thought maybe I could shoot it sometime.”
“Be my guest. You must have a lot of time on your hands,” he said.
After he was gone, I stirred my pen in a circle on my ink blotter. Otis Baylor was either an innocent man or a very smart one. If he or a member of his family had shot the two looters, the temptation would have been to lose the probable murder weapon in the event the round was found embedded in a house or tree trunk across the street. But I suspected Otis did not get where he was by doing the predictable.
I pulled the file on the shooting from my metal cabinet and looked back a
t the notes on my interview with the next-door neighbor, Tom Claggart. Claggart had said he had been sound asleep and had not heard the shot that crippled Eddy Melancon and killed Kevin Rochon. But the man calling himself a private investigator claimed Claggart had told him he saw one of the looters emerge from Otis Baylor’s driveway. If the PI was telling the truth, Claggart had lied to either me or the PI.
Why?
I didn’t know.
EARLY TUESDAY MORNING Clete Purcel woke to the sound of birdsong in his cottage at the motor court. In its shabby way, his home away from home was a grand place, straight out of another era, with no telephones in the rooms, shaded by live oaks, the slope down to the bayou spangled with autumnal sunshine. He fixed coffee and dropped a ham steak and three eggs in a frying plan and brushed his teeth and shaved while his food cooked. Then he opened the blinds and looked out upon his Caddy, its top spotted with bird droppings. It sat where he had parked it the previous night, under a spreading live oak. A tall man whose waxed bald head seemed unnaturally elongated was studying it, a knuckle poised on his chin. He leaned down and looked at the wire wheels and the rusted chrome on the back bumper and the Louisiana tag filmed with dried mud. He wiped the film from one number on the tag with his thumb, then dusted off his fingers.
“Can I help you with something?” Clete said from his doorway.
“I was admiring your vehicle. I restore vintage cars as a hobby,” the man replied. He had heavy eyebrows, like half-moon strips of animal fur that had been glued onto an expressionless face. “I own a Rolls-Royce. But I love Cadillacs, too. Where’d you get yours?”
“A movie company was making a film in New Iberia. They sold off all their vehicles when they left town.”
“I wish I could have gotten in on that,” the man said. “My name is Ronald Bledsoe. What’s yours?”
“You’ll have to excuse me. I’m eating breakfast right now,” Clete said. He started to close the door.
“I just moved in across the way and wanted to introduce myself.”
“That’s funny. A family that got blown out of cameron Parish was staying there.”
“My agency helped them relocate. I’m a private investigator.”
“Is that why you were checking out my tag?”
“No, it’s just a habit I have. I see dirt and I wipe it off. Early up-bringing, I guess.”
“Maybe you can recommend a place that restores old caddies.”
The man who called himself Ronald Bledsoe stared thoughtfully at the bayou. “As a matter of fact, I do know a local gentleman. Let me write his name down for you on my business card.” he wrote on the back of a card and handed it to Clete. “Tell him I sent you.”
“Thanks a lot. I appreciate this,” Clete said, holding up the card, sticking it into his shirt pocket.
CLETE FINISHED HIS BREAKFAST, then called me on his cell phone. “A guy with a hush-puppy accent and the name Ronald Bledsoe was messing around my Caddy. He’s hinky as a corkscrew. Can you run him through the NCIC?”
“I already did.”
“What’d you get back on him?”
“The same guy was out to Otis Baylor’s house. Baylor thought he was weird, too. The National Crime Information Center has nothing on him.”
“Why was this guy talking to Baylor?”
“He seemed to think Bertrand Melancon might have stashed stolen goods on Baylor’s property. He claims to be working for the state.”
“His business card says he’s out of Key West. I called the number, but the phone is disconnected. He also referred me to a car detailer in Lafayette. The guy didn’t recognize the name. You think he’s working for Sidney?”