Crusader's Cross (Dave Robicheaux 14)

"I knew this guy, Andre. He worked for money and no other reason. He was the best in the business and charged accordingly. You make somebody mad at you, somebody so mad he'd pay an uptown guy like Jericho Johnny Wineburger to kill you and your family?" I said.

"What I know, me?"

"You don't think he was after Mr. Val?" I said.

"Ax Mr. Val," he replied.

"Thanks for your time, partner," I said, and handed him one of our business cards. "Mr. Val is a man of mystery, isn't he? You know where he might be now?"

"He had an argument wit' a man in the front yard this morning. Man wit' real li'l ears. He flipped the man's tie in his face and told him not to come 'round here no more. Then he went off by hisself."

"By the way, where's the hatchet?" I said.

"Cops took it. I got to get to my chores. Anyt'ing else?"

Helen and I got back in the cruiser and drove down the driveway, past the carpenters repairing the house and the tree surgeons pruning the oaks. Then, for no apparent reason, Helen braked the cruiser and rested her arms across the top of the wheel. Her shirt was stretched tight across her shoulders, the fingers of her right hand flicking at the air, as though she were trying to pick thoughts out of it. The sunlight through the pruned trees was so bright she had put on shades and I couldn't read her expression. "You feel jerked around?" she said.

"Yep."

"Like he was pointing the finger at Val Chalons but pretending not to?"

"That's what it sounded like to me."

She took her foot off the brake and let the idle carry the cruiser toward the highway, the pea gravel ticking under the tires. "Why would Chalons pay to have his handyman hit?" she said.

"Money."

"Money?"

'Money," I said.

"Like Bergeron might have a claim on the estate?"

"You got it."

"Try to make that one stick," she said, easing her foot back on the gas.

As soon as we got back to the department, I found a note in my mailbox asking me to call Jimmie at his apartment.

"Lou Kale was here about thirty minutes ago. He seems a little irrational," Jimmie said.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, he thinks I'm involved in some kind of scam with Clete Purcel. He says Purcel is trying to blackmail either him or Val Chalons. What's the deal?"

"Clete sent letters simultaneously to both Kale and Chalons."

"He deliberately stoked up this guy?"

"I helped a little."

"A police officer?"

"I think Val Chalons's real parents are Lou Kale and Ida Durbin. I think Old Man Chalons died without leaving a will. That means Val has no familial claim on the Chalons fortune. I think the handyman, Andre Bergeron, may be the heir to a hundred million dollars. So Val Chalons hired Jericho Johnny Wineburger to kill the handyman and maybe his wife and child, too."

"You're making some of this up?"

"Nope."