Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 02 - Skeletons of the Atchafalaya by Kent Conwell

countertop.”
    Giselle nodded to the floor. “What’s wrong with a pallet
on the floor? That would work….” She hesitated, her eyes
growing wide. “Oh, I see.”
    “See what?” Sally frowned at her.
    With a crooked grin, Giselle replied. “Crawly things
coming in out of the storm.”
    “Probably not,” I said, not wanting to alarm them any
more than necessary. “But, it couldn’t hurt. Better safe than
sorry,” I added.
    Leroi grinned crookedly. “The man’s right, ladies. Like
the old philosopher said, forewarned is forearmed. Or
something like that. Tony, you take the table.”
    “What about you?”
    He pointed to the pantry. With a wry laugh, he replied,
“I’ll sleep on the freezer. Be the first time in my life I can
claim I came out on top of Ozzy and A.D.”
    We all laughed. Giselle shook her head. “Leroi, that’s
terrible, terrible.”
    His grin grew wider. “I know, but it sure feels good.”
    I lay on the table and stared at the ceiling. I tried to make
some sense out of all that had happened. For a fact, one of
our family had committed two murders, but who?

    Unable to sleep, I rolled off the table and headed for the
stairs. Maybe if I took another look at the rooms, something
might click. As I ascended the stairs, I attempted to put
together a logical theory.
    A.D. had cheated many of those with whom he had dealt.
I wasn’t sure just which families had felt the sting of his
chicanery, so I figured I would talk to them all.
    I started with Uncle Bailey, born Bailey Claux Thibodeaux sixty-one years ago. Somehow, A.D. had shoved Iolande and Bailey aside and managed to get his hands on
their parents’ money and farm. I didn’t know how, but I
knew Mom and Grandma Ola could tell me.
    There was no question in my mind that Bailey probably
harbored resentment toward his brother who, along with his
sister, lolande, had lived in a half-million-dollar mansion
on two thousand acres raising exotic animals while Bailey
and his wife, Ezeline, eked out a threadbare existence in a
shotgun shack in a rundown neighborhood in Eunice. He
worked as produce manager in a locally owned supermarket.
    I paused at the bottom of the stairs. A frown wrinkled
my forehead. I didn’t know what I would have done had I
been in Bailey’s shoes, but I knew myself well enough to
know that I would never drink with a man who cheated
me.
    On the other hand, I reminded myself, Bailey might have
simply sold A.D. his share of the estate.
    And then there was Pa, who, I suppose, could have murdered his cousin. He had blood on him, but if the truth
were known, he probably wasn’t even aware of the blood.
The damp cards on the table where Pa had been seated led
me to believe that Pa probably passed out and drooled on
them. He wasn’t drinking beer, only whiskey. And trust
me, you don’t get condensation on a table from a bottle of
whiskey.
    He was probably unconscious when the killer murdered
A.D. When he awakened, he staggered from the room, in advertently brushing his hand in the blood spatters on the
table and stepping in the pool on the floor. That would
account for the smeared spatters and footprints on the floor.

    And then there was Leroi. Guiltily, I glanced over my
shoulder in the direction of the kitchen pantry.
    He and I had gone to school together in Church Point.
When I left for the University of Texas, he headed for
Louisiana State, where he dropped out after two years. He
worked, married, and opened his own lube shop, which by
now had grown to four.
    I suppose he could have held the resentment and desire
for revenge for thirty-eight years, but I doubted it. Still,
knowing that his uncle had swindled his father out of land
Leroi’s mother brought to the marriage was a motive not
to be discounted.
    And then there was the murder weapon, a screwdriver
with a Catfish Lube logo on it.
    The big question on my mind as I climbed the stairs was
if the deaths were tied