Read Online Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 14 - Murder in a Casbah of Cats by Kent Conwell - Free Book Online

surprise that he quickly covered. “You need anything, Miss Karla?”
    She looked at me. I shook my head. “No, Henry. Thank you.”
    He came into the room and handed me the spray can. “Here. Wasp spray, but it’s for spiders too.”
    “Thanks, Henry.”
    After he left, Karla asked about the spiders. Sheepishly, I told her of the experience. She shivered and hastily surveyed her room.“I don’t think I could ever sleep in here again if that happened to me.”
    “Sure you could,” I said. “Now, back to what we were talking about. The night your grandfather was killed. How old were you then, eleven, twelve?”
    “Eleven.” She paused. “I don’t remember much of anything about it. I was crushed. Pawpaw was fun to be with. Even before we moved in, he’d take Dorothy and me on walks about the grounds and tell us stories his father and grandfather had told him. Funny,” she said, “he never talked about business, just family. It was my great-great-grandfather that built this place. Back in the old days, you know, those like
Gone with the Wind
.”
    “Yeah. I know.” Leaning back on the couch, I smiled as I remembered some of the old spooky folktales Grand-père Moise would tell me. Afterward, I’d jump in bed at nights and cover my head, expecting see a
feu follet
or
loup garou
spring through the window at any moment.
    Years later, I learned that in the next room my grandfather would be rocking in front of the fire with a glass of white port wine and smoking his pipe and chuckling at how wide my eyes had been when I went off to bed.
    Karla continued, “But the neatest stories Pawpaw ever told was the ones about the secret tunnels his grandfather used to help slaves escape.”
    I sat up. “Secret tunnels?”
    She bobbed her head up and down. “He always promised he’d show us one day, but…” The slim blonde shrugged. Her smile faded. “But he never got the chance. Of course,” she added, “Pawpaw probably made all that up. He made up a lot of stuff just to entertain us.”
    I didn’t know either, but I was beginning to wonder if there might not be more than a kernel of truth in the old man’s fables.



CHAPTER NINE
    “They found Pawpaw dead in the library. All the doors and windows were locked. There was no way for the killer to get out, but he did.”
    “Did you tell them what he said about a tunnel?”
    “Oh, yes. They brought in people who looked everywhere in the library.”
    “I’ve heard that.”
    She shrugged. “Nothing. They found nothing.”
    “They search the rest of the house?”
    “I guess so. I don’t really know. They didn’t find anything, if that’s what you mean.”
    After leaving Karla, I headed back to my room to see if Eddie had replied. Walking down the hall to my room, on impulse, I squirted the wasp spray. It shot out twenty feet in a solid stream. I glanced over my shoulder, hoping no one had seen me spray it. I scrubbed my feet over the carpet, rubbing the moist spray in.
    In my room, I found Eddie’s reply waiting.
    I skimmed it, disappointed.
    William S. Collins, fifty, had been released five years earlier from the federal correctional prison in Beaumont, Texas, after completing his ten-year sentence for drug trafficking.
    He currently worked for H&H Laundry Service, where he was making fifteen dollars an hour. The report gave the names of his brother and sister. Parents deceased. His known cohorts had been Al Guzman, Corky Radison, Willy Morena, and Chippy Alberto, whereabouts unknown.
    I frowned when I finished reading the report. Not much at all. I was surprised. Usually Eddie provided much more information, but then his charge reflected the lack of information. His bill was only about 20 percent of what I usually paid.
    Trying to figure my next step, I went out on the balcony. The day was sweltering, and the shade cast by the porch overhead was a welcome relief. Around the grounds, timed sprinklers sent out row upon row of blossoming spray, giving the