The Girl on the Edge of Summer Page 14
They occurred about every two to three months. The intervals of Mr. Townson’s buying trips? Maybe, but I had nothing to tie him to being here at those times. I could guess that he was killed because one of the women fought back violently and viciously, aware of the previous murders and knowing she was about to become the next victim. But other than the arrest up north and the location of his murder, both circumstantial at best, I had no proof.
Well, the great-grandson was a prick, and this rotten apple may not have fallen far from the tree.
Not compelling evidence to call great-granddad a murderer.
My eyes were bleary and my back aching. Besides reading Samuel Braud’s diary, I’d also looked into transport from Townson’s plantation to New Orleans. That required having some idea of where his plantation was. Which took me to property deeds. The actual land was sold into many pieces, but it had been located on the west bank of the river, about thirty miles this side of Baton Rouge. There was a train that ran from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, a distance of about ninety miles. I wasn’t sure how long it would take—that would require finding train schedules from the era—but trains were a fairly efficient means of travel, so probably two to three hours. But he’d have to get to Baton Rouge, and that would be thirty miles via horse or early automobile, probably another couple of hours, plus taking a ferry across the river. At best, that was five hours one way. Probably closer to seven or eight. Not the quick day trip I could take.
He also might have been able to take the river down. Still, that would have been several hours at best, depending on schedules.
My best guess was that Mr. Frederick Townson didn’t just jaunt down to New Orleans on a whim. It was at least an overnight trip.
I packed up my notes and returned the material. The library was about to close. Even if it wasn’t, I was frustrated. There seemed little way for me to know much more than I knew now. I could keep reading Samuel Braud’s diary, but I already knew he’d never find the killer. Nor would he link Townson to the killings of the young women. Even someone as upper crust and rich as Townson would go down for crimes like these.
As I headed back to my car, I checked my phone—I had politely turned it down in the library.
Voice mail. Yes!
Joanne leaving a message saying she’d give me my gun back when they were done with it. A terse enough message that it didn’t invite a follow-up call to inquire about how long that would take.
Danny leaving a message that she couldn’t really talk, given the circumstances. But once it was cleared up, we could have a nice long chat. The question was would it be as a friend or would it be as a prosecutor to a suspect.
A call from Alan. He hadn’t found the gun. But maybe his mother had moved it. Should he ask her? He’d ask his dad, but he was still in Vegas and… I hit delete without listening to the rest. Either his mother had moved the gun, the cops had taken it, or his dad had it. That certainly narrowed things down.
The third—and final call—was from a voice I didn’t recognize. “Hey, I’ve got some info for you. It might be important. Give me a call.” No number other than the one saved on my caller ID. Local, but not one I recognized.
I had a message from the stupid dating service Torbin had talked me into. I was about to hit delete sight unseen, but curiosity made me open it. Expecting a torrent of abuse from Ms. Hummer, instead I found a note from a different woman saying she’d liked my profile, was in town, and wanted to know if I’d be willing to meet her for a drink or coffee, this evening if that was open. She was free today, but out of town for a few days after.
At least I’ll accomplish something today. Scare off another date, I said to myself.
I looked at myself in the rearview mirror. Not as dressed up as I might have liked, but a decent pair of jeans, gray V-neck T-shirt that had no obvious stains. Good enough. I’d taken a shower this morning, so should get points for being clean.
It would have to do unless I wanted to be an asshole and cancel after just having said yes.
We’d agreed on a coffee place in the Lower Garden District. It was a few doors down from my gym, which meant I could cheat and park in their lot.
I was about five minutes late. CBD rush-hour traffic is always a crapshoot. I would have preferred to be early; occupational habit, I like to check things out and have a chance to observe the other person. But I barely had time to turn into the sidewalk gate before I heard, “Are you Micky?”
“Brenda?” I’d checked the name before I got out of my car.
She was sitting outside, a place she could watch the world go by. Early to mid thirties, a bit young for me, short blond hair, spiked up in the fashionable style. Eye color a shade between brown and gray. Hazel maybe? A face a little too long to be considered pretty, maybe strong. It might depend on the person behind it. She was dressed in white slacks and a sky-blue shirt, men’s-style oxford.
“Nice to meet you,” I said as I sat down. I had to sit facing the front of the coffee shop, with my back to the entrance and the street. Also, professional habit, I preferred to see who was coming and going.
But you’re not on a job and it doesn’t matter, I told myself.
She reached out and shook my hand. Strong grasp. Too strong? Or maybe she just worked out and was a strong woman.
“Can I get you some coffee?” I offered, seeing she had nothing in front of her. “Or tea?”
“Coffee would be great. A little milk and sugar.”
I went into the shop and got two cups, fumbling with the milk and sugar since I don’t take it. But I had offered.
At least it was just milk and sugar and not a double cream latte with mocha caramel foam.
Since this was only coffee and my stomach was grumbling, I added a croissant and a cinnamon roll to the order.
Just as I was returning to the table, a car backfired. I jerked, but not enough to spill anything.
But my date jumped under the table, pulling her chair in front of her like a barricade.
“It’s just a car,” I said, as I slowly sat down.
She didn’t move.
“Are you okay?” I asked, wondering what weirdness I had stumbled into.
She still didn’t move.
“Are you okay?” I repeated. Another minute of no answer and I was out of here. I’ll stay for my friends being weird, but if it takes more time to deal with your weirdness than we’ve known each other, that’s a big, red warning sign.
Her eyes darted up at me, then around and she slowly got up. “Yeah, this is New Orleans and it was just a car,” said more to herself than to me.
She righted the chair, stood next to it as if deciding whether to sit or run, then abruptly collapsed into it as if exhausted.
“I’m sorry,” she said slowly. “Not the best first impression. You must be wondering what the hell that was about.”
I was polite enough to merely say, “It’s a city, you never know when an idiot might start something.”
“So, I just got out of the Army,” she said. Then in a rush, as if she couldn’t stop speaking, her story came out. She’d been stationed in Afghanistan, military police, what she’d seen, friends injured and killed, the people there injured and killed. Was a smile a friendly gesture or a trap? A car bomb got the truck in front of her. One she almost was on, but she had to tie her bootlace, so she ended up in the second truck. One of her friends, a man she’d just had breakfast with, blown in half, still alive and asking about his legs. She wasn’t hurt, she was fine. How she couldn’t sleep, how any noise, anything could make her jump like she was back there and another bomb was about to go off.
“But I didn’t get hurt. I don’t understand,” she said, finally winding down.
I’d already finished my coffee and eaten the croissant. I could listen and eat, and there was no point in letting it go to waste. She hadn’t touched hers. I’d made the executive decision to leave the roll for her since there didn’t seem much chance to break in and ask which she’d like.
“My family keeps telling me to get over it. I’m a hero. They never expected it from the girl.”
“You are brave, just not invulnerable. It takes bravery to go someplace where we know we can be broken.”
She looked at me, sadness in her eyes. “You think I’m broken?”
“I think you’re wounded and you need to heal. There is no dishonor in that.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s a good way of looking at it.”
I did what I was supposed to do, learned from my social worker friends, asked her about support, what she was doing to help. She had good answers, was hooked into the VA, had been seeing a therapist for the last few months, meeting with a support group of female vets. “In fact, they were the ones who encouraged me to do this. Said I needed to meet people. It’s ironic,” she said. “I wasn’t supposed to join. My brother was supposed to carry on the military tradition. Army, every generation.”
“Why didn’t he do it?” I asked.
She nibbled at the cinnamon roll. Then took a sip of the coffee that had to be getting cold. “Oh, he did. He’s just a rat-assed bastard and after a few months decided he didn’t like it. So he started screwing up every way he could. Sloppy uniform, late, not pulling his weight. When they said he was going overseas, he upped the ante. AWOL. Drugs. Guess he decided prison was better than being shot at.”
“So, it was up to you to carry on the tradition?”
“I didn’t really care about tradition. Kinda knew it didn’t count, me not being a man. And that gay thing didn’t help either. Thing is I went, I served. Honorable discharge. Pulled a soldier out of that burning truck and helped with another. Come back here and my mom starts talking about how we need to visit my rat-ass brother. How hard he has it in jail. One of my uncles telling me it’s men who have it hard nowadays. To my face he said, ‘Women and queers are coddled ’cause the government is so afraid of not being politically correct.’ I moved down here to New Orleans even though it pissed my mother off. Rat-ass brother’s wife moved here as well.”
“Are you close to her?”
“Not really. See each other once in a while, hang out with her kid mostly. She still defends him. Really defending her choice to marry him. Thinks he’ll come out of prison a changed man, ready to take care of her and his family.”
“Maybe, but mostly people don’t change without some major force pushing them.”
“I think he’s holding on to that marriage so he can have a place to land here in the city when he comes out and not up in bumfuck northeast Louisiana. Nothing up there except flies and heat. Once he has something better, he’s going to dump her and that lump of a kid as fast as he can.”
“He sounds like a lovely person. That’s in sarcasm font,” I added to be obvious. Not everyone gets sarcasm. “What about you? What are you going to do?”
“Going to UNO, trying to put my life back together. Not make a fool of myself out in public.”
“You haven’t made a fool of yourself. You’ve been real. That’s not a bad thing. Much better than polite chitchat. What are you studying at UNO?”
“Isn’t that polite chitchat?”
“I wouldn’t call what you’re going to do with the rest of your life polite chitchat.”
“Business. I want to eventually open a pet store. I like being around animals; they calm me. People are trouble.” She suddenly looked down at her phone. “Shit. Sorry. My mother texting to remind me to send a package to my brother for his birthday. Like he’d ever send me anything, even when I was overseas.”
“He older or younger?”
“Older, of course. Hit on all my high school girl friends. Grabbed one where he shouldn’t have, she walloped him, and he acted like she was wrong. Never used her name after that. Just called her ‘the bitch.’ My mom and dad just laughed it off, said boys will be boys.”
“That’s a toxic attitude.”
“Oh, yeah, he and his pals are charmers, all right. Macho guys working on cars all day but never really fixing anything, just an excuse to hang out and drink beer. Catcall any woman who walks by like they own us.”
“They bother you?”
“As much as everyone else. Everyone else female. Brother laughing while his friends are making comments about my breasts. What kind of brother does that?”
“His name isn’t Fast Eddie, is it?”
“No, Braddock. Braddock Brendan Beaujeaux. Why?”
“I just stumbled across that kind of man, and his name was Edward.”
“I think one of his friends was named Ed.”
“What happened to him?”
“Far as I know, he stayed pissing around at that little auto repair shop outside Monroe.”
Stop looking for clues. There are none here. There were enough sexist men that there could easily be two—or more—named Edward in the whole state of Louisiana. Even the surrounding ten blocks.
“Do you want some more coffee?” I asked. “I need to take a bathroom break.”
“No, I’m good.”
“I’ll be right back.”
But when I came back she was gone, a note tucked under her coffee cup.
Sorry, I screwed up. This was meeting for coffee, not all my crap. You’re a nice person. Thanks for listening. And buying me coffee.
I was upset, and enough of a coward to be relieved. There were too many things between us to be much more than friends. I liked to think it was more age, education, and worldview, not the baggage from her being in the military.
I sent her an email from my phone. Hey, don’t be too hard on yourself. I think I’m too old to be a girlfriend, but I could be a friend. I meant it when I said you were honest, and that’s more important than being polite.
That would have to do. I left a tip and headed back to my car.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
When I got home, after making a sandwich out of the tail end of bread, cheese, and tomatoes, I did my duty and called Alan.
He answered on the first ring.
I also poured a couple of fingers of Scotch.
“I couldn’t find the gun,” he said.
I didn’t tell him he’d told me that in his message.
“I really looked in a lot of places, but I couldn’t find it.”
Really, you couldn’t find the gun?
Before he could tell me again, I broke in, “Okay, so calm down. It probably means your dad took it. So it’s not a big deal.”
“What if he didn’t?”
“Who else would?” Well, the police, but I wasn’t going to put that thought in his head.
“The real killer? To frame my mom?”
“Whoa! You’ve been watching too many TV shows.”
“No, I read detective novels.”
“Whatever. In fiction, they have to tell an interesting story. In real life it’s the same sad one over and over. Another loser like Eddie decided he didn’t like Eddie and killed him. There is no big conspiracy afoot to frame your mother by sneaking into your burglar-alarmed home and stealing the gun.”
“Oh. Are you sure?”
“Yes. Now, go find a nice, engrossing book. And stop worrying about the gun.”
“I’ll try…” he said slowly.
I should have ended the call there. But I had to be the nice guy. “You’re worried about your mom, aren’t you?”
He started crying.
I took a sip of Scotch. Not drinking wasn’t going to help him. Drinking was going to help me. It was a logical decision.
Another sip. Then I said, “I know this is hard. But you’re going to be okay and your mom is going to be okay. It’ll take time. But you’ll be okay.” Maybe he would; it sounded like the thing to say.
He blew his nose. “I’m sorry.” Then blew his nose again.
“It’s okay,” I said. Not original, but I don’t think that mattered. His sister killed herself, Dad had exited to Vegas, and Mom wa
s falling apart. By default, I seemed to be the adult he could turn to. Oh, lucky me. I felt for him; I just didn’t think I could do much. Except repeat “It’s going to be okay” while he blew his nose.
At least the Scotch was helping me.
“I’m just so scared for her,” he said between sniffles. “What if she goes to jail?”
“She’s not going to jail. She needs a few days to pull herself together, then it’s going to be okay.” No, it wouldn’t, but this was no time for harsh reality. Nothing would bring his sister back or heal the hole in his mother’s life. He could be one son, not a son and a daughter.
“I hope so.” He sniffed again. “I’m sorry to fall apart. My friends look like deer in headlights when I mention this.”
“It’s outside their experience; what they know how to deal with. Look, who do you talk to about things?” Who can I foist you off on? “Is there a teacher, a counselor, a pastor?”
“I talk to my mom. The church we go to isn’t very gay friendly; I only go to please my parents.”
“Anyone in school? A professor?” Anyone but me.
“No, not really. Could we meet again at Riley and Finnegan? I’ll buy you a beer?”
A beer? A useful bribe for college students. I’d cost more than a beer. That was my rational thought. My words were, “Sure, that sounds good.”
“This weekend? Friday or Saturday? I need to go to classes.”
“Okay, text me when you’ll be in town, and we can work something out.”
That was enough to reassure him and get him off the phone.
One half sip of Scotch later my phone rang again.
The number was the one from earlier. I finished swallowing while I debated whether or not to answer it.
Oh, curiosity. “Hello?” I said.
“Hey, I got some really good info for you.”
“Who is this?”
“Oh, sorry. Brandon.”
Young. Young enough to be unaware that I might know more than a few Brandons. As politely as I could (the Scotch helps) I said, “I’m sorry, which Brandon are you?”