“You’ve got a helluva start on Logan’s retirement-party speech, Tyree. But hard to miss that Logan wants to get his gold watch and get gone. He can do a little or a lot before he leaves, and a little’s a lot easier.”
I admired Shuttles’s protection of his partner, trying not to dis Logan. But Tyree had a future in the department while Logan had only a past, and it was time for Shuttles to start cutting his own piece of the pie.
I said, “Everything you learned, everything you’ve seen…does it suggest Pace Logan is a good detective, or a mediocre one? And for the record, what we say doesn’t reach past here.” I knocked the edge of the table.
“For sure?”
“’Til death do us part. What’s wrong?”
Shuttles leaned forward, his voice a whisper. Fear in his eyes. “I soft-pedaled what I think about Pace. He’s getting paranoid. He thinks I’m trying to undercut him, just because I’m interested in contemporary techniques and equipment, the latest in forensics, that type of thing. Plus he’s got that fixation with Harry. Like that night with the Franks woman.”
“Franklin, Taneesha Franklin…And what fixation?”
“When he heard Harry and you were heading to the scene, it was like we were in this big competition, he had to race over and grab the case.”
I grunted. “First case he ever grabbed, I imagine.”
“Then there’s the things on the Hibney case, remember our burned woman?”
“Hard to forget. Things like what?”
“Like telling me I’m keeping stuff from him. He doesn’t get out of the car to interview anyone, just pisses on me whatever I come back with. Like he’s angry with me. He ever work with a black partner before?”
“I don’t think it’s that, Tyree. I think he’s just a miserable human being.”
“For sure. Plus he’s getting weird his last couple months. I hate to say it, but I’ll be glad when he retires. He worries me.”
I thought it over. “I’ve seen old-guard types getting ready to retire before. Some can’t wait, others get depressed. Maybe he’s just getting the blues, taking it out on you. Just wait it out, Tyree. And thanks for letting me in the door.”
Shuttles leaned back and let his shoulders slump in the chair, like he’d just set down a wheelbarrow full of bricks.
CHAPTER 34
Morning came and Harry and I headed to Ory Aubusson’s place in Baldwin County. I studied the MapQuest sheet.
“It should be right up around the bend.”
The road curved; ahead and to the right we saw an imposing yellow house with at least five acres of front lawn, a couple of live oaks per acre, the oaks garnished with Spanish moss. The house was plantation style, a full gallery to the front. I saw a solitary figure sitting on the gallery.
“Should be Aubusson,” I said. “He told Clair he’d be waiting outside.”
Aubusson was in his late seventies. He was in a huge antique wheelchair, an oaken throne with wheels, a marble table beside him, cane propped against the table. He’d once been a large and robust man, but age had bent his back, gnarled his hands, and turned his hair to smoky wisps of gray. Aubusson wore belted khaki pants and a white shirt, a scarlet bow tie below his strident Adam’s apple. His daughter was with him, a sturdy, handsome woman in her late forties. She pulled on the back of Aubusson’s chair.
“Come on, Daddy. Let me get you out of the sun.”
“Leave off, Ella. I got company. Bring me out a whiskey.”
“It ain’t close to noon, Daddy. And you’re not even supposed to…” She stared at the old man with a look that was supposed to be anger, but held too much fondness. She shrugged, turned toward the door.
Aubusson aimed a long finger at chairs set before his. “Put some cushions under your butts, boys. You’re cops, surely you know how to sit.”
He laughed, a wheezy caw. His daughter brought a heavy crystal tumbler of amber liquid, set it down, shook her head, and retreated inside. Aubusson took a long drink, wiped his chin with the back of his hand.
“See, what it is is a generation thing. I came up before all this stuff-whiskey, tobacco, fatted-up food, pussy-was supposed to kill you. So it don’t. Ever’ time one of my friends decided to start eating right and exercising, they tipped over in a year.”
He lifted the tumbler, drank. I smelled a scent like flint and barley; high-end scotch.
“Why didn’t Miz Swanscott come along?” Aubusson asked. Swanscott was Clair’s maiden name.
I said, “She’s working. She sends her regards.”
His eyes got wistful. “Miz Clair Swanscott, or Peltier, as she goes by now, was as fine a piece of young womanhood as I ever laid eyes on, far too fine for that worthless ex-husband and, unfortunately, far too young for me.” The eyes switched to the present and turned to me.
“Clair said you wanted to talk a bit about Buck, the old days.”
I nodded. Close enough for now.
The old man shook the ice in his glass. A heavy brown wasp buzzed before his eyes, hovered. Aubusson backhanded it away.
“Buck Senior and me’s about the same age, came up the same place, over by Bay Minette. We stayed tight for years, made money pretty young, starting with timber, pulpwood. Ol’ Buck kept going, dee-versified, as they say. I always figured dee-versified meant to cut off part of a poem.”
Light tickled in the old man’s eyes. He knew we hadn’t expected the wordplay.
“You ran with him how long?” Harry asked.
“We stayed thick up through his courting and early part of his married life, Maylene dropping babies like a brood mare. I swear that woman’s pussy musta growed so loose you could-”
“How many kids she have?” I asked.
“Six or seven. Not all of ’em made it. Sickly, I guess. There was a couple miscarriages. A stillborn kid.”
Harry said, “What was she like? Maylene?”
“You ever meet her?” Aubusson asked.
I said, “I saw her once at a company party. She wasn’t real conversational. Or real happy-looking.”
He cackled. “She became what she was meant to become, a tough, mean old woman showing the world that, by God, she’s built a family people have to respect.”
“Family,” Harry said. “That’s Buck, Nelson, Racine, right? You know them, I take it. From when they were growing up?”
Aubusson seemed to straighten in his chair, become taller. He looked hard into our eyes.
“Why are you people really here? There’s no reason for anyone to talk about Buck Senior. He’s up there on that spread, in the back house. I saw him seven-eight years back. Walkin’ around in his jammies and grinnin’ like a kid on Christmas, ’cept kids know how to wipe their mouths. Had a negra nursemaid followin’ him around, doin’ for him. He looked at me and farted, started laughing. Basically, he’s dead. I’m gonna ask again: Why are you here?”
I leaned forward. “We’re not sure why we’re here, sir. We may never be sure. But we think there are some strange goings-on that might center around the family. To be frank, I’m talking the possibility of murder.”
“Ella!” the old man bayed. He thumped his cane on the floor of the gallery. The door banged open. I could already hear the coming words:
Wheel me back in the house, baby, and kick these people off our propity.
The daughter arrived. Stood beside her father.
“What is it now, Daddy?”
Aubusson held his glass high; it glinted in the light.
“Hit me again, girl. I got to tell some funny stories and I need my throat wet to do it.”
Lucas had purchased a desk, a simple and noninvolving task. He went to a Staples, paid cash for the desk and
