After making notes on each evidence bag with a Sharpie marker, Manseur put them all into one large paper bag, which he sealed, labeled with a case number, signed, and dated. Taking a screwdriver from his toolbox, Manseur went back to the Volvo and removed the license plate. Back at his car, he slipped the plate into a paper bag, tossed it in the trunk, and slammed it.
“This looks bad,” Alexa said.
“Well, it sure doesn’t look good,” Manseur muttered.
19
R and O’s Italian Seafood Restaurant faced shallow Lake Pontchartrain’s sloping levee, a tall earthen wall covered with grass whose job it was to keep the lake’s brackish water in its assigned area. Alexa tried to imagine a wall of water high enough to breach it, and failed.
Manseur parked on the oyster-shell-covered parking strip, and she followed him into the entrance vestibule. The sky was clear as a bell and the air was beginning to get hot and humid. It was hard to believe a hurricane was hours away.
“So, you think taking the license plate will keep anybody from knowing who’s missing and likely the victim of foul play?” Alexa asked.
“I can only hope it gives us a few hours to get a running start on this before the media begins the circus. Looks like he’s definitely been attacked. Kidnapped, you think?”
“I hope he was kidnapped. If he wasn’t a target because he’s about to be worth more than a Mexican drug lord, he’s probably starting a worm farm about now. Until we know for sure, it’s still your butt against the fire,” she said, smiling.
“I’m ready to make some room for you next to the heat whenever you’re ready.”
“Any ideas on how you’re going to conduct interviews without letting on what the deal is?” Alexa said.
“How would the FBI handle it?”
“The FBI would say that Gary West reported his wallet gone and that you’re here just backtracking to see if he left it here, thinking he could have been pickpocketed by someone in the restaurant. That way the FBI could ask if any strangers were lurking outside or came or went at about the same time and get the answers without giving up anything. And the FBI wouldn’t introduce me if you were us, since the Bureau doesn’t normally look for missing personal items.”
“You reckon these guys would know that?”
“One would hope so.” She winked at him, and she could have sworn he blushed. Alexa had been told for most of her adult life that she was attractive, even desirable to a lot of men, but ninety percent of the time it was a handicap, because it got in the way of her being taken seriously. Being sexually alluring wasn’t something she had ever consciously desired. In fact, the opposite was true. When men, or sometimes women, came on to her, she shriveled inside and felt threatened. The only time she made an exception was when she was interrogating a person who was attracted to her and didn’t see her so much as a threat to them as a potential bed partner. People with sex on their minds often paid less attention to their constructed lies than they might otherwise.
The restaurant was surprisingly busy considering that everybody should have been heading out of the city. On the television set there was a satellite view of the storm, which looked like a plate of cotton candy. Alexa couldn’t hear the report, but by reading the word parade at the bottom of the screen she was informed that Katrina was now a category four storm whose winds were roughly the speed of a rail dragster. The projected path had Katrina making her entrance along a line from Alabama to Texas, with the strongest probability of strike being Louisiana. Being a natural cynic, she found it hard to imagine the city actually flooding, given the levees and the massive number of pumping stations. She wondered if it wasn’t some sort of fairy tale dreamed up by authorities, perhaps the Corps of Engineers, to get their hands on a big chunk of federal money to spend to justify their existence. She was sure about one thing: If the city did get hit and the doomsday scenario proved true, only the drunkest, the most uninformed, the dumbest of the dumb, or the poorest and most infirm would be there to make up the casualty figures.
The restaurant’s tables held a remarkably varied assortment of customers. Alexa’s eyes rested briefly on four men wearing expensive suits mere feet from a group of commercial fishermen wearing filthy coveralls and greasy- looking baseball caps. Their hands, with fingernails that looked like peanut hulls, gripped cans of cold beer like they were afraid their beverages would flee the table if they didn’t hold them tightly.
Manseur opened his NOPD shield case so the receptionist alone could see it. While she went to get the waitress who had worked the Wests’ table at lunch the previous day, Manseur and Alexa took a seat at a table near the front.
The waitress who came to their table wore a name tag that said CINDY. Cindy was a foot too short for her weight and was saved from being homely by the effervescent smile she wore. The uniform consisted of a carpenter’s apron for her pens, tickets, and cash, plus a black T-shirt, dark jeans, and aged running shoes. Alexa noticed that her fingernails were coated in red polish that had been reapplied several times in the way a peeling house might be painted several times without sanding between applications. After the introduction and the obligatory viewing of Manseur’s shield, Cindy’s big brown eyes darted around as if the answer to any questions he might ask her were printed on cue cards scattered about the restaurant.
“I understand you waited on Gary and Casey West yesterday at lunch. Are you familiar with them?”
“Sure,” she said. “They don’t ask for me, but if I’m lucky they sit at one of my tables. Their kid’s name is Deana. Mrs. West’s some kind of rich photographer, and he’s like a writer or something. What’d they do?” she asked suspiciously.
“Nothing,” Manseur said. “Mr. West reported losing a valuable wristwatch and we’re retracing his routine from yesterday.” Alexa had to fight back a smile at the way Manseur changed the lost article from the wallet she had suggested. It was subtle, but told her he felt a need to put his initials on her suggestion to make it his. He was a man after all.
“Oh, that’s terrible. They’re regulars, every Friday. Yesterday they sat at a table up by the front door, but they don’t have a regular place or anything. They’re really nice and super-good tippers. I didn’t see a watch after they left. I didn’t see him take it off, but it seems to me he usually wears an inexpensive watch. Like a Timex or a Citizen, because we’ve discussed the way, you know, they’re rich, but not flashy. No bling for him.” A look of quiet terror crossed her features. “They don’t think I took it, do they? I would never do something like that.”
“They didn’t suggest you took it. We think a pickpocket might have. Did the Wests leave together?” Manseur asked.
Cindy’s brow creased as she contemplated the new question. “No, he left a few minutes before she and their kid did. I’m pretty sure Deana was still eating when he left. You wouldn’t believe how much that little girl eats. Mr. West paid the bill with cash. I know because he tipped me seven dollars and a nickel, which was their change. He always does that-tips the entire amount like that. I remember because it wasn’t very busy around that time, which it usually is on Fridays. But not like Saturdays. The hurricane thing has people jumpy, and I guess most people are putting wood on their windows, gassing up their cars, and stuff.”
“How did they seem?”
“Like usual, pretty much. They’re always laughing and joking around and like.” She looked off across the restaurant. “Happy. I mean, why not? They’re good-looking, young, and rich.”
“Nothing about them yesterday was different?” Alexa asked.
The waitress looked at her, surprised.
“You said ‘like usual, pretty much.’ So something was different. What was it?”
“Well, when I took their orders, she made some comment like, ‘I want to look at the menu,’ and he said, ‘As though there’s some mystery. She wants the gumbo.’ She said, ‘I can order my own food,’ and he said, ‘Excuse me,’ or something like that. Snippy. And anyway, she ended up ordering the gumbo, and they laughed about that. He was right. She always orders a bowl of gumbo and eats only half of it.”
“After that things were normal?”
Cindy nodded. “Like always.”
“So she wasn’t upset when he left?”
