having been so close to losing her client, she hadn’t liked having to tell Martin or her husband about what had happened, and on a personal level, I suspected she really hadn’t liked having her face messed up.
From being basically indifferent about what she considered a personal obsession of mine, Angel had graduated to being vitally interested in the Julius case. So we both watched eagerly for the man’s emergence from the little house.
“We better not be here when he comes out again,” Angel said, and she started the car. We drove around the block until we were positioned on a cross street so that when he came out, we would be able to fall in behind him unless he did something crazy, like attempting a U-turn on the narrow, crowded street.
I was able to see him for the first time when he shut the door of Alicia Manigault’s house behind him. He was tall and muscular, and he looked younger than I’d remembered him. He wore jeans and a work shirt, with the sleeves rolled up. His hair was dark and curly, and he was cleanshaven; Angel and I had been good witnesses. It was hard to square this ail-American blue-collar hunk with the maniac waving an ax who’d so nearly mowed me down a few days before.
“He’s walking a little stiff,” Angel said happily. “I think we banged him around some.”
“I hope so.”
He strode to his lurid pickup truck and started it up.
We drove out of Metairie and across the Huey E Long Bridge and went south steadily. After at least twenty miles, he turned right, and we followed him. He didn’t seem to be looking out for cars following him, or for anything else.
“An amateur,” Angel muttered. I couldn’t tell if she was pleased by our attacker’s amateurism, or disgusted, or enraged. If it was difficult following him at night, she didn’t say so.
Now we were on a narrow road with a bayou on one side, houses on the other. There were boats lining the bayou, with signs for swamp tours, promising alligators and abundant wildlife. Most of the signs featured the word “Cajun.” The lighting wasn’t good, but the white truck with the bright blazes painted on the side was fairly easy to spot. Finally it slowed and turned into one of the narrow driveways. We had to drive on past, and I stared as hard as I could in the dark to see a sort of cabin with a screened-in front porch. Ax-man had parked the truck under a carport, which the truck shared with a battered blue Chevy Nova and a tarp-covered boat.
“That’s the car he was driving in Georgia,” Angel said.
We drove on until we came to a juke joint, where Angel pulled in and parked. We looked at each other questioningly.
Neither of us knew what to do next.
“We could watch all night, or we could come back tomorrow, or we could call Shelby from a pay phone in there.” Angel nodded her head towards the bar, from which came loud zydeco music and a fairly constant flow of in-and-out traffic. I wasn’t about to go in there.
“Let’s find out more before we call Shelby,” I said. “I want to know who lives in that house.”
Chapter Sixteen
IT RAINED THE NEXT MORNING, steamy relentless rain that made the inside of the rental car damp and sticky despite the air-conditioner. We went from the Hyatt Regency in urban New Orleans to the cabin in rural south Louisiana, a sort of cultural leap that sat better with Angel than it did with me. By the time we got there, the truck was gone, but the old Nova was still parked where it had been the night before.
There were neighbors close to this cabin; lots facing the bayou were as valuable as waterfront property anywhere, especially since most of the people along this stretch of road apparently made their living giving tourists swamp tours. On the other hand, since tourists were common, we didn’t stick out as obviously as we might have. A tiny souvenir shop sitting cheek-by-jowl with a boat tour departure site was already open. The man inside, dressed in camouflage greens and browns, his rough black hair in tousled waves, looked like a refugee from a Rambo movie. Angel put on some lipstick and slid from the car. “He’s more my type,” she told me. “I’ll see what I can find out.” The rain had settled down to a very light drizzle.
She’d left her elastic band off this morning, and her blond hair fluffed prettily around her narrow face. In a pair of tight jeans, a sleeveless T-shirt, and sneakers, she could stop traffic if she chose, and this morning, she did choose. She sauntered up to the service window of the little shack, rested her elbows on the sill, and within a minute was deep in conversation with the dark-haired man, whose white teeth flashed in a constant grin. Angel was smiling, shrugging, tossing back her hair, and in general behaving atypically. But it seemed to be quite effective. When she started back to the car, she turned around several times to call back, as he extended the conversation.
“Whoo,” she said in relief, as she slid into her seat. “Talk about Cajun! He had an accent so thick you could cut it, and could charm the birds from the trees, too.”
“What did he say?”
“I told him this long story… I’d met this guy in a bar last night, and I didn’t know his name, but he had this really distinctive truck and lived somewhere right about here. And then I said I’d lost the napkin with his name and phone number, but I was trying to track him down before he called me, because I suspected he was married. And I wanted to know for sure before I went out with him.”
“And?”
“This guy in the souvenir booth wanted me to forget about the man I’d met last night and go out with him instead, but I told him I’d promised the man I’d meet him tonight, though I’d shove him off if he was married.” Angel made a circular sweep with her hand to indicate how long this badinage had taken her. “What it all boils down to-the ax-man is renting this cabin, has been for a couple of years now. No one owns a house along this road that isn’t Cajun, by the way, because of some law that the houses go to family members and no one ever sells, but this particular house, the only son is in the Army right now and just wants someone to live in it until he comes back from his tour of duty-or something like that.”
“Did you get a name?”
“The name is apparently Dumont, or something like that. He works at the lumber yard not five minutes from here. And he is married; or at least there’s a woman in residence, and Rene said he’s heard she’s pretty ferocious. He advised me to keep clear.”
“I don’t know what to do now,” I observed, after we’d looked at each for a moment or two. “Why would a man named Dumont attack us with an ax? Why is he the rent collector for Alicia Manigault? Where is she? She can’t be dead, if she appears for a few weeks each year and crams herself into that house with the Colemans and the dog.”
“And what does it all have to do with the bodies on the roof of your house, as long as we’re asking questions?” Angel added. “All I know to do is ask someone who might know the answer.”
I thought long and hard to find a way around that, but it did seem as if that was the only way to do it. At least the ax-man was gone, and maybe we could find out something in his absence that would explain his attack on us. What we were going to do about it once we discovered the reason, I hadn’t the faintest notion.
“Someone comes running at me with an ax, I want to know why,” Angel said. She was looking at me sideways, sensing my hesitation.
This was a point of pride for Angel.
“Let’s go knock on the door,” I said.
We reconnoitered briefly. There were no cars at the houses on either side of the cabin. We looked at each other and shrugged.
I pulled boldly into the driveway. I was driving, with Angel crouched on the floorboards. I parked as close as possible behind the old car, so the passenger door was not as visible from the front window. As soon as I’d gone inside with the woman, providing as much distraction as possible, Angel was to slip from the car and snake around back. There were enough bushes in the yard to provide cover. If the air-conditioner wasn’t already on, maybe
