Jazz Funeral

broke in. “If y’all don’t mind, I really need to fill in a few details about Ham’s life. The other night I felt as if—well, it wasn’t the best time to talk.”
    Patty said, “We appreciate that, Detective.” Why couldn’t she keep her damn mouth shut?
    “What do you need filled in, Ms. Langdon?” She’d given them a present—the news about Melody—and now she expected something back. Didn’t it embarrass her to be so transparent?
    “I was wondering if Ham had any enemies.”
    “Enemies! Ham? Why, Ham was the best-liked young man in Orleans Parish.”
    “He got along okay with his ex-wife?”
    “So far as I know.”
    “And Ti-Belle?”
    George merely nodded, not about to dignify that with an answer.
    “Melody?”
    “He loved that girl more than anything. They got along like wildfire, because of the age difference, I think—by the time she came along, Ham was too old for sibling rivalry. She was more like his niece than anything else.”
    “Can you think of any reason why Melody would want to run away?”
    “Well, sure,” said Patty. “The boyfriend.”
    “Anything else?”
    “Detective, we’ve been over and over this ground.”
    “I don’t remember that.”
    “In our own minds. With each other. Wouldn’t you in our position?”
    Langdon settled back a little in her chair and looked George in the eye. She smiled, friendly as a fox. “I guess I would. I wonder if you could tell me who Ham’s lawyer was.”
    “Jimmy Calhoun, I think. Why do you need to know that?”
    “Sometimes it’s helpful in these cases.” She was cagey, George thought. Not someone you’d want working against you.
    Patty said, “George, I think we should tell her about Andy Fike.”
    He shrugged. Why not?
    Patty did.
    And in the end George was glad. Because the smart-ass detective did a slow burn all during the telling of it. “Did you call the police at all?”
    “No.”
    “Are you crazy? Do you want your daughter found or not?”
    “We investigated on our own.”
    She put a hand over her face, shook her head and more or less moaned.
    She’d pretty much lost it. George liked that.
    After a brief and utterly unfruitful visit to Andy Fike, in which Fike acted as if he were the severely wronged party and even pretended he couldn’t remember what Melody was wearing, Skip sat down disgustedly at her desk. She would have liked to spend about half an hour running or riding a bicycle instead, to let off a little steam, but there was far too much to do.
    Ham’s financial problems worried her. He needed cash, pure and simple—she already knew that. And that would certainly explain why he was so eager to sell the family business. A man who needed cash might have been pretty active in campaigning among the board members to get his way; which in turn might have made someone wildly opposed want to get rid of him.
    Skip sighed. It was possible, but it didn’t seem likely. She dialed Jimmy Calhoun: Ham hadn’t left a will.
    “So what does that mean?” asked Skip. “Who inherits?”
    “Well, he never got around to getting divorced,” Calhoun said. “At least he didn’t do it through our firm. And, hell, we were at St. Martin’s together—he’d have come to me. Matter of fact, we had lunch a few weeks ago and I nagged him about it. He said I was worse than Ti-Belle.”
    “He did?” That didn’t square with what Ti-Belle had told her about the relationship.
    “Well, no, actually. But I did nag—thought he might want to marry that little Cajun before she got away. But I don’t know—he just looked kind of unhappy when I brought it up.”
    “So does Mason inherit?”
    “Absolutely. If there aren’t kids, the wife gets the loot.”
    When she got off the phone, she started to feel the first pangs of lunch lust. She thought of the tuna fish sandwich she’d brought, and decided it was going to be seriously inadequate. How to beef it up? Potato chips were too salty, a piece of fruit too wimpy. Now, an order of fries—that was more like it. And after lunch, she had a plan. A plan involving Ti-Belle. The phone rang.
    “Lunch?”
    “Cindy Lou Wootten. Where you been, girl?”
    “Working my butt off, same as you. But listen, I got to eat, you got to eat—and you’ve got a case to fill me in on.”
    This beat the hell out of a lonely tuna sandwich. “I’ve got a little chore out at the fairgounds—how about we eat at JazzFest?”
    “If you can get us in free, I’ll be there in ten.”
    “I