PI On A Hot Tin Roof

he’d come home for a reason—most probably to make private phone calls.

Chapter 6
    Once again, she cancelled out on Darryl. She wasn’t quite as tired as the day before, but if she’d had to go out, she’d still have fallen asleep over dinner, and besides, she had a lot of catching up to do.
    First, she listened to the tape, and there was one good thing on it—a conversation between Buddy and Evan Farley:
    Farley:
Hey, Buddy, thought you’d like an update. Sorry we couldn’t run a story about that bust the other day. The city editor didn’t think it was really a story. At this point, anyhow.
    Champagne:
Evan, I really need you here. These scum are ’bout to run me out of business—along with about half the remaining shrimpers in Louisiana. You know how bad it is for the shrimpers, boy?
    Farley:
Well, that’s the story they want to focus on. I appreciated your tip, but the powers that be here just don’t think what the lawyer does in her spare time has anything to do with it.
    Champagne:
This is about integrity, Evan. This is an example of the kinda people out to get me. Druggies and lowlifes. That bitch ought not to even be practicin’ law in this state. Probably loaded half the time and incompetent as hell.
    Farley:
Well, I’m working on it. Just wanted to let you know I appreciate what you’re trying to do for me here.
    Champagne:
I’m expecting great things outta you, boy.
    Now this was fantastic intelligence. It didn’t prove Buddy had Farley in his pocket—that “what you’re trying to do for me” could be construed as helping with a news story—but it was provocative. It confirmed a connection between Farley and Champagne, and it implied the connection might be based on tit for tat. The only problem was finding the tat. Maybe Eddie was having luck on the Farley beat.
    Next, she had to background everybody but Buddy, whom she’d already run through her personal wringer.
    To her dismay, Adele and Royce had pretty much managed to stay out of the papers, though she was able to find out a reasonable amount of Adele’s story. Suzanne had been no newsmaker, either, under her married name, but there was a wedding announcement for her and Royce. She’d been Suzanne Gautier, and there wasn’t much on the former Miss Gautier, either—just one story about feng shui becoming popular in New Orleans. She’d had a few things to say about the proper flow of chi, but that didn’t do much for Talba.
    Lucy had never hit the paper once.
    The one she was interested in was Kristin LaGarde, who was quite a little mover and shaker, and who was also living proof of the commonly held belief that love is blind. What a young, gorgeous, smart, reasonably wealthy woman saw in a crude old snake like Buddy Champagne Talba had no idea. Father figure, probably, although Kristin had a very much alive and not only kicking but ass-kicking father. The lovely Kristin was the daughter of Warren LaGarde, a wealthy developer who built hotels, and she’d gone into the family business, working her way up to vice president in charge of development. She was only thirty-two, but she’d been married and divorced—to and from a lawyer named Daniel Truelove. Evidently, there wasn’t all that much in a name.
    Still, Truelove was a great moniker—Talba could only imagine the inner struggle the woman must have gone through trying to decide whether to remain Kristin Truelove—who could resist that?—or going back to being Vice President Kristin LaGarde of LaGarde, Inc.
    Pragmatism seemed to have carried the day.
    Just for the fun of it, Talba did a little work on Daddy Warren, though most of the city already knew his story. His father had started with the flagship Hotel LaGarde, and when he died, sonny had expanded the business. He now owned four hotels, and he was always building more. Not a day went by that his name wasn’t in the paper—getting yet another height variance, speaking out on the need to support tourism (more or less the city’s only industry), collecting civic awards, announcing new chefs at his hotels’ various restaurants.
    Talba just loved that height variance thing—all the hotels did it, and it went like this: They applied for a permit to build a hotel to be ten stories, maybe; and then, halfway through the building of it, they said they’d go bankrupt if they couldn’t go to fifteen. And, not wanting to lose the business, the powers that be usually went for it. Why on Earth the city kept