PI On A Hot Tin Roof

chore, and help. At noon, she’d be free. Nothing was going to stop her.
    She and Kristin worked together like a machine, not talking, just clearing and cleaning. When Adele returned, she joined them with a merciless efficiency. Buddy disappeared to his office.
    There was no sign of Suzanne and Royce till ten-thirty. By then, most of the heavy work was done, which was “a blessin,” as Miz Clara would say—Suzanne tried to pitch in, but she didn’t have a clue how to make things happen, and she sniped at Kristin every chance she got. Royce grumbled for a while, then repaired to the den with a cup of coffee. Business as usual.
    By noon, it was all done but rearranging the furniture. “Don’t you worry about a thing,” Adele said. “I’ll get Buddy and Royce to do it after ’while. Let me pay you, and then you just run on home and have a happy Mardi Gras with that man of yours—and that cute little girl.”
    Decent woman,
Talba thought, and regretted, not for the first time, what she was about to do to the household.
    She intended to put the unexpected afternoon off to good use. But first, she went home and made herself some tomato soup and an egg salad sandwich, reading the paper as she ate. The bad news was the weather: The storms were going to get worse that afternoon, and Mardi Gras was a crapshoot.
    She listened to the morning tapes before going into the office, and what she heard was beautiful. Absolutely gorgeous. Buddy had made one important call—to Funky Farley, asking why he still hadn’t seen anything in the paper about Angie’s arrest.
    And he’d received a call from a man who identified himself as Mac Boudreaux:
“Hey, your honor. Just wanted to make sure everything worked out. I got a little worried ’cause I didn’t see nothin’ in the paper about it.”
    “Everything’s fine, Mac. I’m gon’ take care of ya. Don’t you worry about a thing.”
    “Well, I wasn’t worried for myself, but my buddy Frank’s got some medical bills
—”
    “You boys did just fine, Mac. I’m gon’ get ya checks off today.”
    “Uh—if you don’t mind—would cash be possible? I mean, nobody wants no records.”
    Buddy’s voice was impatient.
“You come by the house Wednesday. I’ll take care o’you boys.”
    “Everything gon’ work out at the marina?”
Boudreaux sounded tentative.
“I know a lot of guys who’d sure enjoy doin’ business with ya.”
    “Ya brother-in-law brought me a load of shrimp just last Friday. You tell him things are fine—we got ’em on the run—not a peep out of ol’ Ben since last week.”
    “Shame about the Chief, though.”
    “Ah, he’s just another nigger likes his drugs. Bound to go down some time for somethin’.”
    Bingo,
Talba thought.
    Boudreaux was a pretty common name, so she didn’t go through the usual backgrounding process. If this was the guy who planted the drugs, he was probably a cop. She called the police department and asked for Mac Boudreaux. She was immediately put through.
    Smiling, she hung up.
    This was it. With luck she’d be at the house when the transaction occurred.
    She absolutely couldn’t wait to tell Eddie.
    ***
    Eddie was half thinking of going home—nobody was in any kind of mood for business on Lundi Gras—but now he had to do Ms. Wallis’s work as well as his own. He was in his office wrestling the damn machine when she careened in, bouncing off the walls.
    “Eddie, we got him. I heard him on the speakerphone—promising to pay the guys who did it.”
    He looked at her over the top of his glasses. “They said they did it? On the phone?”
    “Well, not in those words.” She reported what the guy had said, and her subsequent confirmation that he was a cop. “With any luck, I can photograph Buddy paying them off. With my trusty spy phone.”
    “Ya ridin’ for a fall, Ms. Wallis. They catch ya, no tellin’ what they might do.”
    “Hey! Who’s the baroness? Catching me’s not in the cards.”
    She was way too cocky for her own good. If it wasn’t Angie’s reputation at stake, he’d order her not to do it. But he wasn’t about to—because she was right. They probably had enough already to bring Buddy down—and get the charges dropped against Angie. Maybe not by going through the usual channels, but Eddie had friends in the police department; he wondered about Boudreaux’s reputation. He could find out by asking around, but he said to Ms. Wallis, “Ya find anything on Boudreaux? He ever been in