PI On A Hot Tin Roof

she watched, too much in shock to dial, as Brad said, “Let me do it.” He jumped into the boat, nearly capsizing it. The motion caused Buddy’s head to roll ever so slightly, just enough for Talba to see the wound—a rather neat hole—on the right temple. Surprised there was so little blood, she tried to remember if it had rained the night before. It hadn’t.
    “Shit!” Brad hollered, and Royce uttered a scream with no syllables.
    Talba took a deep breath. “Don’t move him!” she yelled. But Brad had scrambled back onto the dock. Again he held Royce, neither of them speaking. Fingers shaking, Talba dialed 911 and gave the address of the marina.
    Then she called Major Case Homicide and asked for a cop she knew well, Detective Skip Langdon, formerly of the Third District, but returned to headquarters after one of the department’s many reorganizations.
    “Baroness,” she said. “What’s up?”
    “Skip, get out to Venetian Isles—the old Pelican Marina. Buddy Champagne’s dead in a boat. Looks like a suicide.”
    “Jesus. Call 911.”
    “I already have.”
    “I’m on my way. What the hell are you doing there?”
    “Working a case. Long story, but you’ve got to get me out of here.”
    “That
Times-Picayune
thing?”
    “I’ll tell you when you get here. But here’s the short version—I’ve been working undercover as a maid for the Champagnes. It’s going to get ugly when they find out. Oh, and one other thing—they think my name’s Sandra. Could you possibly refrain from calling me ‘Baroness’?”
    “As you wish, Your Grace.”
    Talba hung up, and called Eddie, who, in turn, promised to call Angie. Finally, because she owed it to her, she called Jane Storey.
    Then she ran down the dock to the two men, but Royce was already driving off in his truck. “What’s he doing?” she asked, outraged.
    “All he could say was, ‘Oh, shit! What’s Lucy going to do?’ He went to break it to her before the police came and kept him for hours. You got a cell phone?”
    “I’ve already called the cops.”
    He raised an eyebrow. “Well. Quick thinking. How the hell could a thing like this happen? He must have had a heart attack. Or fallen, maybe.”
    “Uh-uh. He’s got a hole in his head.”
    “Shit!” Brad said. “Shot? Is that what you’re saying?”
    “Well. You saw it. What did
you
think?”
    Brad lowered shoulders tensed against the truth. “All right. Guess Royce and me thought the same thing. His daddy couldn’t take the heat. Offed himself.”
    Talba’s knees felt weak. The last thing she’d meant to do was cause this man’s death.
    She knew what to expect in the next few hours. The coroner would come to pronounce the judge well and truly dead; the crime lab would take photographs and gather evidence; the cops would ask endless questions, and then they would take her to the station and make her sign a statement. She wouldn’t get away for hours.
    And she’d smell like dead shrimp all day.
    Her cell phone rang: Angie. “Don’t say a word till I get there.”
    “Whatever you do, don’t come down here.” Pointedly, she avoided using the lawyer’s name, but she walked away from Brad just the same. “You don’t want to be connected to this. Are you crazy? Everything’s going to come out. You want to be on television at the scene? Don’t do it, all right? I’ll be fine.”
    Silence hung like a weight on the line. Finally, Angie said, “Okay, I see what you mean. I’ll get Jimmy Houlihan.”
    “I do
not
need a lawyer, okay? I didn’t do it.”
    But try to tell a lawyer you don’t need a lawyer. It took her another five minutes of arguing, and by that time, Langdon had arrived, along with Lieutenant Adam Abasolo, whom she also knew. To her amazement, they obliged by pretending they’d never seen her before in their lives. After a decent interval, Langdon took her aside to get her story—and the backstory to her story.
    During the interview, she asked a question Talba was to remember later:
Had she seen a gun in the boat?
Talba visualized the scene. She had seen both of Buddy’s hands, and they were empty. It was a small fiberglass boat, white, so a gun would have stood out.
    “No,” she said.
    “Are you sure?”
    “Positive. But one of his hands—”
    “I noticed. Like maybe he dropped it. Try to be patient, okay? I’ll be awhile.”
    Meanwhile, Jane Storey arrived, in a feeding frenzy. Talba had also warned Jane that for purposes of this encounter,