PI On A Hot Tin Roof

kid.”
    “I thought you said you trusted me.”
    “What do you want it for?”
    “You know how I said I had a duty? My first duty’s to Lucy. I need to see if I can do anything for her.”
    “Oh, all right.”
    ***
    As usual, Ms. Wallis had her hair on fire. “Eddie, we’ve got a new client. You will never guess—”
    He didn’t let her finish. “Ms. Wallis, just sit down and take a few deep breaths.”
    She sat but she didn’t pause to breathe. “Kristin LaGarde wants us to find out who killed Buddy.”
    He took off his glasses and stared, thinking that if his ears didn’t work, at least his eyes might.
    She said, “Your bags are violet today. Tell me that’s a good sign.”
    “Kristin LaGarde. What’s the matter, she doesn’t think Langdon can handle it?”
    Ms. Wallis shrugged. “Survivor’s guilt? I don’t know. People are crazy—they just need to think they’ve done everything they should, I guess. I told her we’d do it. What do you think?”
    Turning it over in his head, he could see only one possible conflict. “You didn’t kill him, did you?”
    “No. Did you or Angie?”
    “No motive,” he said dryly, “thanks to you and Ms. Storey. What color’s her money?”
    “I thought you’d say that.”
    “So. Ya background the client?” He knew she had, of course—E. V. Anthony and Associates had a hard and fast rule that this was the first thing Talba did after a prospective client left the office. You never knew if they were crazy or a criminal or a chronic liar or could pay the bill.
    “Sure—for Angie’s case.”
    “Well? Anything interesting?”
    “Her dad’s Warren LaGarde, the hotel man.”
    “Hoo boy—she was some catch for Buddy.”
    “Yeah.” She seemed distracted.
    “What’s bothering ya? It’s somethin’. I can tell.”
    “I think there’s a loose end.”

Chapter 12
    There was a loose end, all right. That thing Kristin had said at the Bacchus party, about meeting Buddy in court. That could mean one of only two things—either she’d been a juror or a witness in a case before him, or she’d been involved in a case herself. To find out if it was the former, Talba would have to ask outright. But if it was the latter, it ought to be easy enough to figure out—because chances were it involved her father’s company.
    Talba went back to her computer, but there was nothing about a lawsuit in any of the local papers that she could find. Great. That meant braving the bureaucracy at the courthouse, every P.I.’s least favorite chore. She went out to buy pralines, and then drove to the courthouse. The city’s cops weren’t nearly as corrupt as people thought—there’d been a cleanup in recent years. But a myth she’d found to be true was that New Orleans had the least helpful bureaucrats of any city in Louisiana, and possibly in the world. The point of the candy was to sweeten their dispositions. Eddie had taught her the trick, and, just as he said, their response soon became Pavlovian. When they saw her come in, their often-surly faces lit up. It wasn’t a tip and it wasn’t a bribe. It was just a nice way to say thanks for a job well done.
    Or so she and Eddie rationalized it.
    She found two suits filed against LaGarde, Inc.—both involving hotels LaGarde wanted to build that preservationists had sued to stop. Both had been settled in LaGarde’s favor. And both had been heard before Judge Buddy Champagne. Technically, she supposed, there was no conflict if Buddy and Kristin had begun their relationship after the cases were settled, but who cared now? Talba added the case names to the client’s file and called Lucy.
    “Hi, it’s Sandra.”
    Lucy sounded drugged. “Oh. Hi.”
    “I want to see you. Can I come over?”
    “I don’t care.”
    “That means ‘yes,’ right?”
    No answer.
    “I’m on my way.”
    Adele would be the first hurdle, of course. She answered the door herself, wearing one of her too-fancy dresses, this one black. “How dare you show your face around here?”
    “Kristin said you’d see me.”
    “You’re a plague on this family.”
    “Well. You’re right—I know I have been. Kristin said you’d want to tell me so yourself.”
    “That poor child has had nightmares every night.”
    Talba apologized for what she’d done, and finished with, “Look, I hate what happened—especially to Lucy. The only thing I can do now is try to find out who did it. I owe that to your family.”
    To her surprise, Adele fought tears,