PI On A Hot Tin Roof

us. This thing’s not goin’ away.”
    Well, I am,
Talba thought.
And the sooner the better.
    But she still had a question or two. “Y’all home the night Buddy was shot?”
    Again, they looked at each other. Finally, Fay shrugged. “We don’t go out a lot. Must have been.”
    “You didn’t hear the shot, did you?”
    “I’m not sure we didn’t,” Billy said. “Heard somethin’ funny.”
    “What?”
    “Some kind of noise.”
    “How can you remember that if you’re not sure you were home?”
    Billy flared. “You callin’ me a liar, girl?”
    “No, sir.” She turned her palms up to signal she wasn’t armed. “Just asking.”
    “Well, get on down the road now. I’ve ’bout had enough of the likes of you.”
    She got on down the road. Happily. No matter that the kitten was nowhere in sight.
    Still hiding, she figured. And hoped it wouldn’t decide to go exploring while she was driving.
    She wondered what Jimmy had been like. Lucy’d said she liked him. In that case, he must have resembled his parents only in having two arms and two legs. “Simple,” Ben Izaguirre had called them. A serious understatement.
    Clearly they were racist, homophobic, and prejudiced against anyone better off than they were. They’d seen Buddy’s house and that had probably whetted their greed. She wasn’t sure she could believe a word either of them said.

Chapter 14
    “Eddie, you got connections in the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s office?”
    Eddie couldn’t believe Ms. Wallis sometimes. “I been in business thirty years, or what?”
    “I take it that’s something like ‘Who de man’?”
    Eddie sighed, feeling weary. “You got it, Ms. Wallis. Criminal or civil?” Because of a separation of jurisdictions after the Civil War, Orleans Parish had the only criminal sheriff in the country, whose main duty was to run the jail.
    “Criminal.”
    “Whatcha need?”
    “Royce’s best friend used to be a deputy. Might have gotten fired.”
    Eddie raised an eyebrow. “Ya gotta piss somebody off to be fired from that job. It ain’t civil service. You can be fired at will.”
    “Ah. Even more interesting. Can you find out what happened?”
    “What’s the matter, it’s not online?”
    “Well, the guy’s not in rapsheets.com, but even a baroness can’t get personnel records.”
    “Hang on there—forgot to wear my shock-absorbing tie today.”
    “You should let Audrey pick out your ties.”
    That annoyed Eddie. Audrey didn’t like the damn tie, either. What was up with women? Were they telepathic or something? “I’ll make some calls,” he said.
    “Good. I’ve got to get going. I’ve got a kitten in the car.”
    “Ya got a what?”
    “Rescue kitten. For Raisa.”
    “Darryl know about that?”
    “He’ll love it—it’s a really sweet little thing.”
    “Oh, boy,” was all he said, thinking about the time Audrey’d brought home a rescue kitten for Angie and her brother, Tony. He hadn’t loved it.
    Instead of making calls, he decided to go over to the sheriff’s office, shoot the shit a little to keep his hand in. He asked at the receptionist’s desk for Chief St. Pierre, then waited till his old buddy St. Bernard came to get him—they didn’t let you roam the halls here. The guy’s name was Bernard St. Pierre, but anybody who’d ever met him understood the doggy thing—he was a big, shambling, broad-backed, slow-moving guy, loyal to a fault, who didn’t seem all that smart at first glance. Eddie’d had more than one glance.
    “Eddie, my man, how ya been keepin’?” The Saint wore a slow canine grin that hid the fact that he’d probably taken in all the data Eddie offered by his mere presence. “Let me guess,” he said, “ya gave up desserts for Lent.”
    Eddie had. “What makes ya think that, Saint?”
    “Put on a few, haven’t ya? And ya not gon’ give up beer.”
    “Pound or two,” Eddie shrugged. Ten, in fact. And he had given up desserts. The Saint was starting to bug him already. “Came by to ask about a former employee.”
    “Ya know I can’t talk about that.” The Saint favored him with a wink that was more like a tent door flapping. “Come on into my office.”
    Eddie followed. “Guy named Brad Leitner. Ever know him?”
    “Oh.
Him.
Got rid o’
his
sorry ass.”
    “Uh-huh. I knew there was somethin’.”
    “Queer as a quacker.” The Saint had his own language.
    “Ya mean he’s an odd duck? Or ya mean he’s gay?”
    “Oh, he’s an odd duck, all