PI On A Hot Tin Roof

she laughed. “Eddie, how does a guy like you learn a word like that?”
    “Hey, I’m as hip as the next guy. Ya want to hear the rest of it or not?”
    “Spill, as they say in your generation.”
    He decided to let that one go. “The Saint says he’s as queer as a quacker.”
    He waited for her to go on for twenty minutes about homophobic bubbas. Instead, she only nodded. “I get it. Walks like a duck, talks like a duck.”
    He’d overlooked that possible meaning, but he didn’t let on. “Specially talks like a duck,” he said. “He’s queer and he’s here, and he doesn’t care who knows—a real no-no down at OPP. Saint says they drummed him out on some kind of trumped-up charge.”
    She pondered that one. “What kind of trumped-up charge?”
    “Some kind of bullshit unnecessary roughness thing.”
    “Ah, so he’s a sadist.”
    Eddie was disgusted. “Ms. Wallis, ya usually smarter than this. The Saint said he didn’t do anything anybody else doesn’t do.” He wasn’t sure whether that was proper grammar or not, but he was pretty sure she’d tell him if it wasn’t. “They just didn’t want a queer in the ranks, get it?”
    “You never heard where there’s smoke there’s fire?”
    “Look, say what you want about the Saint, but he’s a fair guy. He says it, he means it.”
    “From what I hear about that jail, they’ve got a lot of sadists down there. If Leitner got fired, he was probably worse than most.”
    “I didn’t get to the good part yet. He thinks Harry Nicasio whacked Buddy.”
    “Eddie, I know you didn’t tell him what we’re working on. Are you saying he just volunteered that?”
    “Well, yeah. Yeah, he did. But I’m not a hundred percent sure he was serious. Said it was a witness protection thing, with a kind of a twist—protection from the witness.”
    “Possible.” But she seemed dubious. “Lots of other witnesses out there.”
    “That’s what I told him. You know what, though? I got an idea—what about Leitner as the perp? The Saint says Buddy didn’t lift a finger to help him when it went down. Maybe he didn’t trust him. Maybe he thinks Leitner was behind the newspaper story, and he asks for a meeting at the marina. They get in an argument, and Leitner kills him.”
    “Heat of passion kind of thing?” She seemed doubtful.
    Eddie shrugged. “Guess it’d have to be. Anyhoo, just a thought. How come you didn’t react to Leitner being gay?”
    “Someone else told me that—said he and Royce Champagne are an item.”
    “Thought Royce was married.” Too late, he realized his mistake.
    “EdDEE! How naive can you be?”
    Nothing to do but ignore her. “Know who I think you should be talking to?”
    “The night watchman, right?”
    Eddie stood up and glowered at her. “Yeah. If you think you can find him.” It pissed him off when she acted like she was one step ahead of him.
    Talba had backgrounded Wesley Burrell in Arabi, but the most interesting thing she found about him was that he didn’t live in Arabi. He used to, that wasn’t hard to figure out, but he was living in Westwego now. Perhaps Burrell had had to put former addresses on his employment form and Royce had read it wrong. Surely he hadn’t tried to misdirect her deliberately—what would be the point? Childishness, she decided. And it could as easily be directed at Kristin and her great idea as at Talba and her investigation.
    Burrell was a retired postal worker, which might not augur a towering intellect, but you never knew—by all accounts, the Saint was a pretty smart dude for the sheriff’s office. The good part was, if the guy worked as a night watchman, he ought to be home sleeping. She liked talking to sleepy people—they let things slip.
    What she found was a dapper, well-built sixtyish guy in shorts, setting out spring begonias, now that it was getting warmer. Westwego was a working-class white town and this guy, despite his absence of beer gut, was probably a bubba who’d pretty naturally be suspicious of a black chick in the neighborhood. She pulled out her badge and license as she approached.
    “Mr. Burrell?”
    He stood up from his planting, his bony knees caked with dirt. “You FBI?”
    She grinned. “Not nearly so bad as that. I’m a humble P.I.—you expecting the FBI?”
    “I was involved in a murder—thought they might come around.”
    “Well, they haven’t yet. I’m Talba Wallis.” They shook hands.
    “You want to come in and have some iced tea?”