A Bad Boy is Good to Find(45)

He hauled in a breath as he heard someone fumbling with a chain on the other side.

“What?” snarled a throaty voice. The door swung open. Jesus, he hadn’t changed at all. Hair still speckled gray and slicked right back with pomade.

“Hello, Sir. I don’t know if you remember me. My name’s Conroy Beale, I used to live just up the road.”

“Conroy Beale.” The rheumy hazel eyes narrowed. “The same Conroy Beale that let my dog loose and stole oranges from my tree?”

Con ran a hand through his hair. “Um, yes. And I’d like to formally apologize for that unlawful act.”

The dog barked on.

The old man didn’t say anything. His eyes narrowed further. Con almost wished Maisie would come on up and take charge. He had a feeling Maisie and old Joe were cut from the same cloth.

“I’m back in the area for the first time in years, and I wonder if you know what became of the people who used to live…in my old house.”

“You don’t know what became of your own family?” One gray eyebrow lifted. Con felt his disapproval like a smack.

He straightened his back. “No. I’m not proud of it, but I’m afraid I don’t.”

Joe Gaudry studied him for a moment. Looked down at his respectable shirt and pants. “Well, I admit I felt pretty sorry for you and your brother, even if you were both a pair of…” He licked his lips. “But never mind that. You do know your daddy died?”

“Did he?” Relief snuck through him, guilt hot on its heels.

“Yes. More than ten years back.”

“Can’t be. I left ten years back and he was still alive then.”

“Must have died right around the time you left. Hit by a car. Drunk as a lord at the time, of course.” He fixed Con with a hard stare. Con flinched. “The other boy, your brother, got sent off somewhere. The boys’ home I expect. Don’t think there were any other relatives. No one’s lived there since. Place fell down, then what was left of it got swept away in one storm or another. Improvement if you ask me. Not that I ever had nothin’ bad to say about your mother.” Con stiffened. “She was a good woman, minded her own business.”

Yeah, that’s what killed her.

Con took a deep breath. “Did Danny ever come back? My brother? I need to find him.”

“Why, you win the lotto?” Joe glanced down at the camera.

“No, nothing like that. Do you know of anyone who might know where he is?”

“Nope.”

The dog kept up its barrage of noisy barking, and Con’s nerves crackled to get going. “Can I give you my cell phone number in case you hear anything?”

“Don’t have a phone. Got no need of one.”

The radio launched into a lively dance number.

“Thank you for your time, sir.”

The old man gave a single nod, stared at him for a withering second, then closed the door.

Con’s blood pounded in his ears as he descended the stairs.

“Didn’t get much of that. Damn dog,” said Dino, as Con reached the ground. The dog still hadn’t let up.

“He didn’t say much. My dad’s dead, my brother got sent away.”

“Where to?” asked Maisie.

“Orphanage, he thinks.” His rib cage felt tight, squeezing on his lungs and making it hard to breathe.

Maisie nodded, her pale eyes fixed on his face and her thoughts obviously whirring behind them. “Let’s go back to the house and make some phone calls.”



“Then you suck the head.”

Lizzie grimaced as Con tipped the crawdad’s head into his mouth and slurped. “That’s the butter.”

“You mean the brains.”

Con shrugged. “Go on, try it.”

With the camera on her and the entire crew gathered around the big wrought-iron table on the moonlit patio, Lizzie didn’t feel like she had a choice.

She picked up a boiled red crawdad from the heaped plate, suppressing a shudder of revulsion. It was so…big. Why couldn’t they be like tiny shrimp or something? Or big like a lobster so you didn’t have to lift it? She snapped it, put the head down on her plate and cracked the shell off the tail.

The meat was tender and tasty. A lot like lobster tail. Con’s anxious face broke into a grin as he saw she enjoyed it.

“Good, right?”

“Yes.” She couldn’t help smiling too. “It’s great. But I’m still not sucking the head.”

Con, back to the camera, winked at her. “Alright. Maybe later, huh?”

Her face flushed. Raoul let out a raucous laugh that echoed around the crew.

This was all your idea.

Con chuckled. “Don’t let ’em get cold. That would be a tragedy. Come on everyone, dig in.”

The entire crew fell on the steaming mound of bright red crustaceans that the chef had boiled in two giant vats of water. A variety of dipping sauces left everyone with garlic butter running down their chins and hot peppers stinging their taste buds. The conversation meandered from food to the eerie beauty of the moon-drenched garden, to the house.

“Who owns this old place anyway?” said one of the lighting guys.

Gia sucked her fingers. “A lawyer in town. He rents it out though an agency. They do weddings and parties here, and a TV movie was shot here last year.”

“It’s beautifully maintained,” said Lizzie.

Con wiped his mouth with his napkin. “It’s just plain beautiful”

“The rooms are very well proportioned.” Maisie sucked the “butter” out of a crawdad head without batting an eye. “And the furnishings are really quite extraordinary. Worth an absolute fortune at auction. Genuine American treasures.”

“Maisie interned at Christie’s auction house in high school,” said Lizzie. “The one thing that’s still missing is air conditioning. I don’t know how the rest of you stand it.” Her armpits were soaked, as usual. She’d taken to wearing black so it didn’t show so much.

“Doesn’t bother me,” said Maisie, who apparently didn’t have any sweat glands. “But the A/C units are arriving tomorrow. They were booked up today with a convention, but tomorrow Con will think he’s back in Canada with his Acadian ancestors.” She picked up another crawdad, and looked around the group. Her eyes rested on the running camera. “The Cajuns migrated here from Acadia in Nova Scotia. A proud and fiercely independent people who maintain the cultural traditions of their native France, including an intriguing variant of the language. Did you speak French at home, Con?”

“Nope.”

Lizzie, who’d been inwardly rolling her eyes during Maisie’s pedantry, wondered if Con even was Cajun. Beale didn’t sound particularly French, now she came to think about it.

“It’s such a marvelously simple life, here in the swamps,” continued Maisie, cracking open her crawdad. “Spiritual almost, in the lack of materialism.”

“I think it’s called poverty,” muttered Lizzie. “Con’s childhood doesn’t sound all that spiritual to me.”