Free Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 13 - The Diamonds of Ghost Bayou by Kent Conwell Page A

Priouxville, not once in all
that time.” She looked around at her editor. “How long that be?
Five or six years?”
    Brasseaux grunted. “About that. He keep mighty close to
himself. I hear the boys at the electric company say they never
see no one at the house” He paused and shivered.
    Emerente jumped back in. “Then one morning, the mailman,
that be Prosper Esteve, he find Guzik floating under the bridge
over Alligator Bayou. He managed to throw a rope over the body
and drag it to shore”
    Brasseaux clucked his tongue. “What be left of it.” He leaped
to his feet and wagged a wrinkled finger. “Me, I get you something.” He rummaged through a file cabinet and moments later
returned with a page of news copy. He handed it to me. “This
tell you about Guzik,” he said, pointing to the byline. “Emerente, she write this two days after his body, it be found. Good
story,” he added, winking at her.
    She beamed.
    I remained with the two chatterboxes another thirty minutes,
managing to glean a few pieces of information that might prove
to be stepping stones-to what, I wasn’t sure.
    Big Tim Strollo had died of a heart attack; Ramsey had moved
out after suffering financial losses; Theriot died in prison, and his partner, Oscar Mouton, continued running Bayou Country
Motors; and the only remaining members of the Prioux family were in their nineties and lived at Priouxville Glen Care
Center.

    As I rose to leave, Brasseaux said, “I suppose you already met
old Rouly out your way, huh?”
    I laughed. “Yeah.”
    “That one, he be quite a character.”
    “I could tell. He even told me about one of your citizens,
L. Q. Benoit, who was found dead. Claimed it was a loupgarou.” I expected a smile from them, but both grew serious.
    Emerente spoke up. “Me, I don’t believe all that much in such
stories, but there be two more what be killed like Benoit.”
    My own smile faded. “What’s that?”
    Brasseaux ran his wrinkled fingers through his full head of
white hair. “Oui, Charley Primeaux and Dudley Vitale. They
be found dead. Beat to death like Benoit.”
    A hint of fear glittered in Emerente’s eyes. “There be tracks of
the horse by them. Me, I know for sure they be by Dudley. I see
them”
    The old editor knit his brow. “Naturally, we all know there be
no such thing as loup-garou, but the sheriff, he say the autopsies
show they was beat to death. By a horse.”
    Emerente arched a pencil-darkened eyebrow. “You think
what you want. Like I say, I see them tracks by Dudley, but then,”
she added, a hint of Old Country superstition in her voice, “the
tracks, they disappear.”
    I frowned. “What do you mean, `disappear’?”
    She held up her arms in exclamation. “Disappear, vanish, go
away” She explained, “Dudley, that one, he was found beside
the dirt road to his shack. The tracks, they was all around him,
and then they was no more. I look for them, but they be gone”
She pointed to a spot on the floor. “They go down the road, and
then,” she said, pointing to another spot, “they not there. Only
footprints made by a boot, the boot of that one who become the
loup-garou.” She jumped to her feet. “I show you” She rummaged
through a file cabinet.

    Brasseaux snorted and rolled his eyes. “Next thing that one
be saying is that it was all voodoo. Marie Laveau reborn.”
    Emerente glanced over her shoulder, her eyes shooting daggers at him. “You don’t know nothing, you foolish old man. Just
you wait. Ah, here it be.” She opened a folder and handed me
two pictures. “This be what I talking about.”
    The first 8 x 10 glossy showed a series of horse tracks leading
from a body in a ditch and ending abruptly in the middle of the
dusty road, where a set of human footprints took over. The second was a close-up of one of the tracks.
    I glanced at the second one and then looked again, realizing
the one leg of the horseshoe’s U was bent outward a