Free Summer of Pearls by Mike Blakely Page A

when the snag-boat men quit work, he asked them what they had found.
    One day a steamer came up Big Cypress Bayou and instead of tying up at the Port Caddo wharf, it anchored first beside the snag boat in the channel. The rousters put a gangplank between the two boats and we saw a fellow in alligator shoes and a silk tie cross the gangplank to the snag boat. He poked around for a long time, asking questions and writing things down. Then he had one of the snag-boat men bring him to the wharf in a rowboat.
    â€œThat’s him,” the snag-boat worker said, pointing at Billy, who was standing on the wharf at the time.
    â€œAre you Billy Treat?” the man asked, stepping up on the wharf.
He was a chubby fellow of about forty, dressed in slick New Orleans styles, stained with sweat. He grew little-bitty mustaches that looked like they had been drawn on with a pencil.
    â€œYes,” Billy said.
    â€œYou were the cook on the Glory of Caddo Lake?”
    â€œWho are you?” Billy asked.
    The man stuck out his hand. “Joshua Lagarde, Delta State Insurance Company, New Orleans. We hold the policy on the Glory of Caddo Lake. The owners have put in a claim.”
    â€œThe owners?” Billy said. “Captain Gentry was the only owner I knew of.”
    Lagarde mopped his neck with a handkerchief and shook with a chuckle. “Gentry didn’t own the boat, Mr. Treat. He sold it six months ago to pay off some gambling debts. The new owners simply insisted that he continue to pose as captain and owner so as not to damage trade. At least that’s the story they give.”
    â€œWho are these new owners?” Billy asked.
    â€œI’m not at liberty to say. I would appreciate your cooperation, Mr. Treat, but you’ll have to let me ask the questions.”
    I nudged Adam Owens. “Run to my pop’s office and tell him there’s a story on the wharf,” I said. Adam wasn’t listening to what was going on anyway. As long as I knew him, he never cared much for gossip and intrigue. He died a simple working man. He took off at a run toward my pop’s newspaper office, delighted to have something to do.
    â€œNow, Mr. Treat,” Lagarde said, “the fellows on the snag boat have brought up the steam engines and all their fittings—the throttle, the valves, etcetera. I’ve found something quite curious about them. All the valves were closed at the time of the explosion. Do you have any idea why?”
    â€œYes, I do,” Billy said. “There was nobody in the engine room when the boat blew up … .” He went on to tell how the explosion had occurred, and he told it in such detail that it gave my pop time to arrive. Pop walked up real casual and pretended to be watching the snag-boat work. But he was in easy listening distance of the insurance man. Billy was just finishing up by explaining how the Glory’ s engineer had
climbed into the yawl only minutes before the boilers blew.
    â€œWhy would he do that?” Lagarde asked.
    â€œHis story was that he wanted to check something on the paddle wheel as the boat got underway.”
    Lagarde scribbled something down in a notebook. “How much do you know about steamboats, Mr. Treat?”
    â€œI worked on the Glory for a year and a half. I knew her pretty well.”
    â€œDo you know what this is?” He motioned to the man in the rowboat, who handed up a large iron cylinder, pretty badly mangled.
    Billy took it in one hand. “Used to be a safety valve.”
    â€œNotice anything unusual about it?”
    â€œYes. The valve lever has been loaded down with extra weight.”
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œI think you know what it means, Lagarde. It defeats the purpose of having a safety valve in the first place, doesn’t it?”
    Lagarde chuckled again and took the valve back. “The men couldn’t find the other two safety valves. This one came from the only boiler that