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

dead by stomping on him.’-‘.
    Loup-garou, like the feu follet, was nothing more than an oldtime Cajun superstition. The loup-garou, or werewolf, of Cajun
myth can be any kind of bird or beast. Some are even good
spirits, but most, for whatever reason, are dark and treacherous.
I guessed Rouly’s loup-garou was probably the mugger or
muggers of which Sheriff Lacoutrue had spoken.
    Old Rouly cackled. “That Benoit, he didn’t have no time to
get himself even one big drunk.” When he saw the frown on my
face, he explained. “Benoit, he come back from prison. He just
come from the sheriff and the deputy, and he come to my shack,
and me and him, we have a drink to celebrate his parole, and then
he go off to his shack. They find him next morning.”

    Like all the old-timers, Rouly could probably talk around the
clock, but I had business at hand. I glanced at the sky, noting
the fading signs of dusk. I shook his hand. “Thanks again, Mr.
Rouly. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
    I was still laughing at the odd old man when I rounded the bend
and spotted Diane and Jack’s house. But what really got my attention were the two men running down the stairs and racing toward two boats moored at the dock. One of the goons was bald.
    I floored the pickup. The engine screamed. The truck leaped
forward. Another hundred feet and the macadam ended, but a
dirt road continued along the bayou. I shot onto the road and
angled toward the dock. I slammed on the brakes just as the two
roared away in a yellow Stratos, leaving a wide, foamy wake behind them.
    I recognized the second boat as Jack’s, a Mako 191 I helped
him pick out at Carrier’s Marine in Austin a couple of months
earlier. I raced down the pier, threw off the stern and bow lines,
and then jumped in behind the center console. I cursed. No keys.
    I stuck the throttle into neutral and then dropped to my knees
and peered under the console. One of the questionable skills I’d
developed on my job as a PI was hot-wiring vehicles, and the
Mako was a snap. Fifteen seconds later, the ninety-horsepower
Mercury roared to life.
    I jammed the throttle onto full power. The stern dipped, and
the nineteen-foot Mako leaped forward.
    Three feet later, the speeding boat slammed to an abrupt halt,
throwing me halfway over the windshield.

     

it took me a moment to gather my senses and climb off the
windshield that I was painfully straddling. By then, the sound of
the retreating outboard was fading into the dark swamps. I looked
around to see what had jerked the boat into such an abrupt halt. I
was stunned to see the big engine tilted forward, its lower unit
parallel to the water, with a massive chain linked around it, and
the other end fastened to one of the piers supporting the dock.
    I shook my head and muttered in wonder, “Jack, what in the
blazes was on your mind?”
    Cursing softly, I reached for the chain. I glanced over my
shoulder and spotted a man about fifty yards deep into the
bayou. He was standing in a boat, sort of like a canoe, watching. I blinked, and he vanished. For several moments, I stood
staring into the growing shadows where I had seen him. Or had
I? This time of evening, swamp shadows played eerie tricks.
    I turned back to the business at hand. After using the chain to
pull the boat back to the dock in the quickly fading light, I checked
the Mako’s transom, surprised that the impact hadn’t ripped it off.
    A soft rumble of thunder rolled through the swamps. I glanced
back to the south and caught a jagged trunk of lightning slashing down from a thunderhead outlined with silver. From a compartment under the casting deck, I pulled out the boat cover and
quickly snapped it on.
    Pulling my truck back under the four-car carport south of the
house, I locked it and looked up at the house. The lower concourse
was covered with white lattice through which myriad roses wound
and twisted their branches. That was cute.

    The single-story