“Do you need me any longer?” Matty asked.
“Not right now. Maybe you should go see your father at the hospital.”
“If you want to, I’ll go with you,” Ben offered.
“Oh, all right,” she agreed, hardly concealing her reluctance.
Colonel Grandpere had been taken to the Tulane University Hospital, one of the city’s oldest. They found him in a private room being attended by his own nurse. “Daddy,” Matty said softly, entering the room with some hesitation.
He lifted his head and peered at her. “You’ve come back, my darlin’ daughter.”
“Not for good, just to see you. How do you feel?”
“Pretty good for someone my age who took a load of buckshot in his chest. Lucky you were there, Snow, or he’d have finished me off.”
She went over to his bed and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “The police think I was somehow involved with this Tommy Franz, but I barely knew the man. He only had lunch with me a few times.”
Colonel Grandpere frowned. “He did? That man was no good.”
There was a noise at the door and Ben turned to see Bedelia Grandpere entering. “Well, Matty. You’ve come back.”
The colonel’s daughter gave her a sour look. “Only for a visit. I thought you’d be in mourning after Rubin was killed.”
Bedelia ignored her remark and went to the colonel’s bedside. “We’d better be going,” Ben suggested to Matty. He thought he understood one reason why she’d left home.
Colonel Grandpere returned to the plantation two days later, accompanied by Bedelia. Ben had only to collect his pay and move on. He’d done the job as best he could and there was nothing else for him in the city. He would head back to Texas later that day.
And yet, there was something unsettling about the entire matter, even after Inspector Withers assured him no charges would be brought against him for shooting Tommy Franz. “It was self-defense,” he told Ben. “The man had already shot two people.”
“Have you been able to trace the dynamite?”
Withers spread out Ben’s list on his desk. “It appears he got it from one of these big plantations, or else he brought it in from upriver.”
Ben was staring at the sheet of paper, suddenly wondering how he could have been so dumb. “I’m on my way out to Horseshoe Plantation to collect my fee and return their horse. It might be a good idea if you came with me.”
Inspector Withers gave him an appraising look. “All right,” he said finally. “If you want me to.”
They reached the plantation a half-hour later, and Bedelia ushered them to her husband’s study. It was a more masculine room than the parlor where Ben and the colonel had first met, with bookshelves holding Civil War histories and volumes on sugarcane cultivation. “Good to see you on your feet again, Colonel,” the detective said.
“It’s a miracle I’m still alive,” Grandpere told him. “I have you to thank, Mr. Snow.” He handed over a check, which Ben quietly pocketed.
“Will you be going back to Texas?” Bedelia asked.
“There, or somewhere else. I’m a wanderer.”
Colonel Grandpere smiled. “You can do a good deal of wandering with the money I paid you.”
Ben was uncertain till that moment what he would do, but he knew he could not leave New Orleans with the truth untold. “It’s hardly enough to commit murder for you.”
The color drained from the old man’s face. “What are you trying to say, Mr. Snow?”
“That this entire charade was carefully planned by you for the purpose of killing Rubin Danials. You then arranged for me to kill your triggerman, Tommy Franz, insuring that you’d be safe. It would have been the nearest thing to a perfect crime I’ve ever come across.” Bedelia was staring at him, open-mouthed. She turned to her husband and demanded, “What is he saying? Tell me it’s not true!”
“Darling, the man is insane.”
Inspector Withers joined in the conversation. “Why would the colonel want Danials dead?”
“Matty made a remark that implied Bedelia might have had a relationship with him. If that was the case, or if the colonel even suspected it, he’d have a motive.” Bedelia said nothing, and averted her husband’s gaze. “I think the colonel hired Tommy Franz just as he hired me. He supplied him with dynamite to damage some of the sugar train’s tracks, and then hired me to guard them. It was Tommy’s own idea to meet up with Matty. Last night the colonel said he received a telephone message that the bomber was near the tracks, but the nearest neighbor seemed surprised at our presence. That was just a trick to get Danials and me out there. He probably told Franz that I’d be along as a witness that the killer shot him, too.”
“But they were both shot!” Withers protested.
“Were they? How could one man have his chest ripped open while the other was barely scratched and his horse not even touched? Remember that sheet of paper I used to list the dynamite sellers and their customers? I’d given it to the colonel and he placed it in the breast pocket of his jacket. You found it there after he’d been shot. But I remembered thinking later that the paper was so thick no light passed through it. No light. How could the buckshot have gone through the colonel’s jacket and shirt to cause those minor surface wounds without penetrating that paper? It couldn’t have! Franz’s first shot was strong enough to kill Rubin Danials outright, but the second shell contained only powder, no buckshot. The colonel had made careful holes in his jacket and shirt beforehand — which went unnoticed in the dark — and even nicked himself with a knife to produce a bit of blood. A dozen rounds of buckshot were stuck to his skin with drops of glue. Franz was to fire the first barrel, killing Danials, and then the second barrel before running off. What he didn’t know was that the colonel had brought along a gunfighter to kill him, too.”
“You figured all that out from the sheet of paper?”
“There were no holes in it. This is the only possible explanation.”
The colonel started to rise, reaching for his cane, but Bedelia got there first. She raised it and swung at him, and she might have killed him if Withers hadn’t grabbed her and pulled her away.
Later, as Ben Snow walked from his hotel to the train, he heard the sound of a saxophone from somewhere on Basin Street. It was the first music he’d heard since the end of Mardi Gras, and he paused for a few minutes to enjoy it. New Orleans was a great city. It always would be.
Copyright © 2006 Edward D. Hoch
The Death of Big Daddy
by Dick Lochte
New Orleans-born Dick Lochte’s first novel, Sleeping Dog, won the Nero Wolfe Award and was named one of the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century by the Independent Booksellers Association. Two of his crime novels feature his hometown: Blue Bayou and The Neon Smile. His ninth novel, Croaked!, is set in California, where he now lives with his wife and son. In this story we see New Orleans circa 1970.
On that afternoon in May, so many years ago, every seat on the Delta flight from New York must have been filled, judging by the mass of departing passengers staggering into the bright terminal at Moisant International. Still, I had no trouble at all spotting my quarry. He was the only passenger wearing a slightly rumpled white linen suit, a flowery Hawaiian shirt open at the neck, large dark sunglasses, a jaunty beret, and an expression of utter bewilderment on his moderately famous, bearded face.
“Tom?” I said.