[Tubby Dubonnet 01.0] Trick Question Read online

  “A real work of mystery art.” —New Orleans Times-Picayune

  (Tubby Dubonnet) makes a charming guide to a side of New Orleans few see.

  —Booklist

  Dunbar weaves together the many strands of his highly entertaining tale with much skill and wit. —Publisher’s Weekly

  Dunbar’s understated, syncopated delivery makes you wonder if there are enough honest men in New Orleans for a rubber of bridge. —Kirkus

  TRICK QUESTION is the THIRD BOOK IN THE TUBBY DUBONNET SERIES

  MORE TUBBY DUBONNET MYSTERIES

  Crooked Man, G.P. Putnam’s Sons (New York, 1994)

  City of Beads, G.P. Putnam’s Sons (New York, 1995)

  Trick Question, G.P. Putnam’s Sons (New York, 1996)

  Shelter From the Storm, G.P. Putnam’s Sons (New York, 1997)

  The Crime Czar, Dell Publishing (New York, 1998)

  Lucky Man, Dell Publishing (New York, 1999)

  Tubby Meets Katrina, NewSouth Books (Montgomery, 2006)

  For more about the next Tubby Dubonnet book, go to www.booksBnimble.com

  Other Books by Tony Dunbar

  Our Land Too, Pantheon Books (New York, 1971); Vintage Books (New York, 1972)

  Hard Traveling: Migrant Farm Workers in America, Ballinger (Cambridge, 1976; Co-authored with Linda Kravitz)

  Against the Grain, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, 1981)

  Delta Time, A Journey through Mississippi, Pantheon Books (New York 1990)

  Where We Stand, Voices of Southern Dissent (Editor), New South Books (Montgomery 2004), Foreword by President Jimmy Carter

  American Crisis, Southern Solutions: From Where We Stand, Promise and Peril (Editor), NewSouth Books (Montgomery 2008), Foreword by Ray Marshall

  TRICK QUESTION

  A Tubby Dubonnet Mystery

  Tony Dunbar

  booksBnimble Publishing

  New Orleans, La.

  Trick Question: A Tubby Dubonnet Mystery

  Copyright by Tony Dunbar 1996

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover by Kit Wohl

  ePub ISBN 9781617500268

  www.booksBnimble.com

  First booksBnimble Publishing electronic publication: December 2012

  Originally published by:

  G.P. Putnam’s Sons

  200 Madison Avenue

  New York, NY 10016

  This book is fiction. All of the characters and settings are purely imaginary. There is no Tubby Dubonnet and the real New Orleans is different from his make-believe city.

  Contents

  More Tubby Dubonnet Mysteries

  Other Books by Tony Dunbar

  CHAPTER 1 • CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3 • CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5 • CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7 • CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9 • CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11 • CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13 • CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15 • CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17 • CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19 • CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21 • CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23 • CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25 • CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27 • CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29 • CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31 • CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33 • CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  Acknowledgments

  Guarantee

  Tubby Dubonnet Mysteries

  Other Books by Tony Dunbar

  About The Author

  CHAPTER 1

  Traffic was light. It usually was on the old Highway 11 bridge across Lake Pontchartrain from Slidell to New Orleans. Most everyone traveled the interstate nowadays. Its straight concrete spans were visible in the distance, but if you were coming in from the fishing camps on the northshore, as Wheezy Wascomb was, the old bridge was the shortest way to the city. She was driving to town to pick up her grandchildren and take them back out to the lake for the weekend. They were at the age when going fishing for crabs off a creaking wooden dock was just about the best fun they could imagine. A light breeze carried the smell of salt from the Gulf of Mexico, and the sunshine flashing off her fenders made Wheezy squint.

  The bridge was long and narrow, built sometime around World War II when they were just learning to pour lots of concrete and everybody drove slower cars. They must have designed the roadway for midgets, too, because when a pickup truck cruising at a steady seventy zoomed past Wheezy’s little Toyota, her car blew about three feet toward the battered gray stone-and-clamshell barrier. Her heart raced almost painfully as she watched the pickup fly away with a throaty roar from its chrome pipes. Truth was, she had been feeling light-headed ever since she got into the car. She had not been well all week. Those Endflu capsules, promising eight hours of relief without drowsiness, had been keeping her upright, but this morning she was feeling positively awful.

  Suddenly she found it hard to breathe. A car coming at her out of the bright sunlight had to honk to shove her back into her lane. She fought to control the steering, but the bridge itself seemed to twist in front of her eyes. Sweat poured out of her and a dark red curtain fell down over her field of view. She was too scared to scream. Sparklers began going off in her head.

  She hit the concrete rail at forty-five miles per hour, and the determined Toyota tried to climb over it. The metal peeled away and the frame in front collapsed loudly in a rainstorm of sparks, but the old barricade held. The crushed Toyota spun once and rolled over on its side, blocking the highway. One tire rotated furiously, and fluids, purple and orange, poured dangerously onto the pavement. Wheezy Wascomb was dumped on the floor—her heart had burst.

  CHAPTER 2

  Moskowitz Memorial Laboratory is the last stop for lots of mice and hamsters, and now and then a monkey. It is one of the planet’s foremost facilities for isolating the things that make people swell up and die, and for wiping them out. It is a source of pride and not insignificant profit for its mother ship, the highly regarded New Orleans State University Medical School.

  Most of the time the place is hopping with an irreverent crew of doctors and their research assistants, wearing white coats over their faded blue jeans and sneakers. But on Sunday night it is fairly quiet, except for the shuffling of white, furry rodents in their hutches, making little sounds in antiseptic cages.

  They became still for a moment when the door to the animal care laboratory slid open, sucking a puff of cool air out into the hallway before the seal was restored. Cletus Busters, the custodian, trudged in, tugging behind him his cart full of brooms and mops and the bags of trash he had collected as he made his way from room to room. He parked the cart by the door and, with an air of innocence, wandered around the lab without any apparent objective in mind.

  “Hello, little rat,” he whispered, brushing the front of one of the metal cages with his fingers. The occupant twisted its nose at him and flicked a long whisker.

  Cletus surreptitiously opened a drawer in one of the stainless steel counters that ran the length of the room and poked around inside. He checked the labels on several of the bottles he found there and then put them back as they were. He looked around the room and pretended to whistle a tune.

  A white-enameled, closet-sized door attracted his attention. It was kind of like the narrow cover of a ship’s hatch. There was a big red-lettered sign taped to it which he did not have much trouble reading. His lips moved as he worked it out: SAMPLES/CAREFUL. Below that someone had written in pencil
, maybe as a joke, “Dressing Room—No Peeking.” Above the sign there was a small round glass gauge that registered interior temperature in degrees centigrade. It was fixed at minus 180.

  Cletus sneaked a backward glance toward the sliding door where he had left his cart, and then he grabbed the cold chrome handle of the closet with both hands and gave it a good pull.

  Harsh cold air blew around him, and the dead man inside came out.

  The body teetered, hard and solid as a statue, and fell directly at Cletus. He jumped back in terror, gasping, and the head missed striking him by an inch. The corpse’s frostbitten eyes grabbed at Cletus’s in passing, glinting with recognition and accusation it seemed to him, but then sailed past, and it didn’t matter. The body smacked against the white-tiled floor with the sound a 175-pound ice cube might make.

  On impact it did an atrocious thing. The head snapped off and flipped into the air, making another pass at Cletus. He dodged, choking a scream, and it bounced a few feet away, coming to rest at the base of a steel hotel full of hamsters. The dead eyes, oblivious to the squeals and panic they had caused, stared blankly at the ceiling. A mustache on the face, like a graffiti smudge on a marble sculpture, was fuzzy with ice crystals.

  Cletus smashed spread-eagled in fright against a rack of rat cages, his fingers grasping the wire mesh for support. The animals inside cowered. He recovered slightly and crouched down to inspect the object at his feet.

  “Dr. Valentine!” he exclaimed.

  He grabbed the head and crawled over the tiled floor to try to stick it back on the shoulders where it belonged, right where a frozen nub of bone protruded from the stiff white lab coat.

  The piece wouldn’t fit the puzzle. His hands shaking, Cletus lifted the frosty head to stare again into those glacial eyes. Then, cradling it like a football, he rushed back to his cart to find some cleaning rags to wrap it in. He hit the silver plate to make the door slide open.

  “Anything wrong here?” asked the security guard. “I thought I heard some noise.”

  Cletus just looked at him, breathing hard and licking his lips.

  The guard took a step forward. He peered past Cletus. His eyes roamed the lab. Then they moved downward to see what Cletus had in his arms, and grew wide with interest.

  CHAPTER 3

  Victory is the reward for perseverance, that was Jason Boaz’s theme. Three races into the afternoon and he was finally waving a winning ticket into the air.

  “Blue Femme! What a doll!” he shouted into Tubby’s ear. He waved his arms exuberantly, forcing people out of his path.

  “I’m happy for you,” Tubby grumbled. He tore up his ticket to place on Nutria Challenger, the horse that had come in fourth, and scattered the pieces on the grandstand steps.

  It was a sunny winter afternoon, fading toward evening. The crowd milled about while the horses were led away and trainers ran around preparing for the next race. Both Jason and Tubby had dates, so to speak, but the ladies had retired to the clubhouse half an hour earlier after the initial thrill of the Fairgrounds had worn off.

  “Let’s go collect my dough and find the babes,” Jason said happily, and Tubby followed him up the steps. He left Jason in the line to cash in and headed off toward the bar. He fancied that he cut a nice figure. Healthy enough, tanned, with blond hair cut maybe a little bit too long for a lawyer, he felt good about the way he was holding up—even forty-something years into the game. Maybe there were a few extra ounces padding his broad frame, but he could still suit up for tennis. He still looked at home behind the wheel of his sports car.

  His companion for the day was Jynx Margolis, lately divorced, and flush with the bucks of her former husband, the gynecologist. And his friend, the local inventor Jason Boaz, had brought Norella Peruna, recently of Honduras, who had fudge-colored skin, gleaming white teeth, and a pink hibiscus in her raven hair. The women were head to head over margaritas, framed by the window with the blue sky and the snapping pennants of the racetrack as their backdrop. Lovely, lovely, Tubby thought.

  “You two make a very pretty picture,” he said admiringly.

  “Why thank you, Mr. Dubonnet,” Jynx said, her smile sparkling, patting the chair beside her. Tubby sat down gratefully and waved at the waitress.

  “Did you win lots of money?” Norella asked.

  “Jason did,” Tubby said. “I’m not the lucky one today.”

  “You’ve had me for the afternoon,” Jynx pointed out.

  “That I have,” Tubby acknowledged. “What would you ladies like to drink?”

  Jynx said she could stand another margarita, Norella said she couldn’t, and Tubby ordered a gin and tonic for himself.

  “Are you having fun ignoring the races?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes.” Norella beamed.

  “I had no idea watching horses could be so much fun,” Jynx said.

  Tubby was going to say something sarcastic, but Jason came upon them, making loud noises about winning money, the science of equestrian spirit, and the hunch he had about any horse with a French name.

  They toasted his success, and Tubby was about to suggest wagering on the next race when Jason announced that they should all leave and go to the Belle o’ the Ball Casino out by the lake to play blackjack with his money.

  “My treat,” he exclaimed. “Everybody gets a stake. After you run through that, you’ll have to just sit and drink.”

  “We can keep our winnings?” Norella asked.

  “Half is mine,” Jason said. “That’s the deal.”

  “That would be fun,” his Latin beauty said gaily.

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Jynx said. “I have to be home by six o’clock. I have a club meeting at my house tomorrow and I need to straighten the place up and plan the menu.”

  Tubby said he was following Jynx, because he was a gentleman, and because he had never liked to go into crowded rooms to place a bet.

  Norella and Jynx went to the powder room to talk it over.

  “You’re involved with the Casino Mall Grande in some way, aren’t you?” Jason asked.

  “How do you mean, involved?”

  “I thought you did some of their legal work.”

  “That never really developed,” Tubby said evasively. “I thought I was going to get some business, but it didn’t come through. To tell you the truth, I’m not sad about it. I love to gamble, you know that, but something about the whole casino atmosphere just isn’t me, I guess.”

  “I didn’t know you turned clients away, Tubby.”

  “Well, actually, I didn’t turn them away,” Tubby admitted. “My contact there, Jake LaBreau, left and…” He shrugged. His other contact, Nicole Normande, had been transferred to Arizona, and her brother, Leo Caspar… well, Leo had been whacked into little bits and fed to the fish. Tubby grimaced.

  “What’s LaBreau doing now?” Jason asked.

  “Promoting the idea of a theme park out in Chalmette.”

  “Mosquito-World? Crawfish-World?” Jason suggested, referring to the most plentiful inhabitants of “the parish.”

  “You’re such a snob. No, jazz, I think. Whatever the politicians think sounds good.”

  “What the hell, let’s go play a few hands anyway. And I ain’t a snob. I married a Chalmatian once.”

  “And she had the good sense to run home to mama, but if Jynx wants to go, it’s okay with me.”

  “She’s got the hots for you.” Jason leered and socked Tubby’s shoulder.

  “You think so?” Tubby was hopeful.

  “Absolutely. All that stuff about going home early. She’s got something special planned for you.”

  “Hey, maybe so.”

  The women returned, and the party got moving.

  Out in the parking lot Jason helped Norella into his Lexus, but Jynx remained firm about going home. Jason gave Tubby a wink and sped away.

  Tubby and Jynx got into his restored Lincoln with the fake convertible top, which he had bought to give his Corvair Spyder a big brother
in the driveway, and set out toward uptown. It was a nice evening, and Jynx chattered away all the way down Broad Street about how colorful the Fairgrounds Racetrack was and how she couldn’t believe she had lived her whole life in New Orleans and never once seen the horses run before.

  He turned into her driveway, and she gave him another big smile.

  “Thank you for a lovely time,” she said as he pushed the shifter into park. “I would invite you in for a drink, but the place is such a mess. Dorene has been sick, and it looks like little ol’ me is going to have to clean it up all by myself.”

  “You need some help?” Tubby offered, trying to be nonchalant.

  “You’re such a dear, but I certainly can’t ask you to vacuum my house. I’ll let you help me some other time with something you can do.”

  “Like, uh, what?” Tubby was asking, but Jynx was out of the car and waving goodbye from her doorstep.

  Friday night, and he was on his own again.

  CHAPTER 4

  Tubby Dubonnet had been the proud proprietor of Mike’s Bar for about three months, but he hadn’t changed it much. From the outside it was still the same nondescript place, advertised only by a faded Falstaff beer sign hanging from a rusty iron rod above the door. Weeds still grew on the curbs, and trash can lids still blew down Annunciation Street in the Irish Channel. Kids played in the sunshine on the sidewalks outside. At night the people kept their doors open and watched TV. The bar had no windows, just a one-way glass in the front door so the bartender could see who wanted to come in before he pushed the buzzer that worked the lock.