Murder Jambalaya by Lloyd Biggle Jr

Author:Lloyd Biggle Jr.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, sleuth, detective, nero wolfe, sherlock holmes
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2012-04-23T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

I now knew why Raina Lambert wasn’t answering her phone. She was pursuing her own investigation in the flea market and might be there until late. I telephoned anyway to tell her answering machine I was about to embark on a critically important investigation of my own and would be out all evening. If I finished before midnight, I would telephone again. Otherwise, she would hear from me in the morning. Then I dialed Venita Berent’s number. Her parents were having guests for dinner, and she felt obligated to join them, so I arranged to pick her up at nine. We discussed where we ought to go first, and I let her decide.

After a moment’s reflection, I next telephoned Jeffrey Minjarus. He was the only one of Marc DeVarnay’s friends who already knew I was a detective, and I wanted him to know about my arrangement with Venita. Otherwise, we might meet him accidentally and have him blow the whistle on me before he grasped what was going on.

“Around nine-thirty, I’ll be at the Top of the Mart with my new fiancée,” I said. “I’d like to have you meet her.”

“You work fast,” he said. He sounded more resentful than admiring. “Is it anyone I know?”

“I can’t say. Why don’t you stop by?”

“All right, I’ll do that,” he said.

As for whether I really expected to accomplish anything, I couldn’t have answered that myself. To solve a complicated mystery, a detective has to bark up a lot of trees, and it is only to be expected that sometimes he will look silly doing it.

When I called for Venita, her parents left their company long enough to be introduced to their daughter’s new fiancé. Charles Berent was a recently retired engineer who had built this and that around Southern Louisiana. He looked like a college professor—slender, quiet, scholarly, dignified. Christine Berent, called Tina by her friends, was a plump, motherly type. The two of them exuded a southern hospitality that was almost homespun in its warmth and friendliness. The contrast with the regal Jolitte DeVarnay was startling. The Berents would have been willing and eager to discuss Marc with me, but it was immediately obvious that neither of them knew anything that would be useful.

They were mildly puzzled about the role I had asked Venita to play, but they raised no objections. If Jolitte DeVarnay, a old friend, needed help, they wanted Venita to do whatever she could.

Top of the Mart is a revolving lounge on the top floor of the World Trade Center. It is unlike most prominent night spots in New Orleans in that it offers canned music. Even so, it is an excellent spot for starting or continuing a romance if anyone happens to be in the market for one. The music is restful and subdued, and the bar seems to hang suspended while the lights of the city and the West Bank, divided unequally by the dark, sinuous shape of the Mississippi, slowly circle below. The lines of automobile traffic have a hypnotic quality.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.