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“If y’all did a deal for that amount in the last few days, you’d have a receipt for that, yeah?”
“Should have,” Kiki said. “Me, I’m behind on my paperwork, though. We’ve been busy, and shorthanded. I was gone down Jeanerette Friday and Saturday to a visitation and a funeral. My cousin Gerry Gaudet, she died of cancer.”
“Sorry for your loss,” Nick said automatically. “So, who was working in here Friday and Saturday?”
“Just Marc in here,” Luc said. “I was running swamp tours all day, both days.”
“Evie Orgeron,” Kiki said. “She minds the tickets and whatnot for the swamp tours over on the dock. She don’t come in here, though. And Noelle was here.”
“Helping Evie,” Luc clarified.
“Who’s Noelle?”
“My daughter,” Kiki said.
“She’s got Down’s syndrome,” Luc explained. “She likes to help on the dock, cleaning the boat up and whatnot. Marc was the only one working the desk Saturday.”
“If there’s a receipt in this amount, you’ll have the name of the customer, right?” Stokes asked.
Luc Mercier shrugged. “If they bought something from us and paid with a credit card or a check, yeah. If we bought something from them, there should be a record.”
Should be.Nick suspected there were probably few records of any cash transactions, people being people, not wanting to give the government a cut of their hard-earned business. And then there was always the possibility the customer had been a thief. Stolen catalytic converters brought a pretty penny, and copper was always a hot commodity. Thieves targeted construction sites and ransacked vacant houses and fish camps, stripping out all the copper they could get their hands on. It was hard to trace and easy to sell—particularly to a dealer not fussy about sources or paperwork.
“If you could check and let us know, we’d appreciate it,” he said.
“What kind of an investigation did you say this is?” Kiki asked.
“I’m not free to say at the moment.”
“Oh, my God,” she murmured, pressing a hand to her flat chest. “He’s dead, isn’t he? Marc’s dead.”
“We don’t know anything of the kind, ma’am,” Nick assured her, not wanting to reveal too much too soon and cause what could very well turn out to be unnecessary anguish. There was also the matter of needing to speak with Marc Mercier’s wife, who was his legal nextof kin. She would be the one asked to identify his body if it came to that, or to provide something for a DNA sample.
The wife, the woman whose mother-in-law thought her capable of murder.
“Do you have any reason to think he could become a victim of foul play?” Stokes asked. “Does he have shady friends or dangerous habits? Drugs? Gambling? Anything like that?”
“Everybody loves Marc,” Luc said with just enough of an edge to make Nick wonder where he’d gotten that shiner. The remark was also curiously not an answer to the question.
“Is he a party kind of guy?” Stokes asked. “Did he maybe go out Saturday night? He could be sleeping off a good time at a friend’s house.”
“He likes to pass a good time, like everybody,” the brother said. “But his wife was still pissed off about Halloween.”
“Why was that?”
“He wanted to go to Monster Bash with some friends. She had an opinion about it. He went anyway. Been in the doghouse since.”
“Marriage problems often come with girlfriends and boyfriends attached,” Stokes said. The voice of experience. “Is he seeing anybody outside the marriage?”
Luc Mercier made a little shrug and glanced ever so slightly away. “Not that I know of. Not that I’d blame him.”
“You don’t like his wife,” Nick stated.
Again with the shrug. “She don’t like us.”
“We’re not good enough for her,” Kiki said. “She thought she could take Marc away from us. She thought wrong. His daddy got sick and we needed him, he come back to us, sure enough. If it wasn’t for the baby, I’d tell her to pack up and go back to her people.”
“Where’s she from?” Stokes asked.
