AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“So am I,” Donnie confessed, making his eyes go wide. “Is that a crime now?”
“Not yet. How do you know Marc?”
“He was a Sacred Heart boy, an athlete, and I put a word in for him with the right people at Tulane when the time came.”
“How benevolent of you, Donnie,” Nick said. “At the risk of ruining your reputation as a feckless narcissist.”
“Never let it be said that tigers can’t change their stripes,” Donnie said pleasantly.
“Have you seen Mr. Mercier recently?”
“On the news last night. They say he’s missing. Is that gonna be my fault? Or Dozer’s? Lots of people know Marc. You’re spoiled for choice here, Fourcade.”
“How many of them would want him gone?” Nick asked.
“None that I know of. Marc’s a good guy. There’s no reason for him to disappear that I can think of.”
“That’s the mystery,” Nick said. “I’m hoping Mr. Cormier might be able to shed some light on that.”
“Yvonne, my office manager, can get you his phone number and address. That crew is working down in Luck today,” Donnie said. “Imagine that. Luck is getting a subdivision! When I was a kid, Luck wasn’t nothing but a wide spot in the road and a fish canning plant. Next thing you know, they’ll have indoor plumbing and everything down there! It’s gonna end up being a suburb. Progress.”
“So they call it,” Nick remarked. “When was the last time you actually saw Marc in the flesh?”
“I saw him Halloween night at Monster Bash. Him and Dozer. I was working the Rotary Club shrimp boil booth.”
“What can you tell me about Dozer?”
“Well, he’s a big dumb lummox with a bad disposition when he drinks, but he’d give a friend the quadruple-XL shirt off his back,” Donnie said. “He’s a hard worker if he’s supervised and lazy as the day is long if he’s not.”
“And him and Marc are tight?”
“They always have been. Dozer was Marc’s left tackle in high school senior year. Mr. Blind Side. He ate defensive linemen for lunch and picked his teeth with their bones. I thought he had a shot at the NFL, but college and Dozer didn’t mix. He couldn’t spell ‘SAT,’ let alone pass it—not that that ever stopped a good football player from getting into a Southern university. He just couldn’t keep himself out of trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Drinking, fighting, flunking. The usual.”
“You hired him, though.”
“He took the twelve steps a few years back—as did I a few years before him.”
“Congratulations,” Nick said honestly. “Good for you, Donnie. I mean that.”
“Thank you. I was as big an idiot as they come when I was drinking—as you well know. All that business with Pam’s murder and everything that happened after…I needed to pull my head out of the whiskey bottle and get my shit together if I was gonna be a proper father to my daughter, save my business, and grow the fuck up.”
“That’s hard work. Takes a lot of courage to step up like that.”
“Yep. I’ve been sober nearly six years now, and I’m damn proud of it,” he said. “The program didn’t stick entirely for Dozer, but he’sgood enough for day labor. I keep an eye on him. He’ll go off the rails on the weekend, but he doesn’t miss a day’s work, and that’s something.”
“Tell me,” Nick said, “do you do any business with the Mercier brothers?”
Donnie shook his head. “No. We’re strictly new construction. Don’t have any real need for the scrap business.”
“You’re not knocking down old houses or anything like that?”
“No. That’s more trouble than it’s worth to me. There’s a couple small contractors around do that, and I leave it to them—K and B, Parcelles’, Melancon brothers.”
“What about copper theft? Has that been a problem on your end?”
