John Ames - Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 128, No. 5. Whole No. 783, November 2006

“Have you seen her since she moved out?”

“Just once. I was shopping for some candlesticks in the Quarter, before Christmas, and she was working at a little store there. I told her we’d welcome her back home, but she wouldn’t speak of it. She viewed her father as an evil man bent on ruining her life.”

“What was the name of the shop?”

“La Belle Fleur. It’s on Iberville Street.”

“Thanks for the information. Tell me something else. Why is sabotage on the rail line such a grievous blow to your husband’s plantation? Surely the cane could still be hauled in wagons.”

She smiled like a teacher imparting knowledge to a backward pupil. “Once cut, the cane begins to lose its sugar content. The faster it reaches the refinery, the more valuable it is.”

“I see. Is the harvesting continuous?”

“Given the right weather conditions, with enough sun and moisture, a stand of cane can be harvested many times. When you ride out you’ll see that the workers move from one field to the next, with the train tracks moving right along with them.”

She left him and headed back to the mansion. Ben rode Duke for a mile or two, watching while the cut sugarcane was loaded into rail cars and trundled off to the permanent tracks that led to the refinery. A locomotive stood ready to haul the train on its way as soon as the proper number of cars had been filled. It became obvious to Ben at once that one man on horseback could hardly patrol twenty miles of track in the dark. Perhaps his best bet was to contact Colonel Grandpere’s daughter.

The French Quarter in the days after Mardi Gras took on the air of a sleeping village. Ben visited it on Friday morning after riding along the track to make certain there’d been no new damage overnight. The temperature, in the mid fifties, enabled him to hide his gun belt beneath a leather jacket without attracting undue attention. La Belle Fleur proved to be a tiny shop wedged between two cafes, selling candles, beads, and amulets that suggested a possible connection with voodoo and the occult. But there was nothing the least bit eerie about the pale-complexioned young woman behind the counter, despite the plain gray shift that she wore. She had a ready smile and a friendly manner as she asked if she could help him.

“I’m looking for Matty.”

She bit her lower lip. “That’s me. Did my father send you?”

“I’m doing some work for him, but he didn’t mention you. I just heard about you working here and thought you might be able to help.”

“I don’t help my father with anything. I’m on my own now.”

“The French Quarter can be a dangerous place for an attractive young woman alone. A few blocks further along this street is Storyville, a sector with legalized prostitution.”

Her face hardened. “I know that. I’ve lived in New Orleans all my life. Did you come here to buy something?”

Ben studied the display case and picked out a coiled snake bracelet for five dollars. She seemed pleased enough at the sale and he started in again. “It’s about your father’s railroad.”

“The sugar train? What a joke that is!”

“How so?”

“It’s a joke on the other property owners. He gives them a barrel of sugar every year for the right to run his train across their land.”

“Someone’s been blowing up his tracks at night.”

The news seemed to surprise her. “No doubt a dissatisfied neighbor.”

“Do you know anyone who might be doing it?”

“Of course not!”

“What about some of your new friends in the Quarter?”

“I’ve only been here since November. I don’t have many friends.”

“Perhaps if you returned to Horseshoe Plantation you and your father could work out your differences.”

She shook her head. “Never! He was nearly fifty when I was born. I always felt closer to my mother, and not just in age. I’ll never go back there.”

“Is it his wife you object to?”

“Bedelia? She’s part of it, but it’s mostly my father. He’s never gotten over the South’s losing the war. He’d be happy if all his workers were still slaves.”

“The war’s been over a long time.”

“Not at Horseshoe Plantation.”

Ben left her then, clutching his purchase in a small paper bag.

He doubted that a young, attractive woman like Matty Grandpere would be without friends in the French Quarter, and he waited across the street until he saw her close the shop for an hour at lunchtime and go next-door to a cafe for something to eat. She chose a table near the rear and sat with her back to the bar, so he was able to enter and order a beer and keep her in view. The place catered to a mixed group of shopkeepers and laborers, none of them black. It wasn’t long before a sandy-haired man in a checkered work shirt entered and stood at the door as if searching for someone. Ben wasn’t surprised when he headed for the rear table and joined Matty.

The two conversed casually, and from his distant observation post it seemed to Ben they were no more than friends. The man left before Matty and called a greeting to the bartender as he departed. “Was that Mark Despard?” Ben asked the man, inventing the name.

The bartender frowned. “Who? The guy that just left? Tommy Franz, he’s a regular here. Never heard of Despard.”

“I must have been mistaken, but I know I’ve seen him somewhere. Does Franz work down at the docks?”

“He does some fishing, but he’s no longshoreman. He hires onto boats sometimes. Maybe that’s where you saw him.”

“Maybe,” Ben agreed.

“Whatever he’s doing these days, he’s making money at it. He spent a bundle during Mardi Gras.”

Ben wandered around the docks for a time and then returned to his horse. He picked up the tracks for the sugar train just outside the city and followed them, this time all the way to the refinery. Colonel Grandpere’s locomotive had just pulled in. For a time he watched workers unloading the cane from the cars, carefully weighing and recording each load before sending it into the main refinery building. Ben rode close enough to ask some of the workers if they knew Tommy Franz, but the name meant nothing to them. His tracking of the colonel’s daughter had gotten him nowhere. There was no hint that Franz was anything but a casual friend.

As he thought again about the explosion that had blown up the tracks, Ben wondered if Inspector Withers had checked local sources of dynamite or black powder. He rode back into downtown New Orleans and called at police headquarters. “How’s it going, Ben?” the inspector asked. “Gotten anywhere on the sugar-train sabotage?”

“Not yet. I was wondering if your department checked for recent sales of explosives.”

“Well, folks use a lot of fireworks during Mardi Gras.”

“I didn’t mean that. Do they sometimes use dynamite to remove old tree stumps?”

“Sure. You realize we’ve been pretty busy around here lately. No time to check things like dynamite sales.”

“Where could I check them out myself?”

“There are just three places locally. Of course, the dynamite could have been brought in from Baton Rouge or almost anywhere.” He jotted the names on a sheet of notepaper. “Let me know if you find anything.”

Ben visited all three places that afternoon and found nothing. All of the big plantations ordered dynamite along with other supplies, but there were no recent purchases by individuals. “It’s the best way of getting rid of tree stumps,” one dealer told Ben. “You drill a hole in the stump, slide in a stick of dynamite, and light the fuse.”

Ben carefully wrote down the list of plantations that had purchased dynamite, including the Horseshoe. It proved nothing, except to show Colonel Grandpere he’d been earning his pay. He stopped back at the bar where he’d seen Matty with Tommy Franz, but neither of them was there. After a beer and a light supper he rode back out to Horseshoe Plantation.