Fat Man Blues: A Hard-Boiled and Humorous Mystery (The Tubby Dubonnet Series Book 9) by Tony Dunbar

his boat. It was a simple and useful vessel, a seventeen-foot Boston Whaler Montauk, and it lived on a trailer in his driveway. This was frowned upon by some of his meddlesome neighbors, but most people didn’t care. It wasn’t against the law anyway.
    First there were the ice chests, which were a little funky. He attacked them with a hose and scrub brush until they sparkled. Then his phone beeped. He dried his hands on his jeans.
    It was Raisin Partlow, a close friend, and he wanted to go out that night for a couple of drinks and some music. His proposition was the Monkey Business Bar in the Bywater.
    “I’m cleaning my boat.”
    “That won’t take all night,” Raisin said. “You want to pick me up later?”
    “What happened to your wheels?”
    “Nothing. I’m just low on gas. Are you taking your boat out tomorrow?”
    “I’m thinking about it, if it’s not too windy.”
    “I’m free. Maybe we can take the girls.”
    “Mine’s back in Folsom for the weekend.”
    “Too bad. But we could blow up to Mandeville, and she could meet us there.”
    “That would be a very long haul.” As in twenty miles of open water.
    “An adventure, my man. So, you want to go out tonight or not?”
    “Maybe. Let’s go grab some dinner first.”
    * * *
    “What do you think of this place?” Tubby asked Raisin. They were dining on Tubby’s dime at Purloo, a new restaurant neither one had been to before.
    “Shiny, bright, modern,” Raisin commented. Indeed it was sort of a film studio space separated by a curtain from the Southern Food Museum. It was clean.
    “That means you don’t like it?”
    “The jury is still out,” Raisin said. “Interesting menu.”
    “What about this Southern Board? Smoked lamb, pimento cheese, devilled eggs, fried pickles, and boiled peanuts.”
    “A possibility. Do you see the catch-of-the-day? Smothered oxtails. What are they smothered in, I wonder?”
    “They come with black-eyed peas, okra and cornbread. Reminds me of Bolivia.” He was referring to his and Raisin’s brief exodus together a decade before when Tubby had needed to cool off while a Federal investigation passed over his head, and Raisin had gone along with him for the ride.
    “That was a trip. Let’s not repeat it.”
    “You wanted to stay,” Tubby said. “I had to leave you behind.”
    “Which is to say, I missed all the good times of Hurricane Katrina.”
    “Yes, you absolutely did.”
    “But I had my own adventures.”
    “Well, to hear you tell it you narrowly missed spending the rest of your life in a drug lord’s stockade.”
    “I was totally innocent.”
    “And you still are, right?”
    “Totally, counselor.”
    “It is so much better to be here in the USA, and to be here in the best city we got.”
    “I’ll drink to that. Where do you think our waitress is?”
    * * *
    Peggy O’Flarity was in the trance she always sank into when crossing the straight, twenty-four mile long, bridge that connects New Orleans to the north shore of the Lake. She was en route to her horse farm near Folsom, and she had a Nevada Barr novel playing on tape. The moon was high.
    She failed to notice the towering Silverado pick-up truck painted in camouflage greens and blacks hurtling upon her in the mirror. The large vehicle came alongside and cut her off, causing Peggy instinctively to jerk the wheel right. Instantly she collided with the concrete retaining wall, and her Porsche, showering the roadway with sparks, tried to climb over the barrier and sail into the water below. One tire made it, but the rest of the car couldn’t quite. It came to rest angled toward the sky.
    The engine conked out. Peggy watched the taillights of the pick-up truck recede into the distance. A car pulled up behind her and a man ran out and tried to pull Peggy’s door open.
    “Are you all right, ma’am?” he screamed.
    Peggy managed to make her fingers release the steering wheel and push the button to unlock the door.

CHAPTER XIV
    Janie’s