I got out and switched seats. We were in an old neighborhood and the street was bordered by spreading oaks and tall pines thick with cones.
I figured some of the trees predated the War Between the States. The antebellum houses sat distant from the pavement behind azaleas, magnolia, red tips and myrtle, as if hiding in the past and eavesdropping on the present.
Harry said, 'We got a full plate, what with the murders, Squill hijacking the PSIT. It could turn into a king-hell political mess, eat us alive. If that little lady's got the alcohol sickness, and you got a feeling for her, you can get ate up from that side too.'
'You telling me leave it alone?'
He smiled with a touch of sadness and shook his head. 'You're gonna do what you're gonna do. I know it, you know it, and all the angels above know it. I'm just saying to watch out for yourself.'
I stared out the window. Down the street a frail and elderly woman watered her flower garden. She looked like an ornament, she was so still.
Harry said, 'You keep pretty tight inside yourself, Cars. Nothing wrong with it. But you find those old wires tightening around you, don't go nowhere but to me, right?'
His phrasing struck a disconcerting note in my head. 'What old wires?
What are you talking about?'
He looked away, put the car in gear.
'Don't get yourself tore up, that's all I'm saying.'
Harry drove the final few blocks to the next address on our shoe-leather list. We got out in front of Les Idees, an art gallery on Mobile's near-south side, a slender yellow New Orleans style two-story with scrollwork iron on the balconies and plum-colored shutters. There were flower boxes. A cobblestone walk. A small trickling fountain.
The place was precious. Harry eyed the coffee shop across the street; the coffee smell was thick in the air.
'Go grab a cup, bro,' I said. 'I think I can handle the interview.'
Harry crossed the street, looking relieved.
Though Deschamps was primarily a commercial artist, he relaxed by painting watercolors, mainly seascapes. Francoise Abbot was the proprietor of Les Idees. She'd exhibited Deschamps's works for several years and occasionally socialized with him in a group situation, before and during his engagement.
Abbot was a slender fiftyish woman dressed in a red velvet wrap just west of where caftan meets kimono. A smoker, she affected an ebony cigarette holder, a device I'd considered passe to the point of antique. Her black hair had one of those abbreviated anti cuts that sent shaggy sprigs flailing in all directions. She led me to several Deschamps watercolors, workmanlike, but lacking the insight to spark illustration into art. I thought they'd have made decent covers for blank-page New Age journals with titles like My Daily Reflections or Notes From a Life.
Madame Abbot's low voice matched her conspiratorial demeanor and she punctuated phrases with an elastic assortment of facial displays. I suspected someone once told her she looked cute when wrinkling her nose and she'd decided to diversify. Customers were absent and we sat at a small ornate table in a back corner. I said, 'Everyone I've spoken with considered Mr. Deschamps next in line for beatification, lacking only in that he was Baptist. Is that your impression, Ms. Abbot?'
'De mortuis nil nisi bonum,' she stage-whispered with a flaring of nostrils that segued into a squint. 'Surely you know what that means.'
She gave me three quick expressions that bet I didn't.
'Of the dead speak nothing but good,' I replied. 'That's inexact but sufficient.'
She dropped her jaw and wiggled it, followed by a wink and a thumbs-up.
She pointed the suck end of her cigarette holder at me. 'That's excellent, Detective Ryder.'
I said, 'It's a phrase often connoting ill that might be revealed, but is left unspoken.'
Abbot winked and wrinkled her nose. 'Really?'
'Perhaps Mr. Deschamps didn't quite lead the straight-arrow life I'm being led to believe.'
She shot her brows and pursed her lips. 'For the most part I think he did.'
'What about for the least part?'
Abbot went through another series of facial contortions meant to convey, if I'd had to guess, some form of consternation. She said,
'Two months ago a friend of mine double-dated with a friend of hers over in Orange Beach. A friend of my friend's, that is. Her friend.
And guess who my friend's friend brought along as her date?'
While I unlinked the chain of friends, Abbot produced a facial display of such distracting variety I had to turn away to think.
'Was it Peter Deschamps?'
Abbot looked side to side as if crossing a busy street and leaned toward me. 'This was two months after he'd proposed to Cheryl.'
'Friends out for an innocent night together.'
'It's possible.' She winked three times and smiled.
'You believe it was more than that?'
'My friend's friend is, how shall I put this, an energetic woman, physically energetic.' Abbot batted her eyelashes. 'Does that say it?'
'Someone who… celebrates her libido?'
Abbot winked, nodded, pursed her lips, grinned, grimaced, and frowned.
I took it as a yes.
'We heading over to see this 'friend's friend'?' Harry asked.
'Stop at the morgue first?'
Harry didn't say a word. He U'd the car to a cacophony of horn blowing while I shut my eyes and gripped the door handle. He pulled up to the morgue a few minutes later.
'I won't be long,' I said, closing the door and walking away.
'Carson?'
I turned. Harry had his thumb in the air. 'Good luck,' he said.
Ava was at her desk doing paperwork. I stepped into her office and shut the door.
'Get out,' she snapped. Her eyes were bagged and bloodshot.
'I'd like to take you to lunch or to supper. If you're busy today, how about tomorrow?'
She scribbled on a form, pushed it across her desk, grabbed another.
'No way in hell.'
I moved forward to the edge of her desk. 'We should talk about Friday evening.'
She started to initial a form but the pen tore the paper. She threw the pen into the wastebasket and glared at me.
'There's absolutely nothing to say.'
I said, 'I'm scared.'
'You're what?'
'Maybe worried's a better word. Listen, Ava, I consider you a friend
'
'And I consider you a snoop and a meddler. I suppose you've already told half the town.'
'I've told no one. It's not their business.' I didn't mention Harry; telling him was like writing her secret on a slip of weighted paper and dropping it into the Marianas Trench.
'Oh, I'll bet. I'll just bet.'
'Listen, Ava, I know some people who've had experience in things like this. Good people. Maybe you could use a little assistance with '
She stood with such force it rocketed her chair backward to the wall.
'I don't know what the hell you're talking about with this 'assistance' business, Detective Ryder. Maybe I had too much to drink the other night. It was a mistake and it'll never happen again. I didn't like your insinuations then and I like them less now. We have to work together professionally, I can deal with that. But I want nothing from you on a personal level and that means conversations, insinuations, prevarications, advice, or lunch. If you really
