Parish. There’s an old man in that plantation house who probably stuck whole families in ovens. Blue Melton floated up on the beach in a block of ice, and nobody could care less. You know how many unsolved female homicides there are in this state? You know what Alafair and Gretchen might be going through while we’re playing pocket pool up here?”
My head felt like a piece of ceramic about to crack. “You’re sure it’s Dupree?”
“Take it to the bank.”
“We’re leaving something out. I just can’t put my hand on it.”
“Like what?” he said.
“I told you, I don’t know. It’s something about a song. I can’t remember.”
“Bad time for a memory blackout,” he said.
I heard footsteps on the stairs behind me. Clete and I turned around. Varina Leboeuf had climbed the steps and was standing halfway inside the loft, as though partially disembodied, her hair sparking with confetti, her face as heartbreakingly beautiful as it was when she was a young girl. “What are you two doing up here?” she said.
“What are you doing here?” Clete replied.
“I was talking to the ice-cream man. He told me y’all were looking for Alafair.”
“Why would you be talking to the ice-cream man about Alafair?” I asked.
“Pierre and his father own part of the frozen-food company. They deliver to offshore rigs. What’s going on?” When we didn’t answer, she glanced at the loft floor. “Where’d this blood come from?”
“There’s a lot more of it behind those boxes,” Clete said. “It belongs to Julie Ardoin. Take a look-see if you like.”
Her face seemed to wrinkle like a flower exposed to heat. “She’s been murdered?”
“Her throat was cut almost to the spine,” Clete said.
Varina pressed her hand to her mouth. I thought she was going to fall backward to the floor below. Clete reached down and helped her the rest of the way up the steps. She looked steadily into his eyes, as though reaching back into an intimate moment they shared. “I wish you’d killed him,” she said.
“Killed who?” Clete asked.
“Lamont Woolsey. I wish you would kill Amidee Broussard, too.”
“What do Broussard and Woolsey have to do with this?” I said.
“They’re evil. They use young girls. They deceive people with religion. It’s white slavery. That’s what it’s called, isn’t it? Is Julie behind those boxes?”
“She told me she hardly knew you,” I said.
“That’s not true. I want to see Julie.”
“This is a crime scene. You need to leave, Varina,” I said.
“Why were you down in the hallway?” Clete said.
“I sponsored the western band. I was going to write them a check,” she said.
“Where’s Pierre?” he asked.
“I have no idea. We’ve settled all our business affairs. I hope I never see him again,” she replied. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
She turned and descended the steps, her small hand tightly gripping the rail, the hem of her prairie skirt bouncing on her calves. Clete stared into my face. “Can you read that broad?” he said.
“Not in a thousand years,” I replied.
I told Molly what had happened and asked her to go home and wait by the phone. It was a foolish request. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “Where is Pierre Dupree?”
“I don’t know. I can’t find him,” I said.
“Why would they want Alafair?” she said.
“They were after Gretchen. They only took Alafair because the two of them were together.”
“Who is ‘they’?” she said.
“Clete thinks this is all about payback. I don’t agree. I think Gretchen knows too much, and some people in Florida and probably here want her off the board.”
We were standing at the rear of the audience. The swing orchestra had been called back for an encore and was playing “The Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B.”
“Dave, this isn’t happening,” Molly said.
“But it is. They’ve got my little girl.”
“She’s my ‘little girl,’ too. I didn’t believe you before. I wish I had,” she said.
“Believe what?”
“That you were dealing with something that’s diabolic. I wish I had believed every crazy story you told me.”
“Have you seen Varina Leboeuf in the last few minutes?” I asked.
“She was going out the front door. She stopped and put her hand on me and said, ‘I’m so sorry.’ I didn’t know what she meant. You think she’s involved?”
“I gave up trying to figure Varina out. She reminds me of Tee Jolie in some ways. I’d like to believe in her, but faith has its limits.”
“Forgive me for saying this, but I hate both those women,” Molly said.
Up on the stage, three female singers imitating the Andrews Sisters went into the chorus of a song that, with the passage of time, had somehow made the years between 1941 and 1945 a golden era rather than one that had cost the lives of thirty million people.
Clete and I waited outside in the cold while at least eight emergency vehicles began to turn in to both the north and south entrances of the park and thread their way through the oak trees. Clete wore no coat and was starting to shiver. I used my cell phone to call the St. Mary Parish Sheriff’s Department and ask that a cruiser be sent to the Croix du Sud Plantation.
“What are we supposed to be looking for?” the deputy asked.
“We have a homicide and a double abduction in New Iberia,” I replied. “I want y’all to find out who’s home and who isn’t at the Dupree place.”
“What would the Dupree family know about an abduction?”
“I’m not sure. That’s why we’re requesting your assistance.”
“You’d better talk with the sheriff about this.”
“Where is he?”
“Duck hunting at Pecan Island. Problem is, I’m not supposed to give out his private number.”
“What does it take to get you to do your job?” I said.
I didn’t get to hear his reply. Clete Purcel tore the phone out of my hand. “You listen, you little piece of shit,” he said. “You go out to Croix du Sud and knock on their door and look in their windows and crawl under the house if you have to. Then you call us back and tell us what you find. If you don’t, I’m going to come over there and kick a telephone pole up your ass.”
Clete closed the phone and handed it back to me. He looked at my expression. “What?” he said.
“We need these guys on our side. I thought I was making some progress,” I replied.
“With St. Mary Parish? Progress for those guys is acceptance of the Emancipation Proclamation,” he said.
“Bring your car around. You’re going to catch pneumonia.”
“You coming?”
“You’ve got to give me a minute, Clete.”
He looked at his watch. “We need to do this together, Streak. Don’t depend on the locals. We’re the guys with the vested interest. We take Pierre Dupree into Henderson Swamp.”
His skin was prickled, and he was jiggling up and down, but it wasn’t because of the cold. His eyes were wider than they should have been, his breath sour. He rotated his head on his neck and straightened his back, his shoulder rig tightening across his chest. When I touched his back, I could feel his body heat through the fabric.
An ambulance pulled to the rear of the Sugar Cane Festival Building, and two paramedics got out and removed a gurney from the back. Three cruisers pulled in behind the ambulance, the light from their flashers bouncing off the buildings and the oak trees. I looked for Helen Soileau but didn’t see her. A moment later, my cell
