phone vibrated in my pocket. I was surprised. It was the deputy Clete had threatened. “Robicheaux?” he said.
“Go ahead,” I said.
“I had a deputy do a check at the Dupree place. Nobody is home. The only light on is the porch light. The deputy walked around back. Nobody is home.”
“You’re sure?”
“What did I just say?”
“One of the abduction victims is my daughter. If I don’t get her back, I’m going to be looking you up,” I said. I broke the connection. I looked at Clete. “That was St. Mary Parish. Nobody is home at Croix du Sud.”
“I don’t buy it,” he said.
“Because you don’t want to,” I said.
“No, I scoped the place out. There was a guard standing in back by the gazebo. I took my eyes off him for two seconds and he was gone, and I mean gone. There was no way he could have entered the house or walked around the side without me seeing him. He never moved ten feet from that gazebo.”
“So what are you saying?”
“There’s got to be a subterranean entrance somewhere close to the gazebo. You ever hear stories about tunnels or basements in that place?”
“No. But the house is over a hundred and fifty years old. There’s no telling what’s under it.”
“I’m going out there. You coming or not?”
I knew what would happen if I stayed at the Sugar Cane Festival Building. I would have to take charge of the crime scene and wait on the coroner and coordinate with Helen and make sure all the evidence was bagged and tagged and the scene secured and the body removed and taken to Iberia General. Then I would have to send someone, if not myself, to notify Julie’s family. In the meantime, word would leak out that a woman had been murdered in the building, and the next problem on my hands would be crowd control. While all this was taking place, my daughter would be in the hands of men who had the mercy of centipedes.
A deputy got out of a cruiser holding a video camera and a Steadicam. “I found these by the entrance to the park, Dave. They’d already been run over. Does this have anything to do with Alafair being kidnapped?”
“Give them to the tech. We need any prints we can lift off them,” I said. Clete was already walking toward his Caddy. “Wait up!” I said.
We headed out of the park and, in some ways, I suspected, out of my career in law enforcement. At a certain age, you accept that nothing is forever, not even the wintry season that seems to define your life. I began dialing Molly’s cell number to tell her where I was.
“Don’t tell anyone where we’re going, Dave,” Clete said.
“That makes no sense.”
“If nobody is at the Dupree place, if I’m all wrong, we come straight back. But if we can get our hands on Pierre or Alexis or any of their hired help, we can get the information we need. We can’t blow this one, partner. Rules are for people who want to feel good about themselves in the morning. They’re not for people who want to save their children’s lives.”
Clete had turned on the heater but was still shivering. I took off my coat and put it over his shoulders.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“I’ve got a corduroy shirt on. I don’t need it,” I replied.
“I’m not cold. My malaria kicks into gear sometimes.”
“You’ve got to go to the VA.”
He coughed deep in his chest and tried to pretend he was clearing his throat. “I’ve got to tell you something, big mon. I haven’t done right by you. Because of me, you protected Gretchen and have probably gotten yourself in a lot of trouble with Helen.”
“I’m always in trouble with Helen.”
“When this is over, we’re all going down to the Keys. I’m going to pay for everything. It’s going to be like it used to be. We’re going to fish for marlin in blue water and fill up the locker with kingfish and dive for lobsters on Seven Mile Reef.”
“You bet,” I said.
He was looking straight ahead, the soft green glow of the dashboard lighting his face, hollowing his eyes. “I got this sick feeling in my stomach,” he said. “Like everything is ending. Like I’ve been full of shit for a lifetime but I never owned up to it.”
“Don’t say that about yourself.”
“Gretchen paid the tab for my mistakes. When you steal a little girl’s childhood, you can never give it back.”
“You’ve tried to square it for years. Don’t blame yourself, Clete.”
“I’ve got an AK in the trunk.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s modified, but it’s untraceable. No matter what else happens, the guys who killed Julie are going down.”
“Can’t let you do that, podna.”
“You know I’m right. Don’t pretend you don’t.”
I kept my eyes straight ahead. We were speeding down the two-lane toward Jeanerette, the bayou chained with fog under the moon, the Angus in the fields clustered under the live oaks. I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. Instead, he clicked on the FM station from the university in Lafayette. The DJ was playing “Faded Love” by Bob Wills. I stared at the radio, then at Clete.
“You said Gretchen was whistling ‘The San Antonio Rose’ the night you saw her clip Bix Golightly?”
“Do you have to put it that way?”
“Does it make sense that a girl from Miami would be whistling a Western tune written seventy years ago?”
“I asked her about that. She said she heard it on a car radio, and it stuck in her head.” He was looking at the road while he spoke.
“She heard it on a car radio in Algiers?”
“Yeah.”
“And she didn’t do the hit on Waylon Grimes?”
“No.”
“Was the car playing the song not far from Grimes’s place?”
He looked at me. “I’m not sure. I didn’t ask.”
“Varina Leboeuf is big on Western art and music and clothes. She collects Indian artifacts from the Southwest.”
“You think she did the hit on Grimes? Maybe on Frankie Gee at the bus depot in Baton Rouge?”
“I don’t know. On this one, I’ve been in the dark since Jump Street, Clete.”
“Join the club,” he said. We came around a bend covered with shadows; he clicked on his brights. “I don’t believe it.”
“Pull over,” I said.
“What’d you think I was going to do? Run her down?”
“It’s a thought,” I replied.
Parked by the side of the road was a Saab convertible, its frame mashed down on a collapsed rear tire. Varina Leboeuf stood next to the Saab, drenched in the glare of Clete’s high beams. Behind her, inside a stand of persimmon trees and water oaks, was a cemetery filled with whitewashed brick and stucco crypts, most of them tilted at odd angles, sinking into the softness of the mold and lichen and wet soil that seldom saw daylight.
I got out on the passenger side. The headlights were in her eyes, and it was obvious she could barely make out who I was. “You sure have bad luck with tires,” I said.
“Yeah, and I told you why. My ex-husband has tried to screw me out of every dime he could,” she said.
“Want a lift?”
“No, I was just about to call AAA,” she replied.
“The AAA service in this area not only sucks, it’s nonexistent,” I said. “You’re headed for Croix du Sud?”
