“I’m listening,” he said.
“The only time I felt bad about anything was when I didn’t get even for what people did to me,” she said. “By the way, I don’t like that term ‘in the life.’ I was never ‘in the life.’”
Clete passed a plantation on the Teche that had been built miles downstream in 1796 and brought brick by brick up the bayou in the early 1800s and reassembled on its present site. Then he entered the spangled shade of live oaks that had been on the roadside for over two hundred years, and passed a second antebellum plantation, one with enormous white columns. He crossed the drawbridge and drove by a trailer slum and entered the small town of Jeanerette, where time seemed to have stopped a century ago and the yards of the Victorian homes along the main street were bursting with flowers, the lawns so blue and green and cool in appearance that you felt you could dive into them as you would into a swimming pool. Clete approached the home of Pierre Dupree and turned in to the gravel lane that led to the wide-galleried entrance of the main house, the gigantic oak limbs creaking above.
“Every time I visit a place like this, I always wonder how things would have worked out if the South had won the war,” Clete said.
“How would things have worked out?” Gretchen asked.
“I think all of us, white and black, would be picking these people’s cotton,” he replied.
They stepped out of the Caddy onto the gravel, the trees swelling with wind, a few yellow oak leaves tumbling through the columns of sunlight. In back they heard a dog bark. Clete rang the chimes on the front door, but no one answered. He motioned to Gretchen, and the two of them walked through the side yard to the rear of the house, where a gazebo stood on a long stretch of green lawn that sloped down to the bayou. An elderly man was training a yellow Lab down the slope, a reelless fishing rod clenched in his hand. By the corner of the house, inside a cluster of philodendron, Clete noticed a stack of wire tender traps. “May I help you?” the elderly man said.
“I’m Clete Purcel, and this is my assistant, Miss Gretchen,” Clete said. “I’d like to talk to either Alexis or Pierre Dupree about a man who claimed to have taken a betting marker out of an office safe that used to belong to Didoni Giacano.”
“Did Mr. Robicheaux send you here?”
“I sent myself here,” Clete said. “Frankie Giacano and his friends tried to extort me with that same betting marker. Are you Alexis Dupree?”
“I am. It’s customary to phone people in advance when you plan to visit their home.”
“Sorry about that. Frankie Gee got himself capped, Mr. Dupree. But I don’t think he got capped over this business with the marker. I think it has to do with stolen or forged paintings that a guy named Bix Golightly was fencing. You know anything about that?”
“I’m afraid I don’t. Would you like to sit down? Can I get you something to drink?” Alexis Dupree said. His gaze shifted from Clete to Gretchen.
“We’re fine,” Clete said.
Dupree picked up a pie plate from a redwood table and a small sack of dry dog food. He walked down the slope as though Clete and Gretchen were not there and set the pie plate on the grass and sprinkled several pieces of dog food in it. He carried the fishing rod in his left hand. The Labrador retriever was sitting in the sunlight on the opposite side of the lawn but never moved. “Come,” Alexis Dupree said.
The dog started across the grass. “Stop,” Dupree said. The dog immediately sat down. “Come,” Dupree said. The dog took another few steps, then stopped again upon command. “Come,” Dupree said.
When the dog advanced, its attention remained upon Dupree and not the pie plate. “Stop,” Dupree said. He looked up the slope at Clete and Gretchen, then at the white clouds drifting across the sky, then at a flock of robins descending on a tree. His lips were pursed, his regal profile framed against a backdrop of oaks and flowers and Spanish moss and a tidal stream and a gold-and-purple field of sugarcane. “Come,” he said again. This time he let the dog eat.
“Is he telling us something?” Gretchen whispered.
“Yeah, don’t let a guy like that ever get control of your life,” Clete said.
From out front, Clete heard the sound of a car coming up the gravel drive, then a car door slamming.
“Mr. Dupree, somebody tried to kill my friend Dave Robicheaux,” Clete said. “It was right after he left the home of Jesse Leboeuf. Your family and Jesse Leboeuf are mixed up with a group called Redstone Security, Inc. These guys have the reputation of stink on shit. You know who I’m talking about?”
“Your passion and your language are impressive, but no, I know nothing about any of this,” Dupree said. He approached Gretchen with a fond expression, the fishing rod still in his hand, his gaze drifting to her throat. “Are you Jewish?”
“What’s it to you?” she said.
“It’s a compliment. You come from a cerebral race. I also suspect you’re part German.”
“What she is, is one hundred percent American,” Clete said.
“Clete says you were in a death camp,” Gretchen said.
“I was at Ravensbruck.”
“I never heard a Jew call his religion a race,” she said.
“You seem like a very perceptive young woman. What is your name?”
“Gretchen Horowitz.”
“I hope you’ll come by again. And you don’t need to call in advance.”
“Mr. Dupree, we didn’t come out here to talk about religious matters,” Clete said. “People you and your grandson are associated with may be involved in several homicides, including a girl who floated up in a block of ice a little south of here. Are you reading me on this, sir?”
Before Dupree could answer, Clete heard footsteps behind him. He turned around and looked at perhaps one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. She did not seem to notice either his or Gretchen’s presence; instead, she was staring at Alexis Dupree with a level of anger Clete would never want directed at him. “Where’s Pierre?” she said.
“In Lafayette at his art exhibit. He’ll be so sorry he missed you,” Dupree said.
“Who are you?” the woman said to Clete.
“A private investigator,” he replied.
“You came to the right place.” She started to speak to Dupree, then she turned again to Clete. “You’re Dave Robicheaux’s buddy, aren’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m Varina Leboeuf. You tell Dave if he ever humiliates my father again like he did yesterday, I’m going to beat the shit out of him.”
“If Dave Robicheaux busted your old man, he had it coming,” Clete said.
“What are y’all doing here?” she said.
“You need to butt out, ma’am,” Gretchen said.
“ What did you say?”
“We’re having a conversation with Mr. Dupree. You’re not part of it,” Gretchen said.
“I’ll tell you what, young lady. Why don’t you and this gentleman ask Mr. Dupree about these wire traps stacked in the flower bed? Alexis places them all over the property every two or three weeks. The madwoman who used to own this wretched dump fed every stray cat in the parish. Alexis hates cats. So he baits and traps them and has a black man drop them at night in other people’s neighborhoods. Most of them will starve to death or die of disease.”
“Did you mention we don’t have a local animal refuge?” Dupree said.
“I just left the office of Pierre’s lawyer. If your grandson tries to fuck me on the settlement, I’m going to destroy all of you,” Varina said.
“You’ve certainly arrived here in a charming mood,” Dupree said.
“What are you doing with my dog? Pierre said he’d run away.”
“He did. But he came back home. He’s a brand-new dog now,” Dupree said.
“Come here, Vick,” Varina called.
The dog rested its jowls on its paws and did not move.
“Vick, come with Mommy. Come on, fella,” she called.
