paid particular attention to them. I went to the house in Jeanerette yesterday and picked up a few things, including this scrapbook.”
She removed a photo from the envelope and handed it to him. In it, Pierre Dupree was standing in front of a bandstand festooned with strings of Christmas wreath and tinsel. A young Creole woman with cups of gold in her hair stood next to him. She wore a magenta evening gown, an orchid pinned to one strap. Neither person was touching the other.
“Is that the girl you and Dave Robicheaux were looking for?” Varina asked.
“That’s Tee Jolie Melton.”
“And Pierre denies knowing her?”
“According to Dave. I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting your husband.”
“I no longer think of him as my husband.”
“You think Mr. Dupree and Tee Jolie were an item?”
“I’m afraid you didn’t hear me the first time. In my mind, Pierre is not my husband. That means I quit tracking his extracurricular activities years ago. He inherited the worst traits on both sides of his family. His grandfather is an imperious aristocrat who thinks he’s genetically superior to others. His mother’s family made most of their money on the backs of rental convicts. They literally worked those poor devils to death. I hated going out in public with any of them.”
“Why?” Clete asked.
“They think the rest of the world is like St. Mary Parish. They expect waiters to grovel wherever they eat. They’re boorish and loud and never read a book or see a film or talk about anything except themselves. They never once invited my father to dinner. I’m sorry, I can’t stand them. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Was your marriage a great success? Is that why you’re single? You are single, right?”
Trying to follow her train of thought was exhausting. “My wife dumped me for a Buddhist guru in Boulder, Colorado. This was a guy who made people take off their clothes in front of the commune he ran. She also gave him most of our savings account. It took three years for the divorce to go through. By that time I was hiding out in El Salvador on a murder beef. You want to go for a walk?”
“You committed a murder?”
“Not exactly. I thought the guy had a piece in his hand. Anyway, he was a sorry sack of shit and had it coming. I need a drink.”
“Go ahead.”
“You want to go in the kitchen?” he asked.
“No, I want to stay here. This was my room when I was a child. It was always my room, even after I left home. What should I do with the photo?”
“Give it to Dave. If I take it, I might create a problem with the chain of evidence.”
“There’s a tray on the drainboard. Will you bring the drinks and the limes in? I’ll put the photo in my desk.”
“It’s pretty nice out. We can have our drinks outside, if you want.”
“No, I don’t want to go outside. The mosquitoes are terrible tonight. Would you rather not be here?”
Clete propped his hands on his knees and studied the far wall and the Indian artifacts on the shelves and the teddy bear staring back at him from the couch. “I shouldn’t be calling somebody else a sorry sack of shit, even the guy I popped in the hogpen. His name was Starkweather, like the kid who killed all those people in Nebraska. What I’m saying is I have a history. For a while I was mobbed up with some guys in Reno and on Flathead Lake in western Montana. These guys happened to be on a plane that crashed into the side of a mountain. I heard they looked like fricasseed pork when they were raked out of the fir trees. The shorter version is I’ve got a jacket that’s probably three inches thick.”
“Are you trying to scare me off?”
He pressed his fingers against his temples. “Hang on a minute. There are some things I can’t talk about without a drink in my hand, otherwise my gyroscope spins out of control and I fall down.” He went into the kitchen and put the shot glasses and the Carta Blanca and the bottle of tequila and the bowl of limes and a salt shaker on the tray and brought them back to the rollaway. He drank his shot glass empty and sipped on the beer and felt it go down cold and bright and hard in his throat. He sucked on a lime and poured another shot, blowing out his breath, gin roses blooming in his cheeks. “I guess I’m going through some kind of physiological change. Hooch seems to go straight into my bloodstream these days, kind of like I’m mainlining. Or throwing kerosene on a fire. Sometimes I feel like I’ve got a dragon walking around in my chest. My nether regions get out of control, too.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t drink.”
“That’s like telling the pope he shouldn’t work on Sundays.”
“You shouldn’t belittle yourself.”
“Yeah?”
“The world beats up on everybody and breaks most of us,” she said. “Why should we do it to ourselves when it’s going to happen anyway? The only things we take with us are the memories of the good times we had and the good people we knew along the way.”
“I never figured any of that stuff out.”
“You’re a lot more complicated than you pretend.” When he didn’t reply, she said, “It’s almost dark. I’m going to turn on the floor lamp. I don’t like the dark.”
“Why tell me about it?”
“Because I don’t hide anything I do.” She walked to the lamp and clicked it on, then faced him. “Do you like me?”
“I get in trouble, Miss Varina. Lots of it, on a regular basis. I think you’ve had enough trouble in your life already.”
She unbuttoned her shirt and the top of her jeans. “Tell me if you like me.”
“Sure I do.”
“You like the way I look now? Am I too forward? Tell me if I am.”
“I don’t have any illusions about my age and the way I look and the reasons I wrecked my career. I’d better hit the road. I showed bad judgment in coming here. You’re a nice lady, Miss V. It would be an honor to get involved with a lady like yourself, but you’re still married, and this won’t be good for either one of us.”
“If you call me ‘Miss’ again, I’m going to hit you. No, don’t get up. Let me do this for you. Please. You don’t know how important the love of a good man can be. No, not just a good man but a strong man. You are a good man, aren’t you? Oh, Clete, you sweet man. Clete, Clete, Clete, that’s so good. Oh, oh, oh.”
He felt as though a great wave had just curled out of the ocean and knocked him backward into the sand.
13
I looked out our back bedroom window early Saturday morning and saw Clete Purcel slouching through the fog like a medieval penitent headed for the side door of the cathedral, hoping no one would see the load of guilt he was carrying. He stared at the house, looking for signs of life, then picked up a folding chair and walked down to the bayou, past Tripod’s hutch, where both Tripod and Snuggs sat on the roof, watching him. Clete’s seersucker coat was sparkling with damp, his wilted necktie and porkpie hat and rumpled shirt as incongruous as formal dress on a hippopotamus.
Molly was still asleep. I slipped on a pair of khakis and a sweater and lit the kitchen stove and set a pot of coffee on the burner and picked up a folding chair from the mudroom and walked down to the bayou. I could barely make out Clete’s shape in the fog. He was leaning forward in his chair, studying the cattails and elephant ears and the water sliding over the cypress knees that marbled the bank. Somewhere deep inside the fog, I heard the giant cogged wheels lifting the drawbridge into the air.
“Did I wake you up?” he said.
“You know me. I’m an early riser,” I replied. I unfolded my chair and sat down beside him. I could smell the booze and weed and the odor of funk and stale deodorant trapped inside his clothes. “Rough night?”
