ANGEL WAS DRIVING. She was very comfortable and competent behind the wheel. She’d opened up enough to tell me she’d taken several driving courses especially for bodyguards. We were going out to Metairie, a giant suburb of New Orleans, where Melba Totino had lived with her sister before she’d moved to Lawrenceton.
There was a phone listing for Mrs. Totino’s sister, Alicia Manigault, in the Metairie phone book.
Mrs. Totino had gotten all misty when she spoke of her former home, but I couldn’t see much about Metairie to love, from the interstate, anyway. There were hundreds of small houses jammed into tiny lots, charmless and style-less, leavened by an occasional motel or restaurant or strip shopping center. Surely there were prettier parts of Metairie somewhere?
The heat had begun in earnest here, and I shuddered when I thought of what it must be like in July or August. We had the air-conditioning on in the rental car, and I still felt sticky when we got out on the short, narrow street where Alicia Manigault lived. Scrubby stunted palms were planted here and there in tiny yards. All the houses were very small and one story, and though some of them were spick and span, others were in need of repair and paint. I would hate living in a place like this more than anything I could imagine. I felt very there-but-for-the-grace-of- God.
The squat flat-roofed house at the phone book address was moderately well cared for. The grass was mowed, but there were no ornamental touches to the yard, beyond some straggly foundation bushes. The house, formerly barn red, was peeling, and the side facing the afternoon sun was noticeably lighter than the rest of the house.
Angel unfolded herself from the dark green rental car and surveyed the street expressionlessly. “What do you want to do?” she asked.
“Ring the doorbell.”
The whole property was enclosed in a low chain-link fence. The gate creaked.
There didn’t seem to be a doorbell, so I knocked instead. My heart was beating uncomfortably.
A young woman answered.
I had never seen her before. She was very fat, very fair, wearing a pink dollar-store “Plus-Size” muumuu.
“What you want?” she asked. She didn’t look unfriendly, just busy.
“Is Mrs. Manigault here?” I asked.
“Alicia? No, she’s not here.”
“She doesn’t live here?”
“Well, it’s her house,” the young woman said, her small blue eyes blinking in a puzzled way behind blue-framed glasses.
“And you rent it from her,” Angel said.
“My husband and me, yeah, we do. What you want with Alicia?” A strange sound behind her made the young woman turn her head.
“Listen, come on in,” she said. “I got a sick dog in here.”
We followed her into the tiniest living room I had ever seen. It was jammed with vinyl furniture covered with crocheted afghans in a variety of patterns. The only thing they had in common was a stunningly dreadful combination of colors. Angel and I gaped.
“I know,” the woman said, with a little laugh, “everyone just cain’t believe it. I sell them at craft shows on the weekend, but the ones in here are my favorites. I just couldn’t sell them. My husband always says, ‘You’d think we got cold here!’”
She bent over a basket in the corner by a doorway into, I thought, the kitchen. When she straightened, she had in her arms a tiny black dog with brown on its muzzle-a Toy Manchester, I thought.
“Kickapoo,” she said proudly. “That’s his name.”
Angel made a snorting noise and I realized she was trying not to laugh. I was too concerned by the obvious illness of the dog. It was limp and listless in her arms.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, not at all sure I really wanted to know.
“He got hurt,” she said. “A bad man kicked our little doggy two days ago, didn’t he, Kickapoo?”
“Oh, that’s terrible!”
“Kickapoo couldn’t hurt anyone, you can see that,” said the woman, dreadful indignation printed deep in folds of fat. “I don’t know what was the matter with him.” I assumed she was referring to the kicker. “He was in a bad mood that day, but he never has done nothing like that.”
“Not your husband?” I inquired incredulously.
“Oh, no! Carl loves our little doggy,” she said, “doesn’t he, Kickapoo?”
The dog didn’t nod.
“No, this was a friend of Alicia’s, the man she has collect the rent and tend to things for her. ‘Course, we mow the lawn and take care of the little repairs, but if something big goes wrong, we call…” and she stopped dead.
“Yes?” I said encouragingly. I was totally bored with the conversation until the woman so obviously remembered she wasn’t supposed to be having it.
“Nothing. Here I am, going on and on. I haven’t even found out what you need.”
Angel and I were both well-dressed that day, since I thought that’d be reassuring to an old lady like Alicia Manigault. I was wearing a little suit with a white jacket and a navy skirt, and Angel had on tailored black slacks and a sapphire blue blouse with a gold chain and earrings. So it wasn’t out of the question for Angel to claim we were from the Metairie Senior Citizens’ Association, which she promptly did.
“Oh,” the woman said. “I never heard of that. But that’s nice.”
“And you’re Mrs.-?” Angel said pointedly.
The woman reached for an eyedropper by a bottle of medicine on a table jammed into one end of the living room. She squeezed what was in it into the little dog’s mouth. It swallowed obediently.
“Coleman,” she said, looking down at the animal. “Lanelda Coleman.”
“So Mrs. Manigault doesn’t need transportation services to and from the center?” Angel asked.
“No, she’s just here a few weeks a year,” Lanelda Cole-man told us.
I was totally at sea.
I opened my mouth to ask where she was the rest of the year, but my cohort kicked me in the ankle.
“Then we’ll just go, I can tell you’ve got your hands full,” Angel said sympathetically.
“Oh,” Lanelda said, “I do. We’re just terrified Kickapoo is hurt bad. We’ve about decided to take him to the vet. It’s so expensive!”
I moved restlessly. They adored the dog but hadn’t taken him to the vet?
“It sure is,” Angel agreed.
“Carl and I just were up all night with this little thing,” Lanelda said abstractedly, her attention on the dog.
“The man who kicked him should pay for the vet visit,” Angel said.
I turned to stare at her.
Lanelda’s face looked suddenly determined. “You know, lady, you’re right,” she said. “I’m gonna call him the minute Carl gets home.”
“Good luck,” I said, and we left.
We conferred by the car.
“We need to ask some questions,” I said.
“But not of her. She’s been told not to talk about the arrangements for that house by someone, someone she’s scared of. We don’t want her calling whoever it is and telling them we’ve been asking questions.”
“So what do we do?”
“We move the car,” Angel said slowly. “Then we go from house to house. Her curtains are closed, and she’s busy with the dog. She may not notice. Our cover story is that we’re canvassing old people in the neighborhood about the need for a community center with hot meals and transportation to and from this center every day. I just hope Metairie doesn’t have one already. Ask questions about the old ladies who own Number Twenty-one.” I looked up at Angel admiringly. “Good idea.”
I wasn’t so enthusiastic an hour later. I’d never knocked on strangers’ doors before. We’d waited until after five o’clock so people would be home; most of the mothers here would be working mothers.
This was an experience that I later wanted to forget. I was never intended to be a private detective; I was too thin-skinned. The old people were suspicious, the younger people were too busy at this time of day to give much
