I parked in front of the grandmother’s white frame house and tapped on the screen door, but no one answered. One of the coffee cans planted with petunias had been blown or knocked off the gallery into the yard. I opened the screen and knocked on the inside door. Then I twisted the handle. The door was locked. I walked around the side of the house and into the backyard. The rear door was locked as well, and all the curtains were closed. No vehicle was parked in the yard. I returned to the front yard and stared at the house. The pecan trees and water oaks on the sides of the house were in partial leaf, and the shadows they cast looked like rain running down the walls and tin roof. I picked up the spilled coffee can and repacked the dirt and uprooted petunias with my fingers, then replaced the can on the porch. Hard by the circular spot where the can had originally stood was a muddy smear, the kind the bottom of a shoe or a boot would make.
I was letting it get away from me. Maybe the grandmother had gone to the home of relatives for Sunday dinner. Maybe she was sick and in the hospital. Maybe she had died. I could not think of any reason she would be in danger.
Unless the seven arpents of land owned by Bernadette Latiolais had automatically reverted upon Bernadette’s death to the grandmother.
I sat down on the steps and dialed 911 on my cell phone and told the dispatcher who and where I was. “Can you send out a cruiser? I’m a little worried about Mrs. Latiolais,” I said.
“What’s the nature of your emergency?”
“I’m not sure there is one. But I’m out of my jurisdiction, and I’d like somebody from your department to help me check things out.”
“We’ll send someone as soon as-” the dispatcher began.
I heard the door open behind me.
CHAPTER 16
WHAT YOU DOIN’ on my gallery?” Bernadette Latiolais’s grandmother said.
“I was looking for you,” I replied, getting up from the step. I told the Jeff Davis dispatcher to cancel my request for a cruiser.
“I was taking a nap. I didn’t know anybody was out here,” the grandmother said. She was silhouetted behind the screen, her thick glasses filled with reflected images of the trees in her yard, her massive weight bent on her walking cane. “Where’s that other one?”
“Other what?” I asked.
“I t’ought he was wit’ you. He used your name. You’re Mr. Robicheaux, aren’t you?”
“That’s correct. Who used my name, Mrs. Latiolais?”
“Mr. Big Foot did. Knocked my li’l flower can in the yard and didn’t pick it up. Just drove on off. In his li’l blue truck.”
“Did he give his name?”
“No, he just give yours. Said he was doing research and was a friend of yours, and wanted to know where my granddaughter’s land was at.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That it was part of a big estate that wasn’t never divided. Maybe it’s on top of the land, maybe it’s underwater. Who cares? My family didn’t even own the oil rights. They was sold for ten dollars an arpent back in the twenties. Why’s he axing me questions?”
“What did this fellow look like?”
“He had a red birt’mark on the back of his neck.”
“Mrs. Latiolais, this man is no friend of mine. He’s an ex-convict by the name of Vidor Perkins. If he comes back, don’t let him in your house for any reason. Call 911 and have a cruiser sent to your home.”
She hobbled out on the porch. Her girth and stooped posture and the entreating manner in which she twisted her head up made me think of a female Quasimodo, stricken and cheated by the fates in ways that were too many to count. “You t’ink he had somet’ing to do wit’ what they done to Bernadette?”
“Maybe, but I can’t be sure.” Then I thought about the words she had just used. “You said ‘they.’”
“Suh?”
“When you mentioned your granddaughter’s death, you indicated that more than one person was involved.”
“’Cause that’s what I t’ink. Bernadette didn’t just go off wit’ some man from a bar, no. She didn’t have no interest in that kind of man. She was an honor student. She had a scholarship to colletch. It wasn’t one man that tricked her or pulled her into a car or somet’ing like that. It took at least a couple of them cowards to do what they done.”
I told her I was sorry for having disturbed her, and I got in my truck. I started the engine and called Clete’s cell phone and ended up with his voice mail. “Clete, I’m just now leaving the home of Bernadette Latiolais’s grandmother. A man who sounds like Vidor Perkins was here today. He was asking questions about the seven arpents of land Bernadette owned. Do those seven arpents coincide with anything you learned from the families of the other dead girls? Call me back ASAP. I might be here awhile.”
As I drove away from the Latiolais home, I could see Mrs. Latiolais in my rearview mirror, still watching me from behind the screen, as though her conversation with me was her only conduit back to the girl who had been stolen from her.
I drove back to the parish road that led north to the interstate and back to New Iberia. But I couldn’t give up my obsession with Bernadette Latiolais and the secrets she had probably taken to the grave. What did she mean when she said she was going to save the bears? What had been her relationship with Kermit Abelard? He claimed he had known her name only because she was a recipient of a scholarship his family had endowed. Was Kermit lying? Was he covering up for his grandfather or Robert Weingart or perhaps even Layton Blanchet?
I had never met Bernadette Latiolais, but I had come to admire her. In spite of the poverty in which she had been born, and the illiteracy and ignorance that surrounded her, she had graduated from high school with honors and had won a scholarship to a university. She had wanted to be a nurse and to help others and evidently had wanted to protect wild animals in a state where the hunting culture is almost a religion. Where were her friends and advocates now? I believed more and more that Bernadette had died for a cause and that her homicide was not a random one. And my experience has been that people who die for causes have few friends in death.
For reasons I couldn’t quite explain, other than the fact that I believed somehow the geography of this area was linked to Bernadette’s death, I drove down toward the river where I had seen an ancient Acadian cottage that was being used to store hay. Most of the pioneer homes built by the original Acadian settlers have disappeared, destroyed by fire or plowed under by tractors or torn down for the two-hundred-year-old cypress planks in their walls. But each one of them, with its small roofed gallery and twin front doors and tall windows, is a reminder for me of the pastoral Louisiana of my childhood. Clouds had moved across the sun, and I could see rain falling on the south end of the parish. In minutes big raindrops and fine bits of hail were hitting my windshield. I parked by the abandoned Acadian cottage and turned off my engine. Down by the river, I could see the gum trees along the bank growing dimmer and dimmer, the clouds swollen and black as soot now and veined with electricity.
My cell phone rang. I thought it was Clete, but it was not. “Mr. Robicheaux?” a voice said.
“Yeah, who’s this?” I could hear almost nothing except the booming of the thunder outside. “Who’s calling? You’ll have to talk louder. I’m in an electric storm.”
“Marvin, at the store,” the voice said. “You gave me your number.”
The army veteran, I thought. “Right. What’s happening?”
“The guy-”
“I can’t hear you.”
“The guy you said… he was… didn’t know what kind of…”
“You’re breaking up, partner,” I said.
“My cousin saw… blue… the guy with… about three miles… help you.”
“Move to a different spot. I’m not reading you.”
“Three miles… the guy with the Florida… blue pickup truck… the guy… out and…”
