Plunder

by Mary Anna Evans

  Didi considered switching to gin. There were herbs and stuff in gin, so maybe it was easier on the complexion. Nothing could have convinced her inner nicotine addict to look closely at the tiny lines forming around her lips.

  There wasn’t enough coffee in the house to meet Didi’s current needs. She had to have a full pot of something black and strong and chicory-laden, and nothing less. There was no other way to face this day. Once she’d pumped herself full of caffeine, she’d be ready to question her mother’s lawyer on the details of her inheritance. Didi slung her purse over her shoulder and left the houseboat, without announcing her intentions to the niece for whom she was responsible.

  She drove past the two nearest bars and tried not to think about the men who’d been pawing her in both establishments, just the day before. None of them had been prizes, and the frontrunner in the competition to take her home had been wearing the residue of thirty years of smoking on his teeth. By dying and forcing her to walk away from this man, her mother had been able to save her from at least one bad decision.

  Now that the vodka had worn off, she needed to assume the role of bereaved daughter. And wife. She kept forgetting that Stan was supposed to be dead. Maybe he was dead.

  There. She’d managed a few tears for her mother and husband. If she didn’t wipe them away, maybe her coffee run could be parlayed into a little bit of sympathy for Didi and her plight.

  And so Didi, a more accomplished method actress than most graduates of drama schools, sauntered into the local grocery store without taking note of a familiar gray pickup pulling into the parking lot behind her.

  ***

  Didi was not impressed with the store’s selection, and she let the clerk and the manager know it.

  “I’ve seen fresher lettuce,” she sniffed.

  “I can’t sell it quick enough,” the manager said, adjusting the lettuce display and wiping his hand on his apron. “I can’t sell much of anything. There’s talk of closing the gulf to fishing. There’s talk of a moratorium on drilling. Nobody’s sure they’re gonna have a job next week. Everybody’s cutting way back on their grocery shopping.”

  “I hear you,” Didi said with a calculated quaver in her voice. “Stan works in the oil field, so who knows if he’ll keep his job. Except—” The quaver modulated and deepened to a half-sob. “Except I’m pretty sure he was on the rig that blew up. He’d told me he had a new job with BP, and I don’t always pay attention when he tells me where he’s going to be. All I know it’s somewhere…out there.” She gave an airy wave to the south. “I haven’t heard from him since the day before the explosion.”

  “Really?” said the clerk, a graying woman wearing stretch pants.

  Didi warmed to her audience. “Not a word. And I do so need to talk to him, since my mother died last night. I feel so…alone.” The voice stopped shaking and dropped to a whisper.

  “Now, Didi, you can’t be alone here in Plaquemines Parish. Everybody here has known you all your life.” These reassuring words came from the lips of an elderly lady that Didi thought she recognized as a lunchroom worker from her elementary school, though the woman’s name escaped her.

  Another woman and two men steered their shopping carts down the produce aisle, nodding their heads at the old woman’s reassuring words. Again, Didi knew their faces but not their names. Now she remembered why she’d left home, even though she’d hardly gone a hundred miles. It could be hard to get away with anything when everybody in town knew your mother. Still, maybe she could work the situation to her advantage this time. Everybody knew that her mother was dead and maybe they wouldn’t be so quick to judge her every little move.

  “I heard you’d been asking last night at the bar whether anybody knew how to file for government assistance. Being as how you’re a widow and all,” the manager said, picking a feathery yellow leaf off an aging bunch of carrots.

  Didi forgot to put a quaver in her voice as she quickly asked, “Do you know where I should go to do that? I didn’t know whether to start with the government or BP or what. Or maybe I should just get a lawyer. Somebody should pay for what happened to Stan.”

  “Dunno.” The manager’s gentle fingers explored the skin of a bright red tomato. Judging it to be too soft to sell, he dropped it into the basket hanging on his arm. “I imagine the government got in touch right away with the wives of the men who they knew was dead. Since nobody but you knows that Stan’s dead…missing…whatever…I imagine you’re going to have to go looking for someplace to file your claim. In the meantime—” He put the tired lettuce and aging carrots into the basket along with the tomato.

  The clerk reached under her cash register and pulled out a phone book. “Maybe this’ll help. Usually the government pages are blue. Let me see.” She raked a well-chewed fingernail down the page. “Here’s the emergency management department. I’d start there.”

  Didi reached out an uncertain hand and the clerk plunked the phone book firmly on her palm with an expectant look. The same look was on all the faces gathered around her. They all seemed to expect her to make the call then and there. Unsure why she was doing it, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and started to dial.

  The person who answered the phone for the emergency management department listened as Didi stammered through her request. “I’m looking for help because my—my husband—I’m sure he’s dead. He—he—just had to have been on the rig that exploded and…yes. I can hold.”

  Didi was surrounded by familiar faces of people whose names she didn’t care enough to remember, and they were all looking expectantly in her direction.

  “Did they put you on hold?” the manager asked.

  She nodded.

  “Damn government. If they can’t help widows, then what good are they? ” He held out the basket of not-quite-fresh veggies. “Here. Take this. Who knows how long it’ll take you to get any help?”

  Didi was looking at his offer of charity, without really reaching out her hand to take it, when she heard a familiar voice behind her.

  “And here I thought my wife was cheating on me yesterday, rubbing herself all over anybody that would buy her a shot of anything. Naw. She wasn’t cheating. Not even a little bit. She thought I was dead. I feel so much better now.”

  It took less than a second for a tall, brown-haired man to cross the space between the door and the spot near the cash register where Didi stood. He would have been good-looking if his jawline had been stronger.

  Stan used a single finger to lift her chin, so that he could look directly into her eyes.

  “How long’ve I been dead, Didi? A week? Two? If you’re trying to get your hands on some government money or…I dunno…maybe trying to con some of these people out of their pocket change, you might want to try acting like a grieving widow.”

  He caught the eye of the manager, who gave him a slight smile. The other onlookers exchanged glances that told Didi the truth.

  They knew. They’d known Stan was alive all along. They’d been stringing her along with their sympathetic murmurs and their urgings to get help from the government. And their charity. She took a step back from the manager and his basket of limp vegetables.

  “Barry, over there,” Stan said, pointing at the generous manager, “he called me yesterday when he saw you down to Helen’s bar.” Then he pointed to the elderly “lunchroom lady,” who must have been Helen. She gave Didi an ugly smile and a wave.

  Didi should have remembered where she’d seen that smirking face, but she’d been more focused on the vodka Helen had been pouring.

  “Barry said it took two whole phone calls to find me. I’ve been staying down to Venice with Buster. You remember Buster? My best friend for my whole life? Dontcha think if my wife wanted to find me, maybe she might call my best friend, instead of making like I’m dead so’s she can get some money from the government?”

&nbs
p; He brought his face down to hers, nose to nose. “That’s fraud, Didi. You wanna ask these people what they think of the cheats who collected big checks after the storm? Just how are you different from people that filed on property that wasn’t fit to live in before that bitch Katrina rolled into town, then pretended they was homeless when they was really living in the same nice clean houses they’d lived in all along? What makes you better than people that went all over town from one Red Cross to the next, collecting one check after the other, because none of the people trying to help had time to check up on ‘em?”

  Didi still refused to answer him.

  “Maybe you’ll get something for nothing, now that your poor Mama’s gone. Some of them stocks your old man left…a piece of that crappy houseboat…a set of silverware, maybe. But you ain’t gonna get anything for nothing because of me, because I ain’t dead.”

  He took the basket of vegetables and handed it to Didi, then very deliberately leaned over and spit in it.

  ***

  When he was sure that the automatic glass door had slid shut behind Didi’s skinny ass, Barry-the-manager said, “Bitch,” clearly and to no one in particular. Then, he dumped the old vegetables in the trash can, basket and all. To no one in particular, he said, “I feel for that little girl Miranda left behind. Can you imagine living on that boat with nobody for a mother but that skinny shrew?”

  ***

  Didi wished she could wipe the contemptuous stares off her back. She could still feel the eyes boring into her. This was why she’d stayed away from home. Small-town people never forgot they didn’t like you, and nobody around here had liked Didi since…

  Nobody had liked Didi since ever.

  They didn’t like her when she was a pigtailed girl who taunted the fat kids until they threw up their chocolate milk when they saw her coming. They didn’t like her in her teens when she wore her miniskirts too tight and her mascara too thick. Actually, in those years, it was just the women who didn’t like her. The men had liked her just fine.

  She’d gone through a lot of those men before Stan came along, so the men she’d loved and left didn’t like her anymore. Neither did the losers she’d rejected. Stan had seemed to be a cut above all the other men she’d known. Marrying him had felt like a fresh start. It had been good to move away, even if she hadn’t gone all that far.

  Now, she had the feeling that she might have burned a bridge she hadn’t intended to burn. She felt sure that Stan was finished with paying her bills. It was a good thing she had a houseboat—well, a piece of a houseboat—that would keep a roof over her head while she regrouped.

  She needed to talk to the social worker about whether she’d get money from the child welfare people if she took charge of Amande permanently. And she needed to get clear on how much control she had over the child’s inheritance. Part of the oil company stock that had helped her mother keep food on the table now belonged to Didi, and part of it now belonged to Amande. Some fraction of it that Didi couldn’t cipher out belonged to Justine’s widower, so she wouldn’t be getting even as much income as Miranda had received. Still, if Didi played her cards right, she could spend Amande’s money to run their little two-woman household and keep her own money for herself.

  Didi liked this plan so well that working out the details kept her awake and alert until she was able to find someplace to buy coffee where nobody knew her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Detective Benoit was back, and so was Sally the social worker. Amande knew that Didi was nowhere to be found, because she’d heard her slip out an hour ago. She wondered why the woman bothered to sneak out. Why should Amande care where Didi went or what she did at breakfast time on a Saturday morning?

  Maybe Didi was just in the habit of sneaking off the houseboat, since she’d done it so many times when she was a teenager living there. Amande remembered. She’d been a little kid, maybe six or seven, but Didi had made sneaking out at night look like so much fun that Amande had tried it once.

  She remembered standing on the shore, alone under the bright moon, looking around and wondering what to do next. She’d never been outdoors alone so late at night, but the novelty wore thin quickly, so she’d tried to think of something to do that had the extra cachet of being forbidden. The only really bad thing she could imagine was throwing trash in the water.

  It had taken some doing for the little girl to hoist herself into the marina’s dumpster and throw a big pile of beer bottles and cigarette butts out onto the ground. Amande remembered that she’d cut her foot while she was in there. Had she really done that while barefoot? It was a wonder that she hadn’t gotten lockjaw.

  Even at that age, Amande had possessed the presence of mind to pitch a grocery bag out of the dumpster along with the trash. Loading her trash into the sack, she’d hauled it to the water’s edge, pitching the forbidden garbage into the water, one naughty piece at a time.

  The beer bottles had sunk down into the murk, invisible even in the bright moonlight. That was no fun. But the nasty cigarettes butts had floated, bobbing on gentle waves. Amande had enjoyed watching them so much, leaning down ever closer to watch them dance, that it was no wonder that the sleepy child eventually fell in. Had she been brought up anywhere but on the water, Amande might have drowned that night, but she’d floundered among the marina’s moored boats for a timeless time, until she reached a dock and, from there, a ladder.

  Amande never knew how long it took her grandmother to find the moldy clothes stuffed in the back of a drawer, and she never knew if her grandmother figured out how they got that way. Miranda had never mentioned it. But the child was always pretty sure that Didi was having more fun when she left the house at night than Amande had enjoyed on her only nighttime excursion, because Didi always walked away smiling, and Amande’s adventure hadn’t been any fun at all.

  Amande was remembering that long-ago adventure as she squatted on the deck of the houseboat, watching Detective Benoit as he watched a diver work. The diver was plying the water in the precise spot where Amande had fallen in all those years before. Sally, who seemed to be some kind of kin to the detective, was standing beside him. They were murmuring, but Amande could hear them.

  “I thought you already found the murder weapon,” Sally said.

  “One of them. We found the knife that killed Hebert. It was sunk in the water over there. No fingerprints, dammit, and nothing left behind on the shore that we could link to the killer.” He gestured toward a seawall some distance away. “It wasn’t a knife that killed the old lady. It was something shaped like this.” He held up an index finger crooked into the shape of a number seven. “The forensics people could tell because it cut into her throat like—”

  Only then did they notice Amande watching them and eavesdropping. Gangling, awkward Benoit had the good grace to look embarrassed. Amande found herself wondering how old he was. He didn’t seem like he’d been doing this job for long.

  Sally had looked at him hard. “You don’t know what killed her? Have you asked the girl if she’s seen anything shaped like that?”

  “I asked her half-sister. I didn’t want to upset her even more by talking about the way her grandmother died.”

  “Well, that train has left the station, hasn’t it?” Sally jerked her head in the direction of the silent girl. She motioned to Amande to join them. “Besides, the half-sister is a half-wit. This is the person who may be able to help you. If you have questions, you should start with Amande.”

  Amande saw Sally beckon. Sally was a nice lady and Amande didn’t like to disobey but, for once in her life, she didn’t do as she was told. She backed away from Sally and the policemen and the diver who was looking for God only knew what. Scuttling sideways like a crab so that she could keep all those strangers in her sights, Amande hurried into the houseboat and into her grandmother’s room.

  Didi’s things wer
e everywhere, shoving Miranda’s orderly belongings aside. Amande knew already, without looking, that all her grandmother’s jewelry was gone, either taken to a pawn shop or on its way there now. Even Miranda’s clothes would be gone soon, if Didi could find a consignment store that would take an old lady’s unfashionable things.

  The half-finished straw dolls had been cut down from their hooks and piled in a heap near the voodoo altar, but the basket of unwoven straw beside Miranda’s worktable was untouched. Her tools still lay spread across that worktable. They were specialized implements, of value only to people interested in making straw voodoo dolls—which is to say almost no one—so Didi had very little interest in them. Until this moment, Amande had thought that she might want to keep those tools as a memento of the grandmother who had already begun teaching her to use them.

  Amande picked the tools up, one by one, hoping they would all be there. But they weren’t. One was missing, a cutting implement with a blade curved into a shape that could be called a seven. Miranda had kept its inner edge honed to razor sharpness, so that it would make clean cuts in the tough straw. What had that tool and its razor edge done?

  Amande backed away, straight into Sally, who had come looking for her.

  “What’s wrong?” Sally asked, grabbing her by the elbows. “Amande, what’s wrong?”

  Amande wouldn’t tell her. She couldn’t tell her. All she could say was, “Get Faye. I want to talk to Faye. Please. Get Faye.”

  ***

  Joe enjoyed haunting pawn shops. He liked sorting through tools that had been used until they were worn and burnished. He always visited the guitars—and there were always guitars in pawn shops, because guitars were portable, easily sold, and non-essential—but he never bought one, because he’d never learned to play. Faye had once clasped one of his big hands between her two little ones and said, “I’d love to play the guitar, but my little wimpy hands just aren’t made for it. Your hands are big, and your fingers are long and strong. You should make some music with these.” Maybe someday.