by Robert Crais
“He wants to, but he doesn’t know what. This is killing him.” The skin around her eyes and mouth was tight, and showing the strain.
Jodi said, “I tliink it’s killing both of you.”
A car turned into the drive and Edith went to the door. “That will be Jo-el. I want you to meet him.”
The front door opened and Sheriff Jo-el Boudreaux walked in, campaign hat in one hand, a rolled copy of Sports Illustrated in the other, looking the way you look when you’re calling it quits after a long day. He stopped when he saw us, and said, “What’s going on here?” Calm and reasonable, like you walk in every day to see a detective and a TV star sitting in your living room. Only not. His eyes flicked to Jodi, then came to me, and the calm look was the kind guys get when their hearts are pounding, but they know they’ve got to cover. Every cop I ever knew could get that look.
Edith stood. “Jo-el, this young lady is named Jodi Taylor.” She wet her lips. “She’s my daughter.”
Jodi stood and offered her hand. “Hello, Mr. Boudreaux.”
Edith said, “She’s the one on TV, Jo-el, She’s the little girl I gave away.”
Jo-el Boudreaux took Jodi’s hand without apparent feeling, shaking his head and making out as if all of this was sort of benignly confusing. “I don’t understand, hon. Your mother gave away a baby.” Like she had made a mistake recalling which day she’d gone to the market.
“We don’t have to pretend, Jo-el.” Edith put a hand on his arm. “They know. Those people were blackmailing her, too, just like they’re doing to us.”
Jo-el’s eyes got wide and he wet his lips and his eyes flicked nervous and frantic. One minute you’re coming home to take it easy with the new Sports Illustrated, the next you’re watching your life go down the toilet. “No one’s blackmailing us.”
I said, “We’re not going to hurt you, Jo-el. It’s okay.”
Sheriff Jo-el Boudreaux waved the Sports Illustrated at me. “I don’t know what you think you’ve dug up, but we don’t want any part of it.” He squared himself toward me, making himself large and threatening. Cop technique. “I think you should leave.”
Edith jerked at his arm. “You stop that! We need to talk about this. We need to start dealing widi this.”
Jo-el was frantic now and didn’t know what to do. He said, “There’s nothing to deal with, Edie. Do you understand me? There’s nothing to talk about here, and they should leave.”
Edith’s voice grew harder. Insistent. “I want to know what’s going on. I want to know if you’re involved in a murder.”
Jo-el Boudreaux’s left eye ticked twice, and he took a single step toward me and I stood. Edith was pulling at his arm, her face red. I said, “I saw you with Milt Rossier. We know about Leon Williams and Edith’s father. Rebenack was extorting Jodi and her studio, and Rossier is extorting you.”
Boudreaux’s eye ticked again and he shook his head. “No.”
Edith said, “He says that Rossier killed that redheaded man. Do you know about tliat? Are you covering up for him?”
Boudreaux blinked hard, and he looked at his wife. “You know better than that.” He squinted at me to stop the blinking. “If I knew who murdered Jimmie Ray Rebenack I would make an arrest. Maybe you did it. Maybe I should take you in for questioning.”
I said, “Sure. That would look good in the local papers.”
He shook his head again, and now the eye was ticking madly, like a moth caught in a jar. “I don’t know what Edie’s been saying to you, but she’s been confused. She’s not making sense.”
Edith made a sudden, abrupt move and slapped her husband on the side of the face. There wasn’t a lot on it, but the sound was sharp and clear, and Jo-el stepped back, surprised. Edith grabbed his arm and shook him. “Don’t you dare speak about me that way! We have been living in a way that makes me ashamed, and I want it to stop. I want it to stop, do you hear?”
Jo-el took his wife by her upper arms. You could barely hear him. “You want me to go arrest your father? That’s what will happen, and won’t that be fine? You can even testify at his trial.”
Edith was crying.
Jodi said, “We’re on your side. Maybe we can help you. Maybe we can work together.”
Jo-el Boudreaux said, “There’s nothing to talk about. I don’t know anything about this, so you take care of your business and let me worry about mine.”
Edith was crying harder. “I want to stop lying. I want this to end.”
Jo-el said, “Edie, Goddammit. There’s nothing to talk about. “Denying it to the end.
Edith pulled away from him and ran back through the house, and a door slammed. For a long moment no one moved, and then Boudreaux went to the front door and held it open. He was breathing hard, and it took him a minute to control it. He looked at me and said, “Do you have a statement that you wish to make in the murder of Jimmie Ray Rebenack?”
“Let us help you, Jo-el.”
He looked at Jodi. “I’m glad Edie had a chance to meet you, but there’s just been a misunderstanding here. We don’t know anything about Milt Rossier, or about the murder of Leon Williams.”
Jodi said, “You’re being a fool.”
Boudreaux nodded and looked back at me. “Where’s it go from here?”
I said, “Jesus Christ, Boudreaux.”
He blinked hard once. “I want to know.” I thought he was about to cry.
I took a deep breath. “It starts here, it stops here. We won’t give you up.”
Sheriff Jo-el Boudreaux stood at the door, the big hand holding it open, the soft sounds of the neighborhood drifting in with the moist scent of cut grass, and then he simply walked away, back across the living room and through a door and after his wife.
Jodi and I went out through the door, closed it behind us, and drove away. The late afternoon had given way to the evening, and the sky in the east was beginning to purple. Fireflies traced uneven paths in the twilight.
Jodi huddled on her side of the car, arms crossed, staring out the window and chewing her lip. The lip started bleeding so she stopped with the lip and chewed at a nail. We drove in silence.
I said, “So say it.”
“They’re good people. He thinks he’s protecting her because he’s a big dumb goober, but he’s making it worse for both of them.”
“Uh-huh.”
She glanced at her watch and her right knee began bouncing. Nervous energy. “I have to go back to L.A. to finish the show, but I can’t just walk away. I want you to stay here and find out what’s going on and see if you can help them.”
The air had cooled, and smelled sweet, but I didn’t know from what. “I have found that, in cases like this, the only way to escape the past is to confess it. They don’t seem anxious to do that.”
“I want you to try. Will you?”
“What about you?”
She looked at me. “What does that mean?”
“Who are you, Jodi? Do you want these people in your life?”
She stared at me for what seemed like years, and then she crossed her arms and settled back into the shadows. “I don’t know what I want. Just help them, okay?”
“Okay.”
We drove directly to the airport. Jodi bought the last remaining first class seat on a flight readying to leave the gate. They held the plane. Can’t just fly away and leave America’s sweetheart holding her bag.
Jodi said, “Call me whenever you want. The pickups should only take a few days, and then I’ll come back.”
“Sure.”
She gave me a kiss, and then she was gone. A businessman with a receding hairline watched Jodi get on the plane. “Say, podnuh, that who I think it is?”
“Who’d you think it was?”
“That one on TV. The singer.”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
As I walked back through the terminal, I felt alone and at loose ends and overly aware that Lucy Chenier was only a short drive away. Of course, Lucy didn’t seem particul
arly interested in my proximity, but that didn’t make it any easier. I tried not thinking about her. I thought, instead, that perhaps I should do something exciting to clear my head. With a clear head, I could probably think of a way to help Edith Boudreaux, which was, of course, what I was being paid to do. Also, something exciting would probably make it easier to not think about Lucy.
It was twenty-three minutes after seven, and there were exactly six people in the terminal besides me. A man of action is ever resourceful, however, and one’s options are limited only by one’s imagination. Hmm. I could hike up to the levee and shoot rats, but that would be noisy and one probably needed a rat-shooting permit. Difficult to obtain. Okay, I could scale the outside of the state’s thirty-two-story capitol building then paraglide onto the Huey Long Bridge, but where would I get the parasail? Rent-a-chute was probably closed, too. Elvis Cole, this is your life!
I drove to the Riverfront Ho-Jo, checked in yet again, then ordered a turkey sandwich from room service, and went up to my room. Twenty minutes later I was eating the sandwich when the phone rang. I said, “Diminished expectations. Elvis Cole speaking.”
Lucy Chenier said, “If that was a play on Great Expectations, it’s too obscure.”
I said, “Hi.” My heart speeded up and my palms went damp. We are often not as tough as we make out to be.
Lucy said, “I want to apologize for the way I acted. I’d like a chance to explain.”
“It’s not necessary.”
“Jodi phoned me from the plane. She told me a little of what’s going on, and, as before, she asked me to assist you in anyway possible.” She sounded mechanical, as if she were nervous.
“All right.”
Lucy didn’t say anything for a moment, and I wondered if the line had gone dead. Then she said, “I’m making dinner. If you’d like, you could join me and we could talk about these things.”
“That would be very nice. Thank you.”
“Do you remember the way?”
“Of course.”
There was another pause before she said, “Then I’ll see you soon.”
“Yes.”
“Good-bye.”
I hung up and stared at the phone. Well, well. I threw away what was left of the turkey, took a quick shower, then talked the bartender in the hotel bar into selling me a bottle of merlot and a bottle of Chardonnay for three times what they were worth. I made it to Lucy’s in fourteen minutes. Try getting across Los Angeles in fourteen minutes. You’d need a Klingon battle cruiser.
Lucy’s neighborhood was quiet, and her home was well lit and inviting. The same man and woman were walking the pinto Akita. I parked in the drive behind Lucy’s Lexus, and nodded at them. The woman said, “It’s such a lovely night.”
I said, “Yes. It is, isn’t it?”
Lucy answered the door in jeans and a soft red jersey top and dangling turquoise earrings, and I thought in that moment that I had never before been in the presence of a woman who looked so lovely. My heart pounded, hard and with great intensity. She said, “I’m glad that you could come.”
I held up the bottles. “I didn’t know what we were having.”
She smiled and looked at the labels. “Oh, these are wonderful. Thank you.”
She showed me into the kitchen. The kitchen was bright, but only a single light burned in the family room, and Janis Ian was on the stereo. Lucy and her home and the atmosphere within it seemed to have a kind of hyperreality, as if I had stepped into a photograph featured in Better Homes & Gardens, and I wondered how much of it was real and how much was just me. I said, “It smells terrific.”
“I have rumaki in the oven for an appetizer, and I’m making roast duck with black cherry sauce for dinner. I hope that’s okay.”
I said, “Wow.”
“I was having a glass of wine. Would you join me?” A bottle of Johannesburg Riesling was on the counter near a mostly empty wineglass. The bottle was mostly empty, too.
“Please.”
“Why don’t we save your wine for dinner and have the Riesling now.”
“Sounds good.” She seemed to be moving as carefully around me as I was around her.
I opened the merlot to let it breathe while she brought out another glass and poured. I said, “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Everything’s done except for the cherry sauce. Why don’t you sit at the counter and bring me up to date about Jodi while I do that.”
Lucy opened a can of black pitted cherries and poured them into a saucepan with lemon juice and port and a lot of sugar, and then put the pan over a low fire. I told her how I had given Jodi the tour of Eunice and Ville Platte and how Jodi had introduced herself to Edith Boudreaux and what had happened when they met. Lucy nodded every once in a while and frowned when I got to the part about Jodi steaming into Edith’s dress shop while there were customers, but mostly she sipped at her wine and concentrated on her cherry sauce. Nervous, I thought. Distracted. She finished her glass of wine and refilled it and added a drop to mine. The Riesling bottle was empty, and I’d only had one glass. I wondered how long she’d been working at it. I said, “I think the rumaki’s burning.”
She said, “Oh, damn,” and took the rumaki from the oven. The rumaki were little bits of water chestnut wrapped in bacon and held together with toothpicks. The toothpicks were black and smoking, and a couple of the rumaki were overdone, but mostly they were fine. She put them on the stove.
I said, “I like them like that.”
She smiled lamely and had another belt of the wine.
I said, “Are you okay?”
She put down the wineglass and looked at me. She’d been working at it, all right. “I really like you.”
Something clutched in my stomach. “I like you too.”
She nodded and looked at the rumaki. She began taking them off the cooking pan and arranging them on a serving plate. I was breathing faster, and I tried to take it easy and slow the breathing. “Lucy?”
She finished arranging the rumaki and put the little plate on the counter between us. She said, “Would you please eat one of these things and tell me that it’s wonderful.”
I ate one. “They’re wonderful.”
She did not look happy.
“They’re great. I mean it.”
She drank more wine. I was breathing so fast that I thought my head might fill with blood and explode. I put my hand across the counter and she put her hand into mine. I said, “It’s okay.”
She shook her head.
I said, “It’s going to be fine.”
She took her hand back and walked across the big kitchen, and then she came back again. She put both hands flat on the counter and looked directly at me and said, “I’m drunk.”
“Big secret.”
She frowned. “Don’t laugh at me.”
“If I don’t laugh at something I’m going to have a stroke.”
She said, “When you went back to Los Angeles I realized how much I was liking you. I don’t want to be involved with a man who lives two thousand miles away. I was mad at you for going. I got mad at you for coming back. Why’d you have to come back?”
The blood seemed to be rushing through my head, and my ears were ringing and I was blinking.
She said, “I have this rule. I don’t get involved with people I work with. I’m feeling very confused and stupid and I don’t like it.”
I got a handle on the breathing, but I couldn’t do anything about the ears. I looked at the table in the dining area. Candles. Elegant seating for two. I said, “Where’s Ben?”
“I sent him to sleep over at a friend’s.”
I stared at her and she stared back.
She said, “Jesus Christ, what kind of lousy detective are you? Do I have to draw you a map?”
I looked at the table and then I looked at the wine and then I looked at the rumaki. I went around the counter and into the kitchen and I said, “Help me detect some coffee.” I started opening cabinets.
She waved her arms. “I just offered myself to you and you want coffee?”
I found a jar of Folger’s Mountain Grown. I started looking for cups. “We’re going to have coffee. We’re going to eat.” I found cups. I looked for a spoon so I could fix the goddamned coffee. “I do not want you to go to bed with me if you have to get drunk to do it!” I stopped all the slamming around and looking and turned back to her. “Do you understand that?”
Lucy opened her mouth, then closed it. She put one hand to the side of her head, then lowered it. She nodded, then thought for a moment, and then she shook her head, confused. “Is this some kind of male power trip or something?”
“Of course. Isn’t that why men do everything?” I think I was yelling.
Lucy grew calm. “Please don’t yell.”
I felt the way I had when I’d lied to the Ville Platte librarian.
She crossed the kitchen and took my face in both her hands. She said, “I think the coffee is a good idea. Thank you.”
I nodded. “You are absolutely beautiful.”
She smiled.
“You are all that I think about. You have filled my heart.”
She closed her eyes, and then she put her head against my chest.
We had the coffee, and then we had the duck. We sat on the couch in the dim family room and we listened to Janis Ian and we held hands. At a quarter to ten she made a phone call and asked how Ben was doing and then she wished him a good night. When she hung up she came back into the family room and said, “Watch this.”
She stood with her feet together, held out her arms, then closed her eyes and touched her nose with her right index finger. She giggled when she did it, then opened her eyes. “Do I pass, officer?”
I picked her up and carried her to her bedroom. I said, “Ask me that in the morning.”
“Studly, you probably won’t last until morning.”
I woke the next morning relaxed and warm and at peace, with Lucy snuggled beside me in her king-sized bed, small beneath light gray sheets and a comforter. Her breathing was even, and when I burrowed under the sheet and kissed her back, she said, “Mrmph.”