Ben smiled to himself.
‘You ain’t gonna be smilin’ when they’re scrapin’ your ass off of the sidewalk,’ Dwayne Skinner said.
Ben said to him, ‘Ever used a wheelchair? It’s harder than it looks. But you’ll get plenty of practice in the weeks and months to come.’
Lottie said, ‘Ben.’ Her voice sounded tight with apprehension.
Ben fished the Tahoe key from his pocket and tossed it to her. ‘You walk on. I’ll meet you back at the car in one minute.’
Ben had decided he’d go for Dwayne first. Then his buddy beside him, the one who’d made the gorilla remark, in that order. They were the two doing all the talking, which meant they were psychologically the leaders of this little peer group, the lean hairy one being number one and the other his second-in-command. Like in a dog pack, where the animals naturally arrange themselves into a hierarchy with the alpha and beta dogs at the top and everyone else in order of ranking below.
In war, Ben had learned long ago, you always take the officers down first if you can. With the alpha and beta broken and helpless and pissing their pants on the concrete, the rest would probably try to bolt. Try being the operative word. None would get further than a few steps before they received a dose of the same medicine as their pals.
Lottie said, ‘Ben, please.’
Chapter 9
Ben was half a heartbeat away from walking into the yard. All he had to do was let events play out exactly as he could already see them happening on the mental screen inside his head. After last night’s heavy dinner and the excessive breakfast he’d eaten back in Villeneuve that morning, a little bit of exercise was the exact thing he needed.
But then he hesitated. Actions had consequences, and while he wasn’t the least bit concerned how those consequences would affect the five guys in front of him, it occurred to him that certain repercussions were best avoided in his own interest. It was a busy street. Not Piccadilly at rush hour, but a lot busier than the sidewalks outside Elmo’s Liquor Locker at midnight. If Ben stepped through the gate into the forecourt of Dumpy’s Rods and things followed their inevitable course, someone was bound to call the cops. The aftermath of the fight was as predictable as its outcome. If Ben remained with the five unconscious bodies until the police turned up, he’d face all kinds of questioning. Even if he left before they arrived, there would be enough witness descriptions for the cops to identify him. Either way, it pointed to the likely reappearance of Sheriff Waylon Roque into Ben’s life soon afterwards.
All of that, combined with the fact that he’d have compromised his anonymity once again, when the whole damn point of leaving Villeneuve was to lie low.
Stupid.
Lottie said, ‘Do what you like, I ain’t waitin’.’ She started walking off, shaking her head.
The gang were just a few steps away. Ben watched them approach, still undecided. Then the decision was made for him when one of the five who hadn’t yet spoken a word pointed at Ben and said, ‘Hey, I seen this guy before. He’s on the news.’
Dwayne Skinner shot his buddy a sneer. ‘Yeah, right. How’s this asshole on the news?’
‘Straight up, man. It’s him for sure. He’s the dude who busted up Billy Bob Lafleur.’
Dwayne and the others were now eyeing Ben more hesitantly. ‘Is that a fact?’ Dwayne said, with as much bravado as he could sum up. ‘Don’t mean shit if he did. Lafleur’s a fuckin’ pussy faggot. Hell, my grandmother could whip his ass.’
But now their curiosity was stronger than their fighting spirit. ‘You the guy, mister?’
‘Forget it,’ Ben said. He picked up his bags, turned and kept walking. Dwayne Skinner and his pals instantly started up a chorus of chicken sounds, strutting and flapping bent arms like wings. They would never, ever know how lucky they were.
‘Changed your mind, huh?’ Lottie said as he caught up with her, handing him back the Tahoe key with a look of immense relief.
He shrugged and replied, ‘Five against one. It wouldn’t have been a fair fight.’
They walked in silence back to the vehicle. Ben’s arms and legs were tingling and trembly from the pent-up adrenalin that would now slowly start to reabsorb into his system. It was a familiar feeling. All combat soldiers were used to it. Nine times out of ten, whenever his old SAS unit had been all kitted out and psyched up for battle, they’d been stood down and had to return to their quarters to shake off all the tension. But what wasn’t such a familiar feeling, and one he disliked intensely, was being recognised everywhere he went. Damn and blast Dickie Thibodeaux from the Courier, or whatever his rag was called. Ben should have smashed the photographer’s camera when he’d had the chance.
They reached the parked Tahoe, and Ben blipped the central locking and opened the rear hatch and loaded in the mass of groceries, which filled only a fraction of the cargo space. Only when they climbed aboard and Ben started the engine did Lottie reach across to touch his arm and break into a dazzling smile. ‘Wow. There was me thinkin’ there were no gentlemen left in this world. Thank you.’
‘For what? Nothing happened.’
‘You kiddin’ me? A lot happened. You stood up for a lady. Even though you hardly know me and we only just met. And that’s somethin’.’
Ben replied, ‘We’re shopping for groceries together and you’re going to cook me dinner. In some countries that’s the same as being married.’
She laughed. ‘Maybe. But trash like Dwayne Skinner ain’t worth gettin’ beat up over, not for my sake.’
‘Who said anything about getting beaten up?’
By the time they reached Chitimacha, Ben had relaxed and mostly forgotten about it. He helped Lottie unload the groceries and bring everything inside. With her larder replenished and all her ingredients for the cooking session laid out systematically on her gleaming kitchen surfaces, Lottie said, ‘Oh joy.’ She rolled up her sleeves, donned a well-used and appropriately-stained apron that said LEITHS SCHOOL OF FOOD AND WINE, and got to work with a fiercely concentrated gusto that was awesome to behold.
It soon became obvious that Ben’s presence in the kitchen was getting in her way, and so he left her to it and wandered out to the garden for a cigarette. As he smoked, out of a kind of morbid curiosity he googled up ‘Clovis Parish Louisiana local news’ on his burner phone and found the Courier’s website. Sure enough, there next to D. Thibodeaux’s trashy and sensationalistic article on the attempted liquor store holdup was the photo of Ben taken outside the Bayou Inn.
Which, needless to say, was how Dwayne Skinner’s buddy had recognised him.
Damn it, once again.
The rest of the afternoon passed languorously. It still felt odd to Ben to have so little to do except mooch about the guesthouse and wait for evening to come. When it finally did, he was in for an eye-opener. Whatever reservations he might have been holding on to about Cajun cooking were soon to be blown away as Lottie seated him at her immaculately set, candlelit table and began lifting lids off steaming dishes of the most beguiling food he’d ever encountered.
‘So this is gumbo,’ he said, gazing at the vast helping she’d put on his plate.
‘No, this is Lottie’s gumbo,’ she corrected him with a gleeful laugh. ‘I’m spoilin’ you for anyone else. Now, please. Don’t talk. Eat.’
Ben willingly obeyed the command. The gumbo was a rich, sumptuous meat stew made from chicken and andouille sausage cooked with celery and bell peppers and onion, all melted together on a glutinous and indecently flavoursome bed of what Lottie called dirty rice. If this was dirt, he was happy to gobble it down, three or four heaped forkfuls to Lottie’s every one.
‘What’s that seasoning?’ he tried to ask, but his mouth was too crammed full to speak. He chewed, swallowed and repeated the question more coherently, and Lottie explained that it was something called filé, which was a classic Cajun spice that came from dried leaves of the sassafras tree and was used for flavour and thickening. She said, ‘My opinion, some Louisiana cooks, like
those Creole folks along the Cane River, lay on the filé till you can’t taste nothin’ else. I like to mix it up with okra for a more subtle effect.’
The delicious concoction was accompanied by a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc so chilled that it numbed the tongue. Ben was generally more of a red wine person, but the pairing was perfect. He ate and drank, but especially ate. Lottie seemed delighted with his enthusiasm for her cooking. After two platefuls he wanted to stop, though somehow the fork just wouldn’t leave his hand. Or stop shovelling food up to his mouth.
It was just as well he didn’t live here. Too much of this stuff, and his daily runs would start to become a waddling stagger.
‘So, you like it, huh?’ Lottie said. Fishing for compliments, naturally.
Ben managed to pause between mouthfuls and looked her in the eye across the table. ‘When I get home, you know the first thing I’m going to do? I’m going to call up whoever compiles the Oxford English Dictionary.’
‘Oh really, and why’s that?’ she said, showing every one of her white teeth in a beaming smile, knowing a compliment was coming and loving the anticipation.
‘Because if they’re not specifically mentioning your cooking, they’re seriously misdefining the word “tasty”.’
For dessert Lottie had whipped up a Southern-style chocolate gravy sauce, which she poured over beignets so rich in eggs and butter that Ben was amazed he didn’t drop dead right there of heart failure. What a way to die, though, if he had. When the last crumb was gone he leaned back in his chair, clutched his belly and said, ‘That’s it. That’s all I can take.’
Chapter 10
Lottie said, ‘How ’bout we retreat to the salon for a lil’ drink?’
She put on an Aretha Franklin CD and they sat in her soft, comfortable armchairs either side of a coffee table. When she proposed an after-dinner tot of rum, Ben had a better idea. He’d eaten so much that he wasn’t sure he could haul himself out of the armchair, but with a manful effort managed to lurch to his feet and run up to the top floor to unbuckle his bag and fetch out the bottle of twelve-year-old Glenmorangie he’d bought from Elmo Gillis. It was still unopened. Tonight seemed like the ideal occasion. He carried the bottle back downstairs. Lottie grabbed a pair of crystal tumblers from a sideboard and they happily attacked the Scottish nectar as Aretha sang about r-e-s-p-e-c-t.
In between refills of whisky, of which there were many, Lottie filled in the gaps in her life story. Her first ten years had been spent growing up as an only child on a tiny chicken farm just outside Chitimacha. It was right on the site of a Civil War battlefield, where a bloody little skirmish had taken place between rebel holdouts and a superior force of invading Union troops in the final days before Lee’s surrender. She remembered how the chickens were always scratching old musket bullets up out of the ground.
‘Poppy could’ve made more money from sellin’ the lead for fishin’ weights than he ever done from raisin’ poultry,’ she reflected.
Her father’s lack of talent as a farmer had eventually led them to sell up and move into town, where he ended up wandering miserably from one menial job to another. Life hadn’t been easy for the family, which she speculated might have been why the seventeen-year-old Charlotte Landreneau had run away to the ‘big city’ to rashly marry Neville Dupré. Neville was sixteen years older and well-to-do, and had the distinction of being the first and only African-American dentist ever to set up a practice in Villeneuve. He was also, it later turned out, a violent control freak who somehow contrived to keep no fewer than four mistresses scattered about Clovis Parish, who between them had borne him six children. For Lottie, never having been able to have any of her own, it had been the cruellest kind of betrayal.
‘I guess we all have our secrets,’ she said. ‘Just took me a long time to find out what that sumbitch was up to all them years.’
‘I’m sorry.’
She looked at him. ‘Do you keep secrets, Ben?’
‘Not that kind,’ he said, struck by the directness of her question.
‘I have a secret,’ she said. ‘One that goes back a long, long time. Momma told me when I was a lil’ girl. She said never to pass it on to another livin’ soul, ’cause folks would hate us for it.’
‘Why would they hate you?’
‘History,’ she said with a shrug. ‘History matters a lot here in the South. Like the song, you know? I wish I was in the land of cotton; old times there are not forgotten.’
‘Dixie,’ Ben said. ‘So are you going to tell me?’
‘Tell you what?’
‘Your secret. I’m intrigued.’
She smiled. ‘You’re a livin’ soul, ain’t you?’
‘Managed to stay that way until now.’
‘Then I can’t. Don’t take it personal.’
‘Fair enough,’ he said.
‘Let’s change the subject,’ she said. ‘You never told me much about yo’self, Ben. What do you do for a livin’?’
‘I’m a restaurant inspector for the US Health Department.’
‘Oh, come on now.’
‘I’m a teacher.’
‘Maths? English? Geography?’
‘No, I teach people to do some of the things I used to do. Like how to protect folks who need protection, or help people who’re in danger. Stuff like that.’
‘Now I’m the one who’s intrigued,’ she said. She watched him curiously for a moment, then added, ‘You don’t like to talk about yo’self much, do you, sugah?’
‘It’s kind of a habit with me,’ he admitted.
‘So I ain’t the only one who keeps secrets. Well, I guess that makes me feel better. You married?’
‘Once upon a time.’
‘Kids?’
‘Just the one. He’s grown up now.’
‘Family?’
‘My parents died a long time ago. I have a sister. Haven’t talked to her in a while.’
‘You should. Even though my folks are both passed now, there ain’t a day I don’t think about them and pray to my Lord to keep a special eye out for the both of them. God and family, that’s all there is. That’s my strength.’
‘I haven’t talked to Him in a while either,’ Ben said.
‘He ain’t forgotten you,’ Lottie said. ‘He watches over all of us, ever’ moment of ever’ day.’
‘I used to think that way, too.’
‘So what changed?’
Now it was Ben’s turn to want to change the subject. That was a part of his life he definitely didn’t wish to discuss and he regretted having raised it.
‘Let’s have another drink.’ He held up the bottle. There was surprisingly little left. He was a fairly hardened whisky drinker and it took a lot to make his head spin. He’d have been lying if he’d said it wasn’t spinning now. Lottie seemed more or less unaffected, apart from maybe a very slight thickening of her tongue and the very fact that she’d brought up the subject of her mysterious secret. He suspected that she was itching to tell, but wasn’t yet drunk enough. Maybe he should have bought two bottles from Elmo instead of just the one.
‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve never known a woman who could knock back the scotch the way you can,’ he said as he emptied the last of the Glenmorangie into their glasses.
‘Fulla surprises, ain’t I?’
‘I’ll drink to that.’
When at last the whisky was finished, Ben was ready for bed. He thanked her for a wonderful dinner and a pleasant evening. She said, ‘Why don’t you stay a week or two longer?’ and they both laughed.
He gave her a hug and then trudged up to his room. He thought about retracting the pull-down staircase behind him, then decided against it. The combination of the white wine and the scotch was kicking in harder now, everything whirling a little. There seemed to be two beds in the room, both of them gently swirling around in circles in front of his eyes, and for a moment it was hard to decide which one to crash into fully clothed, jeans, boots and all.
‘I’m
getting too old for this kind of nonsense,’ he muttered to himself. Then his head hit the pillow and he closed his eyes and was instantly asleep.
He dreamed fitfully, the kind of ethereal reverie that seems vivid at the time but is burst like a bubble in the morning, forever lost to memory. It was through his dreaming that he heard the strange sounds that some more focused part of his mind told him weren’t imaginary. His eyes snapped open and he sat upright.
He definitely hadn’t dreamed it. A thump that had seemed to resonate through the floor beneath him. Followed by the crash and tinkle of breaking glass. Some kind of commotion. And it had come not from outside, but from somewhere in the house. From downstairs.
And then he heard another sound that blew away the last fog of sleep and whisky, and had him jackknifing out of bed in alarm.
The sound of a woman’s scream of terror.
Followed a moment later by another cry. A much worse sound, of a very different nature, the kind of wailing shriek that can only be caused by the most unspeakable kind of agony.
Ben ran for the bedroom door.
Chapter 11
He crossed the pitch blackness of the attic bedroom in two long strides and tore open the door. The little landing outside his room was every bit as dark. The world of the blind. And the deaf, too, because now all he could hear from below was dead silence.
He called out, ‘Lottie?’ Heard the tension in his own voice. Trying to understand where the screams had come from. It was a big house. They could have come from anywhere on the two floors below him.
No reply.
He hurried down the drop-down stairs to the first-floor landing, which was dimly illuminated by a narrow chink of light escaping from Lottie’s part-open bedroom door. He hesitated, then ran along the landing to the door and peered inside. The room was large and cosy, and empty. The light was coming from a little wall lamp above the double bed. The covers were rumpled aside, as though she must have got out of bed in a rush. Ben’s pulse was quickening as he ran back along the landing. The luminous green skeleton hands of his watch told him it was 4.13 a.m. He stopped again at the head of the stairs, listening hard.
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