82 Desire

by Smith, Julie

  Bebe shrugged, tears coming to her eyes. She was on the edge.

  “I’m really sorry you had to go through that.”

  “The phone’s been ringing off the hook.”

  “Hate calls?”

  “Some of each. A lot of people think I ought to resign.”

  Skip was silent, thinking that maybe she ought to; also that, this being Louisiana, the whole thing would be quickly forgotten if she didn’t. Or it would if Bebe were a man. Skip didn’t know if a double standard applied or not—it hadn’t been tested that she knew of.

  Bebe said, “Maybe I ought to.”

  “Maybe—”

  “Do you know what some of them are saying? Some of them think I killed Russell.”

  And did you? Skip thought.

  “Omigod, Ernest LaBarre! What was I thinking of?”

  There was so much regret in her voice she couldn’t be faking it—but that didn’t get her off the hook.

  By now, they’d reached the comfortable den in the back of the house. A young woman sat in one of the leather chairs, body curled around a phone that she now put in her lap. Skip could see that the girl was nearly as tall as she herself. She was slender and slightly stooped and she had brown hair that hung more or less artlessly. She wore no makeup, but her hair had been highlighted. Her face was set in as obvious a pout as ever was seen on a five-year-old.

  Bebe said, “Oh! Eugenie. I didn’t know you were there.”

  “Obviously not, Mother.”

  “This is Detective Langdon.”

  A tiny exclamation escaped the girl. She stood up to shake hands, wiping the pout off her face.

  Ah, Skip thought. Respect. I should get it more often.

  “You’re here about my father?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any news?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  The girl seemed crestfallen and Skip couldn’t blame her. She said, “You must be close to your father.”

  Eugenie shook her head. “Not really. But he’s my father.” She gave Skip a smile that might have been slightly guilty, said, “Nice meeting you,” and left the room.

  Skip turned back to Bebe, who was staring after the girl, heartbreak so obviously written on her face that Skip had to feel sorry for her.

  Bebe said, “Sit down.”

  Skip didn’t remind her of any of their previous conversations. Bebe had had time to think about things and might have a different take on them now. “I was thinking,” she said. “Who knew about you and LaBarre?”

  Bebe shrugged. “Nobody. Think about it. Who would I tell?”

  “Could someone have seen you? Someone who might have mentioned it to Russell?”

  “Of course not. We were always very discreet.”

  “Okay, let’s leave that. Would you mind giving this Rolodex a look”—she produced the one Bebe had given her—”and see if any of the names jogs something for you? Is there anyone who had a special relationship with Russell whom he might have confided in?”

  “Confided he was dumping me, you mean?”

  Skip tried to keep her voice even. “If that’s a possibility, yes. But frankly, I think there’s something else—something at work, perhaps.”

  “What do you mean by ‘something’?”

  “A secret of some sort.”

  “You mean criminal activity?”

  “I really don’t know. It could be. He might have known something about someone else.”

  Bebe drew in her breath, seeing what Skip was getting at. She shuffled through the cards while Skip thumbed through a magazine. Skip thought she heard sobs from another room, but it could have been her imagination.

  Finally, Bebe sighed and put the Rolodex aside. “I’m not getting anything.”

  “Okay. How about a phone bill? Let’s see if there’s a calling pattern.”

  Bebe looked at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. And then, having evidently translated, said, “Why not?” And left the room. She walked like someone with very little energy, barely picking her feet up.

  She came back with a sheaf of papers. “Here are a couple of months of Russell’s bills. He and I have separate phones.”

  Skip checked them. “There is a number.” She showed the other woman. “See? Lots of calls and long talks.”

  Bebe said, “Look at this. Fifty minutes. Seventy-four minutes… Russell hates to talk on the phone.”

  Skip said, “Any idea whose number it is?” She had already memorized it, just in case.

  “Sure.” Bebe sounded utterly amazed. “It’s Beau Cavignac’s. Why Beau, I wonder? He’s not… a confidant. At least, I wouldn’t think so.”

  Skip waited.

  “More like a sports buddy.”

  “Mind if I use your phone?” She wanted to avoid the chance of Bebe’s warning him again. “Mr. Cavignac? Skip Langdon.”

  He said, “Who?” but she couldn’t tell if his ignorance was real or feigned.

  “Detective Langdon. Can you meet me at the Third District in fifteen minutes?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get there.”

  “Look, I’ve really got a lot of work…”

  “Lunch will have to wait, Beau.” I wonder, she thought, if anyone calls him Beauzeau. He was a man it was hard to take seriously.

  She hung up. “Bebe, do me a favor and don’t call him this time.”

  She turned red. “That was a bad thing, before, huh? I’m sorry—I just didn’t think.”

  “It’s all right.” It was the way New Orleans was, and the way politicians were. This time, though, Bebe might not make a call—not if she was truly surprised Russell was spending so much time on the phone with Beau.

  And Skip was inclined to trust that. Bebe hadn’t balked at showing her the bill.

  As she left, Eugenie stepped into the hall, holding a cat to her face, cradling it against her cheek. She had on very brief denim shorts, and she was barefoot. Her toenails, Skip thought, were probably the only female ones in the whole neighborhood without polish on them.

  “Do you think you can find my dad?” she asked.

  Skip thought the girl was asking for assurance that her dad was still alive. She didn’t feel confident about giving it.

  But she smiled and nodded, thinking the nod wasn’t really a lie, it could be taken as good-bye. She said, “You take care of that kitty, now,” and it sounded so lame she blushed.

  ***

  Cavignac took half an hour to get to the station, not the fifteen minutes Skip had prescribed. Yet, when he arrived he had the air more of a man who’d been caught in traffic than a manipulator who’d made her wait deliberately.

  He was mopping his brow, and his hair was mussed, as if he’d been playing with it.

  She decided to be the Good Cop. “Nice to see you, Mr. Cavignac. Let’s go sit down, shall we?” He nodded, not speaking, as she turned and led him to an interview room.

  She gestured and smiled. “Sorry the accommodations aren’t a little more elegant.”

  He nodded again, looking slightly annoyed. Evidently, he wasn’t buying the Ms. Niceguy routine.

  She tried again anyhow. “Sit down, won’t you?”

  He sat and so did she. “I’m missing an appointment, Ms. Langdon.”

  She looked at her watch. “Ah, twelve-thirty. Due at the Pickwick Club?”

  “Ma’am, what can I do for you?” His voice was openly hostile. She thought he meant it to be icy, but he couldn’t quite pull it off. He was a bearlike person, a warm person rather than a cool one. Hostility was possible, but not chilliness.

  She did a masterful chill herself. “My name isn’t ma’am, Beau; nor is it Ms. Langdon. It’s Detective Langdon, please.” She smiled an arctic smile. “Or Skip if you like.” Ha. Got him both ways. She’d pulled rank and still given him permission to ignore it—he couldn’t first-name her just to be annoying.

  She didn’t pause to let him call her anything. “I understan
d you and Russell are quite close these days.”

  “I told you that, ma’am.” His eyes had turned to hard little beads.

  Damn him. She felt a quick, electric flash of fury and suppressed it. She didn’t think he was the sort who’d blurt things in the heat of anger. Instead, he’d just get stubborn and intractable.

  She raised a conciliatory palm. “Beau. Beau.” She uttered his name as if patting him. “There’s nothing to be upset about. I need your help, that’s all. Russell might be in danger.”

  He might. You never knew. He might also be dead, or living it up in Tahiti. “I know you and Russell have been in touch a lot lately.”

  She thought she saw a movement somewhere, as if a thumb had jerked in his lap; she couldn’t really be sure. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think Russell had some real problems and he was talking about them to you. Now that makes me think, why you? Do you have the same problem? If so, you could be in danger yourself.”

  “What are you getting at, Detective?”

  He must be cooling down—at least he was using her title. “If something’s happened to Russell, I don’t want it to happen to you.”

  He looked at his watch. “I think I can take care of myself.” He got up.

  “Sit back down, Mr. Cavignac.” (One “Detective” earned him a “Mister.”) “I’m just going to ask you, flat out—why have you and Russell been on the phone so much recently? What were you talking about?”

  “None of your damn business.”

  “Mr. Cavignac. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney …”

  “What the hell are you talking about? You can’t arrest me.”

  “Not now, no. I just wanted to remind you where you are, and to whom you’re speaking. This is a police investigation. When are you going to start taking it seriously?”

  He sat back a little, drawing in his breath. She thought he looked a little shamefaced. “I’m sorry. We’re all under a lot of pressure.”

  Perspiration broke out on his forehead and once again, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he mopped it. “This is hard for me. I feel as if I’m betraying a friend’s confidence.”

  Skip nodded, as reverently, she hoped, as if he’d disclosed the whereabouts of Atlantis.

  Beau said, “He knew about Mrs. Fortier. About her…” he paused and spat out the distasteful word “… affair.”

  “Yes?”

  “He was distraught about it.”

  Once again she nodded.

  “It was … well, you can imagine how upsetting it was.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Tell me?” He looked bewildered. “That’s self-evident, isn’t it? That she was having an affair with Ernest LaBarre. What else was there to say?” Once again, he sounded hostile.

  She wondered if it was all a big fat squishy lie, or just a little dried-up baby lie, maybe with a grain of truth in it. She shrugged. “You tell me. There sure were a lot of phone calls.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Nobody. I saw the phone bills.”

  “Well, you know how people are when they have a problem. ‘My wife’s having an affair and I’m so unhappy I could just die.’ “

  “He threatened suicide?”

  “No! Of course not.”

  “I thought you just said …”

  Beau put up a hand like a traffic cop. “Okay, okay. I see what you’re getting at. It was just a figure of speech. I mean, they say they’re unhappy and then they say it again. You could die of boredom.”

  “And when he said he was unhappy, what did you say?”

  “Me? I don’t know. I just listened, I guess.”

  “Russell made the calls from home. That puzzles me.”

  “Why?” Beau was just too innocent for words.

  “Bebe could hear him.”

  Beau looked almost triumphant, as if they were playing tennis and he’d finally scored. “She was always out at some meeting or other. That was part of the problem.”

  “So you think he left her? “

  He looked like a person who’d just found a lost child. He nodded emphatically. “I do. I really do.”

  “Why didn’t you say so before?”

  “The LaBarre story hadn’t come out yet. I couldn’t break a confidence.”

  Skip smiled. “You’ve heard from him, haven’t you?”

  “Of course not.” Outrage was written all over his face. But something was off. Had he spoken a little too quickly?

  He took a moment to compose himself. “You know, he’s a pretty different guy lately—I can’t predict what he’ll do.”

  Ha! Maybe we’re getting somewhere. She said, “Different how?”

  “I don’t know. It just seems like he’s lost the old killer instinct. He’s become less competitive, I guess, less interested in his work.”

  “And how long has this been going on?”

  “A couple of years. Since that sailing thing—you know about that?”

  She nodded.

  “I think that really took the starch out of him. After that he seemed like—well, ‘a broken man’ is putting it too strongly, I guess. He’s just seemed kind of subdued. Quieter.” Beau shrugged. “But then his mother died the week after, and his father died a few weeks ago. So let’s see—if your mother died and your wife was having an affair, and your father wasn’t doing so well, maybe you would be subdued.” Beau looked extremely proud of himself.

  “Well, speaking theoretically—if your theory is correct, and Russell did decide to disappear, where would he go? You probably know him better than anybody. What do you think?”

  Beau did a strange thing. He put both hands over his mouth, separated them slightly, spoke briefly, and then put them back. “Let me think,” was what he said. He thought for a full minute.

  In the end, he shook his head. “I just don’t have any idea.” As if as an afterthought, he said, “Your guess is as good as mine.” And shrugged again.

  Fourteen

  RAY WAS SITTING on the levee drinking beer, trying to cheer himself up, convince himself he’d done the right thing, but it was uphill work. He suspected there were lots of bad things he didn’t even know about; consequences of his own actions.

  The river was itself—big and muddy, like its nickname. Big and muddy and inevitable. It was what it was, it flowed like it flowed, and there wasn’t that much could be done about it, unless you were the Corps of Engineers and even then it wasn’t easy. He was trying to find a metaphor for life in this. The levee system was a good thing; the Bonnet Carré Spillway was debatable—both were attempts to control the river. Did that do anything for him? He turned it over in his mind a few times.

  The part that worked for him was the part about big and muddy. Now that described life, or anyway, life’s problems.

  Or anyway, his.

  He thought about chucking his beer can into the river because he was already such worthless scum that one more misdemeanor didn’t matter, but in the end his better nature won out. He put it on the floor of his car and drove home, where he carefully carried it into the house and threw it in the recycling bin.

  The act was like shaving and getting dressed every day even though he had no company to run, and in fact, no job at all. You had to hang on to some vestige of dignity.

  He heard Cille’s car in the driveway. One day a week she worked the early shift, but he’d forgotten it was today, had looked forward to an afternoon of wallowing in his misery.

  The door banged as she came in. “Hi.”

  She was wearing white jeans and a white T-shirt, what passed, these days, for a nurse’s uniform. She was heavier than she’d been when they met, maybe ten or twenty pounds heavier, but it looked good on her. Her hair was no longer blond, because she couldn’t afford to have it colored these days, and remained fairly long because that way she didn’t have to pay to have it cut as often. She generally wore it up, in artful disarray. To Ray, she looked like the prototypical Per
fect Wife, but he knew in his heart she’d still look that way to him if she weighed three hundred pounds.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “Come on.” She moved closer. They were so perfectly in sync she always knew when something was wrong.

  He was sitting at the dining-room table—his makeshift desk—trying to think of something to do. She took another of the chairs. “What is it?” she said.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I just had a beer. I guess it got me depressed.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s all this shit.” He gestured impatiently at the pile of newspaper clippings that, for some masochistic reason, he was collecting. They were clips about the mini-oil boom out in the Gulf.

  “Uh-uh. I don’t buy that. It’s LaBarre’s wife, isn’t it?”

  He had already agonized about this at length—surely he ought to be over it. But Cille knew; she was uncanny that way. He took her hand. “Cille, what if she’d died?”

  His wife shrugged. “If she’d died, it was her time. You didn’t cut her wrists, she did. You didn’t have an affair with Bebe, Ernest LaBarre did.”

  “That sounds so cold.”

  She squeezed the hand she was holding. “I know, sweetheart. I know. But you want to see cold? Look at United Oil if you want to see cold.”

  “Mrs. LaBarre isn’t United Oil. Even Bebe isn’t. Hell, if it comes to that, even United Oil isn’t. The very brilliant Baroness de Pontalba proved that—I think.”

  “Bebe might have known.”

  “Oh, honey, maybe. Maybe not. The point is, maybe I’ve gone too far. How do I know I’m not out of control?”

  She gave his hand another squeeze, let it go, and got up. “Because your own sweet wife says so.”

  She really thought he could do no wrong.

  It was her money he’d used to start the company. That night when he met her, the night she wore lilac and he fell in love with her, he had no idea she had two nickels to rub together. All that talk about starting a foundation, it turned out, was something more than idle chatter. She could have if she’d wanted to.