No Mardi Gras for the Dead

by D. J. Donaldson

  Near the end of the news, she developed a headache that began behind her eyes and quickly diffused into an ache of uncertain location. She clicked off the TV, went into the bathroom, and took two aspirin. Going to the bedroom, she lay down for a few minutes that lasted until sunup.

  *

  * *

  On the way home, Broussard picked up two large redfish fillets at a market that bought directly from local fishermen and boasted, “Our fish are so fresh, it’s like they were faxed to us.”

  To the sounds of Stravinsky’s Petrouchka played by the Boston Symphony, he turned the fillets into redfish meunière with a pecan-butter sauce, surrounded by new potatoes and slices of glazed carrots and cucumbers. Since he had exhibited some restraint by preparing only two fillets, he had ample room for a generous helping of the bread pudding with lemon sauce and Chantilly cream he had made the night before.

  After dinner, he brought Princess, his Abyssinian cat, in from the garage and she sat in his lap purring while he read several articles in the Journal of Forensic Sciences. In an article discussing the proper design of an autopsy room’s ventilation system that would make it safe to work on cyanide victims, whose stomachs routinely liberate dangerous amounts of hydrogen cyanide when they’re opened, he noticed an error in the author’s calculations of air turnover. Unable to let such an error go uncorrected, he put the cat down and went to his desk, where he drafted a polite letter alerting the journal to the problem.

  With that finished, he went back to his recliner and picked up a limp paperback that was part of his continuing quest to read every novel written by Louis L’Amour. This one, Son of a Wanted Man, a copy he’d found in The Book Mart on Calhoun, would make—what was it? He opened the folded list he was using for a bookmark and checked… number forty-two. Only forty-four to go. Reading them was the easy part. Finding them was what slowed him down. But that was also much of the fun.

  He put the bookmark on the table next to the chair and sat with the book in his lap, reflecting on how nice it was to have Charlie on call. Broussard loved his work, but being on call did get under your skin, part of you always waiting for the phone to ring, your pulse racing when it did. It was good to be able to relax fully occasionally.

  He began to read, but every few minutes he would detect in L’Amour’s starry western sky heavenly bodies shaped like pyramidal cells and would see dumbbell shapes among the sagebrush.

  He finished his book around 10:30 and rose to get ready for bed. Before throwing his shirt in the dirty-clothes hamper, he checked the pockets and found Elizabeth Louvier’s card. He looked at it for a lingering moment. Deciding that he was too old for such foolishness, he walked to the bathroom wastebasket and dropped the card into it, a gesture of questionable sincerity, since he had memorized her number.

  Later, between the sheets, he dreamed, not of Elizabeth Louvier but of a train. He was standing on the track, his eyes fixed on the faraway point where the tracks seemed to merge. At first, he could see only faint puffs of steam. Then, through his feet, he could feel the vibrations of wheels. The train itself came into view, menacingly black, looming larger by the second, the thunder of metal on metal hammering in his head, coming closer. He tried to jump aside, but his feet were fused to the cross ties. It was upon him and there was an explosion that sent a black bar hurtling into a cloudless blue sky. Abruptly, the dream ended and he slept peacefully the rest of the night.

  19

  It was now time to pick up Grandma O. As Kit drove toward the restaurant, she mulled over the critical piece of information she had just obtained in her investigation of the police shooting. The clerk at the toy store where the victim bought the gun remembered him saying, “I bet if you pointed this at a cop, he’d shit.” The comment was too cryptic to determine whether the victim had wanted to die or was just pulling a stupid prank. In any event, it corroborated the cop’s story about thinking he was in danger, and would likely clear him.

  Her rear tires were barely into the restaurant parking lot when she saw Grandma O coming toward the car. With her was Bubba.

  “You a little late, Doc,” Grandma O said.

  In a world filled with uncertainty and change, Oustellette fashion was a constant. Grandma O was dressed as always, in so much black taffeta that Kit wondered whether her little car was big enough to hold the woman. As for Bubba, Kit imagined his closet: a row of green baseball caps on the shelf, the bills all pointing forward; next to them, a stack of navy blue T-shirts; under the shelf, a dozen pairs of navy coveralls.

  “Guess Ah’m a surprise,” Bubba said.

  “When Ah tol’ Bubba ’bout dem two men, he insisted on comin’ along to see dat we don’ get in trouble,” Grandma O explained. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  “Absolutely not. I welcome the help.”

  To one not acquainted with Bubba, Kit’s comment might have seemed patronizing, since outwardly he was physically no match for Floyd and Boyd. But Kit knew from past experience that there was more to Bubba than was obvious. As for Grandma O needing Bubba to protect her, things would have to get pretty ugly before they exceeded her ability, considering that Kit had once seen her tear a bottle cap in half with her bare fingers, then cackle happily.

  With the passenger seat pushed back as far as it would go, Grandma O managed to get herself and all of her dress inside the car, but she didn’t look very comfortable. They were barely under way when Grandma O said, “So, Doc Franklyn, how you an’ dat alligator farmer gettin’ along? You close to haulin’ him in? Ah know dat’s a nosy question, but Ah’m a nosy ol’ lady.”

  “We’re sort of at an impasse.”

  “Who made it, you or him?”

  “Little of both, I think.”

  “A woman needs a man,” Grandma O said. “In fac’, Ah been thinkin’ of gettin’ married again mahself, but Ah can’t fin’ none anywhere near da man mah husban’ was. So if you got a good one, you need to hang on to him, an’ when you get him…” She looked at Bubba in the backseat. “Bubba put your hands over your ears.”

  Bubba did as she asked and she said to him, “Can you hear me?”

  Bubba shook his head.

  “Den how come you know what Ah jus’ said. Tighter now….” Satisfied that he couldn’t hear, she leaned toward Kit and screened her mouth from Bubba with her left hand. “Dere’s a sayin’ aroun’ Houma dat when you take a Houma girl to bed, you better wear a thick shirt.”

  “I don’t—” Kit began.

  She lowered her voice. “Dat means you likely to get scratched if you don’. A man never divorces a Houma girl.” She patted Kit’s arm. “So if you get dat alligator farmer, dat’s how to keep him.” She looked at Bubba and nodded.

  He took his hands from his ears and said, “Doc, can we stop at dat McDonald’s?”

  “You can’t be hungry, all Ah fed you before we left,” Grandma O said.

  “It’s not dat.”

  “What den?”

  In the mirror, Kit saw Bubba blush.

  “Speak up boy,” Grandma O urged. “Ain’t no mind readers here.”

  “Ah have to…” Bubba searched for a way to express what he wanted. Then his face brightened. “Ah have to take a Macwhiz.”

  *

  * *

  Arriving at the Sonnier house thirty minutes later, Kit drew a sharp breath. There was nothing left of its roof but blackened timbers that arched starkly against the sky like charred fish bones. The glass in the storm door was broken out and the inner door gaped open. Floyd and Boyd were poking around in the carbonized remains of a sofa in the yard but looked up at the sound of Kit’s car on the oyster shells out front.

  As Kit and her passengers got out of the car, their nostrils were filled with the sour smell of the family’s burned possessions. Floyd and Boyd came toward them, anger written on their faces and in their fists. Kit’s finger went to the button on her Mace.

  Floyd bellied up to Kit and leaned into her face. “Ain’t you done enough?”

  Not
wanting to upset Eugenie by pepper spraying one of her sons, Kit stepped back. “What do you mean? I had nothing to do with this.”

  “Ain’t no way we’re gonna believe that. You come nosin’ around, askin’ questions. Then that same night, we get burned out. You brought this on us all right and we figure we owe you.”

  He rocked back on his heels to throw a punch, but Grandma O put her foot in his belly and pushed him off balance. Cursing, his brother aimed a fist at Grandma O, but she stepped aside and he stumbled past her, his momentum carrying him into the front of Kit’s car, where his head made a dent in the grill. He slid to the ground and rolled onto his back, moaning and holding his head. Floyd came at Kit again. This time she was ready to spray him, but before she could, Bubba moved between them.

  “Step back,” Bubba ordered.

  Floyd grabbed Bubba and lifted him like a child, his hands in Bubba’s armpits. “Or what, shorty?” Floyd said, holding Bubba’s face level with his own.

  “Or dis,” Bubba said, pulling a large pistol from the pocket of his coveralls and putting the barrel against Floyd’s left ear. “Sometimes Ah can make da bullet come right out da opposite ear,” Bubba said, “but usually it don’t.”

  “I’m puttin’ you down,” Floyd said.

  “Dat’s what got you in dis mess in da first place,” Bubba said.

  “What do you want, then?”

  “Go ahead… but take it slow.”

  Floyd gently put Bubba on the ground and Bubba took the gun from Floyd’s ear. “Now help dat fella up and both a you sit on da groun’ over dere.”

  When the two brothers were rump to the grass, Bubba looked at Kit. “Ah think dey ready to behave now.”

  Kit moved closer. “What happened here?”

  Floyd shaded his eyes with his hand and looked up. “While me and Boyd were out havin’ a few beers and Ma was visitin’ with old lady Hebert, somebody set us afire, as if you didn’t know.”

  “What makes you think it wasn’t an accident?”

  “’Cause the firemen that put it out said it wasn’t.”

  “You said your mother was visiting a friend. She wasn’t hurt, then?”

  “Nahh. She’s okay. There she is now.”

  Kit looked behind her and saw Eugenie Sonnier coming across the road from a small run-down white house whose yard contained a painted statue of the Virgin Mary in a shrine made from a half-buried bathtub. Where yesterday, Eugenie’s face had been streaked with sanding dust, it now bore the strain of losing her home.

  Kit figured that if Eugenie blamed her for the fire, she might be angry enough to speak English, especially since Bubba was holding her sons at gunpoint. But before Kit could find out, Grandma O spoke to Eugenie in French, pointing first at Bubba, then to Floyd and Boyd. The conversation went back and forth for several minutes, Eugenie’s responses seeming to grow less hostile with each exchange. Eventually, she pointed at her burned-out house, then at the house across the street, then down the road, apparently recounting in detail what had taken place.

  Finally, Grandma O looked at Kit. “What you want to ask her?”

  With the house and its contents burned, it all seemed quite hopeless, but Kit said directly to Eugenie, “Did any of your sister’s papers survive the fire?”

  Eugenie might have lost her home but she still had her principles, and she pretended not to hear the question. Grandma O restated it in French and then Eugenie answered, gesturing as she did to the rusting vehicles in the side yard.

  Grandma O turned to Kit. “She say dey weren’ in da house. Dey’re in dat panel truck.”

  Though truly sorry for Eugenie’s losses, Kit’s outlook brightened. “Ask her if I can look at them.”

  Eugenie agreed but said that the keys had been lost in the fire.

  “We don’ need keys,” Bubba said, his free hand digging in his pocket for his Swiss army knife. He jerked his head at Floyd and Boyd. “Dose two gonna be any more trouble?”

  Grandma O said something to Eugenie, who went to her sons and slapped each of them on the head. Leaning ominously over them, her finger pointing to the grocery next door, she then said the only English word Kit ever heard from her—“Git.”

  Floyd and Boyd got off the ground and went back to the car seat on the grocery’s front porch, where Kit had first seen them. Eugenie returned to the air-conditioned house across the road.

  Bubba pocketed the pistol and headed for the panel truck, Kit and Grandma O following through calf-high weeds. Reaching the truck, Bubba began to work on the rear door lock with a pick he had previously made from one of the blades on his knife.

  It had been unbearably hot standing in the yard, but here, surrounded by metal that radiated the sun’s heat, it was much worse. Sweat beaded up on Kit’s upper lip and forehead and trickled down her back. Grandma O fanned herself with her hand. Sweat soaked through the back of Bubba’s coveralls as he poked his probe delicately into the lock.

  Bubba worked at the lock for only a few minutes. Because of the heat, the two women were convinced it was much longer. He stood up and tried the door, but it didn’t open.

  “Mus’ be rusted shut,” he said.

  “Lemme try,” Grandma O said, She took hold of the handle, put her foot on the bumper, and tore the door open, its rusty hinges screaming in protest. Heat poured from the van in shimmering waves that backed them all away.

  “We gonna need some ventilation in dere,” Bubba said. He went to the truck and climbed in. A few seconds later, the door on the driver’s side squealed open. Crossing to the other side, he kicked the passenger door open, then climbed out and came back to where Kit and Grandma O waited, his face flushed from the heat.

  Kit stepped up to the truck and looked in. It was filled with cardboard file boxes and bundles of newspapers. On some of the boxes, she could see dates scrawled in black.

  “If you want, Ah can hand dem boxes out one at a time an’ you can look through ’em in da car, where it’s cool,” Bubba suggested.

  “We won’t need all of them,” Kit said, “only the ones for 1962, ’63, ’64’, and ’65.”

  “Ah’ll get ’em,” Bubba said, climbing in.

  Kit offered her car keys to Grandma O. “How about getting the air conditioning going for us?”

  “You ain’t takin’ pity on a ol’ woman cause of da heat, are you?”

  “Grandma O, there’s nothing about you that evokes pity.”

  “Jus’ checkin’,” she said, taking the keys.

  Bubba appeared in the truck’s door opening with a box. “Nineteen sixty-four,” he said.

  Kit took the box from him and put it on the ground, sweat pearling from every pore.

  Another box: “1962.”

  She set that one on the first. Sixty-three went on top of that, and ’65 on top of that.

  Bubba jumped from the truck. “Which one you want first?”

  “Doesn’t matter… the one on top.”

  Bubba carried the paper record of Shirley Guillot’s life for 1965 to the car. Kit got into the back and Bubba put the box on the seat beside her. Then he got in the front seat and shut the door.

  “You two look so hot, you makin’ me feel guilty,” Grandma O said, remarkably freshened compared to her appearance five minutes earlier.

  For awhile, Kit and Bubba simply sat and enjoyed the wonderful sensation of cool air blowing across their steaming bodies. Then Kit took the top off the box and began going through the contents.

  The box was only about three-quarters full, but the files in it were held upright by an adjustable crossbar. All the files were labeled in a neat hand.

  In back was a thick file containing the year’s “Dear Abby” articles from the newspaper. In front of that, another contained Ann Landers’s columns from the same period. The rest of the box was devoted to business papers arranged so that the records for each of her properties occupied a different section. Within a section, there was a folder for repairs/maintenance—general, several for repairs/mai
ntenance of specific apartments, as well as folders for property taxes, insurance, utilities (general), or utilities for specific apartments. And most importantly, each section had a file for leases.

  She flipped through the box until she found the section devoted to her own house, then searched for the lease file, her pulse quickening as she realized how close she was to a potentially significant discovery.

  There it was.

  She pulled the lease from the file and unfolded it. Her eyes went to the bottom, looking for signatures. There were four of them: Shirley Guillot and… three other names she didn’t recognize. She let her hands drop to her lap.

  “Didn’ find what you were lookin’ for?” Grandma O asked.

  “No.”

  “Dere’s more boxes out dere,” Bubba said. “You want another one?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  The next box covered 1963. Three tenants had also signed that lease, none of them repeats from 1965, none of them people Kit knew.

  “Agin?” Bubba said, seeing the look on her face. She nodded and he gamely got out of the car, wrestled the box from the backseat, and went for the next one.

  The lease signed in 1962 contained two of the same names as in 1963 and a new one, also unfamiliar to Kit.

  “When you lookin’ for somethin’, you oughta look in da las’ place first,” Bubba said, getting out of the car, “’cause dat’s always where it is.”

  “You ever think about what you say before sayin’ it?” Grandma O asked.

  Bubba looked at her in surprise. “Person did dat, dey wouldn’ ever say anything.” As Bubba brought the box for 1964, Kit noticed water stains on the bottom that extended up the sides for three or four inches. With a sinking feeling, she searched for the lease, hoping that it wasn’t… She found the file and removed the lease, the water stains that had crept into it from its lower-left edge crushing her spirit.