by Julie Smith
At least that one made her smile. She’d been longing lately for Janessa, no longer feeling it her duty or some adventure or learning experience to find a sister, but a real need. Why, she didn’t have a clue. It could have had to do with the greater sense of family she’d felt since the birth of Sophia, or the loss she felt for a lot of things, many of them illusions. But it was there, strong and clear.
She went back to Eve’s for a manicure, but the girl was gone. No one could say why or where to. One day she hadn’t shown up for work; end of story.
Without hesitating, though it was the middle of a workday, Talba drove to the house on Mystery Street (another phrase that wasn’t lost on her), raced up the steps and pounded. Either no one was home, or no one chose to answer. She left a note, which she followed up with a letter and phone calls, but it seemed Janessa didn’t want to be found.
Talba had unwittingly done her sister an evil turn when they were children—not mischievous, truly evil—and the thought that the girl might know and hate her for it clutched at her.
It was the act of a child—nothing she could even remember in the usual sense, but she had done hideous, irreparable damage to that girl. Perhaps that was why she needed her now—to do something good, something to start to commence to begin (as Miz Clara sometimes said) to make up for it.
She made up a big pot of red beans and rice and took it to the Reverend Scruggs. “How’s Ella today?”
“She is… barely with us, I’m afraid. Her light, her beautiful light, is shining its last.”
“I’m so sorry, Reverend.”
He patted his belly. “But we have been eating well, thanks to you. Miz Lura Blanchard has been many times to see us, always bringing something fine and nourishing. Of course Ella barely touches anything, but I have benefited greatly. Thank you kindly for remembering us to her.”
Another funny phrase: “to remember” one person to another. She thought it meant to say hello by proxy, which she hadn’t. She spoke before she thought. “I’m glad something worked out.”
Reverend Scruggs smiled, eyes twinkling. He seemed to be making his peace with Ella’s imminent death. “Are you in need of pastoral counseling, child?”
“You know, I could probably use some.”
“Feel at liberty to unburden your soul.”
Talba laughed, pretending to check her watch. “Have you got about a week and a half?”
“I have all the time in the world, except when Ella needs me.”
“I just dropped by to tell you I found my baby sister.”
“Congratulations, Sandra. I’m happy to hear it.”
“Finding her was easy. Dealing with it is something else again. I had very weird feelings about her. Snobbish, sort of. She looked like so many girls you see on the street—fat, sloppy… aimless, I guess. I didn’t think I had anything in common with her. But then I started thinking about it—about what would make a person like that. She has no mother, and her aunt more or less hates her. She’s living with a family that might be very nice—I met the mother and she certainly seemed to be—but they probably have no time for her, either. Anyway, I thought maybe… I don’t know, maybe I could do something for her. And then I realized I also wanted to get to know her; I just wanted her in my life.”
“What could be wrong with that?”
“She rejected me. Doesn’t answer my letters, phone calls, anything.”
“Have you tried e-mail?”
Talba was shocked. She hadn’t even thought of it. “She wouldn’t… I don’t think…”
“Perhaps you underestimate her. I have one thing to say to you, Sandra. Ecclesiastes 3.”
“What?”
“Borrow Miz Clara’s Bible. Something tells me you don’t have one yourself.”
She left, promising to come back and knowing it would be soon, when Ella died. On the whole, she felt the worse for the visit.
But out of curiosity, she got Miz Clara’s Bible and looked up the verses. The chapter was really a poem, one she’d known a long time ago, and a version of the one she never wrote, the one about the inevitability not only of death but of life, which had hovered in her when Clayton died and Michelle lived and Sophia was born.
It was the passage that began, “To everything there is a season,” and it made her feel as settled and serene as anything had lately.
But that wasn’t saying a hell of a lot. At the moment it wasn’t all that comforting that somone had written hundreds of years ago that there was “a time to kill.” Killing seemed to have gone into overtime lately.
Exactly when, she thought, is it going to be time for Trey Patterson to go to jail?
The answer was never. In Louisiana, the statute of limitation on aggravated battery was four years, and on attempted murder, six. It had been more than sixteen since the crime and nobody in Clayton wanted to prosecute, anyhow. In Talba’s mind, the worst criminals were King and Deborah Patterson, who betrayed their own daughter. When were they going to be punished, or even realize what they’d done?
Never.
And how about John Earl Macquet?
When hell froze over, maybe. Without a confession from the Underwoods, the police had nothing.
Talba sat down and wrote her own damn poem, which she read at Reggie and Chaz the following week, wearing batik pants and matching flowing top printed in gold and black, a combination she happened to know was stunning on her. She accessorized with a turquoise medallion and earrings, along with an African pillbox-style hat, mostly red, heavily embroidered with gold. According to her mama, she looked like “some fool who’s been to one too many rummage sales,” but Miz Clara was wrong, of course.
She looked every inch a baroness.
It was her second reading since Stan was arrested, and Janessa had missed the first, though Talba followed up on her original, impulsive invitation with a phone message. This time she’d e-mailed her (Reverend Scruggs was right, the girl did have e-mail—she’d gotten her address from the Eve’s Weaves people) and once again, scanning the audience, Talba didn’t see her. Darryl was here, though, and three other people she’d specially invited—Skip Langdon, with whom she was trying to make up; Jason Wheelock, who was still struggling with his own “closure”; and Mary Pat Sutherland, with whom she’d had coffee twice and had started liking after all. She was planning to read the “Three Sisters” poem she’d written for Babalu, and she’d asked both Jason and Mary Pat to read some of Babalu’s poems. She hoped it would turn into a mini-memorial service.
When it was her turn, she said, “I’ve got a new poem to read tonight. I was going to call it ‘Springtime for Clayton,’ but I thought a hundred years from now, when my work is taught in schools and colleges the world over, that might not make a whole lot of sense, so I’m just gonna call it something down-home and unpretentious.” And then she said the name of the poem:
Addendum to Ecclesiastes
I been feeling funny in my head—
uneasy in my mind—
and all messed up.
Lost soul ready-made
For some preacher to preach at;
And I did cook the reverend some beans.
Thought I might cop me a sermon—
Least a homily or something.
But the rev catch on I ain’t no churchlady,
Give me a poem instead.
He say, “To everything there is a season—
A time to be born and a time to die. ”
And I think, no shit, Sherlock.
Been seein’ a lot of them things lately.
Both of ’em.
But I be open-minded,
Think, tell you what here,
I’m gon’ just dance to the rhythms of the universe.
I’m gon’ sow and I’m gon’ plant
Gon’ bust some things and build some things,
Gon’ weep and laugh, gon’ mourn and dance
See—I’m dancin now.
Miz Ella die, I mourn.
Okay, I ca
n do all that.
But that poem say, “To everything there is a season.”
Everything, y’all.
A time for love and a time for hate—
(The Bible really says that)
A time to keep silent, a time to speak
A time to kiss, a time to wait
Well, I can wait—
(Come ’round when you ready, sister girl)
But I ain’t done with this time thing.
I want a time for everything,
Like the reverend says.
I want my time to come.
How ’bout a time for all good men
to come to the aid of the party?
(Any party don’t think it’s crime time)
How ’bout some hard time for somebody deserve it?
Time in for bad behavior
Quittin’ time
For some fine elected crooks;
The time of day
For folks never had
They own sweet time.
Summertime—
When the livin’ is prime time.
Hurry up, please, it’s time!
The time has come, the walrus said,
’Cause time is money here.
Just wrestlin’ with a few things, rev.
I’m gon’ go back now, and
Score me some down time,
Go back to dancin’ to
The rhythms of the universe.
It’s past my bedtime.
Just can’t help thinkin’
As time goes by.
Thinkin’ maybe time’s a wastin’ here.
How ’bout some
Equal time?
THE END
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The next novel in the Talba Wallis series is LOUISIANA LAMENT .
The Talba Wallis Series
LOUISIANA HOTSHOT
LOUISIANA BIGSHOT
LOUISIANA LAMENT
P.I. ON A HOT TIN ROOF
Also by Julie Smith:
The Skip Langdon Series
NEW ORLEANS MOURNING
THE AXEMAN’S JAZZ
JAZZ FUNERAL
DEATH BEFORE FACEBOOK
(formerly NEW ORLEANS BEAT)
HOUSE OF BLUES
THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS
CRESCENT CITY CONNECTION
(formerly CRESCENT CITY KILL)
82 DESIRE
MEAN WOMAN BLUES
The Rebecca Schwartz Series
DEATH TURNS A TRICK
THE SOURDOUGH WARS
TOURIST TRAP
DEAD IN THE WATER
OTHER PEOPLE’S SKELETONS
The Paul Mcdonald Series
TRUE-LIFE ADVENTURE
HUCKLEBERRY FIEND
As Well As
WRITING YOUR WAY: THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL TRACK
NEW ORLEANS NOIR (ed.)
And don’t miss ALWAYS OTHELLO, a Skip Langdon story, as well as the brand new short story, PRIVATE CHICK, which asks the question, “Is this country ready for a drag queen detective?” More info at www.booksBnimble.com.
Acknowledgments
It takes at least a village to write a book. My heartfelt thanks to my fellow villagers: Police Captain Linda Buczek, Doctors Ken White, James Robinson, and Mary Frances Gardner; attorneys Mary Howell and Jim Petersen; office mavens Kathy Perry and Randy Weaver; independent experts Betsy Petersen and Kit Wohl; and PI Fay Faron.
Extra thanks to another PI—Lasson Legros, mon professeur. If Eddie is becoming increasingly Lasson-like, it may be no accident. If Talba is, she’s catching on.
Special thanks to the real-life “Sergeant Rouselle” for unwittingly supplying Chapter One.
And eternal thanks to my beloved husband, Lee Pryor, who’s always ready to go exploring.
About the Author
JULIE SMITH is a New Orleans writer and former reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle and the Times-Picayune. New Orleans Mourning, her first novel featuring New Orleans cop Skip Langdon, won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel, and she has since published eight more highly-acclaimed books in the series, plus spun off a second New Orleans series featuring PI and poet Talba Wallis.
She is also the author of the Rebecca Schwartz series and the Paul Mcdonald series, plus the YA novels CURSEBUSTERS! and EXPOSED. In addition to her novels, she’s written numerous essays and short stories and is the editor of NEW ORLEANS NOIR.
LAGNIAPPE: An Excerpt from JULIE SMITH’s MEAN WOMAN BLUES, a Skip Langdon mystery:
May is the cruellest month.
September has its moments, being hurricane season, but its meanness is unreliable. May is a sure thing.
On Mother’s Day, give or take a week or so, the Formosans swarm, only slightly less consistent than the swallows at Capistrano. They continue their inexorable flight, sometimes in terrifying indoor clouds, well into summer.
Formosan termites, accidentally imported some years ago, are eating the city of New Orleans. They are doing it not in bug-sized nibbles, but in greedy gulps that some people say they can actually hear. They swear that in the dark of night, as they lie awake kissing their investments good-bye, they can hear the buzz of so many tiny saws, mandibles chomping their floor boards.
Perhaps they are merely blessed with good imaginations, but a visitor who arrives in the merry month, strolls a few blocks, and finds himself wearing a vest of termites may be inclined to credit them.
The unsuspecting stay-at-home finds himself in a fifties sci fi film. It begins with a single bug. It may fall on his clothing or perhaps the desk upon which he’s writing. He brushes it off and another falls, like an earwig from the eaves of a porch. He looks up and sees a few winged creatures bouncing off the chandelier. Odd, he thinks, and goes back to his reverie. And soon there are more bugs. And more. And more. The room may fill with them, thick shrouds of them, circling, diving, turning the air into a seething dark mass.
It may seem the sensible thing to run screaming for cover, but in fact there is an easier way—our hero can simply turn off the light and they will leave or die. Or he can just wait, if he can stand it. The winged ones, the alates, or breeders, have about a two-hour lifespan, between seven and nine p.m., usually. Unless, of course, they manage to mate, in which case they will start a nest. The largest nest found to date had a diameter of three hundred feet.
Unlike other termites, these can build aerial nests, right in your walls. Brick or stucco houses are fine with them—they’ll eat the doorframes, window sills, picture frames, furniture, and telephone bills, plus your favorite hundred-year-old shade tree. Except for exterminators, who shake their heads and look grim, like oncologists delivering the bad news, they have no natural enemies. The alates, so shocking in their thick swirling clouds, are only a small percentage of the population, according to entomologists. A mature nest may contain five to ten million termites, though seventy million isn’t unheard of.
Formosan termites now infest eleven Southern states, plus California, New Mexico, and Hawaii. Louisiana has the most severe infestation in the world (despite headway being made by state and federal baiting programs), and it is only natural that the bug has become, like the loup-garou (or Cajun were wolf), part of the local mythology.
The stories are legion: An alfresco wedding attacked by somethin
g resembling a Biblical plague. A window shut just in time, as hundreds of tiny bodies, drawn by the light inside, smash as if on a windshield. An ordinary backyard, covered in minutes by a carpet of termites. Fat garbage bags of wings, as many as ten or twelve, shoveled from the floor of a house.
Indeed, the month of May affords a brush with nature rarely seen by urban-dwellers. Those of a metaphorical bent try not to think about the Mother’s Day aspect.
***
Detective Skip Langdon, a veteran of many Mays in New Orleans, was trying to help her beloved through his first, mostly with diversionary tactics. She had seen Steve Steinman’s face when he discovered the termite launching pads on his newly purchased, newly-painted, hundred-and-twenty-year-old ceiling. He looked as if someone had died.
“Am I insured for this?” he said, and she desperately wished there were something she could do. The insurance companies weren’t that dumb.
“Why didn’t they find them when they inspected?” he asked, outraged.
“You can’t know they’re there unless you rip out the walls.”
“Uh-oh. I’ve got a bad feeling that means I’ve got to do that now.”
“Maybe you won’t. They can probably drill holes for the poison.” But she was lying. They might well have to rip out the walls.
No exterminator would be available for weeks, of course, and it’s said the Formosans can go through a floor board in a month. The thing to do was keep his mind off it.
JazzFest was over and the heaviness of summer was nearly upon them; Mother’s Day brunch at a fine old restaurant sounded like a prison sentence. Yet Skip was a mother of sorts, or at least an aunt to the adopted children of her landlord, Jimmy Dee Scoggin. Dee-Dee was gay, and his partner, Layne Bilderback, had recently joined the household shared by Jimmy Dee and young Kenny and Sheila Ritter, the offspring of his late sister.
Dee-Dee wheedled. “We have to do something to remember their mother—keep the feminine spirit alive. Isn’t it the decent thing?”
Steve said, “How about a hike?” and Dee-Dee countered, “Don’t you get enough wildlife at home?”
But Skip pounced on it. If Steve wanted it, she wanted it. She wanted him in a good mood about Louisiana. He had moved there recently and restored a house (the one being gnawed), after months and years of thinking about it. A documentary filmmaker and film editor, he’d lived in California the entire time he and Skip had been dating. Their long distance relationship had deepened on proximity. Skip was getting comfortable; liking it a lot. Steve had come to New Orleans for her, and his being there had enriched her life so much more than she’d anticipated that she felt responsible now. And motivated; eager to make him happy. A walk in Jean Lafitte Park, over in Jefferson Parish, ought to be wonderfully therapeutic.