I could taste vodka and sweet syrup and orange slices and the tartness of crushed cherries in her mouth. I could even taste the coldness of the ice that had been poured from her collins glass into the Styrofoam cup. She took a breath and got up on her knees, then bent down to kiss me again.
"Whoa, kiddo," I said.
"Kiddo yourself," she said. She got out of the truck and walked inside, her back stiff, the porch light bright on her white dress.
I turned the truck around and started back toward the gate. Not more than three feet from my window, I saw the red glow of a cigar among a tangle of persimmon trees. I slowed the truck, the tires creaking on the gravel, and looked into the spectral face of Honoria's father, Raphael Chalons.
"My daughter is a vulnerable woman, sir. Be advised I do not abide the man who would take advantage of that fact," he said.
Good evening to you, too, sir, I thought, and drove on without replying. I also decided that on some occasions good deeds and the obligations of charity should be heaved over the gunnels.
The next morning Jimmie was up before me, fixing breakfast for us, feeding Tripod and Snuggs, whistling a song.
"You must have had a pretty good night," I said.
"This friend of mine, the professor at UL, he's got this huge collection of country and bluegrass music. Remember we used to always say Ida sang just like Kitty Wells? That's because Kitty Wells sang in B flat. See, my friend has put his whole record library in his computer and he came up with all these recordings that have somebody on them singing like Kitty Wells."
Jimmie had been cutting toast on the breadboard while he spoke. He turned around, his starched white shirt crinkling, his hair wet and combed, his face shiny with aftershave. "You know the best part? On a couple of those records somebody's playing a mandolin just the way Ida did," he said.
I looked away so he could not see my eyes. "That's good, Jimmie," I said.
"Yeah, Ida was smart. I always thought she got away from those guys. Why would they want to kill her, anyway? She was just a piney-woods country girl."
Because they're sonsofbitches and they make examples of piney-woods girls, I thought.
"What?" he said.
"Nothing," I replied. "I'd better get to the office."
"Hey, we're going to find ole Ida. You'll see," he said.
"You bet," I said, knowing that Jimmie, like all brave people, would continue to believe in the world, regardless of what it did to him.
A little after nine, Wally, our overweight dispatcher and self-appointed departmental comic, buzzed my phone. "There's a newsman down here wants to see you. Should I send him up?" he said.
"Which newsman?"
"The one on TV looks like an icicle."
"Valentine Chalons?"
"That's the one."
"Why don't you just say so?"
" 'Cause he looks like an icicle. Or I could call him the TV guy wit' a broom up his ass trying to give me a bad time. By the way, that nun left a note for you."
I couldn't begin to follow his words. "Wally -" I began.
"That nun, the one who builds homes for poor people, she was here to see you. I buzzed your phone but you wasn't at your desk. So she left a note. It's in your mailbox. She went out when the TV guy was coming in. You want to see the TV guy or not?"
Three minutes later Valentine Chalons opened my office door without knocking and closed it behind him., his eyes locked on mine. "I'll make this simple. My sister is a grown woman and can associate with whomever she pleases. But I'll be damned if you'll use her to get at my father," he said.
"Sorry to see you interpret things that way, Val," I said.
"My father is a heart patient. He probably doesn't have long to live. What are you trying to do to him?"
"Your sister had a problem with her car. I gave her a ride home."
"You're looking me in the face, telling me you have no issue with my father?"
"If I do, it doesn't involve your sister."
"How about Sister Molly? It's just coincidence I saw her leaving here this morning?"
"I don't know what it is, because I didn't see or talk with her."
"Our handyman told me he saw you at her office yesterday."
"Yeah, I did see her yesterday. But that's none of your business."
"Let me set you straight about that hypocritical bitch. She's a closet Marxist who uses the Church to stir up class hatred in ignorant and gullible people. Except she's not a real nun. She's got some kind of half-ass status that doesn't require her to take vows. So she hides behind the veil and gets to have it both ways."
"What's she got on you, partner?"
He put his hands on his hips, like a drill instructor, and looked sideways out a window, as though the room was too small for the level of anger he needed to express. Then he snuffed down in his nose and shook it off. "Give my dad a break, will you?"
"He's a heart patient but he smokes cigars?" I said.
"You're a beaut, Dave," he said.
Molly Boyle's note was a simple one: Please call. Thanks - Molly B. I rang her office number and was told she was mowing the grass and would return my call later. But why wait, I asked myself, and headed down the road in a cruiser toward Jeanerette.
Then I had to ask myself a more serious question: What was so urgent about seeing Molly Boyle? Why not just wait for her call? The answer that started to suggest itself was one I quickly put out of my mind.
When I pulled in to her agency I saw her seated on a tractor, towing a grass-cutter though a field of buttercups, a little black boy in the seat with her. She turned at the end of a long swath, then saw me walking toward her and shut off the engine. She wore a baseball cap and cotton gloves and a sleeveless blouse that was peppered with sweat. The tops of her arms were dusty and sprinkled with sun freckles. She introduced the little black boy as Tee Bleu Bergeron. "His daddy is our best birdhouse builder," she said.
"Your father works for the Chalons family?" I said.
"Yes, suh, he work for Mr. Raphael. We live right up the bayou from the big house," he replied.
The little boy was many generations removed from antebellum days, but he still obeyed the same custom of referring to the main building on a plantation as "the big house," just as his antecedents had. Sister Molly asked him to go to her office and wait for her. "You've been a good helper, Tee Bleu. I'll drive you home in a little bit," she said.
"Why is he called 'Little Blue'?" I asked.
"His daddy says the umbilical cord was wrapped around his throat when he was born. I think he has some brain damage. But he's a sweet little guy. Why'd you ask?" Sister Molly said.
"I was just curious." But my answer was not an honest one. The little boy did not look like his father, the black man named Andre Bergeron. He was light-skinned, with high cheekbones, and liquid brown eyes and jet-black straight hair. He looked like Honoria Chalons.
"You asked me yesterday about a woman named Ida -" Sister Molly began.
"Ida Durbin," I said.
"Yes. Did something happen to her?"
"I think she may have been murdered many years ago."
"Was she a prostitute?"
"How did you know?" I asked.
"I didn't. But you said the Chalonses would like to forget about her. I think the Chalonses have secrets. I think one of their secrets is their involvement with prostitution. So I should have spoken up when you asked about this Durbin woman."
"What do you know about the Chalonses and prostitution, Sister?"
"Call me Molly. I grew up in Port Arthur. My father was career army and a policeman. He always said the brothels in Galveston were owned by the Chalons and Giacano families. Raphael Chalons is infamous for his sexual behavior." She stopped, obviously conflicted with herself and her own motivations. "I don't feel very comfortable with any of this, Detective Robicheaux. I think I've said too much."