But I was all out of Purple Hearts and had decided that Honoria was going to leave of her own accord or be picked up by a cruiser. My determination suddenly dissipated when I looked out the front window and saw the Chalonses' handyman, with his son and Sister Molly next to him, turn into my driveway.
"I'm going to talk to some people out front. There's no need for you to leave right now," I said to Honoria.
"Too late, my love," she said. She walked out the front door and down the street toward the Shadows, her purse swinging from a shoulder string.
I stood on the gallery, barefoot, unshaved, looking down at Molly Boyle, my face burning.
"I should have called first, I guess, but Tee Bleu says he knows where the boat is," she said, speaking awkwardly and too fast, trying to hide her embarrassment at my situation.
"Which boat?" I said.
"The one the man with the gun was in. Tee Bleu says it's moored in a canebrake the other side of the drawbridge."
But I couldn't concentrate on her words. "There's a misunderstanding about what you just saw here. The lady who just left has some mental problems. I left my door unlocked and she -"
"I know who she is. You don't have to explain."
"No, hear me out. She hooked me up to my bed with my cuffs. I was trying to get her out of the house when you arrived."
"Locked you in your own handcuffs?"
"Right. I was asleep."
"I didn't mean to intrude. I thought you should know about the boat."
"You didn't intrude. Y'all come inside."
"No, we'd better run. Thank you. It's a beautiful day, isn't it?"
She tried to smile over her shoulder as she got into her car.
Way to go again, Robicheaux, I thought, my stomach churning. "Give me ten minutes. I'd really appreciate it," I said.
I followed Molly and the handyman and his son to the drawbridge south of Molly's agency. The little boy pointed at a boat that had floated into a flooded clump of reeds and bamboo. I waded into the water and dragged the boat's hull up on the mudbank. The boat was old, made of wood, the stern printed with rust where the engine mounts had been removed. There were no tags or registration numbers of any kind on it. "What makes you think this was the man's boat, Tee Bleu?" I asked.
"It got blue paint on the front end," he replied.
"Thanks for telling me about this," I said.
"I seen the gun. I ain't made it up. Seen the man, too. He was old," he said.
"Y'all gonna dust the boat for fingerprints?" his father said.
"It doesn't work quite like that," I said.
The father's half-moon eyebrows gave him a happy look, even when he wasn't smiling. He had a habit of turning his whole head as he glanced about himself, like a curious owl on a tree branch. "I got to make my deliveries. Can y'all run Tee Bleu home for me?" he said.
"Show Dave your birdhouses," Molly said.
"They ain't that much to look at," he said.
"No, show him," she said.
He opened up the trunk of his car, exposing a half dozen or so notched and pegged cypress birdhouses lying on a blanket, each with a wood plug in the roof. "See, the trick is not to get no foreign smells inside the house. I stain the outside with vegetable oil and that way it don't have no paint smell. I got a plug in the roof and a feeder shelf inside so you can pour the feed t'rew the hole and not get no human smells on it. If you stick this house up in your tree, every kind of bird there is gonna be flying around in your backyard. They're t'irty-five dol'ars, if you want one."
Thanks, Molly, I thought.
"I already have one. Maybe another time," I said.
" 'Cause I got 'em, ready and waiting," he replied.
Molly Boyle and I dropped Tee Bleu off at the gated entrance to the Chalons property, where he lived in a small house down by the bayou with his father and mother.
We watched him walk through the shade and around the side of the main house. I could not get over his resemblance to Honoria Chalons.
"You didn't want to take him down the driveway?" Molly said.
I turned my truck back onto the highway and headed toward Jeanerette and New Iberia. "I don't want any more contact with the Chalonses except in an official capacity. About this morning -" I said.
"I believe what you told me. You don't have to explain your life to others."
We recrossed the bayou and entered a tunnel of trees that separated the Teche from a row of antebellum homes that were so perfect in their detail and ambiance they looked like they had been constructed only yesterday. The windows in the truck were down,, and Molly Boyle's hair kept blowing in her face.
"Can you have lunch with me?" I said.
She continued to stare straight ahead. I could hear the truck keys jiggling against the dash, a flurry of leaves sucking across the windshield.
"Do you like trouble?" she asked.
"I don't seek it out," I said.
"I heard you were a Twelve-Step person."
"I'm in AA, if that's what you mean."
"Maybe that's what you need to keep doing and not complicate things."
"I'd sure like to have lunch with you."
She looked out the window at Alice Plantation, the acres of clipped St. Augustine grass and the flowers growing along the brick base of the building. "Can we invite another person to join us, an elderly lady who volunteers at the agency?" she asked.
"That'd be fine," I said.
I could feel her eyes on the side of my face. Up ahead, a black cloud moved across the sun, dropping the countryside into shadow. "Do you have any idea who the man in the boat might have been?" she said.
"Probably just a guy shooting water moccasins," I said.
"That seems kind of cavalier," she said.
"When the pros punch your ticket, they're at your throat before you know it. The guy in the boat was just a guy in a boat," I said.
"I worked at a mission in Guatemala during the civil war. Men with binoculars and guns didn't use them to hunt snakes," she replied.
chapter ELEVEN
The phone on my kitchen counter rang early Monday morning. "Is this Mr. David Robicheaux?" a voice said.
I looked at the caller ID. The number was blocked. "What can I help you with?" I said.
"That one-eyed brother of yours cain't let the past rest. Looks like you cain't, either. Time to stop messing in other people's berry patch."
"What are you talking about?" I said.
"I knew this was a mistake."
Where had I heard the voice? Nowhere and everywhere, I thought. The speech pattern and accent were generic, the kind you hear in carnival people – laconic, faintly peckerwood with hard urban edges, the cynicism and private frame of reference always veiled. "I know you?" I asked.
"Did you lose your cherry in a cathouse? Bet you did. Bet I can tell you the thoughts you had the night you done it. Fantasies about a big-titty girl with a soft ass an ax handle wide. Except she turned out to be a sack of flab that smelled bad and yawned in your face when you got off her. Tell me I'm wrong."
"Still haven't figured out what you're selling, partner, so I'd better ring off now. Thanks for your call."
"Ring off?"
I hung up, then punched in 911 on my cell. Wally, our wheezing dispatcher, answered. "Call the phone company and open up my home line," I said.
"You got it, Dave," he said.
The phone on the counter rang again just as I clicked off the cell. "Hey, man, I ain't your enemy," the voice said. "Let Ida go. She don't -"
The transmission broke up and the connection went dead. Fifteen minutes later, Wally called. "It was from a cell phone, somewhere down in the Keys. What's going on?" he said.
"Some guy with too much time on his hands having dirty thoughts," I said.
"Anyt'ing I can get in on?" he replied.
I walked to work that morning and decided not to tell Helen about the caller. She was sick of hearing the name Ida Durbin and also sick of hearing the kind of vague, uncentered information I had been offering her. In this instance, I had asked an anonymous caller if I knew him. He had answered my question with a reference to brothels. It wasn't a complimentary response. Also it made little sense and hardly seemed worth passing on to anyone else.