Burning Angel (Dave Robicheaux 8)

“Question and answer time.”

“I'm not dressed.”

“I'm not going away.”

“Aren't you suppose to have a warrant or something?”

“No.”

She made a face, closed the door hard, then walked into the back of the house. I waited ten minutes among the gum trees where the dirt had been bladed and packed smooth by the earthmover. I picked up the twisted tongue of an old shoe. It felt as dry and light as a desiccated leaf. I heard Ruthie Jean slip the night chain on the door.

Her small living room was cramped with rattan furniture that had come in a set. The andirons in the fireplace were stacked with stone logs, a blaze of scarlet cellophane pasted behind them to give the effect of flames. Ruthie Jean stood on her cane in a white dress with a lacy neckline, black pumps, and a red glass necklace. Her skin looked yellow and cool in the soft light.

“You look nice,” I said, and instantly felt my cheeks burn at the license in my remark.

“What you want down here this time?”

Before I could answer, a phone rang in back. She walked back to the kitchen to answer it. On a shelf above the couch were a clutter of gilt-framed family photographs. In one of them Ruthie Jean was receiving a rolled certificate or diploma of some kind from a black man in a suit and tie. They were both smiling. She had no cane and was wearing a nurse's uniform. At the end of the shelf was a dust-free triangular empty space where another photograph must have been recently removed.

“Are you a nurse?” I asked when she came back in the room.

“I was a nurse's aide.” Her eyes went flat.

“How long ago was that?”

“What you care?”

“Can I sit down, please?”

“Suit yourself.”

“You have a phone,” I said.

She looked at me with an incredulous expression.

“Your Aunt Bertie told me she didn't

have a phone and I'd have to leave messages for her at the convenience store. But you live just next door. Why wouldn't she tell me to call you instead?”

“She and Luke don't get along.” Her cheek twitched when she sat down on the couch. Behind her head was the shelf with the row of framed photographs on it.

“Because he's too close to Moleen Bertrand?” I said.

“Ax them.”

“I want the white man named Jack,” I said.

She looked at her nails, then at her watch.

“This guy's an assassin, Ruthie Jean. When he's not leaking blood in one of your trailers, he carries a cut-down twelve-gauge under his armpit.”

She rolled her eyes, a whimsical pout on her mouth, and looked out the window at a bird on a tree branch, her eyelids fluttering. I felt my face pinch with a strange kind of anger that I didn't quite recognize.

“I don't understand you,” I said. “You're attractive and intelligent, you graduated from a vo-tech program, you probably worked in hospitals.

What are you doing with a bunch of lowlifes and white trash in a hot pillow joint?”

Her face blanched.