Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux 3)

“But I was deep into the jug that night, definitely not up to her level of bumping uglies,” he said. “I must have passed out and rolled off the side of the bed between the bed and the wall, because that’s where I woke up about five in the morning. The snakes were starting to clatter around in their basket, then I heard the two other lease guys talking by themselves in the other room.

“One guy—I ain’t using his name—says, ‘Don’t worry about it. We did what we had to do.’ Then the other guy says, ‘Yeah, but we should have taken more time. We should have put rocks on top of them or something. Animals are always digging up stuff in the woods, then a hunter comes along.’

“Then the first guy says, ‘Nobody’s going to find them. Nobody cares about them. They were both troublemakers. Right or wrong?’

“Then the second guy says, ‘I guess you’re right.’

“And the first guy says, ‘It’s like a war. You make up the rules when it’s over.’

“I stayed quiet in the bedroom till I heard them call room service for breakfast and a couple of bottles of Champale, then I walked into the living room in my skivvies, looking like I’d just popped out of my momma’s womb. I thought both of them was going to brown their britches right there.”

“You think they killed some people?”

He touched his fingers nervously to his forehead.

“Good God, man, I don’t know,” he said. “What’s it sound like to you?”

“It sounds bad.”

“What d’you think I ought to do?”

I rubbed my palm on the knee of my khaki work trousers, then clicked my nails on the metal housing of the outboard engine. The dappled sunlight fell through the willows on Dixie’s flushed face.

“I can introduce you to the Iberia sheriff or a pretty good DEA agent over in Lafayette,” I said.

“Are you kidding, man? I need a drug agent in my life like a henhouse needs an egg-sucking dog.”

“Well, there’s still the sheriff.”

He drank the foam out of the Jax bottle and looked at me with one eye squinted shut against the light.

“I’m getting the impression you think I’d just be playing with my swizzle stick,” he said.

I raised my eyebrows and didn’t answer.

“Come on, Dave. I need some help. I can’t handle worry. It eats my lunch.”

“Where do you think this happened?”

“Up in Montana, I guess. That’s where we been the last three months.”

“We can talk to the FBI, but I don’t think it’s going anywhere. You just don’t have enough information, Dixie.” I paused for a moment. “There’s another bump in the road, too.”

He looked at me as a child might if he was about to be brought to task.

“When I was on the grog, I had a hard time convincing people about some things I heard and saw,” I said. “It’s unfair, but it goes with the territory.”

He stared at the water and pinched his eyes with his fingers.

“My advice is to get away from these guys,” I said.

“I work with them.”

“There’re other companies.”

“Be serious. I was in Huntsville. The Texas parole office don’t give you the best letters of recommendation.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, then.”