Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux 3)

“I’m fine, little guy. I tell you what, let’s take a ride down to the store and see if they have any kites. You think you can put a kite up today?”

“There ain’t no wind.”

“Don’t say ‘ain’t.’”

“Okay.”

“Let’s go get some apples for Tex. You want to feed him some apples?”

“Sure.” She looked at me curiously.

We walked up to the truck, which was parked under the pecan trees, got in, and drove down the road toward the old store at the four-corners. Alafair looked at the floor.

“What’s that, Dave?”

“Don’t mess with that.”

Her eyes blinked at my tone.

“It’s just a chain. Kick it under the seat,” I said.

She leaned down toward the floor.

“Don’t touch it,” I said. “It’s dirty.”

“What’s wrong, Dave?”

“Nothing. I just don’t want your hands dirty.”

I took a breath, stopped the truck, and went around to Alafair’s side. I opened her door and lifted the loops of chain off the floor. They felt as though they were coated with paint that had not quite dried.

“I’ll be right back,” I said.

I walked down on the bank of the bayou and sailed the chain out into the middle of the current. Then I stooped by the cattails in the shallows and scrubbed my palms with water and sand. Dragonflies hovered over the cattails, and I saw a cottonmouth slide off a log and swim into the lily pads. I pushed my hands into the sand, and water clouded around my wrists. I walked back up onto the bank with my hands dripping at my sides and wiped them on the grass, then I took a cloth out of the toolbox and wiped them again.

The ramshackle general store at the four corners was dark and cool inside, the wood-bladed ceiling fan turning over the counter. I bought a sack of apples for Alafair’s horse, some sliced ham, cheese, and French bread for our lunch, and two soda pops to drink out on the gallery. The sun was brilliant on the white shale parking lot, and through the trees across the road I could see a Negro man cane fishing in a pirogue close in to the cypress roots.

We went back to the house, and Alafair helped me weed my hydrangea and rose beds. Our knees were wet and dirty, our arms covered with fine grains of black dirt. My flower beds were thick with night crawlers, all of them close to the surface after the rain, and when we ripped weeds from the soil, they writhed pale and fat in the hard light. I knew almost nothing of Alafair’s life before she came to Annie and me, but work must have been a natural part of it, because she treated almost any task that I gave her as a game and did it enthusiastically in a happy and innocent way. She worked her way through the rosebushes on all fours, pinging the weeds and Johnsongrass loudly in the bucket, a smear of dirt above one eyebrow. The smell of the hydrangeas and the wet earth was so strong and fecund it was almost like a drug. Then the breeze came up and blew through the pecan trees in the front yard; out on the edge of the trees’ shade my neighbor’s water sprinkler spun in the sunlight and floated across my fence in a rainbow mist.

They came just before noon. The two Lafayette plainclothes detectives were in an unmarked car, followed by the Iberia Parish sheriff, who drove a patrol car. They parked next to my truck and walked across the dead pecan leaves toward me. Both of the plainclothes were big men who left their coats in the car and wore their badges on their belts. Each carried a chrome-plated revolver in a clip-on holster. I rose to my feet, brushing the dirt off my knees. Alafair had stopped weeding and was staring at the men with her mouth parted.

“You’ve got a warrant?” I said.

One of the plainclothes had a matchstick in his mouth. He nodded without speaking.

“Okay, no problem. I’ll need a few minutes, all right?”

“You got somebody to take care of the little girl?” his partner said. A Marine Corps emblem was tattooed on one of his forearms and a dagger with a bleeding heart impaled upon it on the other.

“Yes. That’s why I need a minute or so,” I said. I took Alafair by the hand and turned toward the house. “You want to come in with me?”

“Lean up against the porch rail,” the man with the matchstick said.

“Can’t you guys show some discretion here?” I said. I looked at my friend the sheriff, who stood in the background, saying nothing.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” the tattooed man said.

“Watch your language,” I said.