Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux 3)

“You want me to fix you a drink, Mr. Frank?” Clete said.

The old man flipped his hand at Clete, his eyes still fixed on me, as though he were brushing away bad air.

“That’s my cousin you’re talking about,” he said.

I didn’t reply. I looked again at Dixie Lee, who sat hunched forward on the piano bench, his hands in his lap, his gaze averted from us.

“Tell him to get the fuck out of here,” the father said. “Tell that other one he don’t bring smartass guys up to our house, either.” Again, he didn’t bother to look in Clete’s direction.

Then he motioned with his hand again, and the girl in the silver bathing suit wheeled him through a far door into a bedroom. The bed was piled with pink pillows that had purple ruffles around them. I watched the girl close the door.

“Got to do what Pop says. See you around, Mr. Robicheaux,” Sally Dio said. He tapped one wire brush across the drumhead.

“Dixie, I want you to walk down to my car with me,” I said.

“Conversation time’s over, Mr. Robicheaux.”

“The man can speak for himself, can’t he?” I said.

But before all my words were out, Sally Dio did a rat-a-tat-tat on the drum with the brushes.

“Are you coming, Dixie?”

Again he slapped the brushes rapidly on the drum, looking me steadily in the eyes with a grin at the corner of his mouth.

“A footnote about your relative in Angola,” I said. “I not only helped put him away, I maced him in the face after he spit on a bailiff.”

“Clete, help our man find his car,” he said.

Clete took his drink away from his mouth. His face reddened. Behind him, the people in the pool were in various attitudes of embrace among the rubber cushions and wisps of steam.

“Sal, he’s a good guy. We got off to a bad start this morning,” he said.

“Mr. Robicheaux’s late for somewhere else, Clete.”

Clete looked as though he had swallowed a thumbtack.

“No problem. I’m on my way. Take it easy, Clete,” I said.

“Sal, no kidding, he’s a solid guy. Sometimes things just go wrong. It’s nobody’s fault,” Clete said.

“Hey, Robicheaux—something to take with you,” Sally Dio said. “You came in here on somebody’s shirttail. Then you talked rude to an old man. But you’re in my house and you get to leave on a free pass. You been treated generous. Don’t have any confusion about that.”

I walked outside into the sunlight, the wind riffling the lake, the hazy blue-green roll of the hills in the distance. The flagstone steps that led down the hill to Clete’s place and my truck were lined with rosebushes and purple clematis.

“Wait a minute, Dave,” I heard Clete say behind me.

He had on his crushed porkpie hat, and as he descended the flagstone steps in his Bermuda shorts his legs looked awkward, the scars on his knees stretched and whitened across the bone.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” he said.

“Forget it.”

“No, that was bad in there. I’m sorry about it.”

“You weren’t a part of it. Don’t worry about it.”

“Everybody was saying the wrong things, that’s all.”