Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux 3)

I got up and walked barefoot into her room and sat on the edge of the bed. Her face looked round and tan in the moonlight through the window. Her blanket was pulled up to her chin.

“Don’t think like that, Alf. Nobody wants to hurt guys like us. We’re good guys,” I said. “Think of all the people who love you. Batist and Clarise and your friends and teachers at school. They all love you, Alfie. And I love you most of all.”

I could see her wide-spaced teeth and the brightness of her eyes when she smiled up from the pillow.

But her thoughts were not far from my own. That night I dreamed of South Louisiana, of blue herons standing among flooded cypress trees, fields of sugarcane beaten with purple and gold light in the fall, the smell of smoldering hickory and pork dripping into the ash in our smokehouse, the way billows of fog rolled out of the swamp in the morning, so thick and white that sound—a bass flopping, a bullfrog falling off a log into the water—came to you inside a wet bubble, pelicans sailing out of the sun over the breakers out on the Gulf, the palm trees ragged and green and clacking in the salt breeze, and the crab and crawfish boils and fish fries that went on year-round, as though there were no end to a season and death had no sway in our lives, and finally the song that always broke my heart, “La Jolie Blonde,” which in a moment made the year 1945. Our yard was abloom with hibiscus and blue and pink hydrangeas and the neighbors came on horseback to the fais-dodo under our oaks.

The next morning I got a call from Tess Regan, the third-grade teacher and assistant principal at Alafair’s school. She said she had a one-hour break at eleven o’clock, and she asked if she could walk down to the house and talk with me.

“Is there something wrong?” I said.

“Maybe it’s nothing. I’d rather talk to you about it at your house.”

“Sure. Come on down.”

A few minutes later she knocked on the screen door. She wore a pale green cotton dress, and her auburn hair was tied back with a green kerchief. I could see baby powder on her freckled shoulders.

“I hope I’m not bothering you,” she said.

“No, not at all. I have some iced tea made. It’s a beautiful day. Let’s have some on the porch.”

“All right,” she said. The corners of her eyes wrinkled good-naturedly at the deference to her situation as a layperson in a Catholic elementary school.

I brought the tea out on the porch, and we sat on two old metal chairs. The light was bright on the lawn and the trees, and bumblebees hummed over the clover in the grass.

“A man called earlier,” she said. “He said he was a friend of yours from Louisiana. He wanted to know where you and Alafair lived.”

“What was his name?”

“He wouldn’t give it.”

“Did you tell him?”

“No, of course not. We don’t give out people’s addresses. I told him to call information. He said he tried, but your number was unlisted.”

“It isn’t, but my address isn’t in the phone book, and information usually won’t give out addresses. Why did the call bother you?” I leaned slightly forward.

“He was rude. No, it was more than that. His voice was ugly.”

“What else did he say?”

“He kept saying he was an old friend, that it was important he talk with you, that I should understand that.”

“I see.”

“Alafair said you used to be a police officer. Does this have something to do with that?”

“Maybe. Could you tell if it was long-distance?”

“It didn’t sound like it.”

I tried to think. Who knew that Alafair went to a parochial school in Missoula? Darlene, perhaps. Or maybe I said something to Clete. Or

maybe the person called New Iberia and got something out of Batist or Clarise. Then he could have phoned every Catholic elementary school in town until he hit the right combination.

“What was the first thing this guy said?” I asked.

Her mouth was wet and red when it came away from her glass. Her green eyes looked thoughtfully out into the sunlight.