Cadillac Jukebox (Dave Robicheaux 9)

He leaned out his door and watched her all the way down the hall.

When I opened the door for her I could feel a flush of color, like windburn, in my throat. Two deputies passing in the hall glanced at us, then one said something to the other and looked back over his shoulder again.

"You look flustered," she said.

"How you doin', Karyn?" I said.

She sat down in front of my desk. Her hat and face were slatted with sunlight.

"Clay said I have to do this. I mean apologize . . . here . . . in your office. To the sheriff, too. Otherwise, he says I'll have no serenity," she said. She smiled. Her platinum hair was tucked inside her hat. She looked absolutely beautiful.

"Why are you hanging around with Clay Mason?" I said.

"He was a guest of the university. He's a brilliant man. He's a very good poet, too."

"I heard he blew his wife's head off at a party in Mexico."

"It was an accident," she said.

I let my eyes drop to my watch.

"I'm sorry that I wronged you, Dave. I don't know what else to say." She took a breath. "Why do you have to treat me with fear and guilt? Is it because of the moment there in the hotel room? Did you think I wanted to seduce you with my husband sleeping a few feet away, for God's sakes?"

"There's only one issue here, Karyn. Buford's not the man people think he is. He's taking money from Jerry Joe Plumb. The guy who delivered it to y'all's house was Mingo Bloomberg."

"Who?"

"He kills people. Right now he's in custody for leaving a black girl to drown in a submerged automobile in Henderson Swamp."

"I never heard of him. I doubt if Buford has, either."

"Jerry Joe's mobbed-up. Why do mobbed-up guys want your husband in Baton Rouge?"

"I can't understand you. What are you trying to do to us? Buford's opponents are the same people who supported David Duke."

"So what? Y'all have made a scapegoat out of Aaron Crown."

"Dave, you've let yourself become the advocate of a misanthropic degenerate who molested his daughter and murdered the bravest civil rights leader in Louisiana."

"How do you know he molested Sabelle?"

"I'm sorry, I'm not going to discuss a man like that."

I looked out the window, fiddled with a paper clip on my blotter.

"You're committed to lost and hopeless causes," she said. "I don't think it's because you're an idealist, either. It's pride. You get to be the iconoclast among the Philistines."

"I used to buy into psychobabble myself, Karyn. It's a lot of fun."

"I guess there's not much point in any of this, is there?" she said. Her skirt was tight against her body when she gathered up her purse and rose from her chair. "I wish it had been different, Dave. I wish the grog hadn't gotten you. I wish I'd been able to help. I can't say for sure I loved you, but I loved being with you. Be good to yourself, kiddo."

With that, she went out the door. I could hear my ears ring in the silence.

Just before lunch the sheriff came into my office.

"This morning I've had a call from the mayor's office, one from the chamber of commerce, and one from the New Iberia Historical Preservation Society," he said. "Did you know Jerry Joe Plumb just bought an acre lot right down from the Shadows?"

"No."