Cadillac Jukebox (Dave Robicheaux 9)

"I reckon it otherwise." He rubbed the cigarette's hot ash between his fingers until it was dead. "If them TV people is out there, I need to wash up."

He looked up at our faces, his lidless eyes waiting for an answer.

CHAPTER 37

ON CHRISTMAS MORNING I sat at the kitchen table and looked at a photograph in the Daily Iberian of Buford and Karyn dancing together at the country club. They looked like people who would live forever.

Bootsie paused behind me, her palm resting on my shoulder.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked.

"Jerry Joe Plumb. . .No journalist will ever mention his name in association with theirs, but he paid their dues for them. "

"He paid his own, too, Dave."

"Maybe."

The window was open and a balmy wind blew from my neighbor’s pasture and swelled the curtains over the sink. I filled a cup with coffee and hot milk and walked outside in the sunshine. Alafair sat at the redwood picnic table, playing with Tripod in her lap and listening to the tape she had made of the records on Jerry Joe’s jukebox. She flipped Tripod on his back and bounced him gently up and down by pulling his tail while he pushed at her forearm with his paws.

"Thanks for all the presents. It’s a great Christmas, " she said.

"Thanks for everything you gave me, too, " I said.

"Can Tripod have some more eggnog ice cream? "

"Sure."

"Those creeps are gone, aren’t they? "

"Yeah, the worst of the lot are. The rest get it somewhere down the road. We just don’t see it."

I thought perhaps I might have to explain my remarks, but I didn’t. She actually lived through more than I had in her young life, and her comprehension of the world was oftentimes far better than mine.

She went inside the house with Tripod under her arm, then came back out on the step.

"I forgot. We ate it all," she said.

"There’s some in the freezer down at the shop. I’ll get it," I said.

I walked down the slope through the leaves drifting out of the oak and pecan branches overhead. I had strung Christmas lights around the bait shop’s windows and hung wreaths fashioned from pine boughs and holly and red ribbon on the weathered cypress walls, and Alafair had glued a Santa Claus made from satin wrapping paper to the door. The bayou was empty of boats, and the sound of my shoes was so loud on the dock that it echoed off the water and sent a cloud of robins clattering out of the trees.

I had gotten the ice cream from the game freezer and was about to lock up again when I saw Dock Green park a black Lincoln by the boat ramp and walk toward me.

"It’s Christmas. We’re closed," I said.

"LaRose has got my wife up at his house," he said.

"I don’t believe that’s true. Even if it is, she’s a big girl and can make her own choices."

"I can give you that guy, diced and fried."

"Not interested."

"It ain’t right."

He sat down at a spool table and stared out at the bayou. His neck was as stiff as a chunk of sewer pipe. A muscle jumped in his cheek.

"I think you were involved with Jerry Joe’s death. I just can’t prove it. But I don’t have to talk to you, either. So how about getting out of here?" I said.