Crusader's Cross (Dave Robicheaux 14)

"Go to lunch with me," I said.

"Dave —"

"We'll take someone with us."

"You're suggesting we're doing something illicit," she said.

"It's what we did before. Don't shine me on."

She pressed her fingers against her temples. "You roll in here like a hurricane, then accuse me of being disingenuous. It's a bit hard to take."

"So drink a Dr Pepper with me."

"No!"

I was standing in the middle of the room, drowning in my own ineptitude and heavy-handedness.

She put on a pair of reading glasses, then took them off again. "Is this about the man you had to shoot?"

I felt my right hand open and close at my side, a drop of sweat form and run from my armpit. "He wasn't the first," I said.

"Pardon?"

"I've killed others."

"Have you talked to somebody about this?"

"What do you think?"

"I can't have lunch with you," she said.

"Why not?"

She looked straight ahead, out the window, her skin flushed, her eyes filming. Then she propped her forehead on the ends of her fingers so I could not see her face. "I can't be of any help to you. I wish I could. I'm sorry," she said. When she looked at me again, there were tiny red threads in the whites of her eyes.

That evening, after work, I went shopping at the Winn-Dixie. I filled the basket with items I didn't need, and told myself that perhaps I should invite friends over, maybe barbecue in the backyard or cook a huge gumbo for the people Jimmie and I had grown up with. I dropped frozen packs of veined shrimp and crawfish in the basket, along with gourmet cheese and a smoked ham, a chocolate cake, a gallon of ice cream, crackers and cans of smoked oysters, ginger ale, diet drinks, big jars of fruit juice, a case of Corona, a fat green bottle of Burgundy, and a quart of Jim Beam and one of Black Jack Daniel's.

I could hear a whirring sound in my ears, like wind blowing in a conch shell, as I stacked my purchases on the conveyor belt at the checkout stand. Then the black teenage girl working behind the register, whom I had deliberately chosen, went on break, and the assistant manager, a man my age, took her place. "Fixing to have a party at your house, Dave?" he said.

"Yeah, I thought I might," I said.

"Good weather for a cookout, huh?" he said, scanning the beer and whiskey and wine on the belt, his face empty of expression.

"It's supposed to rain, but who knows?" I said.

"Could be. Everyt'ing all right with you, Dave?" he said.

"Just great," I said.

"That's good. That's real good," he said. For the first time, he looked directly at me, his feigned cheerfulness carefully held in place.

I rolled the basket through the parking lot to my truck and began loading my groceries in back, the sky overhead gray and crackling with dry thunder. Then Molly Boyle passed me in a rusted compact, looked back at me, and made a U-turn, almost running over a man on a bicycle. She stopped abreast of me, her windows down, the front windshield spotted with raindrops. "I want to talk to you," she said.

"Go ahead," I replied.

Her eyes lighted on the packages in the bed of my pickup. "Not here. I'll follow you to your house," she said.

"I'm kind of tied up right now," I said.