Last Car to Elysian Fields (Dave Robicheaux 13)

"You don't need to sing anymore," she said.

"Ma'am?"

"What you've done is very nice, but I don't think this song needs to be recorded."

"I don't rightly understand," he said.

"This particular composition would probably be better deleted from your recording session. I think that's clear enough, isn't it?"

He felt his mouth pucker as though a nerve ending had been cut in his face. From outside he heard a car door slant, then footsteps on the gallery. He lowered his eyes. "Why ain't it supposed to be recorded?" he asked.

"I don't think I should have to explain that to you," she replied.

His throat felt as though he had swallowed a handful of needles. "I'm ready for Boss Posey to take me back now," he said. He pulled the Marine Band harmonica from his shirt pocket and set it on a flower-patterned couch by the French doors.

"I'm not in the habit of having people return gifts to me," she said.

"I'd really appreciate it, ma'am, I mean appreciate more than anything else in the world, if you could just yell at Boss Posey for me, tell him Fse on my way," Junior said.

Just then Castille Lejeune opened the front door and walked into the living room, a Panama hat hanging from his fingertips, his mouth twisted in an incredulous smile.

"Please explain it to me, or I'll have to conclude I've either lost my mind or walked into the wrong house," he said.

I heard the cell phone ring on the front seat of my truck. I went outside and picked it up.

"Where are you?" Helen Soileau's voice said.

"Pecan Island."

"What are you doing at Pecan Island?"

"Interviewing a man who did time with Junior Crudup."

She exhaled her breath into the phone. "We've got a submerged car in West Cote Blanche Bay. The driver's still in there. A witness says he heard firecrackers going off before the car went into the water. Then the car drove off a pier."

"How about sending someone else?"

"Dave, your separate itinerary ends right now. Get your butt over there."

"Soon as I can," I said.

"Not good enough."

I turned off the ringer on the cell and went back inside to finish my interview with Woodrow Reed.

Chapter 17.

Mr. Lejeune and Miss Andrea had a big fight that night," Woodrow said.

"How do you know?"

"My cousin was the maid. She tole me later, that was after I was out of the joints, she tole me Mr. Lejeune went crazy that night. He picked up Miss Andrea's clothes off the flo' and smelled them."

"lie did what}"

"He smelled her clothes and knowed she was messing around on him. He was yelling all over the house, saying his wife went to bed wit' a nigger. My cousin was so scared she run out the do' and hid in the trees down by the bayou. She said Mr. Castille come crashing out of the house and drove his car down to the work camp."

"Looking for Junior?"