"You're sure Theo wasn't part of Fat Sammy's action?" I said.
"Ever see one of Fat Sammy's films?"
"No."
"You don't want to," he said. "Let's go inside. Clete needs to drive me and my daughter to the airport in Lafayette. I'm buying a Mexican restaurant in San Antonio. You get to town, have a free dinner on me."
"You're a stand-up guy, Phil."
"I'm out of the life. I'm a millionaire. What's a few bucks to show some gratitude?"
I started to say something else, but he cut me off.
"I got your drift. Give it a rest," he said.
I drove back to my house on East Main and tried to put the Lejeune family and Junior Crudup out of my mind, but I couldn't rest. I did not believe Max Coll killed Will Guillot, and I couldn't shake the feeling that Castille Lejeune had been unduly happy when I went to his home, as though with a broad sweep of a broom he had gotten rid of a large problem in his life. In fact, I believed Castille Lejeune was about to get away with at least one if not two additional homicides.
And I also felt I had a problem of conscience about Theo Flannigan. I had falsely accused her of involvement in the shooting of the daiquiri-store operator and the production of pornographic films.
In fact, I rued the day I had ever heard of the Lejeunes or Junior Crudup.
On top of my more elevated level of problems, Batist stopped by the house with another one, namely Tripod, Alafair's three-legged raccoon, whom Batist carried up on the gallery inside Tripod's wood-frame hutch.
"Cain't keep him at my house no mo'," he said.
"Why can't you?" I asked, looking down at Tripod, who was standing up in the hutch, his claws hooked on the wire screen, his whiskered snout pointed at me.
"He's old, like me. He went to the bat
' room on the kitchen no'," Batist said.
"Thanks, Batist."
"You welcome," he replied, and drove off.
I opened the wire door on Tripod's hutch and he stepped out on the floor and looked up at me. "How's it hangin, "Pod?" I said.
He responded by running into the kitchen and eating Snuggs's food out of the pet bowl.
But I could not distract myself from my problems with the world of play and innocence represented by animals. I wanted to believe I'd been dealt a bad hand. There was even some truth in my self-serving conclusion. But unfortunately I had dealt the hand to myself, beginning with the day I stepped into the unsolved disappearance of Junior Crudup, a man who had probably sought self-immolation all his life.
I called Theo at her house and apologized for my accusation.
"Drunks are always sorry. But they do it over and over again," she said.
"Could you define 'it," please?"
"Acting like an asshole."
"I see."
"Have you apologized to my father?" she asked.
"Are you serious?" I said.
She hung up.
I called Helen Soileau at the department and told her I'd been wrong about Theo.