“At the Winn-Dixie. His basket crashed into mine. He said, ‘Sorry, pretty lady.’?”
Clete closed the top of the grill and sat down across from her. “Did you know Lucinda Arceneaux?”
“I don’t know nobody named Lucinda.”
“Her body was found floating on a wood cross in Weeks Bay.”
“I don’t know nothing about that.”
“You don’t read the newspaper or watch the news?”
“It don’t have nothing to do wit’ me.”
Clete shut and opened his eyes. “Describe the pictures that the man without a name puts in your head.”
“Horses galloping, people burning up in their shacks, children screaming. If I don’t do what he say, t’ings like that are gonna be my fault. He says we’re all part of a big plan.”
“Are we talking about a guy named Hugo Tillinger?”
“No.”
“This guy is not only a bad guy, he’s a fake. The only power he has is the power you give him.”
She stared at Clete as though he were an apparition and the man who had poisoned her mind were real. Her skin was like dark chocolate, pitted in one cheek, a scar like a piece of white string at the corner of one eye. There was a smear of lipstick on her teeth. Clete wondered whom she had been with before she had come to his cottage. He wondered how many times she had been used as a child and sworn to secrecy by her molester.
“What was Nine/eleven, Hilary?”
“What was what?”
“Nine/eleven.”
“You mean the convenience store?”
He wrote his cell number on the back of his business card and gave it to her. “When you’re ready to give up your guy, let me know.”
“I remember what he said now. I’m the Queen of Cups. What’s that?”
“Some kind of bullshit he uses to scare people,” Clete said. He pulled another longneck from the cooler and screwed off the cap and drank from the bottle. “Is your baby okay?”
“Yes, suh.”
“You need any money?”
“What you t’ink?”
He removed two twenties from his wallet and put them in her hand. “Stay out of bars and away from the wrong people for a few days. Call me if Axel Devereaux comes around.”
She looked at the money. “You don’t want me to do nothing for you?”
“One look at me in the nude and women run for the convent.”
He thought she might smile, but she didn’t. She walked away without saying thanks or goodbye. He watched her get into her car and drive off, the muffler clanking. He hit the speed dial on his cell phone and got into his Caddy, talking on the phone, then drove down East Main to my house.
• • •
WE SAT ON the front steps while he told me everything Hilary Bienville had said. The sun was almost down, and through the trees I could see clouds that were crimson and yellow and half filled with rain in the afterglow.
“You have any idea who this guy could be?” he said.