THAT EVENING I went home in a funk. I felt powerless. We had no viable suspects in the series of murders that had begun with Lucinda Arceneaux; a deranged man like Smiley Wimple was making calls to me that I couldn’t trace; and outsiders and sybarites like Antoine Butterworth were wiping their feet on us.
Alafair had already fixed supper and was putting it on the table when I walked into the kitchen. She was wearing a white dress and makeup.
“Where are you going tonight?” I asked.
“Lou and I are seeing Kiss of Death with Richard Widmark at UL.”
“Wexler again?” I said.
“Give it a break, Dave.”
“I just think he’s too old for you.”
Talk about feeding one to the batter.
“Do you realize how absurd that sounds, coming from you?” she said.
Rain was pelting the trees in the yard, the sky running with ink. I opened the screen door and let Snuggs and Mon Tee Coon inside, mud and all. “I majored in being ridiculous.”
“I’m glad you’re going out with Bailey,” she said.
That was my daughter.
“You’re a good guy, Alf.”
“Lou thinks Kiss of Death is too strong for me,” she said.
“When Tommy Udo pushes the old woman in the wheelchair down the staircase?”
“Lou didn’t know I came from El Salvador. When I told him what happened in my village, he got upset. He’s very protective.”
“I might come in late tonight,” I said.
“You’re seeing Bailey?”
“No.”
She waited for me to go on. But I didn’t. Her face clouded.
“I’m putting in some overtime,” I said.
“Are you and Clete up to something?”
“This has nothing to do with Clete.”
“That’s like one side of the coin saying it has nothing to do with the other side.”
“Watch out for Tommy Udo,” I said.
• • •
I DROVE DOWN TO Cypremort Point. The sky was sealed with black clouds except for a band of cold light along the horizon. The tide was coming in, the waves dented with rain and thudding as heavy as lead against the shore. Up ahead, Desmond’s house glistened against the sky. I parked on the road and walked up the steps in the wind and rain. I had no plan in mind. I could not even say why I was there, except that Clete Purcel had planted the seeds of doubt in my mind about Desmond Cormier.
In his work, Desmond was fascinated by light and shadow. But was that a result of his artistic compulsion or an externalization of a struggle within him? His physical energies and appetites were enormous, his latent anger sometimes flickering alight in the recesses of his eyes, as though the child in him would have its way. Even his goodness was like a child’s, brightening a room one moment, gone the next. His unknowability and mercurial behavior and insularity caused awe and fear in others. If he had an artistic antecedent, it was Leonardo, chipping away at a block of marble, releasing a statue that could be either a Madonna or a gargoyle.
I walked onto the deck, more voyeur than visitor, but I no longer cared about protocol or decorum. I felt soul-sick at what had been done to Bella Delahoussaye. I remembered many years before when I saw Joan Baez perform “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” at Ole Miss, and the chill her words sent through me when she sang “Just take what you need and leave the rest / But they should never have taken the very best.”
And that’s what Bella was—the very best.