Robicheaux (Dave Robicheaux 21)

“If you’re serious about going off-planet, you do it higher up, don’t you?”

“People are not in a rational state when they try to take their lives,” he replied.

“Am I right or not, Doc?”

“They do it here.” He drew two fingers high up on his inner forearm. He gazed innocuously out the window.

“Is there something else you want to tell me?”

“No.”

“Let me rephrase. Is there something else you feel I should know?”

“I’d like to have you banned from my office. How about that?”

I held his eyes.

“Rowena had medical training in Australia,” he said. “She nursed Indians in South America. What we used to call meatball medicine.”

“She wasn’t serious about getting to the barn?”

“This doesn’t mean she wasn’t assaulted.”

“Thanks for your time,” I said.

THAT NIGHT, ALAFAIR played tennis with friends at Red Lerille’s Health & Racquet Club in Lafayette. The night was black, the lights over the courts iridescent with humidity, the whocking sounds of tennis balls and the huffing and shouts of the players a celebration of spring and rebirth. When Alafair’s friends quit for the evening, she wiped herself off with a towel and began hitting on the backboard. A woman in a pleated tennis skirt and a white sweater cut off at the armpits, with black hair pulled back as tightly as wire, walked up behind her, spinning the shaft of a racquet in her left palm. “Like to have another go at it?”

“Pardon?” Alafair said.

“You’re Alafair Robicheaux. I recognized you from the photo on your book jacket.”

“Yes,” Alafair said.

“I’m Emmeline Nightingale.”

“Are you—”

“Jimmy Nightingale’s cousin and bookkeeper. My partner didn’t show. I was hoping to hit a few.”

“I was about to head back to New Iberia.”

“Maybe another time, then. Your last book was marvelous.”

“Thank you.”

“I read you graduated at the top of Stanford Law. Look, I didn’t mean to do anything inappropriate. I know who your father is, and I know he’s talking to Jimmy about some legal matters.”

“No, that has nothing to do with my situation,” Alafair said.

“Well, anyway, I wanted to introduce myself and tell you how much I admire your writing. Damn it, I wanted to play tonight.”

“If you like, we can volley a bit.”

Emmeline went to the far end of a nearby court and began dancing on the balls of her feet. Alafair went to the baseline and bounced the ball once, then hit it leisurely across the net. Emmeline returned it in the same way, smiling, showing no sense of competitiveness, making sure the return always went to Alafair’s forehand. Then, for no apparent reason, she swung the racquet hard, rolling it with her wrist and top-speeding the ball so it scotched the surface of the court and flew past Alafair’s reach.

“Good shot,” Alafair said, ignoring the breach of protocol.

“Sorry, I was still thinking about my partner not showing up,” Emmeline said.