He leaned back in his chair. “You should have told me.”
“Why?”
“Sometimes I feel like a fraud. That’s something no one can ever accuse you of.” He drank his glass to the bottom and looked out the window at the three live oaks he had named for Confederate officers. “What a pile of shit.”
Then, without saying another word, he left me in his office and went outside and resumed stuffing mounds of leaves in the waste barrels, throwing a jelly glass full of gasoline onto the fire, indifferent to the whoosh of heat that must have singed his eyebrows.
* * *
ALMOST TWO WEEKS went by without any change in the status of the Dartez homicide or the sexual assault charges filed by Rowena Broussard. Clete Purcel took Carolyn Ardoin to dinner and a movie in Lafayette. Then the next night to a movie in Lake Charles. Then three days later to a street dance and crawfish boil in Abbeville.
“You’re going to wear me out,” she said on their way back to Jennings.
“I’ve been keeping you up too late?”
“It’s grand being out with you, Clete.”
The top of his Caddy was up, and her skin looked warm and rosy in the glow of the dash lights. He liked everything about her. The way she shook all over when she laughed, the happy shine in her eyes, her manners and all the books she had read. He turned in to her neighborhood, not wanting the night to end.
The houses were small and clapboard with tin roofs, the yards neat and without fences, the driveways nothing more than gravel tracks. If the contemporary automobiles were taken away, the year could have been 1935. He pulled up to the curb. She had not left her porch light on.
He went around to the passenger side and opened the door. When she got out, she looked him directly in the face and smiled. He could smell the gardenias and the two magnolia trees in her yard. She touched his arm when she stood up from the leather seat.
“I’ll walk you up to the steps,” he said. “I’ve sure enjoyed the evening.”
“As I, Clete.” She looked at the sky. There was a rain ring around the moon. “Tomorrow is Saturday.”
“Yes,” he said.
“With no work obligations.”
“Probably a rainy morning, too,” he said. “It’s a fine time of year.”
In the darkness of the gallery, she took her key from her purse. She looked up into his face. “You’re a gentleman. You’re kind and strong, and you respect women. Those things are not lost on a woman.”
“I didn’t quite get that.”
“If you need to go, I understand. I just want you to know you’re always welcome here and that I appreciate your gentlemanly ways.”
When he spoke, he felt as though he had swallowed a pebble. “I’d love to come in.”
Inside, she closed the blinds and turned on a light in a back hallway. “This way.”
In the bedroom, the wood floor creaked under his weight as he approached her. She turned on a lamp. The wallpaper was covered with roses. The quilt on the bed was lavender, the pillows pink. He felt as though he were inside a dollhouse, but in a good way. “Miss Carolyn, I’ve led a checkered life.”
“Who hasn’t?” she replied.
* * *
HE LEFT HER house early in the morning, before the neighbors were up, to avoid making Carolyn a subject of gossip. There was not a person on the street. The morning paper lay on people’s galleries or walkways. The trees ticked with moisture. At the end of the block, he looked in the outside mirror and saw an SUV swing out of an alley and follow him.
He coasted to the curb, cut the engine, and pretended to look for something in the glove box. The SUV passed him. The windows were charcoaled and rolled up except for a crack at the top, probably for a smoker. Clete wrote down the tag number on a small white pad he kept in the well of the console. At the next intersection, the SUV turned and disappeared down a side street.
Clete drove downtown and ate in a café, stationing himself at a table with a view of the street. Before his food arrived, he saw the SUV park at an angle in front of a hardware store that had gone out of business. After a few minutes, the driver opened the door far enough to drop a cigarette on the asphalt. The driver was wearing a checked sport coat and a gray knit cap with a bill.
Clete ate his breakfast, paid the check, and went outside, his gaze fixed on a black kid skateboarding down the sidewalk. Then he crossed the street and tapped on the window of the SUV.
Maximo Soza lowered the window. JuJu Ladrine was in the passenger seat, his face stretched with tension. Maximo scratched a spot under his eye. “I don’t see no envelope.”