Creole Belle (Dave Robicheaux 19)

“He didn’t say. He seemed in a hurry.”

“Dupree owns a building in New Orleans that used to be the headquarters of Didoni Giacano. There was a safe in the building that contained an old IOU from a card game Clete was in. Clete had paid the debt, but a couple of wiseacres got their hands on the marker and tried to take his office and apartment away from him. What do you know about Dupree?”

“I’ve met him at a couple of parties. He seems nice enough,” she said. She took a bite of her sandwich and avoided my eyes.

“Go on,” I said.

“He’s had a lot of commercial success as an artist. I think he’s a marketing man more than a painter. There’s nothing wrong in that.”

“There isn’t?”

“He owns an ad agency, Dave. That’s what the man does for a living. Not everybody is Vincent van Gogh.”

“When was the first time you wrote a dishonest line in your fiction?”

She drank from her iced tea, her expression neutral, her galley pages fluttering when the wind gusted.

“The answer is you never wrote a dishonest line,” I said.

Her skin was unblemished and dark in the shade, her hair as black as an Indian’s, her features and the luster in her eyes absolutely beautiful. Men had trouble not looking at her, even when they were with their wives. It was hard to believe she was the same little El Salvadoran girl I pulled from a submerged airplane that crashed off Southwest Pass. “There’s Pierre Dupree,” she said.

A canary-yellow Humvee with a big chrome grille had just pulled into the driveway. Through the tinted windshield, I could see the driver talking on a cell phone and fooling with something on the dashboard. I walked through the porte cochere until I was abreast of the driver’s window. Pierre Dupree had thick black hair that was as shiny as a raven’s wing. He also had intense green eyes with a black fleck in them. He was at least six feet seven and had a face that would have been handsome except for the size of his teeth. They were too big for his mouth and, coupled with his size, they gave others the sense that in spite of his tailored suits and good manners, his body contained physical appetites and energies and suppressed urges that he could barely restrain.

“Sorry I missed you earlier, Mr. Robicheaux,” he said through the window.

“Get down and come in,” I replied.

He thumbed a breath mint loose from a roll and put it in his mouth and dropped the roll back on the dashboard. “I’ve got to run. It’s about Mr. Purcel. He’s called my office twice regarding a betting slip of some kind. His message said the betting slip was in a safe I inherited from the previous tenant of a building I own. I got rid of that safe years ago. I just wanted to tell Mr. Purcel that.”

“Then tell him.”

“I tried. He doesn’t pick up. I’ve got to get back to New Orleans. Will you relay the message?”

“Do you know a guy named Bix Golightly?”

“No, but what a grand name.”

“How about Waylon Grimes or Frankie Giacano?”

“Everybody in New Orleans remembers the Giacanos. I never knew any of them personally. I really have to go, Mr. Robicheaux. Stop by the plantation in Jeanerette or my home in the Garden District. Bring Alafair. I’d love to see her again. Is she still writing?”

While he was speaking the last sentence, he was already starting his engine. Then he backed into the street, smiling as though he were actually listening to my reply. He drove past the Shadows and into the business district.

I tried to assess what had just occurred. A man who indicated he wanted to deliver a message had gone to my home earlier but had not bothered to go to my office, although he had been told that was where I could be found. Then he had bounced into my driveway and delivered his message, all the while explaining that he didn’t have time to be there. Then he had left, communicating nothing of substance to anyone except the fact that he owned two expensive homes to which we were invited on an unspecified day.

I decided that Pierre Dupree definitely belonged in advertising.

HELEN SOILEAU CALLED me at home on Saturday morning. “We’ve got a floater down at the bottom of St. Mary Parish,” she said.

“A homicide?” I asked.

“I don’t know what it is. I’m getting too old for this job. Anyway, I’m going to need you there.”

“Why not let St. Mary handle it?”

“One of the deputies recognized the victim. It’s Blue Melton, Tee Jolie’s sister.”

“Blue drowned?”