Creole Belle (Dave Robicheaux 19)

“Nothing is right, Tee Jolie.”

“Did you like the songs I left on your iPod? I dropped it before I gave it to you. It don’t always work right.”

“You said everything is all right. Don’t you know about your sister?”

“What about her? Blue is just Blue. She’s sweet. To tell you the troot’, her voice is better than mine.”

“Blue is dead.”

“What’s that?”

“She was

murdered. Her body floated up in St. Mary Parish.”

“You’re breaking up, Mr. Dave. What’s that you said about Blue? The storm is tearing up the boathouse on the beach. Can you still hear me, Mr. Dave?”

“Yes.”

“I cain’t hear you, suh. This storm is terrible. It scares me. I got to go now. Tell Blue and my granddaddy hello. Tell them I couldn’t get t’rew.”

The line went dead, and the words “blocked call” disappeared from the caller identification window. Molly was awake when I got back into bed and lay back on the pillow. “Were you fixing something in the kitchen?” she said.

“No, that was Tee Jolie Melton on the phone.”

Molly raised herself up on one elbow. Each time lightning flashed in the clouds, I could see the freckles on her shoulders and the tops of her breasts. “I didn’t hear the phone ring,” she said.

“It woke me up.”

“No, I was awake, Dave. You were talking in your sleep.”

“She said she was sorry for making me worry about her. She doesn’t know her sister is dead.”

“Oh, Dave,” Molly said, her eyes filming.

“These are the things she said. It was Tee Jolie. You think I could forget what her voice sounds like?”

“No, it was not Tee Jolie.”

“She told me she dropped the iPod. That’s why other people can’t hear the songs she put on there.”

“Stop it.”

“I’m telling you what she said. I didn’t imagine it.”

“You’re going to drive us all crazy.”

“You want me to lie to you instead?”

“I almost wish you were drinking again. We could deal with that. But I can’t deal with this.”

“Then don’t,” I said.

I returned to the kitchen and sat in the darkness and looked through the window at the Teche rising over its banks. A pirogue was spinning in the current—empty, with no paddle, rotating over and over as it drifted downstream toward a bend, filling with rainwater that would eventually sink it in the deepest part of the channel. I could not get the image of the sinking pirogue out of my head. I wished I had asked Tee Jolie about the baby she was carrying. I wished I had asked her many things. I felt Molly’s hand on my shoulder.

“Come back to bed,” she said.

“I’ll be along directly.”