Creole Belle (Dave Robicheaux 19)

“It’s just another gig. If it doesn’t work out, let it go.”

“That’s the way I figured it.”

“I’ve got some coffee on. How about some Grape-Nuts and milk and blackberries?”

“That’d be nice. I didn’t want to wake you up, that’s all. So that’s why I thought I’d sit on the bank awhile and watch the sun come up.”

“What happened last night, Clete?”

He turned and looked at me sideways. He grimaced. “I went out to her old man’s place on Cypremort Point. The old man is in Iberia General.”

I nodded, trying to show no expression.

“We played badminton,” he said. “Then I knocked back a few shots of tequila, and she showed me the photograph. She collects Indian artifacts, all kinds of junk from Santa Fe and around Mesa Verde and other places out west. She goes on archaeological digs. She found some ancient pottery in a cave, bowls that go back to the thirteenth century. That’s when there was a big drought in the Southwest. She knows all about that kind of stuff.”

“People who go on archaeological digs don’t get to keep their artifacts, Clete.”

“Yeah, I brought that up a little later.”

“Later than when?”

“After we got it on.”

“You were in the sack with Varina Leboeuf?”

“In the sack, on a chair, standing up, against the wall, you name it. I think we might have broken some of her old man’s furniture. She’s like a portable volcano. About four A.M. she was ready to rock again. We fell on top of her teddy bear.”

“Her what?”

“She has this teddy bear on a couch under all her Indian artifacts.”

“Varina Leboeuf keeps teddy bears in the room where she gets it on with guys our age?”

“Come on, Streak, I already feel like somebody ran over me with a garbage truck. I don’t mean about her. I’m talking about me. I’m old and fat, and all I think about is getting my ashes hauled. It’s the way I am, but having somebody else tell me that about myself doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“Go over it again.”

“What for?”

“Just do it. Don’t leave out one detail.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, his hands splayed on his knees, and repeated everything. I cupped my hand on the back of his neck. It felt as hard as iron, the pockmarks in his skin oily and hot and as coarse as pig hide on the edges. He looked at the water, his face wan, his coat almost splitting on his back. “I feel awful,” he said.

“The teddy bear, did it look like an old one?”

“Now that you mention it, no.”

“Think about it, Cletus. What doesn’t fit in the story you just told me?”

“I can’t follow you,” he said. “I feel like the Tijuana Brass is doing a Mexican hat dance inside my head.”

“Varina has a long history with men. She never asks for quarter and never gives it. She’s not a sentimentalist. If Wyatt Earp ever had a female counterpart, it’s Varina Leboeuf.”

“The teddy bear?” he said.

“It doesn’t belong in the picture, does it?”

“Why would she want to trap me with a nanny-cam? Who cares if a guy like me can’t keep his stiff red-eye under control?”