Creole Belle (Dave Robicheaux 19)

“It’s possible,” I said. “What are the other possibilities?”

“He’s a pedophile?”

“We would have heard about it.”

“Did the hair look old?”

“Yeah, most of it.”

She wrapped her uneaten food in the plastic bag in which it had been delivered and set it in the bottom of the wastebasket. “I told Clete the old man made me feel funny, like his fingers were crawling all over me.” She was studying the floor. Then she looked me full in the face. “He was one of them?”

“One of what?”

“He’s not a Jew? He was one of the Nazis who worked in those camps? He herded all those children and women and sick people into the gas chambers? That’s what you’re saying?”

“Pierre says Alexis is not only his grandfather but his father as well,” I said. “So tell me who’s lying and who’s evil and who’s telling the truth. This is the wasp’s nest you threw a rock in.”

I heard a key turn in the front-door lock and the blinds rattle against the glass when the door swung open. “What’s going on in here?” Clete said, a double-folded manila envelope in his hand.

“Gretchen was eating some noodles. I kicked three of your clients out. Both of us think Alexis Dupree may have been a Nazi, not a Jewish inmate in a death camp,” I said. “Outside of that, it’s been a pretty dull day.”

CLETE AND I went into his inner office, and I told him about my visit to the Dupree plantation. “So you think the old man is actually a war criminal?” he said.

“It’s possible. He claimed he survived Ravensbrück because of his inner discipline and the fact that he did everything his warders told him to do. Listening to him tell it, I had the feeling that those who died brought their deaths upon themselves. He also said he was a friend of Robert Capa. But he didn’t know if Capa was a Communist. On his wall, he has a photo of Italian troops in what I think was the Ethiopian campaign. They used chemical weapons on people who fought with spears and bows and arrows. Why would a victim of the fascists want a photo like that on his wall?”

I could tell I was losing Clete’s attention. “I know that look. What have you done now?” I said.

“Hang on,” he said. He sent Gretchen on an errand, then closed the door and untaped the double-folded manila envelope he had been holding and removed two memory cards. “I creeped Varina’s apartment in Lafayette and her house on Cypremort Point. You were right about the teddy bear on the couch. It’s a nanny-cam. She had another one on a shelf in Lafayette.”

“You broke into her home and her apartment?”

“Not exactly. I showed my PI badge to the apartment manager in Lafayette.”

“How did you get into the house on Cypremort Point?”

“The key was in a flowerpot.”

“How’d you know it was there?”

“She showed me. In case I wanted to let myself in if her old man wasn’t there.” He saw my look. “So I took advantage of her trust. It doesn’t make me feel good,” he said. “You want to watch this stuff or not?”

“No, I don’t. I don’t think you should watch it, either.”

“Maybe I’m on tape. You think I should ignore that?” he said, uploading the first card into his computer.

“Don’t give power to it.”

“To what?”

“Evil.”

“You think Varina is evil?”

“I don’t know what she is. Just stay away from her. Stay away from the shit on that card, too.”

“What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Give it back to her. Treat it with contempt. Let her live in her own deceit.”