Creole Belle (Dave Robicheaux 19)

“That’s me.”

“Clete Purcel and I met you at that outdoor dinner for Amidee Broussard. I told you to check out a dispatcher’s job with the department.”

“That’s right. But the job didn’t offer enough hours. Everything worked out okay, though. I just started driving for this offshore supply company. I’m going to meetings, too. You helped me out a lot.”

“You deliver food for deepwater rigs?”

“Yeah, every kind of frozen food there is. I drive to Morgan City and Port Fourchon, mostly.”

“How’d you get on with the company?”

“A lady in your department gave me a number and told me to call them up. She told me to use her name.”

“Which lady, Bobby Joe?”

“Miss Julie. I saw her inside the building just a few minutes ago.”

“What’s her last name, podna?”

“Ardoin. I heard her husband wasn’t any good, but to my mind, Miss Julie is a fine lady.”

“What did you hear about Miss Julie’s husband?”

“He got in with the wrong guys and was flying coke and weed into the country. That’s why he killed himself. Maybe it’s just one of those stories, though.”

“I never heard those stories, Bobby Joe.”

“You probably wouldn’t. He flew out of Lake Charles and Lafayette. Better get some of this ice cream. It’s going fast,” he said.

When I went back into the building, the western swing band was blaring out “The San Antonio Rose,” the horns so loud that the floor was quaking under our feet.

I SAT DOWN next to Molly. Alafair’s chair was empty. I looked around and couldn’t see her anywhere. “Where’s Alf?” I said, my voice almost lost inside the volume of Bob Wills’s most famous song.

“She went to find Gretchen Horowitz,” Molly said.

I tried to think and couldn’t. Everything happening around me seemed fragmented and incoherent but part of a larger pattern, like a sheet of stained glass thrown upon a flagstone. A truck like the one from which a man had blown out my windshield was parked outside the building, and its driver had just told me he’d gotten his job from the same woman Gretchen Horowitz had warned me about. Could Clete and I have been wrong all this time? Had Julie Ardoin been a key player in all the events that had transpired over the last two months? Were we that blind? And now “The San Antonio Rose” was thundering inside my head, the same song Gretchen Horowitz had been whistling after she pumped three rounds into Bix Golightly’s face.

I got up and worked my way around the back of the crowd toward the beer concession. I could see Clete sitting at the end of a row, but there was no sign of Alafair or Gretchen or Julie Ardoin. I sat down next to him and scanned the audience. “Have you seen Alf?” I asked.

“Yeah, she and Gretchen were just here. They went to the ladies’ room,” he replied.

“Where’s Julie?”

“She went with them.”

“Clete, I just ran into that guy Bobby Joe Guidry, the Desert Storm vet.”

“Yeah, yeah, what about him?” he said irritably, trying to concentrate on the band.

“The company Guidry works for is supplying the ice cream for the concert. It’s the same company that owned the truck used by the guys who tried to kill me in Lafayette.”

“The truck was stolen, right? What’s the point? A guy who works for the same company is scooping ice cream outside? Big deal.”

“Guidry says he got his job through Julie Ardoin. She told him to call the company and use her name.”

“Julie is on the Sugar Cane Festival committee. She helps with all the events connected with the building.”

“No, it’s too much coincidence. Guidry says her husband was flying dope into the country.”