“She’s been married to Layton too long,” I said.
“Forget about it. I think her problem isn’t with us or the accident,” Helen said. “I think she doesn’t want us talking to her husband.”
“I think you’re right,” I replied.
“What’s going on between Clete and Layton Blanchet?”
“Layton thinks somebody is pumping his wife. He hired Clete to find out who.”
“And?”
“Clete came up with zero.”
“But that’s not why she wants to keep us away from her husband. I want you to get Layton alone and find out what’s going on.”
“You’ve never met Carolyn?”
“Why?”
“You seem a little charged up.”
“I was taking graduate courses at LSU when that snooty bitch was a cheerleader. She got a friend of mine kicked out of her sorority because my friend was a lesbian.”
“I see,” I said, my gaze shifting off Helen’s face to the oaks on the lawn of the old convent across the bayou.
“You see what?”
“Nothing.”
“Dave, do you think you’re the only person in the world who resents rich people treating us like we’re their personal servants?”
“I’ll see what I can get out of Layton,” I replied.
“Do that,” she said. She put on her sunglasses and placed her hands on her hips, her gaze riveted on Carolyn Blanchet. “They’re not going to wipe their feet on us. Not this time.”
“When did they do it before?”
“Everybody does.”
“You sound like me.”
“I know. It’s depressing,” she replied. Then she hit me on the arm.
Layton took the Breathalyzer test and came up negative. Helen rode back to the department with a deputy, and I put Layton in our cruiser and drove across the drawbridge, past the former convent, and into City Park.
“What are we doing?” he asked.
“It’s time for a sno’ball. You’d rather sit in an interview room down the hall from a holding cell or have a sno’ball with me in the shade?”
For the first time since we had arrived at the accident, he tried to smile. Then the humor faded from his eyes and he stared at some children turning somersaults on the grass in the park. “I was a good cop, wasn’t I?” he said.
In my opinion, Layton had used police work solely as a threshold into more lucrative enterprises. “I didn’t know you real well back then, Layton. I suspect, like most of us, you did the best you could.”
“I mean, I never jammed anybody. I never knocked the blacks around.”
“That’s right.”
“When I sold pots and pans and burial insurance in black neighborhoods, I tried to give them a break, at least as far as my boss would allow.”