“You think I just blew it, or maybe—” he said.
We were sitting in his Caddy, the top down, under the overhang of the trees on East Main. The morning was still cool, the sunrise barely visible through the canopy. “Maybe what?” I said.
“She’s dirty.”
“Dirty on what?”
“Everything. I started running the tape backward in my head. When I’m surveilling Carolyn Blanchet at the motel, Emma comes walking out of the lounge and sees me and says she’s waiting for her uncle. Except the uncle never shows up, and I end up getting loaded with her and in the sack with her later that night. Then my gold pen disappears and shows up in Stanga’s swimming pool. Then I see this expensive tennis racquet in her car and I start thinking about who else plays tennis. Like Carolyn Blanchet. Then Emma lies to me about seeing the inscription in the A.A. book. That book had never been opened. Then she tries to get me to come back in the house, maybe for some more high-octane boom-boom. I got to admit it was a temptation.” Clete rubbed the tops of his bare arms. “I feel like I’ve walked through cobwebs.”
“You’re trying to put yourself in the mind of a wet drunk.”
“I am a wet drunk.”
“No, you’re not. You’re still an amateur.”
“Will you stop trying to make me feel better? Do you think I got taken over the hurdles or not?”
“Why would Emma Poche want to help somebody frame you for clipping Stanga?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I’m asking you.”
“You think she was at the motel to meet Carolyn Blanchet?”
“It occurred to me,” he replied. “But if she’s a lesbian or a switch-hitter, she had me fooled. When
you take a ride with Emma Poche, there’s no eight-second buzzer.”
“Will you grow up? This woman is trying to ruin your life, and you talk about her like you’re seventeen years old.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Vidor Perkins came to my office.”
“Are you serious?”
“He says he’s writing a book. He says Timothy Abelard, Kermit’s grandfather, was involved in the drug trade with the Giacano family. He claims Timothy Abelard stiffed the Giacanos, and they had his son and the daughter-in-law wrapped in chains and dropped in sixty feet of water.”
“Abelard got his own kid killed?”
“That’s what Perkins says.”
“And he’s putting this in a book and telling you about it?”
“That’s about it.”
“Is he trying to extort the Abelards or get himself killed?”
“I think he genuinely believes he’s a great talent. He’s already contacted a literary agency and says he and Alafair are going to be colleagues.”
Clete rubbed his forehead. He’d had a haircut the day before and a good night’s sleep, and his face looked pink and youthful, his intelligent green eyes full of warmth and mirth, the way they were years ago when we walked a beat on Canal. “We’ve had a good run, haven’t we?” he said.
“The best,” I said.
He rested the palms of his big hands on the steering wheel. He watched a solitary leaf spin out of the canopy of live oaks above us and light on the waxed hood of the Cadillac. “You don’t figure Layton Blanchet for a suicide?” he said.
“I’m not objective. Most people looking at the scene evidence would put his death down as self-inflicted. I think Layton was too greedy to kill himself. He was the kind of guy who clings to the silverware when the mortician drags him out of his home.”
“Let’s go out there,” Clete said.