“Because of the sexist male pricks I met there,” she replied.
“We’ll be out of your way in just a minute,” I said.
“Be my guest. Take all the time you want. Like five minutes. And ‘bite’ is the word,” she said. She stiffened an index finger and pointed it at me. Her cheeks were bright with color as she went back to work stringing tape in the trees, jerking it hard through the limbs.
“You’ll never win their hearts and minds,” Clete said to me.
“You wouldn’t pick a lock at a crime scene, would you?”
“Emma might be a little nuts, but she’s one cute, smart little package,” he replied.
“I can’t believe you.”
“Give the devil her due. Look at the ass on her.”
“I give up, Clete.”
He slapped me between the shoulder blades, his face full of play. Clete Purcel would never change. And if he did, I knew the world would be the less for it.
We stepped up on the houseboat and worked our way forward, examining the molding around the windows in the galley. A long chrome-plated bar that a person could use as a handhold was anchored along the roof of the cabin. At the approximate spot where I had seen glass slivers on the other side of the wall, I saw what looked like an empty screw hole in one of the metal fastenings on the bar. Except it was not a screw hole. I stuck my little finger inside and felt the rough edges of torn wood and a sharpness like splintered glass.
I removed my finger and put one hand on Clete’s shoulder and stepped up on the deck rail so I could see across the top of the cabin roof. Eighteen inches from the chrome-plated bar was an exit hole in the roof. The .45 round had punched through the hand bar’s fastening and clipped the top of the glass inset into the window, before surfacing obliquely from the treated plywood that constituted the ceiling to the galley.
“You were dead-on right,” I said.
“You found it?”
“We’ve got the entry and exit holes, but no slug.”
Clete pushed himself up on the deck rail so he could see. Emma Poche was watching us from out in the water. “You think this is going to make any difference with the sheriff in St. Mary?” he asked.
“Like you say, this is still a fiefdom,” I replied.
“What are y’all doing up there?” Emma called.
We both stared at her without replying. The sun had come out, and her hair and face and uniform were netted with light and shadow.
“Did you hear me?” she said.
“Why’d you bring crime-scene tape on a 911 possible break-in?” I said.
“Because it was already in my goddamn boat,” she replied.
I drummed my fingers on the cabin roof. “You ever carry a forty-five auto as a drop, Emma?” I asked.
She began to gather up the strips of crime-scene tape broken by deer or bear, and stuff them into her trouser pockets. “When I turn around again, you two cutie-pies had better be out of here,” she said.
“My flopper just started flipping around,” Clete said.
CHAPTER
15
MOLLY AND I attended four P.M. Mass in Loreauville that Saturday, with plans to go to dinner and a movie afterward in Lafayette. Alafair was at home by herself, working on her novel, when the phone rang. “Miss Alafair?” the voice said.
“Yes?” Alafair said.
“It’s Jewel, Mr. Timothy’s nurse.”