“You’re reading Kermit’s novel about the Battle of Shiloh?”
“You keep your hands off my book.”
“Did Kermit give you this, Ms. Poche?”
“Why would you think that? Why wouldn’t you assume I bought it at a store?”
“Because everything else on your bookshelf is trash.”
“You give me that,” Emma said, getting to her feet.
Alafair peeled back the book’s pages to the frontispiece. The inscription read:
To Carolyn,
With affection and gratitude to a champion on the courts and a champion of the heart. Thanks for your support of my work over the years.
Kermit Abelard
Carolyn?
I DID NOT see Alafair until the next morning, when I was fixing breakfast and she came into the kitchen in her bathrobe. I poured her a glass of orange juice and fixed her a cup of coffee and hot milk and set the glass and the coffee cup and saucer in front of her at the table. I didn’t ask her where she had gone the previous night or what she had done. I went outside and fed Snuggs and Tripod and came back in. Then she told me everything that had happened at Emma Poche’s house in St. Martinville.
“You hit her?” I said.
“She’s lucky that’s all I did.”
“You didn’t get a good look at the person going out the back door?”
“No, but I saw the boat. It looked like the one Kermit owns. I can’t be sure. When I saw his novel on her table, I thought maybe Kermit had left it. Except the inscription is to a tennis player named Carolyn. Does that mean anything to you?”
“Yeah, it does. Carolyn Blanchet, Layton Blanchet’s widow. She played on the tennis team at LSU. I think she’s still the seventh-ranked doubles amateur in the state.”
“Layton Blanchet, that guy who was running a Ponzi scheme of some kind? He shot himself at his camp?”
“I think Layton was probably murdered.”
“You think Carolyn Blanchet is involved with Emma Poche? That maybe she was the one who went out the back door?”
“It’s possible.”
“Like maybe they’re getting it on?”
“Could be. A lot of things about Emma would start to make sense.”
I set a plate of eggs and two strips of bacon in front of Alafair. She had been frowning, but now her expression was clear, her hands resting on top of the table, her long fingers slightly curled, her fingernails as pink as seashells. “I thought maybe—”
“That Kermit was Emma’s lover?”
“Yeah, but that wasn’t what bothered me. I thought maybe he was involved with something really dark. With killing Herman Stanga or setting up Clete. But it wasn’t Kermit who went out Emma’s back door, was it?”
“I’m not sure about anything when it comes to the Abelards,” I replied. “Their kind have been dictators in our midst for generations and admired for it. They created a culture in which sycophancy became a Christian virtue.”
But she was staring out the window, not listening to abstractions, her food growing cold. “No, it wasn’t Kermit. I’m sure of it now. My imagination was running overtime. Are you mad at me for going after Emma Poche?”
“I’ve never been mad at you for any reason, Alafair.”
“Never?”