Clete pulled his unlit cigarette from his mouth and held it up like an exclamation point. “I got it. That’s why you couldn’t help Miss Jewel out.”
The man dropped his eyes to the magazine, then seemed to give it up, as though his few minutes of retreat from the distractions of the world had been irreparably damaged. He closed the door and started the engine, his mouth working on the mint while he waited for the black woman to get in.
“You know where I think I’ve seen you?” Clete said.
“Couldn’t even guess.”
“I was looking through some binoculars. You were in a field down by a river in Jeff Davis Parish. It was raining. Ring any bells? Some heavy shit went down. Maybe a couple of your friends got their lasagna slung all over the bushes. I never forget a face.”
“Sorry, I’m from Florida. I think you’re confused.”
“It wasn’t you? I would swear it was. You guys know how to kick ass. It was impressive.”
“Watch your foot.”
Clete stepped back as the man cut the wheel and turned in a circle, opening the passenger door for the black woman. Clete pointed his finger at the driver. “Airborne, I bet. That’s how you got that ruptured disk. You’re doing scut work for the Abelards and Robert Weingart now? That must be like drinking out of a spittoon. I bet you’ve got some stories to tell.”
As the truck crossed the two-lane and turned onto the wood bridge that spanned the moat around the Abelard house, Clete memorized the tag and dialed a number on his cell phone. Then he lost service and had to punch in the number a second time. The call went into voice mail. “Dave, it’s Clete. I’m outside the Abelard place. I need you to run a Florida tag. It belongs to a real piece of work, maybe one of the shitbags from the gig on the river. I tried to rattle him but didn’t have any luck.” He closed his eyes and said the tag number into the cell. “Get back to me, noble mon. Out.”
Clete rumbled across the bridge and up the knoll that formed the island on which Timothy Abelard’s columned manor stood like an abandoned shell from a movie set. The pickup truck driven by the man from Florida was parked by the carriage house, but no one was in sight. When Clete knocked on the door, he could hear no one inside. “Hello?” he called out. No response.
He walked around the side of the house, past a chicken coop and an ancient brick cistern that was veined with dead vines. In the backyard the black woman was hoeing in a vegetable garden, a sunbonnet tied under her chin, her big arms flexing as she notched weeds out of the rows planted with carrots and radishes. Clete did not speak when he walked up behind her, though he had no doubt she was aware of his presence. He took off his hat and studied the refracted glare of the sun inside the flooded cypress snags between the house and the bay. “Mr. Abelard home?” he said.
The woman kept her eyes on her work, a line of sweat sliding out of her bonnet onto her forehead. “No, suh.”
“Where is he?”
“Gone to Lafayette for his dialysis.”
“As his nurse, wouldn’t you normally go along with him?”
“I got chores to do here.”
“Is Kermit or Robert Weingart around?”
“No, suh, they’re in New Orleans for the day.”
“What’s the deal on our peroxided friend from Florida, Miss Jewel?”
Locks of her hair hung outside her bonnet. They were threaded with silver, damp with her work and the humidity that seemed to rise from the composted soil and the dead water surrounding the knoll. Her hoe was rising and falling faster, thudding into the ground, flashing in the sun. “Your name is Mr. Clete, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Clete said.
“You need to leave, suh. It’s not a good time for you to be here.”
“You in trouble, Miss Jewel?”
“No, suh. I been here all my life. I was born in the quarters, back up the road where the old mill use to be. I just do my job. I go my own way. Nothing bad is gonna happen to me.”
“Who’s the dude from Florida?”
She looked out of the corner of her eye toward the house. “I got to get these radishes hoed out. Then I’m fixing a big salad for Mr. Timothy. People have their problems and their grief, then it passes. Mess with it and it gets all over you.”
Clete heard a screen door open and swing back on a spring. The black woman’s hands tightened on the hoe handle, her triceps knotting as she scratched and clicked the blade frenetically between the vegetable rows.
“If you have business on the property, you need to call first and make an appointment,” the man with the peroxided hair said to Clete.
“Give me a number and I’ll get right on that.”