“Is Jim home?”
“Sir, this upsets me. You attacked my husband. Now you’re here.”
“I think your husband is responsible for Micah’s death, Miss Cora.”
“Micah went back to New Mexico. Jim gave him money to go. What are you telling me?”
“May I come in?”
“No, you may not. Jim said you’d do something like this. I think I have some things of your mother’s. Wasn’t her name Guillory? They were in a shed. Maybe you should take them and go.”
“You have belongings of my mother?”
“Yes, I think I do.” Her face became disconcerted, wrapped in conflicting thoughts, as though she were simultaneously asking and answering questions inside her own head. “I don’t know where they are right now. I can’t be responsible for other people’s things.”
I stepped closer to the door. The rain was slanting out of the sky, running off the tiles on the roof, clicking on the banks of philodendron and caladium that lined the brick walkway.
“Go away before I call the police,” she said, and closed the heavy door with both hands and shot the bolt inside.
I drove back up the dirt road. Just as I reached the general store, I felt my left front tire go down on the rim. I pulled into the store’s parking lot and got the jack, lug wrench, a pair of cloth gloves, and the spare out of the back and squatted down by the front fender and began spinning the nuts off the flat. I heard a car pull in next to me and someone walk toward the entrance of the store, then pause.
“Lo and behold, it’s the Davester,” a man’s voice said.
I looked up into the grinning face of Jim Gable. He wore a tweed sports coat and tan slacks and shined loafers and a pink shirt with a silver horse monogrammed on the pocket. There was only a yellow discoloration around one eye and the corner of his mouth from the blows he had taken at the Shrimp Festival.
He looked up at the gallery where an old man in overalls and a little boy sat on a wood bench, drinking soda pop and cracking peanuts.
“That’s a mean-looking lug wrench in your hand. You’re not in a volatile mood, are you?” he said.
“Not in the least, Jim.”
“Don’t get up. I suspect you’ve already bothered my wife. I’ll get the feedback from her later,” he said.
He walked past me, on up the steps and across the gallery, through the screen door and into the store. He shook hands with people, then opened the screen again in a gentlemanly fashion to let an elderly lady enter. I fitted the spare onto the axle and tightened down the wheel nuts and lowered the jack, then went inside the store.
Gable sat at a table with a checkerboard painted on top of it, drinking from a paper cup filled with coffee. The inside of the store smelled like cheese and lunch meat and microwave boudin and the green sawdust that was scattered on the floor. I turned a chair around and sat down facing Gable.
He grinned at me as he had outside, but his eyes wouldn’t hold on mine.
“Remeta missed you with double-ought bucks? Maybe he’s slipping. I’d hate to have him on my case,” I said.
He pulled at his collar and looked sideways out the window at the abandoned nightclub next door and the old Jax beer sign swinging on its chains.
“You don’t have any idea of what’s going on, do you?” he said.
“I don’t have to. Time and Remeta are on my side.”
A family dressed in Sunday clothes came in, folding umbrellas, blowing and laughing at the rain.
“I’ve pulled your sheet. You have a violent, alcoholic history. You’ve spent a whole career discrediting yourself,” he said.
I stared directly into Gable’s eyes.
“I know you murdered my mother. I know the words she spoke just before you and your partner killed her. ‘My name’s Mae Robicheaux. My boy fought in Vietnam. My husband was Big Aldous Robicheaux.’ I’m going to smoke you myself or be there when you ride the needle, Jim,” I said.
He kept his eyes on mine now, so he would not have to look at the people who were staring at us from the grocery counter.
“I’m going to walk out of here now. These are my neighbors. You’re not going to do anything. I’m carrying a weapon, but my hands are on the table. Everyone can see that,” he said.