Creole Belle (Dave Robicheaux 19)

“I don’t think they’ll be very helpful.”

I could see lights of impatience and irritability flicker in her eyes. “Who’s your prime subject, Dave?”

“Gretchen Horowitz.”

“An out-and-out execution?”

“No, she stopped a rape and probably a murder. If you ask me, Jesse got what he deserved.”

“You questioned Horowitz?”

“Yep, but I got nowhere. Here’s what interesting. Before he died, Jesse said something to the killer in French. Catin Segura heard it but says she doesn’t speak French.”

“Catin has no idea who the shooter was?”

“You’d better ask her.”

“I’m asking you.”

“The damage Jesse did to her was off the scale.”

“Where’s Catin now?”

“Back home with her kids. You want me to call her and tell her to come in?”

I saw Helen’s eyes searching in space. “No,” she said. “I’ll talk to her at her house. No evidence at the scene or eyewitness account puts Horowitz there?”

“Nothing.”

“I passed by your door when you were on the phone. Was that Dana Magelli you were taking to?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“Maybe Clete busted up a guy named Lamont Woolsey in the Garden District last night.”

“I just don’t believe it,” she said.

“It’s the way it is, Helen.”

“Don’t tell me that,” she said, turning her back to me, her hands on her hips. The muscles in her upper arms looked like rolls of quarters.

“Helen—”

“Don’t say any more. Just leave. Now. Not later. Right now,” she said.

AT QUITTING TIME, I drove to Clete’s cottage. The air was damp, the sky plum-colored, and stacks of raked leaves were burning and blowing apart in the wind on the far side of the bayou, the ash glowing like fireflies. I didn’t want to accept that winter was upon us and soon frost would speckle the trees and the cane fields that were already being turned into stubble. I was bothered even more by the fact that dwelling too much on the cycle of the seasons could turn one’s heart into a lump of ice.

Clete was barefoot and wearing unpressed slacks and a strap undershirt and was watching the news on television in his favorite deep-cushioned chair. He poured from a pint bottle of brandy into a jelly glass and added three inches of eggnog from a carton. There was a wastebasket by his foot. A roll of toilet paper was tucked between his thigh and the arm of the chair. “Get yourself a Diet Doc,” he said, barely looking at me.

“I don’t want a Diet Doc.”

“Rough day?”

“Not particularly. What’s with the toilet paper?”

“I get the sense Helen is back on the job.”