The New Iberia Blues (Dave Robicheaux 22)

/> “A sad man,” she said. “Get some help.”

• • •

ALAFAIR CALLED ME from Arizona late that afternoon. “You should see it here,” she said.

“Beautiful, huh?” I replied, a strange longing in my heart at the sound of my daughter’s voice.

“I didn’t mean to be hard on you this morning.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I have a way of saying all the wrong things at the wrong time.”

“I have a single room. Lou is just a friend.”

“You don’t have to explain.”

“Yes, I do. You want to protect me. But I’m fine. Give me some credit.”

“Is Desmond out there?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“He’s decent to women.”

“But the people he works with are not?”

“I don’t trust Butterworth, that’s for sure.”

“He’s still at Cypremort Point.”

“When will you be back?”

“In a few days, probably. Dave, are you sure about Desmond?”

“How do you mean?”

“Sometimes he goes inside himself and doesn’t come back for a while.”

“He’s probably a depressive. Most artists are.”

“I asked him about it,” she said. “Know what he said? ‘Dead poets are always speaking to us. You better listen to them. If you don’t, they get mad.’?”

I felt like someone had poured ice water on my back.

“Are you there?” she said.

“The last person who said something like that to me was a prostitute who lives in that trailer slum by the Jeanerette drawbridge.”

“That’s not unusual in Acadiana.”

“Her baby had a charm tied on her ankle. It was a Maltese cross. The mother wouldn’t tell me where she got it. There was a tiny ankle chain on Lucinda Arceneaux’s body, with a piece of silver wire attached.”

“You’re scaring me, Dave.”

“Come on back home.”

“I can’t do that. I made a commitment. Why don’t you come out? You’d love it here. It’s like stepping into eternity.”

“You were born to be a writer, Alfenheimer.”