Chapter Twenty

It was still early in the evening, barely eight o’clock. I drove back via Magazine Street. It was close to the river and hadn’t flooded. I needed the lights and people flashing by as I drove home, a balm to the empty blocks and darkened swaths that I too often had to traverse.

The Overhills seemed like decent people, with a healthy perspective on what money could buy and what it couldn’t. Like Brooke, either they were innocent or were great actors. Except for Jared. Maybe he was tired and a bit wired, but he seemed to be hiding something. Maybe he always used humor to distance himself from the messy business of life. I didn’t know him well enough to judge. Brooke had her singing career; he was the one whose prestige and worth were invested in the family business and wealth.

Much as I wanted Alma to be a brilliant, selfless performer and not someone who had brought chaos into her life, someone had tried to blackmail the Overhills. It appeared to be a clumsy attempt. Though Marilyn didn’t recognize Alma’s voice as the one on the phone, it could still be her. She was a performer who could act and possibly even change her voice. Or have an accomplice make the call. That it was another woman also implicated her. It could have been her lover; as a lesbian she was likely to have more women in her life than a man or a straight woman, women that could help her with her blackmail. Lesbians aren’t perfect, but we’re a little better about gender stereotypes than most. We don’t automatically assume that a woman is too girly for a little blackmail.

After I’d turned off Magazine onto Camp, I’d pretty much been driving on autopilot. I realized I was heading for my house—and Cordelia—not my office.

Just do it, just get it over with. Waiting another day and another day won’t change anything or make it easier. Tomorrow had become too seductive, always beckoning, “Do it tomorrow.” But tomorrow never came; in the night it turned into today. I needed to do it today.

I drove by the house, then made the block, coming back around and parking two houses down. I noticed the changes in the neighborhood. The water had reached this block. When I’d first come back about half the cars parked on the street had muddy black water lines on them. It seemed like those derelict heaps had finally been towed away. A tree near the corner was about half the size it had been before, with all the limbs ripped away by the wind.

Several of the houses were dark, perhaps empty, abandoned or still waiting for those who lived there to return.

The lights were on at our house, although I didn’t see a car that I recognized as Cordelia’s. Had she flown in? And did that mean she would soon be flying out? Or had she bought a new car? Hers had close to a hundred-thousand miles on it before Katrina. Maybe she had traded it in. I should know all these things and I didn’t. I felt a stab at the loss of the daily rhythm of my life, the little things that added up.

What do I want, I again asked myself. I wanted to talk to her and find out what she wanted. And then…that would depend on what she wanted.

A big boxy SUV drove past me and parked right in front of my house.

Patty What’s-Her-Name got out. Carrying flowers.

“You fucking bitch,” I muttered under my breath, as I slunk down low in my seat so she wouldn’t notice me. I wasn’t sure if I was referring to Patty or Cordelia or both.

She marched confidently up the stairs and knocked on the door.

She waited for about a minute and knocked again.

I began to suspect that Cordelia was not expecting her.

Patty was about to knock a third time when the door finally opened.

Cordelia was in sweatpants and an old sweatshirt. Definitely not expecting company. Unless she was trying to get rid of her.

Patty presented the flowers with a flourish.

Cordelia hesitantly took them.

I was almost enjoying the show since I knew Cordelia well enough to know she hadn’t agreed to this. I could almost picture it. Someone told Patty that she needed to be more assertive and chase the woman she wanted. Either Patty hadn’t listened or didn’t seem to realize that the other woman had to want to be chased for this to work.

I could almost hear the sigh as Cordelia finally stepped aside and let Patty in.

“You are too nice,” I told her, much too quietly for her to hear.

I considered hanging around and waiting to see Patty put out, but she was quite an obtuse person and I wasn’t sure Cordelia could manage the level of impoliteness that would probably be required.

“But you, my little pretty,” I said to her vehicle, “have walked into my evil clutches.” It was a Chevy Tahoe—why does anyone with less than ten kids need something that massive—dried-blood red and ugly. I noted down the license number.

I stayed another fifteen minutes, but it was cold and I was tired and hungry. Only the lights on the first floor were on when I left, the bedroom chastely dark.

“Your hubcaps will be mine oh-so-soon,” I told the Tahoe as I drove past it.

Then it was back to my office. By myself. To a sumptuous dinner of peanut butter, strawberry jam on whole-wheat bread.

Why hadn’t I banged on the door and told Patty to get the fuck out of my house?

Because it didn’t seem quite like the right time for a macho possessive act? Because it gave me an excuse to put everything off once again? Because I wasn’t sure how Cordelia would respond? She might just throw us both out.

I decided to focus on an easier task. Catching a murderer.

I went back through my case notes, seeing what Mrs. Frist had said about the family next door. Jordy, the father, was dead and Mae, the mother, wasn’t doing too well. One child had overdosed, one was in prison, one killed in a motorcycle accident, one married to a woman fifteen years older than he was with four kids already. They might want to know that their sister was dead.

Time for some more Internet sleuthing.

After an hour or two I found out that the sister, Latisha Mae, had done time for helping her scum-dog boyfriend run drugs. She had gotten out of St. Gabrielle, the women’s prison, a week before Katrina. The only address for her was her parents’ house. Somehow I didn’t think she was living there. She probably had a parole officer and Joanne could find out who that was.

The living son was Calvin. His address was a place in the Lower 9th Ward, so it was a good bet I wouldn’t find him there either.

Katrina had spread people all over the country, from the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain to Alaska. I had seen an article about refugees who’d ended up in Milwaukee needing winter coats. Sometimes people just got on buses or planes with no i.e. where they’d end up. Some of the planes had landed in places like Utah.

Maybe it was less than kind, but I posted on a where-are-you Web site, “Calvin, Latisha Mae, and Mae, your sister/daughter Alma is looking for you,” with a nondescript e-mail address I sometimes used for this purpose.

I searched for another few hours, but could find nothing else useful. A few more listings of performances by Alma, a mention of Calvin winning an award for being the lead water boy on the high-school football team. But nothing that would help me find them.

Another thought occurred to me. What if Alma hadn’t wanted to use what she had discovered as a way to get money from the Overhills, but someone else had, someone who wanted to get the information from her. To the point that he (or she) murdered Alma to get it. That might explain what I saw at the house, why those thugs were there looking for what I had to assume was the information Alma had uncovered.

But it didn’t seem likely that, for example, her just-released-from prison sister would have the wherewithal to hire thugs like the ones I’d seen. Plus they were white. Would a black woman hire two white thugs when presumably she could get any number of her ex-boyfriend’s associates to help her? Maybe she didn’t want to murder her sister or have anyone she knew do it for her, so she hired someone she didn’t know.

You’re getting tired and making things up. The sister had just got out of jail, presumably she didn’t want to go back, and a quick way to go back to jail was to engage in criminal activity with people who’d be more than willing to sell her out for a shorter prison sentence.

Nothing was making sense. Except for the scenario that I didn’t much like, that it probably was the Overhills—maybe only Jared—who had the most to lose and the resources to prevent that loss.

I was tired. It was time to pile on the blankets and go to bed.

I made a list of what I needed to do—contact Joanne about the parole officer and get my butt out to Kenner to find out what was going on with Nathalie and connect her with Liz. Tell Torbin that Operation Shrimp de Jour was afoot.

Talk to Cordelia.

That was enough for one day. I went to bed.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14