Elvis Cole 05 – Voodoo River – Crais, Robert

*

Semper fidelis.

Chapter 1

I met Jodi Taylor and her manager for lunch on the Coast Highway in Malibu , not far from Paradise Cove and the Malibu Colony. The restaurant was perched on the rocks overlooking the ocean, and owned by a chef who had his own cooking show on public television. A saucier. The restaurant was bright and airy, with spectacular views of the coast to the east and the Channel Islands to the south. A grilled tuna sandwich cost eighteen dollars. A side of fries cost seven-fifty. They were called frites. Jodi Taylor said, “Mr. Cole, can you keep a secret?”

“That depends, Ms. Taylor. What kind of secret did you have in mind?”

Sid Markowitz leaned forward, bugging his eyes at me. “This meeting. No one is to know that we’ve talked to you, or what we’ve discussed, whether you take the job or not. We okay on that?” Sid Markowitz was Jodi Taylor’s personal manager, and he looked like a frog.

“Sure,” I said. “Secret. I’m up to that.”

Sid Markowitz didn’t seem convinced. “You say that now, but I wanna make sure you mean it. We’re talking about a celebrity here.” He made a little hand move toward Jodi Taylor. “We fill you in, you could run to a phone, the Enquirer might pay you fifteen, twenty grand for this.”

I frowned. “Is that all?”

Markowitz rolled the bug eyes. “Don’t even joke about that.”

Jodi Taylor was hiding behind oversized sunglasses, a loose-fitting man’s jeans jacket, and a blue Dodgers baseball cap pulled low on her forehead. She was without makeup, and her curly, dusky-red hair had been pulled into a ponytail through the little hole in the back of the cap. With the glasses and the baggy clothes and the hiding, she didn’t look like the character she played on national television every week, but people still stared. I wondered if they, too, thought she looked nervous. She touched Markowitz’s arm. “I’m sure it’s fine, Sid. Peter said we could trust him. Peter said he’s the best there is at this kind of thing, and that he is absolutely trustworthy.” She turned back to me and smiled, and I returned it. Trustworthy. “Peter likes you quite a bit, you know.”

“Yes. It’s mutual.” Peter Alan Nelsen was the world’s third most successful director, right behind Spielberg and Lucas. Action adventure stuff. I had done some work for him once, and he valued the results.

Markowitz said, “Hey, Peter’s a pal, but he’s not paid to worry about you. I wanna be sure about this guy-“

I made a zipper move across my mouth. “I promise, Sid. I won’t breathe a word.”

He looked uncertain.

“Not for less than twenty-five. For twenty-five all bets are off.”

Sid Markowitz crossed his arms and sat back, his lips a tight little pucker. “Oh, that’s just great. That’s wonderful. A comedian.”

A waiter with a tan as rich as brown leather appeared, and the three of us sat without speaking as he served our food. I had ordered the mahi-mahi salad with a raspberry vinaigrette dressing. Sid was having the duck tortellini. Jodi was having water. Perhaps she had eaten here before.

I tasted the mahi-mahi. Dry.

When the waiter was gone, Jodi Taylor quietly said, “What do you know about me?”

“Sid faxed a studio press release and a couple of articles to me when he called.”

“Did you read them?”

“Yes, ma’am.” All three articles had said pretty much the same thing, most of which I had known. Jodi Taylor was the star of the new hit television series, Songbird, in which she played the loving wife of a small-town Nebraska sheriff and the mother of four blond ragamuffin children, who juggled her family with her dreams of becoming a singer. Television. The PR characterized Songbird as a thoughtful series that stressed traditional values, and family and church groups around the nation had agreed. Their support had made Songbird an unexpected dramatic hit, regularly smashing its time-slot competition, and major corporate sponsors had lined up to take advantage of the show’s appeal. Jodi Taylor had been given the credit, with Variety citing her “warmth, humor, and sincerity as the strong and loving center of her family.” There was talk of an Emmy. Songbird had been on for sixteen weeks, and now, as if overnight, Jodi Taylor was a star.

She said, “I’m an adopted child, Mr. Cole.”

“Okay.” The People article had mentioned that.

“I’m thirty-six years old. I’m getting close to forty, and there are things that I want to know.” She said it quickly, as if she wanted to get it said so that we could move on. “I have questions and I want answers. Am I prone to breast or ovarian cancer? Is there some kind of disease that’ll show up if I have children? You can understand that, can’t you?” She nodded hopefully, encouraging my understanding.

“You want your medical history.”

She looked relieved. “That’s exactly right.” It was a common request from adopted children; I had done jobs like this before.

“Okay, Ms. Taylor. What do you know about your birth?”

“Nothing. I don’t know anything. All I have is my birth certificate, but it doesn’t tell us anything.”

Sid took a legal envelope from his jacket and removed a Louisiana birth certificate with an impressed state seal. The birth certificate said that her name was Judith Marie Taylor and that her mother was Cecilia Burke Taylor and her father was Steven Edward Taylor and that her place of birth was Ville Platte, Louisiana. The birth certificate gave her date of birth as July 9, thirty-six years ago, but it listed no time of birth, nor a weight, nor an attending physician or hospital. I was born at 5:14 on a Tuesday morning and, because of that, had always thought of myself as a morning person. I wondered how I would think of myself if I didn’t know that. She said, “Cecilia Taylor and Steven Taylor are my adoptive parents.”

“Do they have any information about your birth?” “No. They adopted me through the state, and they weren’t given any more information than what you see on the birth certificate.”

A family of five was shown to a window table behind us, and a tall woman with pale hair was staring at Jodi. She had come in with an overweight man and two children and an older woman who was probably the grandmother. The older woman looked as if she’d be more at home at a diner in Topeka. The overweight man carried a Minolta. Tourists.

“Have you tried to find out about yourself through the state?”

“Yes.” She handed a business card to me. “I’m using an attorney in Baton Rouge, but the state records are sealed. That was Louisiana law at the time of my adoption, and remains the law today. She tells me that we’ve exhausted all regular channels, and recommended that I hire a private investigator. Peter recommended you. If you agree to help, you’ll need to coordinate what you do through her.”

I looked at the card: Sonnier, Melancon Burke, Attorneys at Law. And under that: Lucille Chenier, Associate. There was an address in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Sid leaned forward, giving me the frog again. “Maybe now you know why I’m making a big deal about keeping this secret. Some scumbag tabloid would pay a fortune for this. Famous actress searches for real parents.”

Jodi Taylor said, “My mom and dad are my real parents.”

Sid made the little hand move. “Sure, kid. You bet.”

She said, “I mean it, Sid.” Her voice was tense.

The tall woman with the pale hair said something to the overweight man, and he looked our way, too. The older woman was looking around, but you could tell she didn’t see us.

Jodi said, “If you find these people, I have no wish to meet them, and I don’t want them to know who I am. I don’t want anyone to know that you’re doing this, and I want you to promise me that anything you find out about me or my biological relatives will remain absolutely confidential between us. Do you promise that?”

Sid said, “They find out they’re related to Jodi Taylor, they might take advantage.” He rubbed his thumb across his fingertips. Money.

Jodi Taylor was still with me, her eyes locked on mine as if this was the most important thing in the world. “Do you swear that whatever you find will stay between us?”

“The card says ‘confidential,’ Ms. Taylor. If I work for you, I’m working for you.”

Jodi looked at Sid. Sid spread his hands. “Whatever you want to do, kid.”

She looked back at me, and nodded. “Hire him.”

I said, “I can’t do it from here. I’ll have to go to Louisiana, and, possibly, other places, and, if I do, the expenses could be considerable.”

Sid said, “So what’s new?”

“My fee is three thousand dollars, plus the expenses.”

Sid Markowitz took out a check and a pen and wrote without comment.

“I’ll want to speak with the attorney. I may have to discuss what I find with her. Is that okay?”

Jodi Taylor said, “Of course. I’ll call her this afternoon and tell her to expect you. You can keep her card.” She glanced at the door, anxious to leave. You hire the detective, you let him worry about it.

Sid made a writing motion in the air and the waiter brought the check.

The woman with the pale hair looked our way again, then spoke to her husband. The two of them stood and came over, the man holding his camera.

I said, “We’ve got company.”

Jodi Taylor and Sid Markowitz turned just as they arrived. The man was grinning as if he had just made thirty-second-degree Mason. The woman said, “Excuse us, but are you Jodi Taylor?”

In the space of a breath Jodi Taylor put away the things that troubled her and smiled the smile that thirty million Americans saw every week. It was worth seeing. Jodi Taylor was thirty-six years old, and beautiful in the way that only women with a measure of maturity can be beautiful. Not like in a fashion magazine. Not like a model. There was a quality of realness about her that let you feel that you might meet her at a supermarket or in church or at the PTA. She had soft hazel eyes and dark skin and one front tooth slightly overlapped the other. When she gave you the smile her heart smiled, too, and you felt it was genuine. Maybe it was that quality that was making her a star. “I’m Jodi Taylor,’ she said.

The overweight man said, “Miss Taylor, could I get a picture of you and Denise?”

Jodi looked at the woman. “Are you Denise?”

Denise said, “It’s so wonderful to meet you. We love your show.”

Jodi smiled wider, and if you had never before met or seen her, in that moment you would fall in love. She offered her hand, and said, “Lean close and let’s get our picture.”

The overweight man beamed like a six-year-old on Christmas morning. Denise leaned close and Jodi took off her sunglasses and the maltre d’ and two of the waiters hovered, nervous. Sid waved them away.

The overweight man snapped the picture, then said how much everybody back home loved Songbird, and then they went back to their table, smiling and pleased with themselves. Jodi Taylor replaced the sunglasses and folded her hands in her lap and stared at some indeterminate point beyond my shoulder, as if whatever she saw had drawn her to a neutral place.

I said, “That was very nice of you. I’ve been with several people who would not have been as kind.”

Sid said, “Money in the bank. You see how they love her?”

Jodi Taylor looked at Sid Markowitz without expression, and then she looked at me. Her eyes seemed tired and obscured by something that intruded. “Yes, well. If there’s anything else you need, please call Sid.” She gathered her things and stood to leave. Business was finished.

I stayed seated. “What are you afraid of, Ms. Taylor?”

Jodi Taylor walked away from the table and out the door without answering.

Sid Markowitz said, “Forget it. You know how it is with actresses.”

Outside, I watched Jodi and Sid drive away in Markowitz’s twelve-cylinder Jaguar while a parking attendant who looked like Fabio ran to get my car. Neither of them had said good-bye.

From the parking lot, you could look down on the beach and see young men and women in wetsuits carrying short, pointy boogie boards into the surf. They would run laughing into the surf, where they would bellyflop onto their boards and paddle out past the breakwater where other surfers sat with their legs hanging down, bobbing in the water, waiting for a wave. A little swell would come, and they would paddle furiously to catch its crest. They would stand and ride the little wave into the shallows where they would turn around and paddle out to wait some more. They did it again and again, and the waves were always small, but maybe each time they paddled out they were thinking that the next wave would be the big wave, the one that would make all the effort have meaning. Most people are like that, and, like most people, the surfers probably hadn’t yet realized that the process was the payoff, not the waves. When they were paddling, they looked very much like sea lions and, every couple of years or so, a passing great white shark would get confused and a board would come back but not the surfer.

Fabio brought my car and I drove back along the Pacific Coast Highway toward Los Angeles.

I had thought that Jodi Taylor might be pleased when I agreed to take the job, but she wasn’t. Yet she still wanted to hire me, still wanted me to uncover the elements of her past. Since my own history was known to me, it held no fear. I thought about how I might feel if the corridor of my birth held only closed doors. Maybe, like Jodi Taylor, I would be afraid.

By the time I turned away from the water toward my office, a dark anvil of clouds had formed on the horizon and the ocean had grown to be the color of raw steel.

A storm was raging, and I thought that it might find its way to shore.

Chapter 2

I t was just after two when I pulled my car into the parking garage on Santa Monica Boulevard and climbed the four flights to my office there in the heart of West Hollywood. The office was empty, exactly as I had left it two hours and forty minutes ago. I had wanted to burst through the door and tell my employees that I was working for a major national television star, only I had no employees. I have a partner named Joe Pike, but he’s rarely around. Even when he is, conversation is not his forte. I took out Lucille Chenier’s business card and dialed her office. A bright southern voice said, “Ms. Chenier’s office. This is Darlene.”

I told her who I was and asked if Ms. Chenier was available.

Darlene said, “Oh, Mr. Cole. Mr. Markowitz phoned us about you.”

“There goes the element of surprise.”

She said, “Ms. Chenier’s in court this afternoon. May I help?”

I told her that I would be flying in tomorrow, and asked if we might set a time for me to meet with Ms. Chenier.

“Absolutely. Would three o’clock do?”

“Sounds good.”

“If you like, I can book you into the Riverfront Howard Johnson. It’s very nice.” She sounded happy to do it.

“That would be great. Thank you.”

She said, “Would you like someone to meet you at the airport? We’d be happy to send a car.”

“Thanks, but I think I can manage.”

“Well, you have a fine flight and we’ll look forward to seeing you tomorrow.” I could feel her smiling across the phone, happy to be of service, happy to help, and happy to speak with me. Maybe Louisiana was the Land of Happy People.

I said, “Darlene?”

“Yes, Mr. Cole?”

“Is this what they mean by southern hospitality?”

“Why, we’re just happy to help.”

I said, “Darlene, you sound the way magnolias smell.”

She laughed. “Oh, Mr. Cole. Aren’t you the one.”

Some people just naturally make you smile.

I dialed Joe Pike’s condo and got his answering machine. It answered on the first ring and Joe’s voice said, “Speak.” You see what I mean about the conversation?

I told him who we were working for and where I would be, and I left both Sid Markowitz’s and Lucille Chenier’s office numbers. Then I hung up and went out onto the little balcony I have and leaned across to look into the office next door. A woman named Cindy runs a beauty distribution outlet there, and we often meet on the balcony to talk. I wanted to tell her that I would be gone for a few days, but her office was dark. Nobody home. I went back inside and phoned my friend Patricia Kyle who works on the Paramount lot, but she was in a casting meeting and couldn’t be disturbed. Great. Next I called this cop I know named Lou Poitras who works detectives out of the North Hollywood division, but he wasn’t in, either. I put down the phone, leaned back in my chair, and looked around the office. The only thing moving besides me was this Pinocchio clock I’ve got. It has eyes that tock side-to-side and it’s nice to look at because it’s always smiling, but, like Pike, it isn’t much when you’re trying to work up a two-way conversation. I have figurines of Jiminy Cricket and Mickey Mouse, but they aren’t much in the conversing department, either. My office was neat, clean, and in order. All bills were paid and all mail was answered. There didn’t seem to be a whole lot of preparation necessary for my departure, and I found that depressing. Some big-time private detective. Can’t even scare up a friend.

I shut the lights, locked the door, and stopped at a liquor store on the way home. I bought a six-pack of Falstaff beer from a bald man with a bad eye and I told him that I was going to Louisiana. On business. He told me to have a nice time and to stop in again when I got back. I said that I would, and I told him to have a nice night. He gave me a little wave. You take your friendship where you find it.

At 1:40 the next afternoon I was descending into the Baton Rouge metropolitan area over land that was green and flat and cut by chocolate waterways. The pilot turned over the muddy wide ribbon of the Mississippi River, and, as we flew over it, the bridges and the towboats and the barges and the levee were alive with commerce and industry. I had visited Baton Rouge many years before, and I remembered clear skies and the scent of magnolias and a feeling of admiration for the river, and for its endurance through history. Now, a haze hung low over the city, not unlike Los Angeles. I guess commerce and industry have their drawbacks.

We landed and taxied in, and when they opened the airplane the heat and humidity rolled across me like warm honey. It was a feeling not unlike what I had felt when I stepped out of the troop transport at Bien Hoa Air Base in 1971 in the Republic of South Vietnam, as if the air was some sort of extension of the warm soupy water in the paddies and the swamps, as if the air wasn’t really air, but was more like thin water. You didn’t walk through the air down here, you waded. Welcome to Atlantis.

I sloshed down to the baggage claim, collected my bag, then presented myself to a smiling young woman at the Hertz desk. I said, “Pretty hot today, huh?”

She said, “Oh, this isn’t hot.”

I guess it was my imagination.

I gave her my credit card and driver’s license, asked directions to the downtown area, and pretty soon I was driving past petrochemical tank farms and flat green fields and white cement block structures with signs that said things like FREE DIRT and TORO LAWNMOWERS. The undeveloped land gave way to working-class neighborhoods and grocery markets and, in the distance, the spidery structures and exhaust towers of the refineries and chemical plants that lined the river. The chemical plants reminded me of steel towns in the Northeast where everything was built low to the ground and men and women worked hard for a living and the air smelled strange and sulfurous. Most of the men in these neighborhoods would work at the refineries, and they would work in shifts around the clock. The traffic in the surrounding areas would ebb and flow with great whistles announcing the shift changes three times a day, at seven and three and eleven, sounding like a great sluggish pulse, with each beat pumping a tired shift of workers out and sucking a fresh shift of workers in, never stopping and never changing, in its own way like the river, giving life to the community.

The working-class neighborhoods and the refineries gave way to the state’s capitol building, and then I was in the heart of downtown Baton Rouge. The downtown area was a mix of new buildings and old, built on a little knoll overlooking the river and the Huey Long Bridge. The river ran below the town, as much as within it, walled off from the city by a great earth levee that probably looks today much as it did over a hundred years ago when Yankee gunboats came down from the north. Even with the commerce and the industry and a quarter million people, there was a small-town southern feel to the place. Monstrous oak trees laden with Spanish moss grew on wide green lawns, standing sentry before a governor’s mansion sporting Greek Revival pillars. It made me think of Gone With the Wind, even though that was Georgia and this wasn’t, and I sort of expected to see stately gendemen in coarse gray uniforms and women in hoop gowns hoisting the Stars ‘n Bars. I wish I was in the Land of cotton…

At six minutes before three, I walked into an older building in the heart of the riverfront area and rode a mahogany-paneled elevator to the third floor and the offices of Sonnier, Melancon Burke, Attorneys at Law. An African-American woman with gray hair watched me approach and said, “May I help you?”

“Elvis Cole for Lucille Chenier. I have a three o’clock appointment.”

She smiled nicely. “Oh, yes, Mr. Cole. I’m Darlene. Ms. Chenier’s expecting you.”

Darlene led me back along a corridor that was solid and enduring, with heavily lacquered pecan walls and art deco sconces and framed prints of plantations and cotton fields and portly gentlemen of an age such that they might have shared cigars with old Jeff Davis. . . Old times there are not forgotten. . . The whole effect was unapologetically Old South, and I wondered what Darlene felt when she walked past the slave scenes. Maybe she hated it, but then again, maybe in a way I might never understand, she was proud the way any person might be proud of obstacles overcome and disadvantages defeated, and of the ties with a land and a people that adversity builds in you. On the other hand, maybe not. Like friendship, you take your paycheck where you find it.

She said, “Here we are,” and then she showed me into Lucille Chenier’s office.

Lucille Chenier smiled as we entered, and said, “Hello, Mr. Cole. I’m Lucy Chenier.”

Lucy Chenier was five-five, with amber green eyes and auburn hair that seemed alive with sun streaks and a wonderful tan that went well with the highlights. She seemed to radiate good health, as if she spent a lot of time outdoors, and it was a look that drew your eye and held it. She was wearing a lightweight tweed business suit and a thin gold ring on the pinkie of her right hand. No wedding band. She came around her desk and offered her hand. I said, “Tennis.”

“Pardon me?”

“Your grip. I’ll bet you play tennis.”

She smiled again, and now there were laugh lines bracketing her mouth and soft wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Pretty. “Not as often as I’d like. I had a tennis scholarship at LSU.”

Darlene said, “Would you like coffee, Mr. Cole?”

“No, thank you.”

“Ms. Chenier?”

“I’m fine, Darlene. Thanks.”

Darlene left, and Lucy Chenier offered me a seat. Her office was furnished very much like the reception area and the halls, only the couch and the chairs were covered with a bright flower-print fabric and there were Claude Monet prints on the walls instead of the plantation scenes. A blond wood desk was end on to a couple of double windows, and an iron baker’s rack sat in the corner, filled with cascading plants. A large ceramic mug that said LSU sat among the plants. The Fighting Tigers. She said, “Did you have a nice flight?”

“Yes, I did. Thank you.”

“Is this your first time to Louisiana?” There was a southern accent, but it was slight, as if she had spent time away from the South, and had only recently returned.

“I’ve visited twice before, once on business and once when I was in the army. Neither was a fulfilling visit, and both visits were hot.”

She smiled. “Well, there’s nothing I can do about the heat, but perhaps this time will be more rewarding.”

“Perhaps.” She went to the blond desk and fingered through a stack of folders, moving with the easy confidence of someone who trusted her body. It was fun watching her.

She said, “Sid Markowitz phoned yesterday, and I spoke with Jodi Taylor this morning. I’ll bring you up to date on what we’ve done, and we can coordinate how you’ll proceed.”

“All right.”

She took a manila folder from the desk, then returned to sit in a wing chair. I continued to watch her, and continued to have a fine time doing it. I made her for thirty-five, but she might have been younger. “Yes?”

“Sorry.” Elvis Cole, the Embarrassed Detective, is caught staring at the Attorney. Really impress her with the old professionalism.

She adjusted herself in the chair and put on a pair of the serious, red-framed reading glasses that professional women seem to prefer. “Have you worked many adoption cases, Mr. Cole?”

“A few. Most of my experience is in missing persons work.”

She said, “An adoption recovery isn’t the same as a missing persons search. There are great similarities in the steps necessary to locate the birth parents, of course, but the actual contact is a far more delicate matter.”

“Of course.” She crossed her legs. I tried not to stare. “Delicate.”

“Are you familiar with Louisiana’s adoption laws?”

“No.”

She slipped off her right shoe and pulled her foot up beneath her in the chair. “Jodi Taylor was relinquished to the state for adoption on an unknown date thirty-six years ago. Under the laws of the state at that time, all details of that surrender and all information pertaining to Jodi’s biological parents were sealed. When Mr. and Mrs. Taylor adopted her, their names were entered as parents of record, and Jodi’s birth name, whatever that might have been, was changed to Judith Marie Taylor. All records of that name change were also sealed by the state.”

“Okay.” Maybe I should take notes. If I took notes, she might think me professional.

“Louisiana maintains what we call a voluntary registry of birth parents and adopted children. If birth parents or adopted children wish to contact each other, they register with the state. If both the parent and the child are registered, then, by mutual consent, the records are unsealed and an intermediary working for the state arranges a meeting between the two.”

“Did Jodi enter the registry?”

“Yes. That was the first thing we did. Neither of her birth parents are registered. I filed a request for special leave with the state to open the records, but we were turned down.”

“So, legally speaking, that was the end of the road and now it’s up to me.”

“That’s right. You’ll conduct the actual investigation to try to identify Jodi’s birth parents or locate a bio-family member who can supply the information she seeks, but you won’t make contact with them. If contact has to be made, that will be my job. Do you understand?”

“Sure.” Strong back, weak mind.

She took a folder from the larger file and passed it to me. “These are local maps with directions to Ville Platte, as well as some tourist information. I’m afraid there isn’t much. It’s a small town in a rural area.”

“How far away?” I opened the folder and glanced at it. There was a Triple-A map of the state, a Chamber of Commerce map of Ville Platte, and a typed sheet listing recommended restaurants and motels. Everything the visiting private eye needs in order to swing into action.

“A little over an hour.” She closed the larger file and placed it in her lap. “Our firm is very well established, so if there’s any way that we can help with research or access to state agencies, don’t hesitate to call.”

“I won’t.”

“May I ask how you’ll proceed?”

“The only way to ask about a child who was given up for adoption is to ask about a child who was given up for adoption. I’ll have to identify people with a possible knowledge of the event, and then I’ll have to question them.”

She shifted in the chair, not liking it. “What do you mean, question them?”

I smiled at her. “Questions. You know. ‘Where were you on the night of the fourth?’ Like that.”

She nodded twice, then frowned. “Mr. Cole, let’s be sure that you appreciate the complexities involved. Typically, the birth parents of a child given for adoption in the nineteen-fifties were young and unmarried, and great pains were taken to keep that birth secret. It’s just as typical that, years later, those birth parents are leading lives in which their current friends and families know nothing of that earlier pregnancy and the fact that a child was born. Nothing must be said or done that could possibly give away their secret. It’s as much your job to protect the birth parents’ confidences as it is to uncover Jodi Taylor’s medical history. Jodi wants it that way, and so do I.”

I gave her my most winning smile. “I just look stupid, Ms. Chenier. I can actually spell the word ‘discretion.'”

She stared at me for a surprised moment, and a trace of color crept onto her cheeks and neck. She was wearing a necklace of large silver shells and they stood out against her skin. “That did sound like a lecture, didn’t it?”

I nodded.

“I’m sorry. You don’t look stupid at all. Perhaps I should tell you that these issues are important to me. I’m an adopted child myself. That’s why I practice this kind of law.”

“No apologies are necessary. You just want to make sure I respect everyone’s privacy.”

She was nodding. “That’s right.”

I nodded back at her. “I guess that rules out the ad.”

She cocked her head.

“Famous actress seeks birth mother! Huge reward.”

The laugh lines reappeared at the corners of her mouth and the flush went away. “Perhaps we’d be better served with a more conservative approach.”

“I could tell people that I’m investigating an alien visitation. Do you think that would work?”

“Perhaps in Arkansas.” Regional humor.

We grinned at each other for a moment, then I said, “Would you join me for dinner?”

Lucy Chenier smiled wider, then stood and went to the door. “It’s very nice of you to ask, but I have other plans.”

“How about if I sing ‘Dixie’? Will that soften you up?”

She opened the door and held it for me. She tried not to smile, but some of it got through. “There are several fine Cajun restaurants listed in the folder. I think you’ll like the food.”

I stood in the door. “I’m sure I’ll be fine. Maybe Paul Prudhomme will see me for dinner.”

“Not even if you sing ‘Dixie.’ Paul Prudhomme lives in New Orleans.”

“That makes two fantasies you’ve destroyed.”

“I don’t think I’ll ask.”

“Good night, Ms. Chenier.”

“Good night, Mr. Cole.”

I walked out singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and I could hear Lucy Chenier laughing even as I rode down in the elevator.

Chapter 3

I had a fine catfish dinner at a restaurant recommended by Lucy Chenier’s office, and then I checked into a Ho-Jo built into the base of the levee. I asked them for a room with a view of the river and they were happy to oblige. Southern hospitality. I ordered two bottles of Dixie beer from room service and sat drinking the beer and watching the tow-boats push great strings of barges upstream against the current. I thought that if I watched the river long enough I might see Tom and Huck and Jim working their raft down the shore. Of course, river traffic was different in the 1800s. In the old days, there were just the paddle wheelers and mule-drawn barges. Now, Huck and Jim would have to maneuver between oil tankers and Japanese container ships and an endless gauntlet of chemical waste vents. Still, I trusted that Huck and Jim were up to the job.

The next morning I checked out of the hotel, drove across the river, then turned north and followed the state highway across a wide, flat plain covered with cotton and sugarcane and towns with names like Livonia and Krotz Springs. Cotton gins and sugar-processing plants sprouted on the horizon, the sugar plants belching thin smoke plumes that gave the air a bitter smell. I turned on the radio and let the scanner seek stations. Two country outlets, a station where a man with a high-pitched voice was speaking French, and five religious stations, one of which boasted a woman proclaiming that all God’s children were born evil, lived evil, and would die evil. She shrieked that evil must be fought with evil, and that the forces of evil were at her door this very moment, trying to silence the right-thinking Christian truths of her broadcasts and that the only way she might stave them off was with the Demon Dollar Bill, twenty-dollar minimum donation please, MasterCard or Visa accepted. Sorry, no American Express. I guess some evils are better than others.

I left the highway at Opelousas, then went north on a tiny two-lane state road following what the map said was Bayou Mamou. It was a muddy brown color and looked more like standing water than something that actually flowed. Cattails and cypress trees lined the far bank, and the near bank was mostly wild grass and crushed oyster shells. A couple in their early twenties poled a flat-bottomed boat along the cypress knees. The man stood in the stern, wearing an LSU T-shirt and baggy jeans and a greasy camouflage ball cap with a creased bill. He pushed the little boat with steady, molasses-slow strokes. The woman wore a pale sundress and a wide straw hat and heavy work gloves and, as the young man poled, she lifted a trotline from the water to see if they had caught fish. The young man was smiling. I wondered if John Fogerty had been thinking of Bayou Mamou when he wrote “Born on the Bayou.”

I passed a wooden billboard that said THE KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS WELCOME YOU TO VILLE PLATTE, LA. “HOME OF THE COTTON FESTIVAL,” and then the highway wasn’t the highway any more. It was Main Street. I passed gas stations and an enormous Catholic church, but pretty soon there were banks and clothing and hardware stores and a pharmacy and a couple of restaurants and a record store and all the places of a small southern town. A lot of the stores had posters for something called the Cotton Festival. I turned off the air conditioner and rolled down the window and began to sweat. Hot, all right. Several people were standing around outside a little food place called the Pig Stand, and a couple of them were eating what looked like barbecued beef ribs. A million degrees outside, and these guys were slurping down ribs in the middle of the day. Across from the Pig Stand there was a little mom-and-pop grocery with a hand-painted sign that said WE SELL BOUDIN and a smaller sign that said FRESH CRACKLINS. Underneath that someone had written no cholesterol – ha-ha. These Cajuns are a riot, aren’t they?

I drove slowly and, as I drove, I wondered if any of the people I passed were in some way related to Jodi Taylor. I would look at them and smile and they would smile back, and, with a curious feeling, I searched for Jodi Taylor’s reflection. Were those the eyes? Is that the nose? If Jodi Taylor were beside me, and were not familiar from being on television, would one of these people catch a passing glance of her and call her by another name? I realized then that Jodi Taylor must sometimes wonder these same things.

If I was going to find Jodi Taylor’s birth family, I would have to interview people, but the question was who? I could check with local medical personnel, but any physician who was a party to the adoption would be legally bound to remain silent. Ditto clergy and members of the local legal community. Also, they would ask questions that I didn’t want to answer and would probably notify the cops, who would come around to ask similar questions. Small-town cops are notoriously territorial. Therefore, ix-nay the more obvious sources of information. Perhaps I could forgo interviews altogether and use the concept of familial resemblance to find said birth parents. I could post pictures of Jodi Taylor all over town. Do you know this woman? Of course, since she was famous, everybody would know her, but maybe there was a way around that. I could have Jodi wear a Groucho Marx nose when I took the picture. That should fool ’em. Of course, then everybody might think she was Groucho Marx. Ix-nay the nose.

Thirty-six years ago a child had been born and its care relinquished to the state. That would not be a common occurrence in a town of Ville Platte’s size. People would talk and, quite possibly, people would remember, even thirty-six years later. Gossip is a detective’s best friend. I could randomly question anyone over the age of fifty, but that seemed sort of unprofessional. A professional would narrow the field. All right. Who talks about having babies? Answer: mommies. Task at hand: locate women who delivered on or about 9 July, thirty-six years ago. The detective flies into action and it is awesome to behold. A mind like a computer, this guy. A regular Sherlock Holmes, this guy.

I drove back to the little grocery with the “boudin” sign, parked at the curb, and went in. A kid in a gray USL Ragin’ Cajuns T-shirt was sitting behind the register, smoking a Marlboro and reading a drag boat magazine. He didn’t look up when I walked in. In Los Angeles, you walk into a convenience store and the people who work there reach for their guns.

I said, “Howdy. Is there a local paper?” He waved the cigarette at a newspaper rack they had off to the side, and I picked up a copy and read the masthead. The Ville Platte Gazette – established 1908. Perfect. Daily. Even better.

I said, “Do you have a library in town?” He sucked on the Marlboro and squinted at me. He was pale, with wispy blond hair and caterpillar fuzz above his lip and a couple of primo zits ripening on his forehead. Eighteen, maybe, but he could’ve been older.

I said, “You got a library?”

“Course. Where you think you are, Arkansas?” They’re really into that Arkansas thing down here.

“Any chance you’d tell me how to get there?”

He leaned back on his stool and crossed his arms. “Which library?” Score one for the yokel.

Six minutes later I circled the town square past a red brick Presbyterian church and parked at the library. An older African-American gentleman was behind the counter, stacking books onto a gray metal cart. A young woman with braided hair sat at a reading table and a kid with a limp shuffled through the stacks, listing to the right so he could read the book spines. I went to the counter and smiled at the librarian. “That air-conditioning feels good.”

The librarian continued stacking the books. “That it does. And how are you today, sir?” He was shorter than me and thin, with a balding head and a prominent Adam’s apple and very dark skin. He was wearing a plaid short-sleeved shirt and a burgundy knit tie. A little nameplate on the counter said MR. ALBERT PARKS.

I said, “Do you have the Gazette on microfiche?” I could have gone by the newspaper offices, but newspaper people would ask questions.

“Yes, sir. We do.” He stopped stacking books and came over to the counter.

I told him the year I wanted, and asked if he had it.

Mr. Parks grinned broadly, pleased to be able to help. “I mink we might. Let me run in the back and see.”

He disappeared between the stacks and returned with a cardboard box and had me follow to an ancient microfiche unit on the other side of the card catalogs. He pulled out one of the spools and threaded it into the machine. “There are twenty-four spools in this box, two spools for each month of the year. I put in January. Do you know how to work the machine?”

“If the film gets stuck, please don’t force the little crank. These kids from the school use this thing and always tear the film.”

“I’ll be careful.”

Mr. Parks frowned down into the little box and fingered through the spools.

I said, “What’s wrong?”

“Looks like we have a month missing.” He frowned harder, then arched his eyebrows and looked up at me. “May’s gone. Did you need May?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Maybe I put it in a different year.”

“I don’t think I’ll need it.”

He nodded thoughtfully, told me to call him if I needed any help with the little crank, then went back to his book cart. When he was gone I took the January spool out of the microfiche and dug around in the box until I found the two July spools. I threaded in the first and skimmed through until I reached the Gazette dated 9 July. The ninth was a Tuesday and had no birth announcements. I searched through the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth, which was the following Friday. Friday’s paper had three birth announcements, two boys and twin girls. The boys were born to Charles Louise Fontenot and William Edna Lemoine, the twin girls to Murray Charla Smith. As I was writing their names on a yellow legal pad, Mr. Parks strolled by. “Are you finding everything you need?”

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”

He nodded and strolled away.

I cranked the little spool back to the beginning of July and copied the birth announcements published at the end of every week, and then I did the same for June and August. When I was working through August, Mr. Parks pushed the book can next to me and made a big deal out of straightening shelves and trying to pretend that he wasn’t interested in what I was doing. I glanced up and caught him peeking over my shoulder. “Yes?”

Mr. Parks said, “Heh heh,” then pushed the cart away. Embarrassed. They get bored in these small towns.

When I finished with August I had eighteen names. I put the little spools back into their box, turned off the microfiche, and returned the box to Mr. Parks. He said, “That didn’t take very long.”

“Efficiency. Efficiency and focus are the keys to success.”

“I hear that.”

I said, “Is there a phone book?”

“On the reference table next to the card catalog.”

I went over to the reference table and looked in the phone book for the names I had copied. I was on the fourth name when Mr. Parks said, “Seems to me you appear to be looking for someone.”

He was standing behind me again, peering over my shoulder.

I put my hand over the names. “It’s rather personal.”

He frowned. “Personal?”

“Private.”

He peered at my hand as if he were trying to see through it. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“No,” I said. “I’m from the government. Central Intelligence.”

He looked offended. “No reason to be rude.”

I spread my free hand.

He said, “You were copying birth announcements. Now you’re looking for those names in the phone book. I think you’re trying to find someone. I think you’re a private detective.” Great. The big-time Hollywood op gets made by the small-town librarian. He started away. “Perhaps we should call the police.”

I caught his arm and made a big deal out of looking around. Making sure that the coast was clear. “Thirty-six years ago, the person I’m working for was born in this area and given up for adoption. She has now contracted leukemia and requires a bone marrow transplant. Do you know what that means?”

He answered slowly. “They need a blood relative for those transplants, don’t they?”

I nodded. You toss it on the water and sometimes they take it, but sometimes they don’t. He was a knowledgeable man. He’d know more than a little about marrow transplants. He could ask to speak with my client or my client’s physician, and, if I were legitimate, they’d be more than happy to speak with him. He could ask me if the leukemia was acute or chronic, or he could ask me which type of white blood cells were affected. There were a hundred things he could ask me, and some of them I could scam but most of them could blow me out of the water.

He looked at my hand over the list of names, then he looked back at me and I saw his jaw work. He said, “I saw some of your names there. I know some of those folks. This lady, the one you’re working for, she gonna die?”

“Yes.”

He wet his lips, then pulled over a chair and sat down beside me. “I think I can save you some time.”

Of the eighteen names on my list, Mr. Albert Parks knew four, and we found another three listed in the phone book. The rest had either died or moved away.

I copied addresses and phone numbers for the seven still in the area, and Mr. Parks gave me directions on how to find those people who lived in the outlying areas. He offered to phone the four that he knew to tell them that I’d be stopping around, and I said that that would be fine, but that he should ask them to respect my client’s privacy. He said that he was certain that they would. He said that he hoped that I could find a donor for my client, and asked me to give her his very best wishes for a complete recovery. His wishes were heartfelt.

Mr. Albert Parks worked with me for the better part of an hour, and then I walked out of the cool quiet of his library into the damp midday Louisiana heat feeling about three inches tall. Lying sucks.

Chapter 4

O f the seven names on the list, four lived in town and three lived in the outlying area. I decided to speak with the townies first, then work my way out. Mr. Parks had recommended that I start with Mrs. Claire Fontenot who, as the widowed owner of a little five and dime just across the square, was the closest. He said that she was one of God’s Finest Women. I took that to mean that she was kind and caring and probably easy to manipulate. Son of like Mr. Albert Parks. As I walked over I thought that maybe I should just cut out this manipulation business and proclaim for all the world who I worked for and what I was after. If I did, I would probably feel much better about myself. Of course, Jodi Taylor probably wouldn’t, but there you go. Her privacy would be violated and her confidence breached, but what’s that when compared to feeling good about oneself? Elvis Cole, detective for the nineties, comforts his inner child. Going into Fontenot’s Five Dime was like stepping backward in time. Cardboard cutout ads for things like Carter’s Little Liver Pills and Brylcreem – a little dab’ll do ya! – and Dr. Tichnor’s Antiseptic were taped and retaped to the door and the windows, filling the same spaces that they had filled when they were first put up forty years ago. Some of the cutouts were so faded that they were impossible to read.

An overweight girl in her late teens sat on a stool behind the counter reading a copy of Allure. She looked up when I entered.

“Hi. Is Mrs. Fontenot in?”

The girl called out, “Miss Claire,” and a stately woman in her early sixties appeared in the aisle, holding a box of Hallmark cards. I said, “Mrs. Fontenot, my name is Elvis Cole. I believe Mr. Parks over at the library might’ve phoned.”

She looked me up and down as if she viewed me with caution. “That’s right.”

“May I have a few minutes?”

She viewed me some more, and then she put down the box of cards and led me to the rear of the store. She seemed rigid when she moved, as if her body were clenched. “Mr. Parks told me that you want to know something about a baby that was given up for adoption.” She arched an eyebrow when she said it, clearly suspicious of the practice and disapproving.

“That’s right. Somewhere around the time that Max was born.” She had delivered a son, Max Andrew, sixteen days before Jodi Taylor’s birth.

‘Tm afraid I don’t know anything about that. I kept all my children, believe you me.” Daring me to deny it. When she spoke, she kept both hands folded together between her breasts, as if she were praying. Maybe you did that when you were one of God’s finest.

“Not one of your children, Mrs. Fontenot. Another woman’s child. Maybe you knew her, or maybe you just heard gossip.”

The eyebrow arched again. “I don’t gossip.”

I said, “Ville Platte is a small town. Unwed pregnancies happen, but they would be rare, and babies given for adoption would be still more rare. Maybe one of your girlfriends at the time mentioned it. Maybe one of your aunts. Something like that.”

“Absolutely not. In my day, that type of thing wasn’t tolerated the way it is now, and we would never have discussed it.” She clutched her hands tighter and raised both eyebrows, giving me All-knowing. “Now, people don’t care about this kind of thing. People do whatever they want. That’s why we’re in this fix.”

I said, “Onward Christian soldiers.”

She frowned at me. “What?”

I thanked her for her time and left. One up, one down. Six more to go.

Evelyn Maggio lived alone on the second floor of a duplex that she maintained six blocks south of the five and dime. Her duplex was a big white clapboard monster set high on brick piers in case of flood. Evelyn Maggio herself was a vital woman in her late fifties, twice married and twice divorced, with tiny teeth and too much makeup. She showed me the teeth when she let me in and latched onto my arm and said, “My, but you’re a good-lookin’ fella.” Her words were long and drawn out, sort of like Elly May Clampett. She smelled of bourbon.

I was with her for almost forty minutes and in that time she called me “sugar” eleven times and drank three cups of coffee. She drank it royale. She put out a little tray of Nabisco Sugar Wafers and told me that the very best way to eat them was to dip them in the coffee, but to watch because they could get too soggy and would fall apart. She put her hand on my arm and said, “No one likes a limp sugar wafer, honey, especially not lil’ ol’ me.” She seemed disappointed that it wasn’t what I wanted to hear, and, when it became clear that she knew nothing about a child being given to the state, she seemed even more disappointed when I left. I took two of the sugar wafers with me. I was disappointed, too.

I spent the next twenty-two minutes with Mrs. C. Thomas Berteaux. She was seventy-two years old, rail thin, and insisted upon calling me Jeffrey. She was quite certain that I had visited her home before, and when I told her that this was my first time in Ville Platte, she asked if I was sure. I said I was. She said she was certain that I had asked her about this adoption business before. I asked if she remembered her answer, and she said, “Why, of course, Jeffrey, don’t you? I didn’t remember anything then, and I don’t now.”

She smiled pleasantly when she said it and I smiled pleasantly in return. I used her phone to call Mrs. Francine Lyons, who said she’d be happy to see me, but that she was on her way out and could I call later. I said that I could, but then she volunteered diat Mr. Parks had mentioned something about a child given for adoption and that she just didn’t know anything about that, though, as she’d said, she’d be happy to see me later in the day. I told her diat that wouldn’t be necessary and scratched her off my list. You either remember or you don’t. Mrs. C. Thomas Berteaux, watching from her chair, said, “What’s the matter, Jeffrey? You look disappointed.”

I said, “Some days are more difficult than others, Mrs. Berteaux.”

She nodded sagely. “Yes, Jeffrey. I know that to be true. However, I might suggest that you speak with Mrs. Martha Guidry.”

“Yes?” Martha Guidry wasn’t on my list.

“Martha was a midwife at that time and, if I remember correctly, quite a well-known busybody. Martha may know.” Then she looked thoughtful. “Of course, Martha may be dead.”

I let myself out.

Four up, four down, and nary a shred of evidence to show for it. I had three more women to see, and, if the results were the same, it was back to the drawing board. Not good. The key to all this seemed to be the sealed state documents. Maybe I should stop trying to investigate my way to Jodi Taylor’s medical history and concentrate on unsealing those documents. I could shoulder my way into the appropriate state agency, pistol whip a couple of civil servants, and force them to hand over the documents. Of course, this method might get me shot or imprisoned, but wasn’t that better than questioning women who called me Jeffrey? Of course, thirty-six-year-old documents would probably be buried under thirty-six years of more recent documents in an obscure state building long forgotten by any living person. You’d need Indiana Jones just to find the place.

I decided to think about it over lunch.

The Pig Stand was a white cinder block building with handwritten signs telling you what they offered and a couple of windows to order the food. The people on the sidewalk were mostly thin guys with cr+!pey skin and women with pale skin and loose upper arms from eating too much deep-fried food. Everybody was drinking Dixie beer and eating off paper plates and laughing a lot. Guess if you stand around eating barbecued ribs in this kind of heat you had to have a sense of humor.

An enormously wide black woman with brilliant white teeth looked out of the order window at me and said, “Take ya awdah, please?”

I said, “Do you have boudin?” I had wanted to try boudin for years.

She grinned. “Honey, we gots the best boudin in Evangeline Parish.”

“That’s not what they say in Mamou.”

She laughed. “Those fools in Mamou don’ know nuthin’ ’bout no boudin! Honey, you try some’a this, you won’t be goin’ back to no Mamou! This magic boudin! It be good for what ails you!”

“Okay. How about a couple of links of boudin, a beef rib with a little extra sauce, some dirty rice, and a Dixie.”

She nodded, pleased. “That’ll fix you up jes’ fine.” “What makes you think I need fixing?” She leaned toward me and touched a couple of fingers beneath her eye. “Dottie got the magic eye. Dottie know.” Her eyes were smiling when she shouted the order into the kitchen, and I smiled with her. It wasn’t just the food around here that gave comfort.

Passing cars would beep their horns and diners would wave at the cars and the people in the cars would wave back, sort of like everybody knew everybody else. While I was waiting, a sparkling new white Mustang rag-top cruised past, top up, giving everybody the once-over and revving his engine. The Mustang circled the block, and when he came back around an older guy widi a thick French accent yelled something I couldn’t understand and the Mustang speeded up. Guess the older guy didn’t like all the engine-revving.

A couple of minutes later, Dottie called me back to the window and handed out my order on a coarse paper plate with enough napkins to insulate a house. I carried the food to the street, set the Dixie on the curb, then went to work on the food. The boudin were plump and juicy, and when you bit into them they were filled with rice and pork and cayenne and onions and celery. Even in the heat, steam came from the sausage and it burned the inside of my mouth. I had some of the dirty rice, and then some of the beef rib. The dirty rice was heavy and glutinous and rich with chicken livers. The rib was tender and the sauce chunky with onion and garlic. The tastes w ere strong and salty and wonderful, and pretty soon I was feeling eager to dive back into the case. Even if it meant being called Jeffrey.

The black woman looked out of her little window and asked, “Whatchu say ’bout dat boudin now?”

I said, “Tell me the truth, Dottie. This isn’t really Ville Platte, is it? We’re all dead and this is Heaven.”

She grinned wider and nodded, satisfied. “Dottie say it’ll fix you up. Dottie know.” She touched her cheek beneath her left eye and then she laughed and turned away.

At ten minutes after two, I used a pay phone at an Exxon station to call the last two women on my list. Virginia LaMert wasn’t home, and Charleen Jorgen-son said that she’d be happy to see me.

Charleen Jorgenson and her second husband, Lloyd, lived in a double trailer two miles outside of Ville Platte on Bayou des Cannes. The double trailer sat upon cement block piers and looked sort of ratty and overgrown. A small flat-bottomed boat rested on a couple of sawhorses in the backyard, and a blue tick hound slept in a tight knot in the shade thrown by the boat. They had a little drive made out of the crushed oyster shells, and when I pulled up, the oyster shells made a loud crunching sound and the blue tick hound charged at my car, barking and standing on its back legs to try to bite through the window. An old guy in his seventies came out on the step yelling, “Heah naow! Heah naow!” and threw a pop bottle at the dog. That would be Lloyd. The bottle missed the dog and hit the Taurus’s left front fender. Lloyd said, “Uh-oh,” and looked chagrined. Good thing it was a rental.

Charleen Jorgenson told me that she wished she could help, but she just didn’t remember anything like I was asking.

I said, “Think hard, Mrs. Jorgenson. Are you sure?”

She sipped her coffee and nodded. “Oh, yes. I thought about it when that other fellow was here.”

“What other fellow?”

“Another young man was here a few months ago. He said he was trying to find his sister.”

I said, “Do tell.”

“He wasn’t very nice and he didn’t stay long.”

“Were you able to help him find his sister?”

“I would’ve been happy to, but I just couldn’t help him. He became very abusive. Lloyd like to threw a fit.” She nodded her head toward Lloyd, as if one of Lloyd’s fits was quite a spectacle. Lloyd, sitting in a heavy chair that had been covered with a bedspread, had fallen asleep as we talked. She said, “You’re trying to find some kind of organ donor, aren’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am. A marrow donor.”

She shook her head. “That is so sad.”

“Mrs. Jorgenson, this guy who was here, was his name Jeffrey?”

She had more of the coffee, thinking. “Well, maybe. He had red hair, all piled up on his head and oily.” She made a sour face. “I remember that.” “Ah.” “I’ve never been comfortable with a red-haired person.

People say the damnedest things, don’t they?

I left Charleen Jorgenson’s home at twenty-five minutes after four that afternoon and stopped at a bait and tackle shop on the road leading back to town. They had a pay phone on the wall under a huge sign that said LIVE WORMS. I tried calling Mrs. C. Thomas Berteaux to ask if Jeffrey’s hair had been red, but I got no answer. Probably out. I tried Virginia LaMert again, but also got no answer. Virginia LaMert was the last name on my list, and if she didn’t come through it was drawing-board time. I called Information and asked them if they had a listing for Martha Guidry. They did. I dialed Martha Guidry’s number and, as I listened to her phone ring, the same white Mustang I’d seen at the Pig Stand turned into the parking lot and disappeared behind the bait shop.

Martha Guidry answered on the sixth ring. “Hello?”

I identified myself and told her that Mrs. C. Thomas Berteaux had suggested I call. I said that I was trying to find someone who was born in the area thirty-six years ago, and I asked if I might pay a visit. She said that would be fine. She told me her address and gave me directions and said that, as old as she was, if I didn’t hurry she might be dead before I arrived. I was going to like Martha Guidry just fine.

I hung up and stood at the phone, waiting. A blue Ford pickup pulled in and a young guy with a scraggly beard went into the bait shop. An older man came out of the shop with a brown bag and got into a Chevy Caprice. The young guy came out with a Budweiser Tall Boy and hopped back into his truck. The Mustang didn’t return.

I climbed back into my car and followed the directions toward Martha Guidry’s house. Maybe this business with the Mustang was my imagination, like the heat.

I had gone maybe three-quarters of a mile when the Mustang swung around a Kleinpeter Dairy milk truck and eased in behind me. He came up so close that I could see the driver in my rearview mirror. He had a scoop-cut pompadour maybe six inches high and long nasty sideburns carved down into points so sharp you could cut yourself.

And he had red hair.

Chapter 5

T he guy in the Mustang wouldn’t let anyone get between us, as if he wanted to follow me and thought he had to stay close to do it. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled, and he drove with his left hand hanging down along the door. One of those. I turned off the state road and headed back toward town, and the Mustang turned with me. I pulled into an Exxon station and topped off my tank and asked a kid in a grease-stained uniform about the local bass fishing. The Mustang drove past while the kid was telling me, but a couple minutes later it pulled up to a stop sign a block away and sat waiting. Following me, all right.

I took it easy up through town, letting him follow, and twice managed to stop for traffic lights. Each time I stopped he eased up behind me, and each time he made a big deal out of staring off to the side. The ostrich technique. If I don’t see you, you can’t see me. I had to smile at this guy. He was something. At a four-way stop a kid in a red Isuzu pickup tried to turn in behind me, and the guy in the Mustang jumped the stop sign and blew his horn, cutting him off. Maybe he thought I wouldn’t notice.

A set of railroad tracks ran through the center of town. The tracks were prominent and the road was old, so everybody was slowing to ease their cars across the tracks. On the other side of the tracks there were several businesses and a couple of cross streets and, still further down, a little bridge where the road crossed the bayou. Cars were waiting at most of the cross streets, people getting off work.

I eased the Taurus across the tracks, then punched it, putting enough distance between me and the Mustang for a woman in a light blue Acura to get between us. The Mustang came up to her fast, swerving into the oncoming lane, but there was too much traffic for him to pass. I swung to the right onto the shoulder, floored it past six or seven cars, then jerked it back into the traffic lane and then right again around a bread truck and into a Dairy Queen parking lot. He wouldn’t have been able to see me turn past the bread truck. I pushed it around the back of the Dairy Queen, threw it into park, then jumped out and ran up the side past a couple of kids sucking malts in a ’69 VW Bug. The Mustang was still behind the woman in the Acura, blowing his horn and swerving from side to side, until finally she couldn’t take it anymore and pulled to the side. He horsed it past her, giving the finger and screaming that she should get her head out her butt, and then he blasted away up the shoulder, spraying gravel and dust and little bits of oyster shell. I wrote down his license number, went back to my car, and turned again toward Martha Guidry’s. I checked the rearview mirror from time to time, but the Mustang didn’t reappear. You had to shake your head.

I drove up the center of Evangeline Parish through dense stands of hardwood trees and sweet potato fields, passing small frame houses set near the road, many with rusted cars and large propane gas tanks and chickens in their yards. Martha Guidry lived in such a house across the street from a strawberry stand. She was a small bony woman with skin like rumpled silk and cataract glasses that made her eyes look huge and protruding. She was wearing a thin housedress and socks and house slippers, and when she answered the door she was carrying a large, economy-sized can of Raid Ant Roach Killer. She squinted out the thick glasses. “You that Mr. Cole?”

“Yes, ma’am. I appreciate your seeing me.”

She pushed open the screen door and told me to come in quick. She said if you don’t come in quick all kinds of goddamned bugs come in with you. As soon as I was in she fogged the air around the door with the Raid. “That’ll get the little bastards!”

I moved across the room to get away from the cloud of Raid. “I don’t think you’re supposed to breathe that stuff, Ms. Guidry.”

She waved her hand. “Oh, hell, I been breathin’ it for years. You want a Pepsi-Cola?”

“No, ma’am. Thank you.”

She waved the Raid at the couch. “You just sit right there. It won’t take a moment.” I guess she was going to give me the Pepsi anyway. When she was in the kitchen there was a sharp slap and she said, “Gotcha, you sonofabitch!” The thing about this job is that you meet such interesting people.

She came back with two plastic tumblers and a single can of Pepsi and the Raid. She put the glasses on her coffee table, then opened the Pepsi and poured most of it in one glass and a little bit in the other. She offered the full glass to me. “Now, what is it you want to know?”

I lifted the glass but noticed something crusted down in the ice. I pretended to take a sip and put it down. “Mrs. Berteaux said that you’re a midwife.”

She nodded, eyes scanning the upper reaches of the room for incoming bugs. “Unh-hunh. Not in years, a’course, but I was.”

“Thirty-six years ago on July ninth a baby girl was born in this area and given up for adoption. Chances are that the child was illegitimate, but maybe not. Chances are that the mother was underage, but maybe not.”

Her eyes narrowed behind the thick lenses. “You think I birthed the child?”

“I don’t know. If not, maybe you heard something.”

She looked thoughtful. “That was a long time ago.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I waited, letting her think. Probably hard with all the nerve damage from the Raid.

Martha Guidry scratched at her head, working on it, and then seemed to notice something in the far corner of the room. She put down her Pepsi, picked up the Raid, then crept across the room to peer into the shadows behind the television. I got ready to hold my breath. She said, “Goddamned ugly bugs,” but she held her fire. False alarm. She came back to the chair and sat. “You know, I think I remember something about that.”

Well.

She said, “There were some folks lived over here around the Nezpique.” She was nodding as she thought about it, fingering the Raid can. “They had a little girl, I think. Yes, that’s right. They gave her away.”

Well, well. “You remember their names?” I was writing it down.

She pooched out her lips, then slowly shook her head, trying to put it together. “I remember it was a big family. He was a fisherman or somethin’, but they might’ve cropped a share. They lived over on the bayou. Right over here on the Nezpique. Wasn’t no bastard, though. Just a big family with too many mouths to feed.”

A name?

She looked sad and shook her head. “I’m sorry. It’s right on the tip of my tongue and I just can’t remember it. You get old, everything goes to hell. There’s one!” She raced to a potted plant beneath the window and cut loose with the Raid. Clouds of gas fogged up around her and I walked over to the door, leaned out, and took deep breaths. When she was finished with the Raid I went back to the chair. Everything smelled of kerosene and chemicals.

I said, “These bugs are something, aren’t they?”

She nodded smugly. “They’ll run you out of house and home, let me tell you.”

I heard the crunch of a car pulling off the road. Not in her yard, but farther away. I went back to the door. The white Mustang was sitting across the street by the strawberry stand. I said, “Ms. Guidry, has someone else approached you about this?”

She shook her head. “Unh-unh.”

“A few months ago.”

She got the thoughtful look again. “You know, I think a fella did come here.” She made a face like she’d bit into something sour. “I didn’t like his looks. I won’t deal with anybody I don’t like the way they look. No, siree. You can tell by a person’s looks, and I didn’t like that fella, at all. I ran ‘m off.”

I looked back out the door. “Is that the man?”

Martha Guidry came over next to me and squinted out through the screen. “Well, my goodness. That’s him. That’s the little peckerwood, right over there!”

Martha Guidry charged through the screen door with her can of Raid as if she’d seen the world’s largest bug. She screamed, “Here, you! What are you doin’ over there?!”

I said, “Oh, God.”

She lurched down the steps and ran toward the highway, and I was wondering if maybe I should tackle her before she became roadkill. Then the Mustang fishtailed out onto the highway and roared back toward Ville Platte, and Martha Guidry pulled up short, shaking her fist at him. I said, “Martha, do you remember his name?”

Martha Guidry stalked back up the steps, breathing hard and blinking behind the thick glasses. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to dial 911. “Jerry. Jeffrey. Somegoddamnthing like that.”

“Aha.”

“That rotten sneak. Why do you think he was out here?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m going to find out.”

She took a deep breath, shook herself, then said, “God damn, but I feel like a drink! You’re not the kind of fool to let a lady drink alone, are you?”

“No, ma’am, I’m not.”

She threw open the door and gestured inside with the Raid. “Then get yer ass in there and let’s booze.”

Chapter 6

A t twenty minutes after six that evening I checked into a motel in Ville Platte and phoned Lucille Chenier at her office in Baton Rouge . I only had to wait eight or nine minutes for her to come on the line. She said, “Yes?””Guess who?” Martha had been generous with the Old Crow.

“I’m very busy, Mr. Cole. Is there some way I can help you?” Some people just weren’t around when they handed out laugh buttons.

“Can your office run a license plate check for me?”

“Of course.”

I gave her the Mustang’s number and told her about the red-haired man. She said, “He was also asking about a child?”

“Yes”

You could hear her fingernails clicking on her desk. Thinking. “That’s odd. I wonder why he would be following you?”

“When he tells me, I’ll pass it along.”

“It’s very important that this not be associated with Jodi Taylor.” She sounded concerned.

“I’m telling people that I’m searching for a marrow donor. In a case like this, you have to ask questions. People talk. This kind of thing can be exciting to folks, and they like to share their excitement.”

“And people with secrets want to protect them.”

“That’s the point. But I’ve no reason to believe that anyone I’ve yet seen has secrets.”

“Except, perhaps, for your red-haired man.”

“Well, there is that. Yes.”

She told me that she would have the information on the Mustang’s owner by ten the next morning, and then she hung up. I stared at the phone and felt strangely incomplete now that the connection was broken, but maybe that was just all the Raid I had breathed. Sure. You spend most of the afternoon breathing Raid and drinking Old Crow, it heightens your sense of dissociation. It also puts you to sleep.

At eighteen minutes after nine the next morning, the phone rang and Lucy Chenier said, “Your Mustang is registered to someone named Jimmie Ray Rebenack.” She read two addresses, both in Ville Plane.

“Okay.”

“Mr. Rebenack lists his occupation as a private investigator. He was licensed two and a half years ago.”

I was grinning. “If this guy’s for real, he has to be the world’s worst detective.”

“Prior to licensing, he was employed as a full-time auto mechanic at an Exxon station in Alexandria. His tax records indicate that he continues to derive the majority of his income from part-time mechanic work.”

“Wow. You guys work fast.”

“The firm is well positioned. You’ll keep me informed?”

“Of course, Ms. Chenier.” Elvis Cole, Professional Detective, discourses in a professional manner.

I located Rebenack’s addresses on my map of Ville Platte, then went to find him. One was a business address, the other a residence. The residential address put Jimmie Ray Rebenack in a small frame duplex on the east side of town, four blocks north of a switching station for the Southern-Pacific Railroad. It was an older neighborhood, and it wasn’t particularly proud, with small unkempt houses and spotty lawns and cars and trucks that were mostly Detroit gas guzzlers in need of paint. Jimmie’s Mustang was not in evidence.

I cruised the block twice, then drove to Jimmie Ray Rebenack’s office two blocks north of Main above a fresh-seafood market. The seafood market was set between a barber shop and a secondhand clothes store, and there was a little stairwell between the seafood and the clothes, and a black felt and glass directory for the offices up the stairs.

I circled the block, looking for the Mustang, but as with the house the Mustang was not there. I parked around the corner, then walked back to the little directory. There were five businesses listed, and Rebenack Investigations was the third. You had to shake your head. Jimmie Ray Rebenack in his brand-new Mustang, thinking he wouldn’t be noticed as he followed me all over town.

I crossed the street to a little coffee shop opposite the fish market. There was a counter and a half-dozen Formica tables spread around the place sporting overweight men in thin cotton shirts drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. A napkin dispenser sat on each of the tables, alongside a bottle of Tabasco sauce. I sat at a table in the window, watching the fish market until a sturdy woman with about a million miles on her clock came over with a coffeepot. She poured without asking, and said, “You wan” some breakfast, sugah?”

“How about a couple of hard poached eggs, toast, and grits?”

“Wheat or white?”

“Wheat.”

She walked away without writing anything and left me to sip at the coffee. It was heavy with flavor and about a million times stronger than the coffee people drink in the rest of the world, sort of like espresso that’s been cooked down to a sludge. Mississippi mud. I tried to pretend that I enjoyed it, and I think I did a pretty good job. Maybe the Tabasco was on the tables for the coffee. I sneaked glances at the men with their papers. Okay. If they could drink it, I could drink it.

When the waitress brought the food, I said, “Mm-mm, that coffee’s some kinda strong!”

She said, “Uh-huh.”

I smushed the eggs into the grits and mixed in a little butter and ate it between bites of the toast. The grits were warm and smooth and made the awful coffee easier to drink. I watched the fish market. People came and went, and a couple of times people climbed the stairs, but none of them was Jimmie Ray Rebenack. The front of the fish market was covered with hand-lettered signs saying CATFISH and LIVE CRABS and GASPERGOO $1.89. The people who patronized the fish market came out with brown paper bags that I took to be the catfish and the crabs, and, as I watched them, I wondered what a gaspergoo was and why someone might want to eat it. Another little sign had been painted on the door. WE HAVE GAR BALLS; These Cajuns know how to live, don’t they?

I was halfway along my third cup of sludge when Jimmie Ray Rebenack’s Mustang rumbled down the street and pulled into a metered spot outside the clothing store. Jimmie Ray fed some money into the meter, then trotted up the stairs. He was wearing blue jeans and a red western shirt and gray snakeskin boots. His pompadour looked a foot high and must’ve taken most of the morning to shellac into place.

I gave it a few minutes, then paid at the counter, left a hefty tip, and crossed the street to Jimmie Ray Rebenack’s office.

The building was dingy and low class, with crummy linoleum floors and water-stained paint. The smell offish was strong, and seemed a part of the fiber of the building. Three offices overlooked the front street, and three overlooked the alley behind the fish market. Rebenack had the middle office over the alley. I listened for a second, didn’t hear anything, then let myself in.

Jimmie Ray Rebenack was sitting behind a plain wooden desk, feet up, staring at some papers when he heard the door. He saw me, then came out of the chair as if somebody had poured hot oatmeal into his lap.

“Hey.”

“Nice boots, Jimmie Ray. You going for that Joey Buttafucco look?”

“Who?” Out of the cultural loop, down here in Ville Platte. “What do you want?” He slid the papers into his desk drawer. Surreptitious.

Jimmie Ray Rebenack had sharp features and pock-marks on his neck and the pink skin of a natural redhead. Maybe an inch shorter than me, but muscular in a rawboned kind of way. Grease from his part-time mechanic’s job was embedded in the thick skin of his knuckles and fingers. He’d tried to wash it off, but the grease was in deep and probably a pan of him. A lowboy gray metal file cabinet sat in one corner of the little room, and a couple of padded dinette chairs sat against the wall opposite his desk. Both of the chairs looked like they had been out in the rain, and the padding on one had been patched with duct tape. Classy. Everything in the place looked like it had been picked up at a yard sale, or maybe bought secondhand from the Louisiana public school system. There was a framed picture of Tom Selleck as Magnum sitting on top of the file cabinet.

I said, “I want to know why you’re following me, Jimmie Ray.”

“Man, what d’ hell you talkin’ ’bout? I ain’t followin’ you.” The accent was somewhere between Cajun and French Quarter New Orleans.

I crossed his office and looked out the window. He had a view of the Dumpster behind the fish market and, beyond that, a backyard with a little tomato garden. A mayonnaise jar with a two-headed turtle floating in alcohol was on his windowsill. Keepsake, no doubt. I said, “You’re Jimmie Ray Rebenack. You drive this year’s Mustang, license number 213X455, and you possess Louisiana State investigator’s license number KAO154509.”

You could see him relax. I hadn’t shot him or thrown a punch, so the surprise of my entry was wearing off and he was getting himself together. He put together a pretty good smile, sort of a Jack Nicholson number, part sneer and part smirk. He sat again, leaning back and trying to look expansive. “You made me, huh? You must be pretty good.”

“Jimmie, a twelve-year-old could’ve made you. Why are you following me?”

“I heard you was in town and I wanted to find out why, you know? Like there might be some money in it, thas all.”

“Why were you talking to Martha Guidry and Claire Fontenot and Evelyn Maggio last year?”

He frowned and dug at the inside of his teeth with his tongue. Nervous. “I don’t know whatchu talkin’ ’bout, man.”

“C’mon, Jeffrey.”

He stared at me like he was trying to think of something to say, but couldn’t. I grinned at him. “Gotcha.”

He frowned, not happy about it. “They got me confused with somebody else.”

“With hair like that?”

He leaned forward. “Hey, podnuh, this is my town. I ain’t gotta tell you dick. I know your name is Elvis Cole, and you’re from Los Angeles. I know you’re stayin’ at the motel over here.” He pointed his thumb at me and smirked. “You see? I ain’t no goddamned slouch in the detectin’ department, either.”

“Wow. You think we could have a detect-off? You think we could duke it out for the world middleweight detective championships?” I looked at the picture of Tom Selleck. Jesus Christ.

He said, “Maybe my business is knowing your business. Maybe I figured that since you was workin’ in my town, I could cut myself in.” He leaned back again, grinning at me like I was supposed to believe it. “These coonies won’t open up to a stranger, and I know my way around. Figured that might be worth some cash. Whatchu think?”

“I think you’re full of shit.”

Jimmie Ray shrugged like what I thought didn’t matter, and then I heard steps coming up the linoleum stairs. The steps came closer and then the door opened and a guy in his mid-forties stepped in. Something large filled the hall behind him.

Jimmie Ray kept grinning at me and said, “This my podnuh, LeRoy.” He nodded at the shape in the hall. “That there’s Ren+!, behind him.”

LeRoy’s eyes narrowed and he looked at Jimmie Ray as if Jimmie was the world’s largest turd. LeRoy was maybe five-eight, with dark weathered skin just beginning to loosen and eyes like a couple of hard black marbles. He was in a thin short-sleeved plaid shirt and worn denim pants, and there was a tattoo on his forearm so obscured by wiry hair that I couldn’t make it out. Anchor, maybe. Or a bulldog. He looked surprised to see me, and not particularly happy about it. “Who d’fuck dis?” He said it with a heavy Cajun accent.

Jimmie Ray’s smile lost some of its confidence. “Just some guy. He’s leaving. Let’m pass, Ren+!.”

Ren+! moved into the room behind LeRoy, and when he did I stepped back the way you might when something large passes very close to you, say a mobile home, or some great African beast. Rene” was only six-three or six-four, but his body possessed size in the way a dirigible possesses size, as if there were a quality to its bulk that could block out the sun. He had a tiny round head and diin, sandy hair and fingers as thick as my wrists. He wore humongously thick glasses that made his eyes seem tiny and far away, and the lenses were speckled with white flecks of matter. There were liver-colored blotches on his forearms and ears that looked like birthmarks, and a large misshapen lump riding the top of his right shoulder like a second head. His skin looked like tree bark. I said, “Jesus Christ.”

Jimmie Ray said, “That Ren+! is somethin’, idin’ he? Had him a job in a carnival down ’round Bossier City. Useta bill him d’ Swamp Monster.” Jimmie Ray liked Ren+! the same way he liked the two-headed turtle. Something in a jar.

LeRoy still had the narrow eyes on Jimmie Ray. “Jus’ some guy? You callin’ names wi’ jus’ some guy? How goddamn stupid you are?”

Jimmie Ray raised his hands like what’s the big deal? “It’s nothin’, man. Eve’body cool here.” The sharp smile fell away and you could see that Jimmie was scared.

LeRoy said something in French.

Jimmie Ray nodded. “Hey, Cole, there’s nothin’ I can tell ya, all right? Now, I got business. Go on.”

LeRoy had put the narrow eyes on me. “Whatchu lookin’ at, podnuh?”

Rebenack came around the desk and took my arm. “C’mon, Cole. Out. I gotta go.” Now he was trying to get me out of there and damned anxious to do it.

I said, “Are you okay with this?”

Jimmie Ray Rebenack looked at me with wide, surprised eyes. “Hey, yeah, no problem.”

LeRoy squinted at me, then at Rebenack. “Who dis guy?” Then back at me. “You his boyfrien’, what?”

I said, “If you’re in trouble with these guys, Rebenack, don’t go with them.”

Rebenack waved me toward the door, making a big deal out of showing me that everything was fine. “Hey, these are just a couple of pals. It’s not your business, man. Now, c’mon, I gotta lock up.”

I let myself get shown out, and then I went down the stairs and back across to the little coffee shop. In a couple of minutes, LeRoy and Ren+! and Jimmie Ray came down and climbed into a rusty, gold Polara double-parked at the curb. When Ren+! got in, the Polara groaned and settled on its springs. They eased away down the street, did a slow K-turn, then headed back to Main Street and swung left.

I ran hard around the corner to my car, jumped in, pushed it hard through the little alley behind the fish market to Main, then jumped out of the car, climbed onto the hood, and looked both ways to find them. The gold Polara was moving south, just winding a bend in the street maybe three blocks and a dozen cars away. I followed them.

Jimmie Ray might be a turd, but he was my turd.

Chapter 7

T hey were easy to follow. I trailed them south of Ville Platte, staying four to six cars back. LeRoy drove slowly, and a train of cars piled up behind them, unable to pass because of the narrow road. Six miles south of Ville Platte we crossed a little bayou, and the line of traffic slowed as LeRoy turned west. I didn’t turn after him because no one else had, and the land was wide and fiat and empty of trees. Sweet potato fields, maybe. I pulled onto the shoulder and waited until the Polara was out of sight, and only then did I turn. If Jimmie Ray was doing the following, he’d be tooling along a couple of car lengths behind, thinking he was invisible because he was playing the radio. Hmm. If I was the world’s greatest detective and Jimmie Ray was the world’s worst, maybe this was some kind of karmic coming together.

Maybe a mile off the main road another road branched away, this one going through a gate with a big sign that said ROSSIER’S CRAWFISH FARM, MILT ROSSIER, PROP. The farm was hidden from the road by a heavy windbreak of hardwood trees, and I couldn’t see beyond the windbreak into the farm. I could see pretty far up the tarmac road, and the gold Polara wasn’t visible. No dust trail, either. Hmm, again. I drove a hundred yards past the gate, pulled onto the shoulder, then trotted back into the trees.

The windbreak was maybe a hundred yards deep, with more fields beyond cut through by a regular crosswork of shell roads. The gold Polara was parked on the far side of a large rectangular pond about the size and shape of a football field. There was another pond of identical size and shape beyond it, and another one after that, and a couple of long, low cinder block buildings. The Polara was parked beside a white Cadillac Brougham and an Evangeline Parish Sheriffs department highway car. Jimmie Ray and LeRoy and Ren+! were standing at the edge of the pond with a guy in a tan sheriffs uniform. The sheriff was maybe in his fifties, and everybody seemed to be talking to a heavy guy with baggy trousers and a cheap white short-sleeved shirt and a straw field hat on his head. He looked about the same age as the sheriff, but he might have been older, and he carried himself with the unmistakable bearing of an overseer. He gestured out toward the pond, and everybody looked. He gestured in the opposite direction, and everybody looked there, too. Then he leaned against the Cadillac and crossed his arms. Milt Rossier, no doubt. Proprietor.

I watched for another few minutes, and then I made my way back through the trees, drove back to town, and let myself into Jimmie Ray Rebenack’s office. It was as we had left it, quiet and smelling of raw shrimp, the sounds of the alley and backyards below drifting nicely through the open window. A lawn mower was growling a few houses away, and the rich smell of cut St. Augustine grass mixed nicely with the shrimp. The two-headed turtle was milky in its jar on the sill, and Tom Selleck looked bored in his frame atop the file cabinet. I could see Jimmie Ray Rebenack, watching Magnum reruns, watching Tom Selleck drive the fast car and mug with the beautiful women. Jimmie sitting in his little duplex in Ville Platte, thinking, yeah, I could do that, then taking some mail order course, How to Be a Private Eye!

I opened his desk to see what he had been reading, and suddenly the lawn mower sounds faded and the office was very quiet. Jodi Taylor smiled up at me from the cover of Music magazine. The cover and an accompanying article had been clipped from the magazine and stapled together. The People article was under it. I took a breath and let it out. Sonofagun. I went through the rest of the desk, but the rest of the desk was empty. I moved to the file cabinet. Two cans of Dr Pepper were hiding in the bottom drawer, and a single roll of prank toilet paper, the kind with Jerry Falwell’s face printed on each of the sheets. Office-warming gift. The second drawer was empty, and the third was nicely outfitted with hanging file folders in various colors, only the folders were as empty and as clean as the day Jimmie Ray had installed them. There were eight hanging files in the top drawer. One of them held a Polaroid snapshot of a nude woman with a Winn-Dixie shopping bag over her head. A lot of blond hair peeked out beneath the bag, and she was cheap-looking, wearing rings on her diird and fourth fingers. Girlfriend, no doubt. Another held a surveillance report that Jimmie Ray Rebenack had written for a Mrs. Philip R. Cantera, who was convinced that her husband was playing around. Jimmie Ray’s report said that he had observed Mr. Cantera in intimate embrace on several different occasions with (a) a young woman who worked at Cal’s Road House and (b) another young woman who sold beer at the Rebel Stock Car Oval. The next three files contained case notes from similar jobs, two of them involving suspected infidelity, and the remaining being a grocery store owner who suspected an employee of stealing houseware products. The fifth folder contained more pictures of Jodi Taylor clipped from magazines and newspapers and what looked like studio press release sources, only sandwiched in with the articles were the Xeroxed copies of the first two pages of a document relinquishing the care and trust of one Maria Sue Johnson, a baby girl, to the State of Louisiana from her natural parents, Pamela E. Johnson and Monroe Kyle Johnson, on 11 July, thirty-six years ago. The document was incomplete and bore no signatures. Jodi Taylor’s birth certificate was paper-clipped to the document along with a second birdi certificate, this one stating that Maria Sue Johnson had been born to Pamela E. Johnson and Monroe Kyle Johnson on 9 July. Jodi Taylor’s birthday.

Jesus Christ.

An address had been written in pencil on the back of the birth certificate: 1146 Tecumseh Lane. I copied it.

I stared at the birth certificate and the relinquish-ment document for quite a while, and then I put Jim-mie Ray’s office back as I had found it, let myself out, and went back through the smell of wet shrimp to the little diner across the street. The same cook with the cratered nose was leaning on the counter. The same crinkled old man with the snap-brimmed hat was smoking at the little window table. Dignified. I said, “Use your pay phone?” They have a pay phone on the wall by the restroom.

The cook nodded help yourself. Watching me gave him something to do.

I fed a quarter into the phone and dialed Martha Guidry, who answered on the second ring. I said, “Martha, it’s Elvis Cole.”

“What?” The Raid.

I had to yell. “It’s Elvis Cole. Remember?” The old man and the cook were both looking at me. I cupped the receiver. “Her ears.” The cook nodded, saying it’s hard when they get like that.

Martha Guidry yelled, “Goddamn bugs!” You could hear the flyswatter whistle through the air and snap against the wall, Martha cackling and saying, “Gotcha, you sonofabitch!”

“Martha?” Trying to get her back to the phone.

Something crashed, and she came back on the line, breathing harder from her exertion. “You have a bowel movement yet? I know how it is when I travel. I cross the street, I don’t go potty for a week.” A living doll, that Martha.

I said, “The people you were trying to remember, were their names Johnson?”

“Johnson.”

“Pamela and Monroe Johnson.”

There was a sharp slap. “You should see the size of this goddamned roach.”

“The Johnsons, Martha. Was the family named Johnson?”

She said, “That sounds like them. White trash lived right over here. Oh, hell, Pam Johnson died years ago.”

I thanked Martha Guidry for her help, then hung up and stared at the address I had copied. 1146 Tecumseh Lane. I fed another quarter into the phone and dialed Information. A pleasant female voice said, “And how are you today?” She sounded young.

“Do you have a listing for a Pamela or Monroe Johnson on Tecumseh Lane?”

She didn’t say anything for a moment, and then she said, “No, sir. We’ve got a bunch of other Johnsons, though.”

“Any of them on Tecumseh Lane?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t show Pamela or Monroe Johnson, and I don’t show a Tecumseh Lane, either.”

I hung up.

The cook said, “No luck?”

I shook my head.

The old guy at the window table said something in French.

“What’d he say?”

The cook said, “He wants to know what you want.”

“I’m trying to find Monroe and Pamela Johnson, I think they live on Tecumseh Lane, but I’m not sure where that is.”

The cook said it in French, and the old man said something back at him and they talked back and forth like that for a while. Then the cook said, “He doesn’t know these Johnson people, but he says there’s a Tecumseh Lane in Eunice.”

“Eunice?”

“Twenty miles south of here.” Ah.

I smiled at the old man. “Thank him for me.”

The cook said, “He understands you okay, he just don’t speak English so good.”

I nodded at the old man. “Merci.”

The old man tipped his hat. Dignified. “Il y a pas de quoi.” You take your good fortune where you find it.

I went out to my car, looked up Eunice on the Triple-A map, and went there. Like Ville Platte, the landscape was flat and crosscut with bayous and ponds and industrial waterways, mostly sweet potato fields and marshlands striped with oil company pipelines and vent stations. The town itself was bigger than Ville Platte, but not by a lot, and seemed like a neat, self-contained little community with a lot of churches and schools and quaint older buildings.

Tecumseh Lane was a pleasant street in an older residential area with small frame houses and neatly trimmed azalea bushes. 1146 was in the center of the block, with a tiny front lawn and an ancient two-strip cement drive and a big wooden porch. Like every other house in the area, it was set atop high brick pillars and, even though the land was flat, you had to climb three or four steps to enter the house.

I left the car at the curb and went up to the house and rapped at the door. An older black woman in what looked like a white nurse’s uniform answered. “May I help you?”

I gave her one of my nicer smiles. “Mrs. Johnson?”

“Oh, no.”

“I’m looking for Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. I was told they lived here.” The air behind her smelled of medicine and pine-scented air freshener.

She was shaking her head before I finished. “You’ll need to speak with Mrs. Boudreaux. I work for her.”

“Who’s Mrs. Boudreaux?”

“She owns this house.” A wet, flapping sound came from deeper in the house, and a raspy old man’s voice yelled something about his pears. The black woman took a half-step out onto the porch, pulling the door so I wouldn’t hear. “She doesn’t live here, though. She only comes by in the morning and the evening.”

I let myself look confused. A relatively easy task. “Did the Johnsons move?”

“Oh, Mr. Johnson’s her daddy. She used to rent this place out, but now she lets him live here.” She pulled the door tighter and lowered her voice, letting me in on the know. “He can’t live by himself, and they didn’t want to put him in a home. Lord knows he couldn’t live with them.” She raised her eyebrows.

“He’s very ill.”

I said, “Ah. So Mr. Johnson does live here.”

She nodded, then sighed. “He’s eighty-seven, poor thing, and he takes spells. He’s a devil when he takes a spell.” The voice in the house yelled again, something about the TV, something about Bob Barker and the goddamned pears.

I said, “How is Mrs. Johnson?”

“Oh, she died years ago.”

Score another for Martha Guidry. “If I wanted to speak with Mrs. Boudreaux, how could I do that?”

“She’ll be here in a little while. She always comes around two. Or you could go by her shop. She has a very nice formal wear shop on Second Street by the square. They call it Edie’s. Her first name is Edith, but she goes by Edie.”

“Of course.”

She glanced back toward the house. “Twice a day she comes, and he don’t even know it, most days. Poor thing.”

I thanked her for her time, told her I’d try to stop at the house again around two, then drove back to the square. Edith Boudreaux’s boutique occupied a corner location next to a hair salon, across from a little square filled with magnolia trees. I parked on the square, then walked back and went inside. A young woman in her early twenties smiled at me from a rack of Anne Klein pants suits. “May I help you, sir?”

I smiled back at her. “Just sort of browsing for my wife.”

The smile deepened. Dimples. “Well, if you have any questions, just ask.”

I told her I would. She finished racking the Anne Kleins, then went through a curtained doorway into the stockroom. As she went through the curtains, an attractive woman in her late forties came out with an armful of beige knit tops. She saw me and smiled. “Have you been helped?”

The similarities to Jodi Taylor were amazing. The same broad shoulders, the good bone structure, the facial resemblance. They were, as the saying goes, enough alike to be sisters. We would have to unseal the sealed documents to be sure. We would have to compare the adoption papers from the Johnson family to the Taylor family to be positive, but Edith Boudreaux and Jodi Taylor were clearly related. Maybe Jimmie Ray Rebenack wasn’t the world’s worst detective, after all. I said, “Are you Ms. Boudreaux?”

“Why, yes. Have we met?”

I told her no. I said that her shop had been recommended and that I was browsing for something for my wife, but if I had any questions I would be sure to ask. She told me to take my time and she returned to her stock. I browsed around the store another few minutes, then let myself out, walked to a pay phone on the other side of the square, and dialed Lucy Chenier. I said, “Well, I’ve done it again.”

“Tied your laces together and tripped?” Maybe she had a laugh button, after all.

I said, “I have found a gentleman named Monroe Johnson. Thirty-six years ago on Jodi Taylor’s birthday, his wife, Pamela Johnson, delivered a baby girl. They gave the child up for adoption. I saw his adult daughter, a woman named Edie Boudreaux, and she is Jodi’s spitting image.”

Lucy said, “You’ve done all this in two days?”

“It is not for nothing that I am the World’s Greatest Detective.”

“Perhaps you are.” She sounded pleased.

“Also, Rebenack found them for me.” I told her what I had found in his office.

“Oh.” She didn’t sound as happy about that.

I said, “I still don’t know what Rebenack’s interest in all this might be, but if these people are, in fact, Jodi’s biological family, Edie Boudreaux should be able to provide whatever medical information Jodi wants.” I gave her Bogart. “So it’s all yours, shweet-heart.”

“Was that Humphrey Bogart?”

Some people are truly cold.

She said, “The next step is to approach these people. Perhaps we can figure out a plan of action over dinner.”

I said, “Is this an invitation, Ms. Chenier?”

“It is, Mr. Cole, and I advise you to accept. There may not be another.”

“Dinner sounds very nice, thank you.”

“Where are you?”

“Eunice. The family lives here.”

She said, “Can you be back at the Riverfront and ready to be picked up by six-thirty?”

“I think I can manage.” If I grinned any wider I’d probably split my gums.

“Good. I’ll see you then.” She paused, and then she said, “Good work, Mr. Cole.”

I hung up, went to my car, and sat there with the grin until a guy in a Toyota flatbed yelled, “Hey, pumpkinhead! You’re gonna catch bugs that way?”

Southern humor.

Chapter 8

I went back to the motel in Ville Platte, showered, shaved, then drove back across the Atchafalaya Basin to Baton Rouge . It seemed a lot faster than when I had driven from Baton Rouge to Ville Platte, but maybe that was because I was looking forward to getting there. I am nothing if not goal oriented. I checked into the Riverfront again and was nursing a Dixie beer in the lobby bar at six-thirty when Lucy Chenier walked in wearing a rose blazer over a clay-colored blouse and tight jeans. Two businessmen at a little round table watched her walk in. So did the bartender. She smiled when she saw me and her eyes seemed to fill the room. She offered her hand. “Did you satisfy your urge for local cuisine, or are you still feeling adventurous?”

I said, “Adventure is my middle name.”

She smiled wider, and her teeth and eyes sparkled, but maybe that was just me. “Then you’re in for a treat.”

Lucy waited while I paid the bar bill, then we went out to her car. She was driving a light blue Lexus 400 two-door coupe. The sport model. It was clean and sleek and had been freshly washed. There was an ATT car phone, and the small backseat was littered with CDs, mostly k. d. lang and Reba McEntire. She looked good behind the wheel, as if she and the car were comfortable together. “Nice,” I said.

She flashed the laugh lines, pleased. Lucy Chenier drove cleanly and with authority, very much the way I imagined she practiced law or played tennis, and pretty soon we turned into a great warehouse of a building with streams of people going in and coming out. Ralph Kacoo’s. She said, “Let me warn you. The decor is kind of hokey, but the food is wonderful.”

“No problem,” I said. “I go for that Barnacle Bill look.”

Ralph Kacoo’s made an airplane hangar look small. It was festooned with fishing nets and cork buoys and stuffed game fish and mutant crab shells the size of garbage can lids. There must have been seven hundred people in the place. A lot of families, but a great many couples, too. All it needed was Alan Hale in a yellow slicker greeting everyone with a hearty “Ahoy, matey!” I said, “Kind of?”

Lucy Chenier nodded. “We’re big on hoke down here.”

A young woman who looked like a college student seated us and asked if we’d care for a drink. I said, “Shall we order a bottle of wine?”

“Never with Cajun food.” Lucy grinned, and now there was a glint of fun in her eyes. “You’re going to think it’s hokey again.”

“What?”

She looked at the waitress. “Could we have two Cajun Bloody Marys, please?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Cajun Bloody Marys?”

“Don’t laugh. They’re made with cayenne and a hint of fish stock. You said you’re adventurous.” She turned back to the waitress. “And we’ll have an appetizer of the alligator sausage.”

The waitress went away.

I said, “First, it’s dinner at Gilligan’s Island, now it’s alligator sausage. What could be next?”

Lucy looked at her menu. “The best is yet to come.”

The waitress came back with Bloody Marys that were more brown than red, with a ring of lemon floating in them. I tasted. There was the hint of fish, and the flavors of Tabasco and pepper and cayenne were strong and tingly, and went well with the vodka.

Lucy said, “Well?”

“This is good. This is really very good.”

Lucy smiled. “You see?”

The waitress returned with the alligator sausage and asked if we were ready to order. I tried the sausage. It could have been chicken or pork, but the texture was interesting.

Lucy said, “If you really want to taste Louisiana, I’d suggest any of the crab dishes, or the crawfish. The crab dishes tend to be fried; the crawfish boiled or made in a soup.”

“Sounds good.”

Lucy Chenier ordered the crawfish +!touff+!e, and I ordered the crawfish platter. With the platter I would get a bowl of crawfish bisque, as well as boiled crawfish and fried crawfish tails. The fried tails were called Cajun popcorn. We finished the first Bloody Marys and ordered two more. The waitress brought our salads, and I watched Lucy eat as, in her office, I had watched her move. To watch her was a singular, enjoyable occupation. She said, “To be honest with you, when Jodi told me that she was bringing in an investigator from California, I tried to discourage it. I didn’t think you’d be as effective as a local investigator.”

“Reasonable.”

She tipped her glass toward me. “Reasonable, but clearly misplaced. You’re good.”

I tried to sit straighter in the chair. “You’re making me blush.”

She sipped the Bloody Mary. She didn’t seem too interested in the salad. “What did Mr. Rebenack have to say for himself?”

I went through it for her. I told her that Jimmie Ray Rebenack had approached at least two of the women I interviewed and presented himself as someone seeking to find a sister, and that when I questioned him about this, he denied it, and also denied approaching the women. I told her that I had taken the opportunity to enter his office, and that when I did I discovered what appeared to be Louisiana State adoption papers and a birth certificate for a girl child born to Pamela and Monroe Johnson on the same day as the day of Jodi Taylor’s birth. When I said that part of it, Lucy Chenier put down her Bloody Mary and held up a hand. No longer smiling. “Let me stop you. You broke into this man’s office?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head. “Breaking and entering is a crime. I will not be a party to criminal behavior.”

I said, “What office?”

She sighed, still not liking it.

I said, “The state papers were standard stuff, showing that the Johnsons remanded all rights and claims on the child to the state. Someone had written the Johnsons’ address on back of the birth certificate. It could be coincidence, but if it is, it’s a big one.”

“Were the Taylors mentioned anywhere on the papers?

“There was a copy of Jodi’s birth certificate. That’s all.”

“Do you think this man Rebenack is related to Jodi Taylor or to the Johnson family?”

“I have no way to know. He denied all knowledge, yet he had the file. He’s interested in Jodi Taylor, and he’s linked her to the Johnsons. He had Monroe Johnson’s address, so he may have approached them, but I don’t know that.”

Lucy Chenier stared into midspace, thinking. Now that we were on the serious stuff, she seemed intent and focused and on the verge of a frown. Her court face, I thought. A mix of the tennis and the law. I had more of the Bloody Mary and watched her think. Watching her think was as rewarding as watching her move, but maybe that was just the vodka. My mouth tingled pleasantly from the spices, and I wondered if hers was tingling, too.

She said, “The documents you’re describing are part of the files sealed by the state. The biological parents would’ve been given a copy, what you might call a receipt for the child, but there’s no way Mr. Rebenack should have a copy.”

“Only he has it.” I wondered what it would be like to kiss someone with a tingling mouth.

She said, “Still, that document doesn’t prove that Jodi Taylor is in fact the child given up by the Johnsons. We’ll have to open the state files for that. We’ll have to approach Edith Boudreaux to confirm that what you’ve found is correct. If her father is incapacitated and her mother is dead, then it falls to her to give the state permission to open the files. That’s the only way to officially confirm that Jodi Taylor was born to Pamela Johnson.”

“And that we’ll do tomorrow.”

She nodded. “Yes. I think it’s best if we approach her at the boutique. We’ll make contact there, on ground where she’s comfortable, and ask to speak with her in private. That should be me, because I’ve done it before and because women are less threatened by other women.”

“You mean, we don’t just walk up and say, hey, babe, how’d ya like to meet your long lost sister?”

Lucy Chenier smiled, and had more of her drink. “Perhaps in California.”

I said, “Is your mouth tingling?”

She looked at me.

“From the spices.”

“Why, yes. It is.”

I nodded. “Just wondering.”

The waitress took the salad plates away and came back with the +!touff+!e for Lucy and the crawfish platter for me. A bowl of bisque was in the center of my plate, surrounded by a mound of boiled crawfish on one side and the fried crawfish tails on the other. The fried tails looked like tiny shrimp, curled tight and lightly breaded. I forked up several and ate them. They were hot and tender and tasted in a way like saut+!ed baby langostinos. “Good.”

Lucy said, “The bisque is like a soup that’s been enriched with crawfish fat. The heads have been stuffed with a mixture of crawfish meat and bread crumbs and spices. You can pick it up, then use your spoon to lift out the stuffing.”

“Okay.” The bisque was a deep brown, and several stuffed crawfish shells bobbed in it. I did as she said and dug out the stuffing and tasted it. The stuffing tasted of thyme. “This is terrific. Would you like one?”

“Please.”

I spooned out one of the stuffed shells and put it on her plate. She said, “Here. Try the +!touff+!e.”

The +!touff+!e was a rich brown sauce chunky with diced green bell peppers and celery and crawfish tails over rice. She forked some onto one of the little bread plates, then passed it to me. I tasted it. These people have redefined the word yummy.

She said, “Does the +!touff+!e you get in California taste like this?”

“Not even close.”

Lucy Chenier picked up the stuffed shell I had given her and spooned out the filling. As she did, a brown drop of the gravy ran down along the heel of her hand toward her wrist. She turned up her hand without thinking about it and licked off the drip. I felt something swell in my chest and had to swallow and then had the rest of the Bloody Mary. I said, “Would you like another?”

Nod. Smile. “Maybe one more. I have to drive.”

I flagged at the waitress and showed her two fingers. Two bags of ice and a cold shower, please. Lucy said, “You eat the boiled crawfish by breaking the tails out of the body, then pinching the tail so that the shell cracks and you can get out the meat.” She took one of my crawfish and demonstrated. “You see?”

“Unh-hunh.” Maybe if I concentrated on the food. The food could save me.

“Then you put the head in your mouth and suck it.”

I blinked at her as she put the head in her mouth and sucked it. She smiled simply. “Gets out the juice.”

I coughed and covered my mouth. I drank some water. Think about the food. The food. The waitress brought our drinks and I drank mine without stopping. Lucy looked concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I shook my head. “Not a thing.”

She sipped her new drink and ate some more of her +!touff+!e. I noticed that most of my food was gone and most of hers was still on her plate. I hope she didn’t think me a glutton. “Are you from Baton Rouge?”

“That’s right.”

“Your accent is sorter than the others I hear.”

She smiled. “I’m not the one with the accent, Mr. Cole.”

I spread my hands. Busted.

“I went to LSU for prelaw, but I attended law school in Michigan. Living with Yankees can devastate your accent.”

“And you returned home to practice.”

“My boyfriend was here, working, and we wanted to be married. He was a lawyer, too. He still is.”

“How about that.”

“We were divorced four years ago.”

“That happens.” I tried not to beam.

“Yes, it does.” It seemed as if she was going to say more, but then she went ‘back to the +!touff+!e. “Now tell me about you. Do you have a background in law enforcement?”

“Nope. I’ve been licensed for twelve years and, before that, I apprenticed with a man named George Fieder. George had about a million hours of experience and was maybe the best investigator who ever lived. Before that, I was in the army.”

“College?”

“University of Southeast Asia. The work-study program.”

She shook her head, smiling. “You look too young for Vietnam.”

“I looked older then.”

“Of course.”

“May I ask you a personal question, Ms. Chenier?”

She nodded, chewing.

“Have you sought out your birth parents?”

“No.” She shook her head, then used the back of her wrist to move her hair from her eyes. Fingers still sticky from the crawfish. “The vast majority of adopted children don’t. There may be a minor curiosity from time to time, but your mom and dad are your mom and dad.”

“The people who raise you.”

“That’s it. A long time ago a woman gave birth to me, and gave me over to the state because she felt it best for both of us. She now has her life, I have mine, and my birth father his. I can appreciate on an intellectual level that they birthed me, but emotionally, my folks are Jack and Ann Kyle. Jack helped me ace algebra and Ann drove me to the court every day after school to practice tennis. Do you see?”

“Sure. They’re your family.”

She smiled and nodded and ate more of the +!touff+!e. “Just like yours.”

“Yet you’ve devoted your career to this kind of work.”

“Not really. Most of my practice is in the area of divorce and custody disputes. But I don’t have to want to recover my birth parents to appreciate that need in others. All of us should have access to our medical histories. Because I feel the weight of that, and because I’m in a position to help those with the need, I do.”

“You share a mutual experience with other adopted children and you feel a kinship. All brothers and sisters under the skin.”

She seemed pleased. “That’s exactly right.” Amazing how a little vodka can dull the senses, isn’t it? She put down her fork and crossed her arms on the table. “So, Mr. Adventure, tell me what you think of our Louisiana crawfish. Is it the most incredible thing you’ve ever eaten?”

“I ate dog when I was in Vietnam.”

Lucy Chenier’s smile vanished and she looked uncertain. “How . . . adventurous.”

I shrugged and finished off the crawfish tails.

She said, “Arf.”

I looked up.

Lucy Chenier’s face was red and her mouth was a dimpled tight line. She opened her mouth and breathed deep and blinked to clear her eyes, “I’m sorry, but the idea of it.” She covered her face with her napkin. “Was it a poodle?”

I put down my fork and folded my arms on the table. “Oh, I get it. Humor.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just so funny.”

“Not to the dog.”

Lucy laughed, then motioned to the waitress and said, “I really do have to be going.”

“Would you like coffee?”

“I would, but I can’t. I have another appointment with a very special gentleman.”

I looked at her. “Oh.”

“My son. He’s eight.”

“Ah.”

The waitress brought us Handi Wipes. Lucy paid, and then we drove back to the hotel. I suggested that we go together to Edith Boudreaux’s shop the next morning, but Lucy had two early meetings and thought it better if we met there. I told her that that would be fine. We rode in silence most of the way with an air of expectancy in the car that felt more hopeful than uncomfortable, as if the night held a kind of static charge waiting to be released.

When we stopped at the Ho-Jo’s front entrance, it was almost ten.

She said, “Well.”

“I had a very nice time tonight, Lucy. Thank you.”

“Me, too.”

We sat in the neon light another moment, looking at each other, and then I leaned across to kiss her. She put her hand on my chest and gently pushed, and I backed up. She looked uncomfortable. “You’re a neat guy, and I had a good time with you, but we’re working together. Do you see?”

“Sure.” I swallowed and blinked, and then offered my hand. “Thanks for dinner. I enjoyed myself.”

She took my hand, eyes never leaving mine. “Please don’t take this wrong.”

“Of course not.” I tried to smile.

We shook, and then I got out of Lucy Chenier’s car and watched her drive away.

The night was balmy and pleasant, and I walked along the levee and up the little hill and along the nighttime Baton Rouge streets, drunk not from the vodka but with the joyful awareness that tomorrow I would see her again.

Chapter 9

T he next morning I left the hotel just before eight, drove across the Huey Long Bridge , and, one hour and five minutes later, parked in a diagonal spot beneath the Eunice town clock just across the square from Edith Boudreaux’s clothing store. A CLOSED sign hung in the window, and the red and white store hours sign said that they opened at ten A. M. It was twelve minutes after nine. I went into a coffee shop, bought two coffees to go, and brought them and a handful of sweetener and creamer packs out to my car. I sat there with the windows down, sipping the coffee and watching the store. At twenty-six minutes after nine Lucy Chenier’s Lexus came around the square and parked four spaces down from me. I got out with the coffees, walked over, rapped on her fender, then opened her passenger-side door, slid in, and handed her a coffee. “There’s sweetener and creamer. I didn’t know what you take.”

“This is so thoughtful. Thank you.”

“We’re a full-service operation, ma’am.” She popped the plastic top off the Styrofoam cup, blew on the coffee, then sipped it black. Even watching her sip was an adventure.

She said, “Is that the store?”

“Yes. Edie’s. They open at ten.”

Lucy Chenier sipped more of the coffee and watched the store. When she sipped, the steam from the coffee brushed over her face like a child’s fingers. The amber-green eyes seemed darker today, almost brown, and I wondered at their change. She was wearing a crushed linen jacket over a white blouse and baggy camel pants, and she smelled of buttermilk soap. If I stared at her any more I’d probably reveal myself to be the world’s largest doogie. I forced myself to look at the store.

At fourteen minutes before ten, Edith Boudreaux walked around the corner and came down the block and let herself in through the shop’s front door. I said, “That’s her.”

“My God, she does look like Jodi, doesn’t she?”

“Yep.”

Lucy finished her coffee, then said, “Let’s go see her.”

We walked across the square and went in. The same little bell rang when we entered, and the air was as chill today as I remembered it. Edith Boudreaux looked up at us from the cash register where she was loading a fresh tape. She said, “Sorry. We’re not open yet.” She hadn’t yet turned around the CLOSED sign.

Lucy smiled pleasantly and stepped into the store as if they were old friends. “I know, but I was hoping we might spend a few minutes now. My name is Lucille Chenier. I’m an attorney from Baton Rouge.” Lucy crossed with her hand out and Edith Boudreaux took it without thinking. She seemed sort of puzzled, and then she recognized me.

“You were in yesterday.”

“That’s right.”

She brightened and glanced at Lucy. “You brought your wife this time.”

Lucy gave a friendly laugh. “No. Mr. Cole and I work together.” She patted Edith Boudreaux’s hand, calming her, telling her that we were good people and there was nothing to be frightened of. Friendly people come to change your life. Lucy said, “I know you need to ready for opening, but it’s better that we’re alone.”

“What are you talking about?” Looking at me. “Why alone?”

Lucy said, “I practice civil law, and part of my practice involves adoption recovery. It’s a sensitive, private matter, and I treat everyone’s confidence with the utmost respect.”

Edith Boudreaux’s face darkened and she took a single step back. Jimmie Ray had been to see her all right.

Lucy went on, “Birth parents who want to find their children or adoptees who want to find their birth parents or learn something about their biological relatives employ me to help make those connections. I’m working for such a person now, and Mr. Cole and I have come across something that we need to check.”

Edith Boudreaux glanced from Lucy to me and back to Lucy. Her mouth opened slightly, then closed, and her hands came together beneath her breasts. Lucy said, “Mrs. Boudreaux, I hope this won’t come as a shock to you, but it may. This isn’t bad news in any way. It is very, very good news. Were you aware that your mother gave birth to a child on July 9, thirty-six years ago, and then gave that child up for adoption?”

The eyes flicked again. Me to Lucy. Lucy to me. “Why did you come here? Who sent you here?” Jimmie Ray all right.

The bell tinkled again and the young blond clerk came through the door. Edith Boudreaux clutched at Lucy and said, “Please don’t say anything.”

She went to the young woman and said something so softly that we could not hear. Lucy looked at me and lowered her voice. “Why’s she so scared?”

I shook my head. Edith Boudreaux returned and said, “That’s Sandy. Sandy helps out. We can go in back.” She hustled us through the curtained doorway and into the stockroom. Racks of plastic-covered clothes filled most of the floor space, and blue and white garment boxes were stacked against the walls and on cheap shelves. An Arrowhead water cooler stood outside what I guessed was a restroom. Edith pulled the curtain and wrung her hands. “I don’t know what you want of me.”

Lucy’s voice was calm and measured and soothing, an FM disc jockey playing easy listening after midnight. She said, “My client may be the child that your mother gave away. Your sister, Edith. She wants nothing of you, or anyone else in her biological family, except to learn her medical history.”

Nodding now. Squinting like all of this was going by very fast and it was difficult to contain. I wondered what Jimmie Ray had told her. I was wondering where he’d gotten the money to buy the Mustang. She said, “I don’t know.”

Lucy said, “The only way we can be sure that my client is the child that your mother gave away is if both parties submit to the state’s adoption registry search so we can see if there’s a match. If there is a match, the state will unseal the records and confirm the identity.”

Edith Boudreaux was nodding, but I’m not sure the nods meant anything. She said, “You think your client is that baby?”

“We believe she is, yes.”

“That’s who sent you here? The baby?” She was so nervous she was rocking, swaying back and forth as if in time with a heartbeat.

“My client is thirty-six years old. She’s a woman now.

“That was all so long ago.”

“She doesn’t want anything from you, Mrs. Boudreaux. She simply wants to know the particulars of her medical heritage. Does breast or uterine cancer run in the family? Is the family long-lived? That kind of thing.”

“My mother’s dead.”

“We know. And we know that your father is ill. That’s why we came to you. Won’t you help us?”

She was still making the little rocking moves, and then she said, “I have to call my husband. I need to speak with him.”

She went out through the curtain without looking at us. Lucy blew out a loud sigh and took a cup of water from the cooler. “What’s wrong with this picture?”

“Somebody scared her. Probably Jimmie Ray.”

Lucy crumpled the cup, didn’t see any place to toss it, put it in her pocket. “With what? All we’re talking about here is an adoption.”

It didn’t take long for Edith Boudreaux to talk to her husband, and it didn’t take long for him to arrive on the scene. We waited maybe eight or nine minutes, and then the outer bell tinkled and a tall, florid man about Edith’s age came through the curtain ahead of her. He was thick across the shoulders and butt, with small eyes and a sun-reddened face and large hands that looked callused and rough. He was wearing a crisp khaki Evangeline Parish sheriff’s uniform open at the collar, and he was the same cop I’d seen with Jimmie Ray Rebenack at the crawfish farm.

He said, “My name’s Jo-el Boudreaux. I’m the sheriff here in Evangeline Parish. Could I see some identification, please?” As he said it he looked over Lucy and then he looked over me. His eyes stayed with you without blinking. Cop eyes.

Lucy showed her driver’s license and gave him a business card. When he looked at my investigator’s license he said, “California.”

I nodded.

“You carrying?”

I shook my head. “Nope. Not licensed in Louisiana.”

“Why don’t we see?”

He pointed at the wall and I assumed the position and he patted me down. Lucy Chenier looked surprised and then angry. She said, “There’s no need for that. I’m an attorney, this man is a licensed investigator. This is a legitimate inquiry.” She was breathing quickly, confused by his manner. Everything had suddenly risen to a level she wasn’t used to.

I said, “It’s okay.”

The sheriff copied some information off the license into a little notepad. After that he flipped back the license, and he didn’t much care if I caught it or not. He said, “Yeah, well, we’ll check on that. We’ll see. Now that we know where we stand, why don’t you tell me what you’re after.” He squared himself off at us, the way he’d front a kid he’d stopped for driving too fast on a back road.

Lucy didn’t like it, but she went through it again for Jo-el Boudreaux, telling him about the sealed state documents, about the possibility that our client was the child given away by Pamela Johnson, about our client’s desire not to contact her long lost family but simply to establish her medical history.

Jo-el Boudreaux was shaking his head before she finished. “You got any proof that this baby and your client are the same person?”

Lucy said, “No, sir. But they were born on the same day, and they’re both female, and they were both given up to the state. That’s why we need the records opened.”

He was shaking his head again. “Not interested. I want you people to leave my wife alone. Whatever you’re selling, we don’t want any.”

Edith Boudreaux looked like she wasn’t as sure. She said, “Jo-el, maybe we should -“

He cut her off. “Edith, what’s there to say? The past is the past, isn’t it?”

Lucy said, “Our client doesn’t want anything from you, Mr. Boudreaux. She simply wants to know her medical history. You can understand that, can’t you?”

He said, “I understand that a lot of my wife’s family’s dirty laundry is going to be stirred up again. You people go around town spreading crap about my wife’s family, it’ll go hard on you.”

Lucy stiffened and the court face appeared. “Is that a threat, Sheriff?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ve just threatened legal action. As an attorney, I’m sure you understand that.” He handed back her card. “We’ve got nothing to say to you.”

Lucy looked at Edith Boudreaux. She was small behind her husband. Her eyes looked hurt. “Is this what you want?”

Edith repeated it. “What’s past is past. Let’s not stir things up.” Nervous.

Lucy stared at the other woman for a time, then carefully put her business card on a stack of Anne Klein boxes. “I can appreciate your confusion. If you change your mind, please call me at this number.”

Sheriff Joel Boudreaux said, “There’s no confusion, counselor. If you leave the card, I can cite you for littering.”

Lucy picked up the card, thanked Edith for her time, and walked out.

I said, “A litter bust. That’d probably make your month.”

The cop eyes clicked my way. “You wanna push for the prize, podnuh?”

I said, “How’d a guy like Jimmie Ray Rebenack get you so scared?”

The big sheriff looked at me, and a single tic started beneath his left eye. The blocky hands flexed, and Edith Boudreaux touched her husband’s arm, and it was suddenly still in the little room. Outside, the doorbell tinkled, and I wondered if it was Lucy leaving. Edith said, “Joel?”

Boudreaux went to the curtained door and pulled the curtain aside and held it for me. “You’d better leave now, podnuh. That’d be best for you. That’d be best for everyone.”

I wished Edith a good day and then I walked out past the blond clerk. She smiled brightly and told me to have a good day. I told her I’d try. When I got to the door I looked back, but the curtain was drawn again and Joel Boudreaux and his wife were still in the stockroom. I thought I heard a woman crying, but I could have imagined it.

It was supposed to be a simple case, but cases, like life, are rarely what they seem. I walked out of Edie’s Fashion Boutique wondering at the pain I’d seen in their eyes.

Chapter 10

L ucy was waiting on the sidewalk, her arms crossed and her face set. A couple of teenagers were behind her, looking at the sheriff’s shotgun through the driver’s side window of his highway car, the older of the two sneaking glances at Lucy’s rear end. He cut it out when he saw me approach. Lucy said, “I’ve been doing this for almost eight years and I’ve never had a reaction even close to that. Something’s wrong.” “They’re scared. Him, maybe more than her.” As we walked back to our cars, I told her about Jim-mie Ray Rebenack and the two goons who’d come to his office. “I followed them to a place called Rossier’s Crawfish Farm. Boudreaux was there, and some older guy with a Panama hat who was probably Milt Rossier. Boudreaux didn’t look thrilled to be there, but he and Rebenack are connected.””Do you think that Rebenack has seen these people about Jodi Taylor?”

“Looks that way.”

“Maybe he’s working for them, just like we’re working for Jodi.”

“Maybe.”