“Then we’ll get to go in after her,” he grinned happily.
Maman’s old-fashioned iron cookstove and oven, once wood- burning, had been converted to butane gas. There was a chipped white enamel sink, and an ancient white enamel fridge with the cooling coils bare on top instead of being fitted in underneath.
Vangie and Maman sat at the minuscule table, finishing their coffee and fresh beignet. A gumbo already simmering on the stove filled the room with rich dark smells. Vangie leaned back, replete, licked the last of the powdered sugar off her fingers and half stifled a satisfied little belch.
“Oh, Maman, how many years since I’ve had your beignets!”
Maman drew a deep breath, sniffing. “Tonight, gumbo!”
“Guess I’d better go meet Papa before he starts back, him.” Vangie stood up. “But I have to see the dogs first!”
“And you gotta change your pretty city clothes, you,” said Maman. “Your old clothes still fit you, I bet!”
The stately blue and white bird stood motionless knee-deep on the fringe of the bayou. A far mosquito whine got steadily louder, but he ignored it to dart his head suddenly down into the water. He came up with a small wriggling silver fish speared on his bill just as the flat-bottom scow bearing Inverness and Dain appeared around a bend in the stream. He crouched, alarmed.
Dain was in the prow of the skiff, craning down the bayou at the spindly-legged bird bursting off the water on huge flapping wings, a doomed minnow wriggling in its bill. A heron? A crane? Inverness would know — Inverness probably knew as much about this swamp as any outsider ever would.
Which made him turn and start to yell a question, but his words were lost in the staccato beat of the motor. Inverness, in the stern, just pointed at the outboard motor and shrugged. Dain pantomimed turning it off. Inverness frowned, turned it down to trolling speed.
“For Chrissake, it’s a Louisiana heron,” he snapped.
But Dain said, “Why didn’t you ask the guy you rented the boat from just where the Broussard store was?”
“You had me stop for that? Cajuns are very big on minding their own business and everybody is first cousins. Unless you speak their patois, better just look, not ask.”
He speeded up the motor again. Every sunken log had its colony of turtles to either slide into the water with barely a ripple or do a sudden scrabbling noisy belly flop. One had a snow-white egret standing on its back; bird and turtle fled at their approach, one up into the air, the other down under the water. Bright-feathered ducks unknown to Dain zipped by on whistling wings. Fish swirled in the shallows when the boat’s waves touched their exposed backs. He glimpsed a lumbering black bear in the brush along the bayou, several small swamp white-tailed deer, and a little shambling ring-tailed fellow with a pointy nose he thought was a raccoon but actually was a coatimundi.
A thick-bodied snake Dain took for a water moccasin swam past with whipping sinuous motions. Beauty was edged with death here, which he realized was what he had come to seek in his own life. As if feeling his thoughts, Inverness suddenly flipped the motor into neutral. It popped and spluttered as they watched the life going on around them. There was a strange, almost luminous look on Inverness’s face.
“I tell you, Dain, come retirement, I’m right out here for good — living off the land. This is just about the last place a man can do it — be entirely on his own, trade what he catches or shoots or traps for whatever store-bought stuff he needs like hooks and lines and shells and flour...”
“You don’t like people very much, do you?” asked Dain.
“Show me a cop who does.”
Dain could think of one, Randy Solomon; but even with Randy, it was sort of despite himself.
Vangie had her fingers through the chicken wire at the deerhounds’ enclosure, scratching the long floppy ear of a sad-faced, dewlapped liver and white hound. She was dressed for the bayou, tight jeans and a cotton long-sleeved shirt with her hair tucked up under a billed gimme cap.
“This bluetick looks good,” she said as the floppy-eared hound crowded the wire for more hands.
“Your papa say he de bes’ deerhound we ever have.”
Vangie came erect. There was disbelief in her voice.
“Better than old Applehead?”
By mutual consent, they turned away toward the river. Maman almost giggled. “You know your papa. Every hound de bes’ one he ever had, him.”
The dogs pressed against the wire behind them, clamoring, tails wagging, heads alert, as they left to descend the switchback dirt path from the top of the riverbank. Near the boats was a big sunken live-box where the fish taken on the setlines were kept until they were sold.
“I look for you two soon after sunset,” said Maman.
Vangie hugged her, unwound the chain painter of the flat-bottom scow from around a tree, pushed it out, then with a final push jumped lightly into the prow. The ten-year lapse might never have been; she walked expertly back to the rear as the current moved the boat downstream and away from the bank. She sat down on the rear seat, primed the outboard, started it. Her mother stood watching on the shore. Vangie put the motor in gear, started off with mutual waves between the two women.
Maman trudged up the path to level ground. Vangie’s boat was just disappearing around a bend in the river downstream. The diminishing whine of the motor faded away as she went back into the store, picked up the attaché case and carelessly stuffed it under the front counter before going back to tend her gumbo.
At Henderson’s Crossroads, a big four-door sedan came along the blacktop road and stopped just short of the steel bridge. To the left a seafood restaurant was built over the water, with the inevitable checker-playing geezers on the galerie. To the right another road went off on the levee parallel to the bayou.
Trask, behind the wheel, said, “You wanna ask which—”
“We ask no one anything,” snapped Maxton. “I’ll drive from here on. I have directions. First, over the bridge, then take a right along the top of the levee...”
22
Inverness got back into their boat, went to the rear seat. Dain cast them off, jumped in as the old Cajun who wasn’t named Broussard turned away with a wave of his hand.
“Third time unlucky,” Dain said.
Long afternoon shadows were reaching across the swamp. Inverness was setting the start lever on the motor. He shrugged.
“If we don’t find ‘em tonight, we’ll come back in the morning by car, get Vangie’s statement, be on our way...”
The boat had started to drift downstream. Inverness was about to start the motor, but Dain held up a hand to stop him.
“Unless somebody gets her first. Zimmer wasn’t a suicide.”
“What the hell are you—”
“Some hard boys from Chicago were all over the Vieux Carré looking for them yesterday. Last night, Zimmer ended up dead. Maybe Vangie couldn’t have done it, but a couple of strongarms could have stuffed him in that bathtub easy enough.”
“Without marking him up? A man fighting for his life?” Inverness shook his head doggedly. “No way.”
He turned back to the motor, but Dain spoke again.
“You shove him in the tub, grab him by the hair, hold his head under.” Inverness was watching him, so he added appropriate gestures. “He grabs your arm, fighting you, but this gives your backup man a chance to slash his wrist. Clean, one stroke. Now he’s bleeding to death, even while he’s fighting for air.” Another gesture. “Zip! The other wrist. Then you let go of the head so he bleeds to death instead of drowns. Instant suicide.”