“You seem to have given this a lot of thought,” said Inverness slowly, as if ideas and questions were moving ponderously about in his mind.
Dain said, “Their room had been searched.”
“Dammit, that I don’t believe! My men would have noticed if there had been anything—”
“Your men weren’t looking.”
Inverness turned back to the motor, seemed to address it.
“You have anything else?”
Dain gave a low chuckle. “My hunter’s intuition.”
Inverness looked back at him, started to chuckle with him, then suddenly got serious, with an odd expression on his face.
“You trust that really?”
The door crashed open against the wall, the two attackers were framed in it. One of them, sunglasses, curly hair. The other, ski-masked so no hair showed.
Details of only shadowy recall previously. Was memory coming back, after five long years?
“With my life,” Dain said fervently.
The big sedan came to a stop on the gravel at the dirt turnoff to Broussard’s Store, about a hundred yards shy of the deerhound pen. No one was visible, nothing was moving.
“So, whadda we do?” asked Trask.
“Wait,” said Maxton.
“For what?” asked Nicky from the backseat.
“Dark.”
The shadows were getting long across the brown reach of Bayou Tremblant. Vangie’s boat had been pulled into shore a bit downstream from the bend where Papa had run out his trotline. The water was slow enough here for the line, known locally as a float line because it was supported at intervals by cork floats, to run out at a right angle to the current.
Papa was in the blunt prow of his flat-bottom scow, Vangie on the stern seat. Papa, a short fierce bristling man, very French, was pulling them along the line, checking the hooks hung from the main line at three-foot intervals on shorter, lighter lines called stagings.
Almost every hook had a catfish on it. Papa removed them, tossed them into a big wash bucket full of water. Vangie was rebaiting each hook, using the heads of large shad as her cut-bait. Both were quick and expert at the work. Vangie’s face was intent but serene, Papa was grinning with delight as he pulled them along the line.
“De bes’ day I have all spring, Vangie.”
“I’ve brought you luck, Papa,” she said gaily.
“Havin’ you home make Papa so happy he wanna bust, him.”
Vangie was silent, thoughtful. “It’s good to be home, Papa, but I hate to see you work so hard.”
Papa laughed. “Not hard, do what you love. It doan make much money, but what you wan’ Papa to do?” His laughter had turned to indignation. “Go drive a truck? Pump ‘pane in New Orleans? Work on a oil rig with les Texiens, him?” He shook his grizzled narrow head. “Time all you got b’longs to you, just you alone. So you gotta use that time lak you wan’.”
In a sudden terrifying moment, Vangie realized that she had never really planned out what she would do with the bonds. She’d stolen them more to get back at Maxton than for the money... Oh, some fuzzy thoughts about tropic isles, the great cities of Europe, the pyramids along the Nile, Japan, Hong Kong, freedom — but mainly it had been, at first, just taking them, and then just getting away with them. Not much beyond that.
Maybe poor Jimmy had been right. Maybe they should have cashed them in and just started running and living and loving with the money, until Maxton eventually, inevitably caught up...
But no, she’d thought only of escape. Now Jimmy was dead. He would never escape. She had the bonds but was afraid to cash them.
No. Not afraid. She knew now, without hesitation or question, what she would do with them. She would cash them somewhere far away, then send her parents the money. If Maxton did ever catch up with her, he would never be led back here to the bayous and to them.
“What if someone gave you money, Papa? A lot of money?”
“Doan want a lotta money,” he said with fierce pride. “I do my life damn good, me! Got all I need. Your maman, good hounds, good fishin’, food huntin’, dis bayou...”
They had worked their way across the channel to the far shore. He let the cleaned and rebaited line drop back into the water. Vangie watched him hungrily, as if trying to figure out the secret of life that he had and that she had lost.
“Dat de las’ hook,” he said happily. “We go home now.”
It was dusk. The three men watched Maman as she removed the last of the dried laundry from the line. She picked up the big wash basket and, leaning sideways to counterbalance its weight, went to the back door of the living area and disappeared. Two minutes later she emerged with a brimming bucket of scraps for the hounds. They flowed around her in an excited river of silky tan and white backs, yelping and barking and whining, ravenous as only dogs can be.
“That old broad don’t never stop working,” said Nicky. “Probably outlive us all.”
“Wanta give odds on that?” asked Trask, and laughed.
She returned to the house and the lights went on. Maxton got out of the car, followed by the other two. They walked down the road to the store, climbed the creaky wooden steps to the equally creaky galerie. Maxton stopped, Nicky and Trask went through the screen door, it slammed its three diminishing times behind them, tinkling the bell.
Maman trudged up from the rear, beaming. Her expression changed when she saw the two men and Maxton outside.
“Cold beer,” said Trask.
Maman jerked her head. There was suspicion in her manner. “In de back. In de cooler ‘gainst de back wall.”
Trask went down the aisle out of sight. Nicky took out some folding money, offered her a $50 bill, thereby keeping her at the front of the store.
“Got nuthin’ smaller, you?” she asked.
Nicky dug around in his billfold, came up with a twenty.
“For three of them,” he said.
Maman made change. Trask came up the store holding all three icy bottles of beer in his left hand, the necks between his curled fingers.
“We’ll drink ‘em here.” said Nicky.
“Mebbe you leave dem empties in de crate on de porch, non?”
On the galerie they gave Maxton his beer, and all three men moved to the front edge of the porch beside the steps. They could not readily be heard from inside. They stood in a row in their town clothes, facing out, drinking their cold beers.
“I went through the place,” Trask said. “She’s alone in there now, but the clothes I saw on a fucking blonde snatch at the New Orleans bus depot was lying on the bed.”
“Blonde, huh? A wig and she gets past you,” said Maxton in a low snarly voice. He stopped and spread his hands. “No matter. She’s been here, we’re here now, we’ll ask where...”
A car came down the dirt track from the gravel to stop in front of the store. Two Cajun fishermen got out and crossed toward the trio on the galerie. Sunset was flushing the sky over the trees to the west with delicate violet and rose pink.
“Nice sunset,” said Maxton to the fishermen as they started up to the steps.
“Tu dis,” said one.
They went by, into the store. Maxton said, “Get us another round of beers, Nicky. It looks like we’ll be here a while.”
Papa’s scow, silhouetted against the gold and crimson sky, was towing Vangie’s empty boat across an open area of marsh. Vangie, in the prow of Papa’s boat, was twisted around forward so the wind was in her face. The motor was a thin steady throb; a big heron flapped by over them in spindly dignity. Vangie looked up at a trio of wood ducks whistling by overhead, then looked back at her father. She laughed. He laughed. There was sheer shared delight in both of their faces.