His eyes said I’m listening, but his head leaned a fraction of an inch toward the music, so I wasn’t sure if he was paying attention to me.
I said, “While we were talking, Jaz noticed the time and got scared. She said if her stepfather came home and found her gone, he’d kill her. I don’t think she meant it literally, just, you know, the way kids talk. Anyway, she rushed out and I followed her. Drove behind her and watched where she went. She ran into the nature preserve behind the Key Royale, so I knew the only place she could be going was there, to the hotel.”
Guidry’s eyes had grown sharper on me, so I was pretty sure he was listening.
I said, “I talked myself into the Royale and one of the employees showed me around the place. They have honeymoon cottages that back up to the nature preserve, and he said rabbits come from there all the time. The cottages are built on tall stilts exactly like Reba’s house, so I think Jaz must have described one of them to somebody, and that’s why those boys came in Reba’s house looking for her. She didn’t have a house number to give them because those cottages are all named instead of numbered.”
Guidry looked skeptical. “You think she lives in a honeymoon cottage at the Key Royale?”
“I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I do. The guy who showed me around said those cottages rent for twenty thousand a weekend. Jaz’s stepfather doesn’t look like he could afford that, but I don’t think there’s any other explanation. I’m thinking he must work there as a security guard, but Don—that’s the guy at the Royale who showed me around—said the hotel doesn’t give living quarters to anybody except the managers. The employees I saw were all well dressed and sophisticated. Not like Jaz’s stepfather.”
He said, “Did you or Ms. Soames ever get a last name from the girl?”
“No, but I found out Jaz is short for Jasmine, pronounced Jas-meen, and she said that’s what her mother named her. She resents her stepfather calling her Rosemary. When she mentioned her mother, she got teary and stopped talking. Hetty doesn’t believe there’s a mother in the picture, and she may be right. Hetty took her shopping last night and bought her some new clothes. She’s also feeding her.”
Pete Fountain began playing “Tin Roof Blues” and Guidry’s eyes changed in a way that made me positive he was as aware of the music as he was of me.
I suddenly felt like a complete dolt. Maybe it hadn’t been my nipples that had caused Guidry’s pupils to dilate, maybe it had been Pete Fountain. Guidry was from New Orleans. His name was Jean Pierre. He spoke French. He came from a wealthy family, and he was smart as all get-out. New Orleans French Quarter jazz might turn him on more than I did.
I said, “Guidry, are you French Creole or French Cajun? What is Cajun, anyway?”
I swear to God I hadn’t meant to say that. It wasn’t an appropriate time or an appropriate question. Besides, I truly didn’t care what kind of French he was. It was just that my mouth didn’t know I didn’t care.
Ella raised her head above my hip to look hard at me. She said, “Thrippp!” and curled up behind my back again. The music had apparently brought out her scatting tendencies. Either that, or she was embarrassed at my nosiness and didn’t want to be seen with me.
Guidry’s gray eyes examined my face for a moment, pretty much the way Ella had. When he answered he sounded a bit like a teacher whose patience is stretched.
“You’ve heard of the French and Indian War? When Canada fought France and Great Britain?”
I shook my head. I was sorry I’d asked. I didn’t want a history lesson, I just wanted to know if he was Creole or Cajun.
“France and Great Britain both claimed an area in Canada that had been settled by Frenchmen. Part of the area was Acadia. Great Britain won the war and ordered all the French settlers to leave. A lot of them went to Louisiana. That’s what the poem Evangeline is about. Since they’d come from Acadia, they called themselves Acadian, but the Americans in Louisiana pronounced it Cajun. French Creoles were already there when they came, and the Cajuns spoke a different French dialect. Still do. It’s about as hard to find a pure Cajun today as it is to find a pure Creole. Lots of intermarrying, lots of different bloodlines.”
“So you’re Cajun?”
He grinned. “When did you get into genealogy?”
“I’m just curious.”
“Okay, here’s my family story. Too bad my sister isn’t here, she could tell you all the details.”
I assumed this time he meant a real sister, like in a family, not a nun who’d taught him to fear girls in school.
He said, “First-generation French colonists in Louisiana were just called French. Their children were called French Creole to identify them as American-born rather than immigrants. My French Creole several-times-great-grandfather met my several-times-great-grandmother at a Quadroon Ball.”
I was only half listening. My mind was back on the fact that he had a sister. I wondered if he had more than one, and if he had any brothers.
He said, “You know what a quadroon is?”
“Old French money?”
He rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. “A quadroon was somebody less than a quarter black. A Quadroon Ball was where French Creole men were introduced to beautiful, well-educated young quadroon women.”
I said, “Uh-huh.”
I had a fuzzy mental image of a lovely young bride with skin the color of creamed coffee walking down the aisle to meet a proud French Creole groom.
As if he guessed what I was seeing in my mind, Guidry said, “The women were not introduced as potential wives, but as potential mistresses.”
My neck drew back in distaste.
Guidry said, “Seems hard to believe now, but interracial marriage was illegal until the 1960s. People thought it would be the end of civilization if couples of different races married.”
“But your grandfather—”
“My great-great-great-grandfather. According to family legend, he loved the woman he met at a Quadroon Ball at first sight, and loved her to the end of his life. They had four children, all sons. They were given his name, and he sent them to the best schools in the country.”
Disillusioned, I said, “Did he also have a legal wife?”
“No, Guidry men are one-woman men.”
My cheeks heated. Guidry had told me once that he’d no longer loved his wife when they divorced. I wondered if he had used up all his woman-love on her and would never love another.
He said, “Before you ask, we don’t have a family legend about my mother’s ancestors, but they were mostly French and Spanish.”
As if he’d been deliberately providing background music for Guidry’s family story, Pete Fountain went silent on the CD player.
Guidry looked toward the silence. He sat up a little straighter and looked faintly embarrassed.
He said, “Before I climbed my family tree, we were talking about the girl named Jaz.”
I said, “Guidry, there’s something creepy about her and her stepfather. In the first place, why would a guy who wears polyester suits and drip-dry shirts rent something so expensive? And in the second place, those are one-bedroom honeymoon cottages, which brings up all kinds of awful possibilities if they’re living there together. But Jaz is too young to live by herself, and there doesn’t seem to be a mother in the picture. The whole thing is just weird.”
Guidry said, “The bigger question is where the money is coming from.”
“Do you still think Jaz is mixed up in a gang?”
“How old do you think she is?”
“Twelve or thirteen.”
“When you were that age, were you smart enough to stay away from the guys with the coolest jackets and the hottest cars?”