Voodoo River Part 11

"There was another brother and a sister."

"Robert, Jr., died in 1968. Over in that war."

"How about the sister? Do you know how I might reach her?"

Her voice became crisp. "She's working right now. She works for a Jew in that d.a.m.ned sausage factory, and you shouldn't be calling her there. When you call, that Jew answers the phone and he doesn't like that. You'll get her in trouble."

"Please, Mrs. Williams. It's important."

"Feeding her five children is important, too. That job is all she has, working for a Jew." Oh, man.

"I promise I won't get her in trouble, Mrs. Williams." Like a kid, cross my heart and hope to die.

"How do I know you're who you say you are? You might be up to no good. I a.s.sure you that I am not to be trifled with."

"There's an attorney in Baton Rouge named Lucille Chenier. I can give you her number and you could call her office and speak with her about me."

That seemed to mollify her. "Well, perhaps that won't be necessary. I take pride in knowing a sincere voice."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Chantel lives right over here in Blue Point. She has lunch soon. Why don't you see her at lunch. Her name is Chantel Michot now, and she always goes home for lunch. She has to put dinner on for those little ones."

I looked at my watch. "That's fine, Mrs. Williams. I'm coming from Baton Rouge." It was a quarter before eleven. I could get there/by twelve-thirty.

"Well, then, I guess this must be important, all the way from Baton Rouge."

"Yes, ma'am, it is."

"We'll be expecting you." We.

"Yes, ma'am, I'm sure you will."

I copied the directions as she gave them, and then I went to see Chantel Michot, Leon Williams's younger sister.

Chapter 15.

B lue Point, Louisiana, was a wide spot in the road five miles south of Ville Platte at the tip of Bayou des Cannes . You had to go to Ville Platte first, then take a little state road that wound its way over narrow steel bridges and sluggish channels of water and sweet potato fields. It was rural country, with a lot of barbed wire fences and great live oaks bearded with Spanish moss, and the air was heavy with pollen and bees and moisture. Chantel Michot lived in a clapboard shotgun house at the edge of the road that backed upon a wide green pasture. The pasture was fenced and the fence ran behind her house as if a little square had been cut from the owner's pasture so that the Michot family might live there. The house looked old and poorly kept, with peeling paint and a green shingle roof that was missing tiles and a wooden front porch that was cracked and splintered. There was a screen door like every other house in Louisiana, but the screen was cruddy and stretched, and little wads of pink Kleenex had been stuck into holes to keep out the mosquitoes. Martha Guidry would have a field day. Tire ruts ran down from the road past the house and the rusted cha.s.sis of a very old Dodge and across the pasture. Maybe a dozen chickens pecked in the dirt around the cha.s.sis. Yard birds. A late-sixties Bel Air sedan was parked beneath an elm tree, and a newer Pontiac Sunbird was parked behind the Bel Air. I pulled in behind the Sun-bird and got out. The engines of both the Bel Air and the Sunbird were still ticking. Couldn't have gotten here more than ten minutes ago.

The screen door opened and a little boy maybe four years old came out and looked at me from the lip of the porch. He was barefoot in shorts, with a little round belly and a runny nose and an ocher complexion. Hair more curly than nappy. His left index finger was stuffed up his nose to the first joint. I said, "My name's Elvis. What's yours?"

He pushed the finger in deeper and didn't answer. I often have that effect on people.

The door opened again and a light-skinned woman in her forties came out, followed by an older, heavier woman with skin the color of burnished walnuts. The younger woman was wearing a thin cotton smock over faded Bermuda shorts and open-toed sandals. Her hair was piled on her head and held there with a broad purple band. It wasn't particularly neat, but she didn't have it like that for style; she had it like that for work.

Keep the hair out of the sausage. The older woman was in a light green rayon suit with a little white hat and white gloves and a crocheted purse the size of a grocery bag. All dressed up to meet the detective. The older woman said, "I am Mrs. Lawrence Williams.

Are you Mr. Cole?"

"Yes, ma'am. I appreciate you and Ms. Michot agreeing to see me."

Chantel Michot said, "I got to see about these children and I got to get back." Not exactly thrilled to meet the detective. She was holding a filter-tipped cigarette and kept one arm crossed beneath her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I offered her a card, but Mrs. Lawrence Williams took it. "Ada say this about Leon." Ada was Mrs. Williams.

"That's right. I know you were only ten when he was killed, but I thought we might speak about it."

"Why?"

"I'm working on something and Leon's name came up, and I don't know why. Maybe you can help me with the reason."

Chantel Michot sucked on the cigarette and blew smoke. Trying to figure me. There were children's voices behind her in the house, and another little boy came to the door, this one maybe five. He pressed against the screen and looked out. She said, "Anthony, get on in there and eat that lunch." Anthony disappeared. "Ada, would you make Lewis sit at that table, please?"

The little boy with his finger up his nose said, "No."

Mrs. Lawrence Williams pulled the big purse in closer and raised her eyebrows. Not liking the idea of being inside with the children and left out of all the great stuff on the porch. "Well, if I must." Snooty. She took Lewis by the arm and brought him inside. Lewis yelled bah bah bah bah as loud as he could.

I said, "They never caught Leon's killer. No arrest was made."

"You the police?"

"No."

"All these years, you gonna find the guy done it?"

"That's not what I'm after."

"But maybe?" All these years, she was still hopeful.

"I don't know, Chantel. I found Leon's name in a place it doesn't fit and I want to find out why it was there. I don't want to lead you on. I know you've got to get back to work."

"Least you ain't lyin' about it." She stared at me a minute, motionless, a thin trail of smoke drifting from her cigarette, barely moving in the still air, and then she made up her mind. "You want some lemonade? I put some up this morning."

I smiled at her and she smiled back. "That'd be fine. Thanks. If you've got the time."

"I got a few minutes."

We sat in the shade of the little porch on a sofa that was covered with crocheted bedspreads. Mrs. Lawrence Williams came to the door every few minutes, still p.i.s.sed about being inside, always with the big purse. She probably had something in there in case I decided to trifle with them. "This is good lemonade."

"I put honey in with the sugar. That's clover honey. A man down the bayou keeps a hive."

I said, "The newspaper reports said that the sheriff believed that Leon was killed by a transient over a gambling dispute."

"Leon was fourteen. What he know about gamblin'?"

"What'd your parents think?"

"Said it was silly. Said it was just the sheriffs way of shinin' us on. A black man gets killed, they don' care."

"Did your parents have an idea of what happened?"

She squinted out at the road. Trying to remember. A truck pulling a natural-gas tank rumbled past and made the thin gla.s.s in the windows rattle. "Lord, it's been so long. Daddy died in seventy-two. Mama went, oh, I guess it was eighty-one, now."

"How about Lawrence or Robert, Jr.? Did they ever say anything?"

She thought harder. "Lawrence didn't really have nothin' to do with Leon, but Leon and Junior were close. I remember Junior sayin' somethin" 'bout some gal. I guess there couida been some gal mixed up in there."

"Like maybe Leon got killed over a girl?"

"Well. I guess." Chantel pulled deep on the cigarette, then flicked the b.u.t.t out into the yard. A skinny Rhode Island Red hen picked it up, ran a few feet, then dropped it, squawking. The other chickens circled it, c.o.c.king their heads for a better look, then ignored it. Chantel said, "The gals did flock around Leon, let me tell you. He was a beautiful boy, and, my, he could talk. Charmin'? I was just a baby and I remember that. Robert used to get jealous! Oo!" She crossed her arms and leaned forward on her knees, enjoying the memories. "You know, I haven't thought about that in years. Here it is, sometimes I can't even remember Leon's face, but I remember that."

Mrs. Williams came to the door, still with the big purse, still with the p.i.s.sy expression. "You don't have time for all this, now, girl. You have to get back to work."

Chantel nodded without looking.

"You late, that Jew'll get after you."

Chantel closed her eyes. "Ada!"

"Well, he's a Jew, isn't he?"

"Ada. Please."

Mrs. Williams harumphed and stalked back into the house. Chantel Michot said, "That woman is such a trial."

I said, "Think about Leon. Maybe you'll remember something else."

She stood up. "I may have something. You wait here." She went into the house and came back a few minutes later with a King Edward cigar box and sat with it on her knees. "This is mostly Robert's things, but there's some stuff from Leon in here, too. Lord, I haven't looked in here in years."

She opened the box and stared down at the contents, as if the letters and snapshots and papers within were treasures awaiting discovery. "You see Leon? Here's Leon right here. That's Lawrence and that's Junior and that's Daddy."

She handed me a yellowed Kodak snapshot with a little date marker on the white border: 1956. An older man was standing in front of an enormous Chevrolet roadster with three boys. Mr. Williams and his sons. Lawrence and Junior and Leon. They were light-skinned men with delicate features. Leon was the smallest, with large expressive eyes and long lashes and an athlete's carriage. He would have been twelve. She said, "We had some good-looking men in this family, but that Leon, he was plain pretty."

"He's handsome, all right."

She fingered through handwritten notes and birthday cards and a couple of elementary school report cards and tiny black-and-white snapshots of older black men and women, all neatly dressed and stiffly formal. "My momma gave me these things. She said these were the little bits of us that she held dear. This is me. This is Robert and Lawrence. Oh, my G.o.d, look how young." She smiled broadly and the smile made her seem younger and quite pretty, as if for a moment she was free of the weight of the five children and the crummy job at the sausage factory. "Robert was killed in the army," she said. "He died in that Tet thing." That Tet thing.

"Uh-huh."

She lifted out a white government envelope, its edge ragged from being torn, now yellow and flat from the years in the box. We regret to inform you... There were spots on the envelope. I wondered if they were tears. "They gave him a medal. I wonder where it is."

I shook my head.

Mrs. Williams reappeared at the door. "You are going to be late now."

"I am busy, Ada." Sharp.

Ada shook her finger at me. "You are going to get her in trouble with that Jew."

"Ada!"

Mrs. Williams stalked away.

She said, "Oh, here's some of Leon's things." She lifted out two brown newspaper clippings, the originals to the articles I'd read/on the LSU microfiche, brittle and brown and very likely untouched since the day her mother had cut them from the Ville Platte Gazette and put them in the King Edward box. She took out more bits of paper and photographs and pa.s.sed them to me. Leon sitting on a tractor that looked a million years old. Leon and a swaybacked mule. There were a couple of Mother's Day cards drawn in a child's hand and signed "Leon," and a poem he had written. She handed me things as she found them, and she was still fingering through the box when I opened a piece of yellowed notebook paper filled with the doodles you make when you're bored in cla.s.s. Most of the page was cla.s.s notes about the Louisiana Purchase, but in the borders there were finely detailed pencil drawings of Sherman tanks and World War II fighter planes and the initials EJ EJ EJ. LW+EJ.

I was wondering about EJ when I saw a little heart at the bottom right-hand corner of the page. The kind kids draw when they have a crush on someone. And that's when I knew about EJ, and all the rest of it, too.

Inside the heart Leon Williams had printed I LOVE EDIE JOHNSON.

Edie Johnson. Edie Boudreaux.

Edith Boudreaux wasn't Jodi Taylor's sister. She was Jodi Taylor's mother. And Jodi's father was Leon Williams.

Chapter 16.

I folded the paper and handed it back to her and twice she spoke and both times I had to ask her to repeat herself. I love Edie Johnson. When we had gone through the rest of the things, she said, "Does any of this help?""Yes. I believe it does."

She nodded, pleased that her effort was of value. "You wanna take any of these things, you may."

I smiled. "No. These are your precious things. Keep them safe."

She put the papers back in the King Edward box and closed it. "I wonder if they'll ever catch that man who killed Leon."

"I don't know."

"It's been so long now. I can't imagine anyone would care."

I patted her hand and then I stood. "Somebody cares, Chantel. Somebody somewhere cares. I've always believed that."

She gave me a nice smile and we finished our lemonade and then I left. I followed the back roads north to Ville Platte, checked out of the motel there, then stopped by the Pig Stand and bought a link of boudin for the road. I told Dottie that my business here was finished, and that this would be our last time together. She laughed and told me that I'd be back. She touched the place beneath her eye as she had done before and said she had the second sight. I wished that she would have used it earlier. Jimmie Ray might still be alive.

I ate the boudin as I drove back to Baton Rouge and listened to the same female radio evangelist screaming about plague-carriers from abroad and once more crossed the big Huey Long Bridge and arrived back at the Riverfront Ho-Jo at 1:40 that afternoon.

I didn't bother trying to call Sid Markowitz or Jodi Taylor. I booked the first available flight back to Los Angeles, checked out, then phoned Lucy Chenier's office from the lobby. Darlene said that Lucy was in and asked if I wished to speak with her, but I said no, that I was at the Riverfront and would walk over. Ten minutes later I rode the elevator to the Sonnier, Melancon Burke offices. Lucy's smile was wide and bright, and she seemed glad to see me. Something ached in my chest when I looked at her, and the ache increased when I took her hand. I said, "I think I've come to the end of the line on this and there are some things we need to talk about. I'm going back to Los Angeles."

She stopped smiling, and said, "Oh."

We sat on the flower-print couch and I showed her the copies I'd made of the articles reporting Leon Williams's murder, and as she read them I told her about Mrs. Lawrence Williams and Leon's sister, Chantel Michot, and the little heart that said I LOVE EDIE JOHNSON. She finished reading before I finished talking, then sat quietly, watching me with sharp lawyer eyes until I was done with it. "Jodi told me none of this."