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“Be sure to put a piece of cake in there, Alf,” I said.
She turned around and grinned.
“I already did,” she said.
“Do you want to talk about it later?” Bootsie said.
“Yeah, that’s a good idea.”
Ten minutes later Alafair raced out the screen door to catch the church bus. Bootsie watched her leave, then came back into the kitchen.
“I just saw Batist carrying some lumber into the shop. What’s he doing?” she asked.
“A few repairs.”
“Did that man Gates do something in our shop? Is that why you wouldn’t let anybody in it yesterday?”
“It just wasn’t a day for business-as-usual.”
“What’s Clete’s involvement with this?”
“It was Gouza’s goons who put him in the hospital. That makes him involved, Boots.”
She took the dishes off the table and put them in the sink. She gazed out the window into the backyard.
“When you go to see Clete, it always means a shortcut,” she said.
“You don’t know everything that’s happened.”
“I’m not the problem, Dave. What bothers me is I think you’re hiding something from the people you work with.”
“Joey Gouza ordered this man Gates to throw Gouza’s brother-in-law into an airplane propeller. Then he sent this same man to our house with a—”
“What?”
I caught my breath and pinched my temples with my fingers.
“Gouza has a furnace instead of a brain,” I said. “He’s left his mark on our home, and I can’t touch him. Do you think I’m going to abide that?”
She rinsed the plates in the sink and continued to look out the window.
“Two of the men who murdered the deputy are dead,” she said. “One day it’ll be Joey Gouza’s turn. Can’t you just let events take their course? Or let other people handle things for a while?”
“There’s another factor, Boots. Gouza’s a paranoid. Maybe today he feels wonderful, he’s hit the daily double, the dragons are dead. But next week, or maybe next month, he’ll start thinking again about the individuals who’ve hurt or humiliated him most, and he’ll be back in our lives. I’m not going to let that happen.”
She dried her hands on a dish towel, then used it to mop off the counter. She brushed back her hair with her fingers, straightened the periwinkles in a vase. Her eyes never looked at mine. She turned on the radio on the windowsill, then turned it off and took a pair of scissors out of a drawer.
“I’m going to cut some fresh flowers. Are you going to the office now?” she said.
“Yes, I guess so.”
“I’ll put your lunch in the icebox. I have to run some errands in town today.”
“Boots, listen a minute—”
She popped open a paper bag to place the cut flowers in and went out the back door.
THAT AFTERNOON THE sheriff came into my office with my report on Gates’s shooting in his hands. He sat down in the chair across from me and put on his rimless glasses.
