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I brought a tray of seasoned and oiled chickens out of the shop and began laying them on the barbecue grill. The hickory wood I used for fuel had burned into hot, white coal, and the oil from the chickens dripped into the ash and steamed away in the wind. I could feel Alafair’s eyes on the side of my face.
“Dave?”
“What is it, Alf?”
“Bootsie told me not to tell you something.”
“Maybe you’d better not tell me, then.” I turned my head to smile at her, but her dark eyes were veiled and troubled.
“Bootsie dropped a fork on the floor,” she said. “When she picked it up her face got all white and she sat down real hard in a chair.”
“Was that this morning?”
“Yesterday, when I came home from school. She started to cry, then she saw me looking at her. She made me say I wouldn’t tell.”
“It’s not bad to tell those kinds of things, Alf.”
“Is Bootsie sick again, Dave?”
“I think maybe we need to change her medicine again. That’s all.”
“That’s all?”
“It’s going to be all right, little guy. Let me finish up here, and we’ll get Boots and go to Mulate’s for crawfish.”
She nodded her head silently. I hoisted her up on my hip. Tripod ran in circles at our feet, his chain clanking on the wood.
“Hey, let’s buy you some new Baby Squanto books today,” I said.
“I’m too old to read Baby Squanto.”
I pressed her against me and looked over the top of her head at the shadowed front of my house and thought I could feel my pulse beating in my throat with the urgency of a damaged watch that was about to run out of time.
I WASN’T ABLE to keep our weekend entirely free of the Sonniers after all. That afternoon, after we drove back from Mulate’s in a rain shower, the phone was ringing as we ran from the truck through the pecan trees onto the gallery. I picked up the receiver in the kitchen and blotted the rainwater out of my eyes with the back of my wrist.
“I thought I’d check in with you before we left town,” the voice said.
“Weldon?”
“Yeah. Bama and I are going to visit her mother in Baton Rouge. We’ll probably be gone a week or so. I thought I should tell you.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean ‘why’? That’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re part of a case, aren’t you? Check in with the authorities, that sort of thing?”
“You weren’t cooperative yesterday, Weldon. I think you have information you’re not giving me. I have my doubts about our level of sincerity here.”
“I get the feeling I shouldn’t have bothered you today.”
“Your brother Lyle paid me a visit. He told me a long story about your father.”
“Lyle’s a great entertainer. Did you know he had a zydeco band before he got hit with a bolt of religion?”
“He said the prowler your wife saw was your father. He said he’s seen the man in his TV audience in Baton Rouge.”
“Years ago Lyle put so many chemicals in his head it glows in the dark. He has hallucinations.”
“Was Bama hallucinating?”
