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She had created an administrative center in a restored nineteenth-century farmhouse on the bayou, eleven miles south of town, and lived next door with another nun in a cypress cottage. Ostensibly she worked under the auspices of the diocese in Lafayette, but as I turned into the gravel driveway I had the sense the archenemy of the Chalons family had staked out her own territory.
The entire compound was about three acres in size. The lawn was bright green and freshly mowed, partially shaded by live oaks and pecan trees, the embankment along the Teche planted with elephant ears, caladiums, impatiens, and periwinkles. A large sunny area was devoted to vegetable gardens, beehives, and a huge compost heap piled inside a rectangle of railroad ties. A tractor was parked in a pole shed, and poultry pecked in a bare spot under a spreading oak that grew above the shed and the adjacent barn. A secretary in the office walked with me onto the gallery and said I would probably find Sister Molly in the barn.
She was grinding a machete on an emery wheel, her eyes encased in machinist goggles, the heel of her hand pressed down close to the blade's edge. I waited until she clicked off the toggle switch on the grinder before I spoke. "I didn't want to startle you. Sister. I'm Dave Robicheaux, from the Iberia Parish Sheriff's Department," I said.
She pulled her goggles off with one thumb and left a greasy smear by her eyebrow. Her hair was dark red and tied up on her head with a white kerchief, the tails of her denim shirt knotted across her stomach. The heat and trapped moisture inside the barn were stifling. Motes of dust and desiccated manure floated as thick as gnats in the shafts of sunlight through the cracks. But she seemed unbothered by any of it. "I go by Molly," she said, and extended her hand.
"It looks like some vandals were trying to give you a bad time a couple of years back. Have any idea who they were?" I said.
"The deputies who came out thought they were kids from the neighborhood," she replied.
"But you don't?"
"Our dog was poisoned. Our car tires were cut into ribbons. Our secretary was shot in the back with an air rifle. We help impoverished people own their homes. Why would their children want to hurt us?"
I blotted the perspiration out of my eyes on my arm. "Can we go outside?" I said.
She hung the machete on a nail, the edge of its curved blade like a strip of blue ice. Then she pulled her kerchief loose from her head and shook out her hair. "How about some lemonade?" she said.
I sat at a spool table on the back porch of her cottage while she went inside. Through the trees the sunlight looked hard and brittle and unrelenting on the bayou's surface. She came back on the porch with a tray of cookies and two glasses of lemonade, with sprigs of mint in them.
"You tried to unionize the farmworkers hereabouts?" I said.
"For a while. Mechanization took the jobs away, so we turned to other things. We teach people folk crafts and carpentry now."
"Has the Chalons family ever tried to injure you?"
She gazed at the bayou, her eyes blinking more than they should have. "They let us know they were around," she said.
I removed the handful of mug shots from my shirt pocket and placed them on the table. "Ever see any of these guys?" I asked.
She separated the photos one from the other with her index finger. Then she tapped on the face of a man with grainy skin, recessed eyes, and teeth that were too big for his mouth. "That's one I won't forget," she said.
"His name is Billy Joe Pitts. He's a sheriff's deputy."
"He pulled me over to the side of the highway north of Alexandria. We'd been circulating a union petition among some cannery workers. He made some rather nasty remarks."
"He threatened you?"
"His remarks were sexual in nature. That night our car was vandalized."
"Did you ever hear of a woman named Ida Durbin?"
"No, I don't recall that name. Who is she?"
"Someone I believe the Chalons family would like to forget," I said.
She paused a moment. "You're not really here about our troubles, are you?"
I felt my face tighten. "Billy Joe Pitts is part of an ongoing assault-and-battery investigation. I think he takes his orders from the Chalonses."
"I see," she said.
"You've been very helpful." But I had lost her attention and I believe her trust as well.
She looked at her watch. "I have to make some deliveries now. We run a folk craft workshop and sell the birdhouses they make. A tough way to raise a dollar, huh?"
Way to go, Robicheaux, I thought.
