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There was a long silence, then I felt my stare break and I looked away at the flooded trees that had been killed by saltwater intrusion, the petrochemical sheen that glistened on his lagoon, the flaking paint on the pillars that supported his second-story veranda, the decay and sickness that seemed to infect the entirety of the Abelards’ property, and I wondered why we had concentrated so much of our lives on hating or envying or emulating people such as the Abelards and the oligarchy they represented. Then I saw a motorboat with two figures in it come across the bay and enter the cypress trees, riding on its wake, passing the man who was fishing in the pirogue. Kermit sat behind the wheel, wearing Ray-Bans and a sky-blue cap with a lacquered black brim tilted on the side of his head. Alafair was sitting next to him, her hair and face damp with salt spray.
I got up from the chair, keeping my face empty of expression. “I’ll walk down to your dock, if you don’t mind,” I said. “I enjoyed talking with you.”
“You seem offended.”
I looked at the boat and at Alafair sitting close to Kermit, clenching his arm. “You withheld information from me, Mr. Abelard.”
“What your daughter does or does not do isn’t my business, sir. I resented your indicating that it is.”
I looked at him a long time before I spoke. He was infirm and, I suspected, visited in his sleep by memories and deeds no one wishes to carry to his grave. Or perhaps I was endowing him with a level of humanity that he didn’t possess. Regardless, I had concluded that Timothy Abelard was not someone I would ever come to like or admire.
“Robert Weingart is in your home with your consent, sir,” I said. “You’re an intelligent man. That means his agenda is your agenda. That’s not a comforting thought.”
“Get out,” he replied.
I walked outside and down the slope of the yard toward a wood dock, where Kermit was mooring his boat. Alafair stepped off the bow onto the dock and came toward me. She was wearing white shorts and a black blouse and straw sandals; her skin was dark with tan in the sunlight, her hair blown in wet wisps across her cheek, her mouth lifted toward me.
“I’m here to see Kermit. It has nothing to do with you, Alafair,” I said.
“You gave me your word,” she said.
“I promised I wouldn’t interfere in your relationship. There’re some questions Kermit has to answer. He can talk to me or he can talk to Helen Soileau. Or he can wait until he’s contacted by the FBI.”
She walked past me without replying, glancing at me once, her eyes dead.
Kermit stood on his dock, his hands on his hips, gazing at the hammered bronze light on the bay and at the moss straightening on the cypress snags and at the man fishing in the pirogue. When he heard my footsteps behind him, he turned and extended his hand, but I didn’t take it. The smile went out of his face.
“Did you know Bernadette Latiolais?” I asked.
He held his eyes on mine, more steadily than was natural, never blinking. “The name is familiar,” he said.
“It should be. You were photographed with her.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “One of the scholarship girls, I believe.”
“She was a murder victim. She said you were going to make her rich. How were you planning to do that?”
“Wait a minute. There’s some confusion here.”
“Are you telling me you weren’t photographed with her?” The truth was I had never seen the photo, and I knew of its possible existence only because Bernadette’s brother, Elmore, said she had shown it to him when she visited him at the work camp in Mississippi.
“I’m saying I remember her name because my family belongs to the UL alumni association, and I was at the ceremony at Bernadette’s high school when she was awarded a scholarship that we endow. At least if we’re talking about the same person. Why don’t you check it out?”
“I don’t have to.”
“Why is that?”
“Because you’re lying. I think you have blood splatter all over you, podna, and I’m going to nail you to the wall.”
“I don’t care if you’re Alafair’s father or not, you have no right to talk to me like that.”
“Who’s the dude in the pirogue?” I asked.
“He looks like a fisherman.”
“His name is Vidor Perkins. He did a stretch in Huntsville Pen with Robert Weingart, the guy who’s made you his bunkie. He was also in the Flat Top in Raiford. That’s where they keep the guys they couldn’t legally lobotomize. In Alabama he cut up the face of a female convenience-store clerk with a string knife. He was also arrested for the rape of a five-year-old girl. If that man comes close to my daughter, your grandfather won’t be able to protect you, Kermit.”
“Say that stuff about a ‘bunkie’ again?”
