James Burke - Light of the World

Felicity Louviere had asked Clete to meet her that evening at the Café Firenze, a lovely buff-colored restaurant on a side road in the Bitterroot Valley, set among aspens and poplar trees, backdropped by the Sapphire Mountains in the east and the gigantic outline of the Bitterroots in the west. Clete shined his shoes and laid out his clothes on the bed and shaved in the shower stall and stayed under the hot water until his skin glowed. Then he put on his beige slacks and tasseled loafers and a blue shirt with a lavender tie and the sport coat that he wore to the track in New Orleans. The perfection of the evening, the pink sky, the distant smell of rain, a flicker of electricity in a cloud, reminded him of springtime in Louisiana, when he was young and the season seemed eternal and all of his expectations were within inches of his grasp.

He arrived early at the restaurant and ordered a glass of red wine at a table by a window. He saw her turn off the highway in the fading twilight and come down the county road and park her Audi by a row of poplar trees. She put on a pair of dark glasses before she came into the restaurant.

When he stood up to hold out her chair, he saw the red abrasions at the corner of one eye and the bruise on her jaw that she had covered with foundation. “Did your husband do that?” he said.

“I told him I’m leaving. The prenup is a hundred thousand. I’m going out to Nevada with it.” She took a sip from his wineglass and smiled in a self-mocking way. “Want to roll the dice under the stars?”

“He beat you up?”

“Who cares? He’s a child.”

“I care.”

“He’s taken to drinking absinthe. It makes him go crazy sometimes. He’s a scheming, cruel little man, but nobody forced me to marry him. Now I’m going to unmarry him and do something with my life. You don’t want to come along?”

“I can’t think straight right now, Felicity. My daughter still has this bogus murder beef against her. It’ll go away, but in the meantime, I can’t just take off.”

She picked up the menu and stared at it without seeming to see it. “Can we order?” she asked.

He took the menu from her and set it on the tablecloth. “You want to get married out there?”

“I’m not divorced yet.”

“You want to or not? You ever spend time around Austin, Nevada?”

“No,” she said.

“It’s seven thousand feet up in the clouds. It’s like going back a hundred years. People play poker twenty-four hours a day. The river is so cold, the rainbow trout have a purple stripe down their sides. I could seriously dig a lifestyle like that.”

“You’re serious?” she said.

“I’ve got addictive issues. I’m no bargain.”

“I’ve got to make up for some wrong choices I’ve made, Clete. I haven’t thought it all out yet.”

“Get away from that kind of thinking. The past is the past. Why spend your time sticking thumbtacks in your head?”

“I married into wealth, and I did it for selfish reasons. Somehow I feel I’m responsible for Angel’s death. If I’d been a better mother, she wouldn’t have been drinking at the biker saloon.”

“Her presence in that saloon didn’t have anything to do with her death. The issue was money. In almost every homicide, the issue is sex or money.”

Felicity’s brow wrinkled. “Angel didn’t have any money. Not of her own.”

“This crap is all about money. I’m not sure how, but that’s the issue. Or most of it, anyway.”

“Your marriage offer is very generous. There’s another problem. Caspian is jealous and vindictive. He knows people who can hurt you.”

Clete looked out the window. “Are you expecting him?”

“Here? No, I’m not. He doesn’t know where I am. Unless he heard me on the phone.”

Clete took his cell phone from his coat pocket. “He and another guy just pulled into the lot. You said he goes crazy sometimes. Does he ever carry a weapon?”

“I’m not sure,” she replied.

“Who’s the other guy?”

She looked through the window. “He used to be with the sheriff’s department. Caspian just hired him as his new security chief. His name is Boyd.”

Albert called me into the kitchen and said Clete was on the line.

“I’m with Felicity at Café Firenze in Florence,” Clete said. “I think I might need backup or a witness.”

“For what?”

“Caspian Younger and a dude who used to be a sheriff’s deputy are sitting on the other side of the room. Younger beat up Felicity earlier today. I think maybe it’s a setup.”

“Who’s the ex-deputy?”

“Boyd.”

“He was one of the guys who gave Gretchen a bad time up by the cave. What are they doing right now?”

“Ordering. It’s a setup, Streak. I can smell it.”

“Do you have your piece?”

“It makes Felicity nervous. I left it at the cabin.”

The little settlement of Florence was on the four-lane, ten miles south of Lolo. When I pulled into the parking lot, the summer light was still high in the sky, the mountains massive and purple with shadow against the western horizon. I went directly to Clete and Felicity Louviere’s table without looking in Caspian Younger’s direction.

“He’s packing,” Clete said.

“Who?” I said.

“The ex-deputy. When he got up to go to the restroom, I saw his clip-on. It’s probably a twenty-five.”

I pulled up a chair and asked the waiter to bring me a cup of coffee. Clete and Felicity Louviere were already eating. She hadn’t spoken or even acknowledged my presence. I could not see through her dark glasses and had no idea whether she was looking at me or not. She ate in small bites, as though the food were tasteless or a forbidden pleasure. I had no idea what went on in her head or if she was part of a plot to take Clete Purcel off the board.

“It’s nice to see you again,” I said.

“I’m glad you feel that way,” she said.

How do you respond to a statement like that? “You miss New Orleans sometimes?” I said.

“My memories of New Orleans are more bad than good. I suspect that’s my fault. But no, I don’t miss it.”

I saw the blank look in Clete’s face. I ordered a bowl of minestrone. Across the room, Caspian Younger and Jack Boyd were eating silently, without expression. Caspian’s right leg was jiggling up and down.

“I’m going into the can,” Clete said. “If one of those guys follows me, it’s going down.”

“Sure you want to play it out here?” I said.

“I’ve got to use the can. What am I supposed to do? Hold it all the way back to Lolo?” he replied.

After he had left the table, Felicity Louviere looked up from her food and said, “You don’t approve of me, do you?”

“I like you just fine,” I replied. “But I don’t like the fact that you’re married, and I don’t like what you’re doing to Clete.”

“I don’t blame you,” she replied. She resumed eating, tilting her head back down.

“Why don’t you cut him loose?”

“I already have. I’m leaving my husband. Watch out for the father.”

“Why should I be worried about Love Younger?”

“He’s sentimental, and like most sentimental people, he’s unaware of his own cruelty. He has great guilt for what he’s done to his family. If you cross him, he’ll destroy you.”

I looked over at Caspian Younger’s table. Neither he nor the former detective seemed to have taken notice of Clete’s trip to the restroom. Maybe Clete had been unduly alarmed and the evening would pass uneventfully, I thought. The tables were set with flowers, the tablecloths immaculate. Music was playing in the background, and families at the other tables were breaking loaves of fresh bread and dividing platters of spaghetti and meatballs. I wanted to put aside all the violence and rage and self-destructiveness that had characterized my life and Clete’s and join in the festive mood. I had even come to like Felicity Louviere, and I wondered if he and she could start a new life, one that would preempt the denouement he and I had courted for decades.