Douglas Child - Fever Dream

They walked back to the old parking lot and the kitchen door of Jake's. The woman watched their approach with complete taciturnity, with no visible change of expression.

"Good afternoon, ma'am," Pendergast said with a slight bow.

"Afternoon yourself," she replied.

"Do you, by chance, own this fine establishment?"

"I might," she said, taking a deep drag on the cigarillo. D'Agosta noticed it had a white plastic holder.

Pendergast waved at the Spyder. "And is there any chance you recognize this vehicle?"

She looked away from them, peering at the car through her grimy glasses. Then she looked back. "I might," she repeated.

There was a silence. D'Agosta heard a window slam shut, and a door.

"Why, how remiss of me," Pendergast said suddenly. "Taking up your valuable time like this uncompensated." As if by magic, a twenty-dollar bill appeared in his hand. He held it out to the woman. To D'Agosta's surprise, she plucked it from his fingers and stuffed it down her withered but still ample cleavage.

"I saw that car three times," the woman said. "My son was crazy about them foreign sporty jobs. He worked the soda fountain. He passed away in a car crash on the outskirts of town a few years back. Anyhow, the first time it showed up he just about went nuts. Made everybody drop whatever they were doing and take a look."

"Do you remember the driver?"

"A young woman. Pretty thing, too."

"You don't recall what she ordered, do you?" Pendergast asked.

"I'm not likely to forget that. An egg cream. She said she'd come all the way from N'Orleans. Imagine, all that way for an egg cream."

There was another, briefer silence.

"You mentioned three times," Pendergast said. "What about the last time?"

The woman took another drag on the cigarillo, paused a moment to search her memory. "She showed up on foot that time. Had a flat tire."

"I commend you on your excellent memory, ma'am."

"Like I said, you don't forget a car--or a lady--like that any time soon. My Henry gave her the egg cream for free. She drove on back and let him get behind the wheel--wouldn't let him drive it, though. Said she was in a hurry."

"Ah. So she was going somewhere?"

"Said she'd been going in circles, couldn't find the turnoff for Caledonia."

"Caledonia? I'm not familiar with that town."

"It ain't a town--I'm talking about the Caledonia National Forest. Blame road wasn't marked then and it ain't marked now."

If Pendergast was growing excited, he didn't show it. To D'Agosta, the FBI agent's gestures--as he lit another cigarillo for the old woman--seemed almost languid.

"Is that where she was headed?" he asked, placing the lighter back into his pocket. "The national forest?"

The woman plucked the fresh cigarillo from her mouth, looked at it, masticated her gums a few times, then inserted the holder back between her lips as if she were driving home a screw. "Nope."

"May I ask where?"

The woman made a show of trying to remember. "Let me see now... That was a long time ago..." The excellent memory seemed to grow vague.

Another twenty appeared; once again, it was quickly shoved down into the same crevasse. "Sunflower," she said immediately.

"Sunflower?" Pendergast repeated.

The woman nodded. "Sunflower, Louisiana. Not two miles over the state line. Take the Bogalusa turnoff, just before the swamp." And she pointed the direction.

"I'm most obliged to you." Pendergast turned to D'Agosta. "Vincent, let us not waste any time."

As they strode back to the car, the woman yelled out, "When you pass the old mine shaft, take a right!"

24

Sunflower, Louisiana

KNOW WHAT YOU'D LIKE, SUGAR?" THE WAITRESS asked.

D'Agosta let the menu drop to the table. "The catfish."

"Fried, oven-fried, baked, or broiled?"

"Broiled, I guess."

"Excellent choice." She made a notation on her pad, turned. "And you, sir?"

"Pine bark stew, please," said Pendergast. "Without the hush puppies."

"Right you are." She made another note, then turned away with a flourish, bouncing off on sensible white shoes.

D'Agosta watched as she wiggled toward the kitchen. Then he sighed, took a sip of his beer. It had been a long, wearisome afternoon. Sunflower, Louisiana, was a town of about three thousand people, surrounded on one side by liveoak forest, on the other by the vast cypress swamp known as Black Brake. It had proven utterly unremarkable: small shabby houses with picket fences, scuffed boardwalks in need of repair, redbone hounds dozing on front porches. It was a hardworking, hard-bitten, down-at-the-heels hamlet forgotten by the outside world.

They had registered at the town's only hotel, then split up and gone their separate ways, each trying to uncover why Helen Pendergast would have made a three-day pilgrimage to such a remote spot.

Their recent run of luck seemed to sputter out on the threshold of Sunflower. D'Agosta had spent five fruitless hours looking into blank faces and walking into dead ends. There were no art dealers, museums, private collections, or historical societies. Nobody remembered seeing Helen Pendergast--the photo he'd shown around triggered only blank looks. Not even the car produced a glimmer of recall. John James Audubon, their research showed, had never been anywhere near this region of Louisiana.

When D'Agosta finally met up with Pendergast in the hotel's small restaurant for dinner, he felt almost as dejected as the FBI agent had looked that morning. As if to match his mood, the sunny skies had boiled up into dark thunderheads that threatened a storm.

"Zilch," he said in answer to Pendergast's query, and described his discouraging morning. "Maybe that old lady remembered wrong. Or was just bullshitting us for another twenty. What about you?"

The food arrived, and the waitress laid their plates before them with a cheery "Here we are!" Pendergast eyed his in silence, dipping some stew out with his spoon to examine it more closely.

"Can I get you another beer?" she asked D'Agosta, beaming.

"Why not?"

"Club soda?" she asked Pendergast.

"No thank you, this will be sufficient."

The waitress bounced off again.

D'Agosta turned back. "Well? Any luck?"

"One moment." Pendergast plucked out his cell phone, dialed. "Maurice? We'll be spending the night here in Sunflower. That's right. Good night." He put away the phone. "My experience, I fear, was as discouraging as yours." However, his alleged disappointment was belied by a glimmer in his eye and a wry smile teasing the corners of his lips.

"How come I don't believe you?" D'Agosta finally asked.

"Watch, if you please, as I perform a little experiment on our waitress."

The waitress came back with a Bud and a fresh napkin. As she placed them before D'Agosta, Pendergast spoke in his most honeyed voice, laying the accent on thick. "My dear, I wonder if I might ask you a question."

She turned to him with a perky smile. "Ask away, hon."

Pendergast made a show of pulling a small notebook from his jacket pocket. "I'm a reporter up from New Orleans, and I'm doing research on a family that used to live here." He opened the notebook, looked up at the waitress expectantly.

"Sure, which family?"

"Doane."

If Pendergast had announced a holdup, the reaction couldn't have been more dramatic. The woman's face immediately shut down, blank and expressionless, her eyes hooded. The perkiness vanished instantly.

"Don't know anything about that," she mumbled. "Can't help you." She turned and walked away, pushing through the door to the kitchen.