James Burke - Crusader's Cross

"There was no water in the cat's bowl," she said.

"He drinks out of the toilet," I said.

"That's disgusting."

"That's what I've been telling him," I said.

But she saw no humor in my remark. She served oatmeal in two bowls and placed them on the breakfast table, then began hunting for spoons and coffee cups. I looked at my watch. "I'm running a little bit late for Mass," I lied.

"Where's your butter dish?"

"I don't have one. Look, Honoria -"

"The oatmeal is getting cold. I fixed it for you. It would be nice if you ate it."

"Sure," I said, and sat down at the table.

She poured coffee, and placed toast, jam, and sugar in front of me, preoccupied, her eyes darting about the room, as though somehow she needed to impose order on it. "Your cat is climbing in the sink," she said.

"Snuggs is his own man," I said.

"You should train your animals," she said, lifting him off the drainboard and scooting him out the back door. "Don't you ever rake your leaves? A couple of days' work and this place would look fine."

"Last night you said the devil lived under the bayou and also inside your father."

"Where'd you get that?" she said, smiling for the first time that morning.

I studied her eyes. They were dark brown, like warm chocolate, possessed of visions and privy to voices and sounds that I believed only she saw and heard. They were the eyes of someone who would never be changed by therapy, analysis, Twelve-Step programs, religion, or medical treatment.

"Do you know what you did in your sleep last night?" she said.

"Nothing," I said.

"Have it your way. I don't kiss and tell," she said.

"This bullshit ends now, kiddo. The Robicheaux Fun House is officially closed. Thanks for fixing breakfast," I said, and dumped my food into a sack under the sink.

She took a half pint of gin from her purse, poured a three-finger shot into a glass, and drank it at the back door, staring in a desultory fashion at the yard. "Have you ever spent the spring in Paris? I fell in love there with a boy who was gay. My father hounded him without mercy. He drowned himself in the Seine," she said.

But I was all out of Purple Hearts and had decided that Honoria was going to leave of her own accord or be picked up by a cruiser. My determination suddenly dissipated when I looked out the front window and saw the Chalonses' handyman, with his son and Sister Molly next to him, turn into my driveway.

"I'm going to talk to some people out front. There's no need for you to leave right now," I said to Honoria.

"Too late, my love," she said. She walked out the front door and down the street toward the Shadows, her purse swinging from a shoulder string.

I stood on the gallery, barefoot, unshaved, looking down at Molly Boyle, my face burning.

"I should have called first, I guess, but Tee Bleu says he knows where the boat is," she said, speaking awkwardly and too fast, trying to hide her embarrassment at my situation.

"Which boat?" I said.

"The one the man with the gun was in. Tee Bleu says it's moored in a canebrake the other side of the drawbridge."

But I couldn't concentrate on her words. "There's a misunderstanding about what you just saw here. The lady who just left has some mental problems. I left my door unlocked and she -"

"I know who she is. You don't have to explain."

"No, hear me out. She hooked me up to my bed with my cuffs. I was trying to get her out of the house when you arrived."

"Locked you in your own handcuffs?"

"Right. I was asleep."

"I didn't mean to intrude. I thought you should know about the boat."

"You didn't intrude. Y'all come inside."

"No, we'd better run. Thank you. It's a beautiful day, isn't it?"

She tried to smile over her shoulder as she got into her car.

Way to go again, Robicheaux, I thought, my stomach churning. "Give me ten minutes. I'd really appreciate it," I said.

I followed Molly and the handyman and his son to the drawbridge south of Molly's agency. The little boy pointed at a boat that had floated into a flooded clump of reeds and bamboo. I waded into the water and dragged the boat's hull up on the mudbank. The boat was old, made of wood, the stern printed with rust where the engine mounts had been removed. There were no tags or registration numbers of any kind on it. "What makes you think this was the man's boat, Tee Bleu?" I asked.

"It got blue paint on the front end," he replied.

"Thanks for telling me about this," I said.

"I seen the gun. I ain't made it up. Seen the man, too. He was old," he said.

"Y'all gonna dust the boat for fingerprints?" his father said.

"It doesn't work quite like that," I said.

The father's half-moon eyebrows gave him a happy look, even when he wasn't smiling. He had a habit of turning his whole head as he glanced about himself, like a curious owl on a tree branch. "I got to make my deliveries. Can y'all run Tee Bleu home for me?" he said.

"Show Dave your birdhouses," Molly said.

"They ain't that much to look at," he said.

"No, show him," she said.

He opened up the trunk of his car, exposing a half dozen or so notched and pegged cypress birdhouses lying on a blanket, each with a wood plug in the roof. "See, the trick is not to get no foreign smells inside the house. I stain the outside with vegetable oil and that way it don't have no paint smell. I got a plug in the roof and a feeder shelf inside so you can pour the feed t'rew the hole and not get no human smells on it. If you stick this house up in your tree, every kind of bird there is gonna be flying around in your backyard. They're t'irty-five dol'ars, if you want one."

Thanks, Molly, I thought.

"I already have one. Maybe another time," I said.

" 'Cause I got 'em, ready and waiting," he replied.

Molly Boyle and I dropped Tee Bleu off at the gated entrance to the Chalons property, where he lived in a small house down by the bayou with his father and mother.

We watched him walk through the shade and around the side of the main house. I could not get over his resemblance to Honoria Chalons.

"You didn't want to take him down the driveway?" Molly said.

I turned my truck back onto the highway and headed toward Jeanerette and New Iberia. "I don't want any more contact with the Chalonses except in an official capacity. About this morning -" I said.

"I believe what you told me. You don't have to explain your life to others."

We recrossed the bayou and entered a tunnel of trees that separated the Teche from a row of antebellum homes that were so perfect in their detail and ambiance they looked like they had been constructed only yesterday. The windows in the truck were down,, and Molly Boyle's hair kept blowing in her face.

"Can you have lunch with me?" I said.

She continued to stare straight ahead. I could hear the truck keys jiggling against the dash, a flurry of leaves sucking across the windshield.

"Do you like trouble?" she asked.

"I don't seek it out," I said.

"I heard you were a Twelve-Step person."

"I'm in AA, if that's what you mean."

"Maybe that's what you need to keep doing and not complicate things."

"I'd sure like to have lunch with you."

She looked out the window at Alice Plantation, the acres of clipped St. Augustine grass and the flowers growing along the brick base of the building. "Can we invite another person to join us, an elderly lady who volunteers at the agency?" she asked.

"That'd be fine," I said.

I could feel her eyes on the side of my face. Up ahead, a black cloud moved across the sun, dropping the countryside into shadow. "Do you have any idea who the man in the boat might have been?" she said.

"Probably just a guy shooting water moccasins," I said.

"That seems kind of cavalier," she said.