***
"OKAY, NOW HOLD this spoon in your left hand." Susie stood next to Rodney's bed and helped him grip a spoon from the breakfast tray. He held onto the spoon and smiled after she let go. The muscles around his jaw tightened. "Good. Now put it in the applesauce and bring it to your mouth." She held the plastic container close to him, and he dipped his spoon in the applesauce. He was able to get some on the spoon and slowly brought it to his mouth.
He swallowed and put the spoon back into the container and did it again. He smiled at her, and repeated his new trick. I was so happy for them, I wanted to cry.
"I think you've been sandbagging me." Susie cut his omelet into pieces and handed him the fork. "Now, try this."
He held the fork as though it were a butcher knife used to stab someone. Once he got the eggs on the fork he couldn't figure out how to turn it around to get it to his mouth. Susie took the fork from his hand and readjusted it.
"Like this, baby, remember?" They got through breakfast with Rodney sitting up in bed at a ninety-degree angle. She put the head back a little.
"How's it going, you two?" I stood next to the door to the hall. Susie hadn't seen me, so she was startled.
"Oh, Sissy, I didn't hear you come in." She turned around to look at me.
"I've been watching your therapy session." I walked over and hugged her. "Pretty impressive, brother-in-law." I squeezed Rodney's arm, and he smiled at me. "I don't want to disturb your lessons, so I'll be off to Jules Avenue. If you need anything, call me." I kissed Susie on the cheek, and she hugged me for several seconds longer than usual. I kissed Rod on the forehead, told them both I loved them and that I'd come back soon.
As I walked towards the door, I heard Susie say to Rodney, "Are you ready for speech therapy? I have a novel I think you'll enjoy. The title is A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole and, it's set in New Orleans." She paused, and I turned around to see her pull a book from her bag. "Can you say, "New Orleans?"
"Noo Ore Lins."
"Hey, that was good. Say it again."
"Noo Ore Lins."
"Where do we live now?"
"Noo Ore Lins."
I walked down the hall, laughing at the absurdity of it all, how they could be so happy after almost being killed, simply because they were finally together.
*
Marianne came into the house on Jules Avenue at around five o'clock and headed to the kitchen.
"How about a glass of wine." She talked as she walked, and I followed her. "I'm beat."
"Sure." I grabbed one of her arms when I caught up with her and steered her to the table. "I'll get the wine, you sit down."
We sat at the kitchen table with two glasses and one bottle of Chardonnay, and Marianne began to tell me about everything that happened.
"First off, the governor came to visit Rodney and Susie at the hospital earlier this week. Don arranged it all and sneaked Governor Breaux in through the doctors' entrance and up the exit staircase."
"Don?" I looked at her with my eyes squinted and eyebrows lowered.
"Warner. That's his name." She took a sip of wine and smiled.
"You call him Don?"
"Actually, I usually call him Warner, but his friends around here call him Don. His family calls him Donato." She grinned and drank the rest of the wine in her glass.
"Seems you've gotten to know a lot more about Dr. Warner." I looked at her over my glass.
"He took me to a fancy restaurant last night, called Antoine’s. It's in the French Quarters." She poured more wine into her glass. "He said he'd been married once, but things didn't work out. He's been in New Orleans almost six years and thinks he'll stay here."
"So what else did you talk about?"
"He said after his divorce he was a 'rogue.' That was his word for dating lots of girls and leaving them heartbroken. He told me he started meeting with his priest a year ago and quit dating altogether, trying to find his 'authentic self,' again, his words." She rubbed her closed eyes with her thumb and forefinger. "He said, after what happened last week at the restaurant on Deckbar, he went to see his priest, for an 'attitude adjustment.'"
"His words?"
"Yep." She took a long sip of wine and turned to look at me. "He said his priest told him that he'd reacted like he did because I rejected him, and women have never rejected him. He said he admitted to his priest that he wants what Rodney and Susie have."
"Wow. That's pretty honest. How did that make you feel?"
"It scares me because it feels like his honesty requires me to be honest, too." She grabbed my hand on top of the table and looked directly at me. "I told him I'd never had a boyfriend."
"Is that all you told him?"
"Yeah. I just couldn't make myself tell him the rest."
"It's a start, Mari. Give yourself some credit." I squeezed her hand, and we sat there in silence for a long time.
She put her head down, and for a minute I thought she was crying, then she looked up at me and grinned. "By the way, my mom and Rodney's parents are coming this weekend to see the house. We're going to have a barbecue, and they are staying over. Rodney's sisters might come, too."
"Then I'm going to shimmy out of here. Too many people, not enough beds." I got up from the table and rinsed my glass. "Anyway, I got a call from Robert Morris today. He asked whether I could meet with him tomorrow afternoon."
"If that's what you want to do, but you can always stay at the Brenthouse. It's walking distance."
"Listen, I love Tootsie, Miss Bessie, Mr. Ray, and all the others, but I'm going to Baton Rouge tomorrow, then back to Jean Ville to make sure things are still moving forward on the case."
*
I arrived at the attorney general's office at about four thirty Friday afternoon. Miss Millie met me with her snake-eyed stare, as though I were about to wreck her very busy weekend. Robert ushered me down the hall and told Millie she could go home whenever she was done, and he'd see her Monday. We turned into a doorway before we got to Robert's office. His was the last one at the end of the hall next to the back door that said, "No Exit." I had to laugh, because I knew it was the door he went through to and from the parking lot.
We entered a conference room where four other men were seated. They all stood when we came in. Two were wearing state police uniforms, two were in suits. I recognized Detective Sherman as one of the suits. Robert sat at one end of the long table and pointed to the chair catty-corner from his. When I sat, the men took their seats, too.
For the next hour, I heard reports about the investigation that I wasn't sure I should be privy to, but I listened and took notes.
Lieutenant Thomas Schiller started off the meeting. He reported on a trip he'd taken to Jean Ville with Robert Morris, Sgt. Lee Montgomery—who was the other officer in uniform—and two other state troopers. He said they drove into Jean Ville in three state "units" and parked on the concrete pad on the grounds of the courthouse that was cordoned off for official use only. The five men went to Judge DeYoung's office and met with him for over an hour.
"We were impressed with the Judge." Schiller's expression didn't change, nor the cadence of his voice shift as he relayed the information he'd recorded. "A straightforward guy who is opposed to discrimination and bigotry and is appalled that his parish still has factions of the Klan who continue to impose violence on black people." He said DeYoung didn't have any information about the actual crime, but asked that he be kept in the loop. They discussed how to issue warrants when the time came to make arrests, which Schiller felt they were close to doing.
"Next we went to see your friend, the DA." Robert looked at me and emphasized, "Your friend." I wanted to say, "He's not my friend," but decided to keep my mouth shut and listen. "He's quite a trip. I guess we should have expected him to be defensive and combative." Robert said Reggie Borders didn't understand why they wanted to investigate the incident. He said it wasn't a crime.
"'Someone's gun went off, and that Thibault boy happened to be hit,' he told us." Robert laughed along with the others, who must have witnessed the idiocy of the Toussaint Parish DA. "He said that even if it had been done on purpose, 'which, I guarantee you, it wasn't. And I should know, I investigated it myself,' he said that we should just 'leave it be.'"
Robert said that Borders was insistent that they would never turn up any evidence to the contrary and that, if they did, they would never find the person or people who did it. "That made me more determined to turn over every stone and empty every can until we find the guys who did this."
"We know there were two of them—a driver and a shooter." Sgt. Montgomery stood up and walked to a whiteboard, and used a black marker to diagram where the truck was with respect to the front of the church. He drew red lines to show the trajectory of the bullets.
"We just got the ballistics report on the projectiles that entered Major Thibault." Montgomery sat back down at the end of the table. "Looks like they came from a 45-caliber handgun. Thank God it wasn't a rifle like those deer hunters use or Thibault would be dead, for sure."
I took a deep breath when I thought about how lucky Susie and Rodney were to be alive.
"The blue truck. I'd like to talk to you about that, Miss Burton." Detective Sherman sat directly across from me and met my stare. "Several people saw it, including Rodney, Susie, and Marianne Massey. Jeffrey Thibault said he thought he recognized the guy riding shotgun because he'd been part of a Klan attack on him ten years ago."
"Jeffrey knows who did it?" I sat up straight in my chair.
"Yes, he gave us a name, Tucker Thevenot. Do you know him?" Sherman looked at me as though I were guilty of something.
"Yes. I'm embarrassed to say he's friends with my ex-boyfriend." In my mind, I could see that scroungy-looking guy standing on James's front porch and the blue truck idling in the driveway.
"Sandy blonde hair, scraggly, longish, past his ears; a goatee and mustache. Skinny, lanky, dirty. Those are the adjectives Jeffrey used." Sherman never took his eyes off me.
"I saw him a few weeks ago in Jean Ville. He got in an old blue truck that was driven by a Cajun guy with dark curly hair who used to work for Sheriff Guidry." I looked at each of the men around the table and spoke slowly.
"Who's Sheriff Guidry?" Sherman wrote something on his pad and looked up.
"He was Sheriff before Desiré was elected. He ran a suspicious crew. There was talk he and some of his deputies were members of the Klan." I took a deep breath. "I might know the license plate number."
"Of the blue truck?" Sherman poised his pen over his paper.
"Yes. I mean, I didn't see the license plate at the church. But when I saw Thevenot and Rousseau in the truck a few weeks ago, I memorized the plate number." I inhaled and felt afraid they'd ask me where I saw the truck. "It's 37-L-402, if I remember correctly."
"Do you remember if the plate said, 'Sportsman's Paradise,' or 'Bayou State'?" Sherman wrote something down.
"Bayou State." I crossed my ankles under the table and put my hands in my lap to keep from twisting my hair.
"Where did you see the truck?" Robert looked at me and I realized I wasn't in that room to receive information. I was there to give it.
"It was on a road in Jean Ville called, Shortcut Road. Sometimes I take it from Highway One to Jefferson Street." I watched Sherman write everything I said on his pad. I prayed they wouldn't find out that James lived on Shortcut Road. Then I realized they were bound to find out, so I'd better tell them, as though it were meaningless information. "My brother lives on that road, and I sometimes stop by to visit him if he's home."
"Which brother?" Robert was direct, not very friendly.
"James. My oldest brother. He's a…"
"I know. A lawyer and vice president of Confederate Bank and Trust." Robert nodded at Sherman, who wrote something on his pad. "I spoke with James when we were in Jean Ville."
"How'd that go?" I was curious about how James reacted to having the attorney general drop in on him.
"Let's just say he was evasive." Robert looked at Lt. Schiller, and they laughed. "I tried to be friendly, said I'd heard good things about him, wanted to know whether he'd support me for reelection in three years. I intimated I was there on a campaign stop, but he's a smart one." Robert said he left the four uniformed officers outside in the parking lot, but thought James saw them through his window. "He said he didn't know Tucker Thevenot, had never heard of him, had never seen an old blue truck like the one I described. Although I didn't describe it; I just said, 'blue truck.'" Robert laughed.
"Why didn't you tell us about the license plate number before this?" Lt. Schiller looked at me from across the table.
"I'm not sure it's the same truck that was at the church, but it looked similar, which is why I memorized the plate." I tried to speak with confidence so they wouldn't think I was hiding anything. Was I? Hiding something? I felt like I was, but I couldn't figure out what it might be. I think I felt uncomfortable with the discussion about James in the same vein as Tucker Thevenot and the blue truck; as though James had something to do with the shooting. I knew James would never be involved in anything like that, but why would he tell Robert he didn’t know Tucker Thevenot? I saw them talking on James’s front porch.
"Do you think Tucker Thevenot shot Rodney Thibault?" Lt. Schiller was still staring at me.
"I couldn't make that connection even if I wanted to." I took a breath and sat back in my chair, my legs stretched out in front of me under the table. "I didn't see the shooter, only the blue truck. Months later I see a blue truck that looked similar to the one I saw at the church, and you describe a scroungy-looking dude named Tucker Thevenot. The description reminded me of the truck I saw a couple weeks ago. That's what I know."
"We spoke with the police officers who were at the scene: Mike Richard, Joey LeBlanc, and Grady Baudin." Sgt. Montgomery looked at me with a kind expression. "Do you know any of them?"
"I went to school with Joey. He was a couple years ahead of me, but I knew him." I thought about the one date I had with Joey LeBlanc and how he tried to grope me. I slapped him, and he slapped me back. Hard. The blow bruised my cheek for weeks. I remember getting out of his car to walk home. He followed alongside me saying awful things about my figure and how every boy at Jean Ville High School wanted to get in my pants. I eventually got in the back seat and let him take me home, but I never went out with him again.
I'd heard things about Joey LeBlanc in the years since high school. I'd heard he joined the Klan and that he terrorized young black girls. There was talk that he'd raped a fourteen-year-old girl near the Indian Park. I wasn't sure if it was true. The thing that bothered me most as I sat in that conference room with Robert and the four investigators was that Joey and Warren were good friends, maybe best friends. They'd played football together and went in the woods to hunt squirrels and deer, and other critters. Warren always had stories about Joey, but I would never agree to go to parties if he would be there. I didn't want to be alone with Joey LeBlanc again.
The other thing that bothered me was that I would have noticed if Joey LeBlanc had been one of the cops that showed up at the church. I was sure he wasn't one of them.
"What can you tell us about him?" Sgt. Montgomery asked.
"About Joey?"
"Yes. Joey LeBlanc."
"Well, I had one date with him in high school, but I never went out with him again. He's a creep." I shuddered when I thought of that night.
"Do you know any of his friends?" Sgt. Montgomery looked at me as though he knew that I knew that he knew. I sat still like a cat cornered by a bulldog and thought about how to answer that question.
"Yes, of course. Jean Ville is a small town. Everyone knows everyone. One of his best friends is Warren Morrow, the guy I used to date." I took a deep breath and thought about how they would interrogate Warren, and that made me sad, as though I were ratting him out. But I couldn't lie. Montgomery knew.
"And your relationship with Warren Morrow?" He glared at me.
"I told you, I use to date him. But he's a loser." I stared back at Montgomery, and he started laughing. Everyone around the table joined in, and soon we were all laughing—at me! The atmosphere relaxed after that, and the discussion was more about sharing information and less about interrogation. I wanted to let out a huge sigh of relief, but I was afraid to break the spell and have things turn on me again, so I didn't tell them that Joey wasn't one of the cops at the church.
"Sissy," Robert touched my shoulder, and I turned to look at him. "We believe that Tucker Thevenot did the shooting and that the driver was Keith Rousseau. What do you know about Rousseau?"
"He was the one driving the blue truck the day I saw it on Shortcut Road. Keith used to be Sheriff Guidry's deputy." I felt as though I'd already explained that, and he must have forgotten.
"You told us you recognized the driver as one of Guidry's deputies. You didn't tell us his name." Robert looked at me, then at Detective Sherman, then back at me.
"If I recall our conversation half an hour ago, when I told you about Guidry's deputy, you changed the subject to the license plate number. I didn't mean to withhold his name." I felt my blood start to rise. My chest was hot, and I knew a red rash would begin to climb up my neck onto my face.
"I'm sorry, Sissy. I didn't mean to sound accusatory." Robert's expression became much friendlier.
"Y’all keep jumping from one thing to another. First it's Tucker Thevenot, whom I barely know. Then you talk about my brother, James; then Joey LeBlanc, then Warren, now Keith Rousseau. I'm just trying to keep up." I took a deep breath and folded my arms across my chest.
"You're right. You must feel like we've ganged up on you."
"Look, I'm the one who asked for this investigation." I raised my voice louder and louder as I talked and realized I was almost screaming at the end. "Why are you making me feel like I did something wrong. I can't help who I know. It doesn't mean I'm aware of what they do in their spare time."
"Not even your brother?" Robert still had a friendly expression, but the others didn't look so amicable.
"Not even my brother."
"Not even your boyfriend?"
"He's not my boyfriend. I told you. He's a loser." I didn't smile, even though the others tried to stifle laughs.
"Not even your dad?" Robert spoke very softly and tried to use his most brotherly expression.
"What's my dad got to do with this?"
"Probably nothing. I was just wondering whether you might know if he's ever been engaged in any behaviors against black folks that could be construed as unlawful and bigoted?" Robert was searching my face for clues that I knew something about my dad that was far from my understanding about who he was.
"If he has, I'd be shocked. My dad raised us to be nondiscriminatory." I sat up in my chair and folded my hands together on the table. My face was inches from Robert's. "I can't believe he'd ever do anything to hurt another person, black or white."
"I believe you." Robert sat back in his chair, indicating that he was finished with his questions.
The suit who had never said a word the entire time identified himself as Detective Craig Comeau, and said he was more interested in discovering why there was a cover-up.
"We know who did it, and they will be arrested soon." Comeau sat forward in his chair and looked around the table to indicate he was not singling me out. "What we don't know is why? And why is everyone in Jean Ville trying to cover up this crime? Everyone but Judge DeYoung seems determined that we hit a dead end. Why? Is there one big cheese behind this? Why would someone want to kill Rodney Thibault unless it was a contract by a big cheese? Was Thibault a threat to one of the politicians? Those are the questions I want answered. Can you help us?"
"Geez. I hadn't thought that someone might be behind it. I mean, I believe Tucker Thevenot is just a mean-ass s-o-b who would want to take down a black guy who had the audacity to marry a white girl." I was still leaning forward on the table; the detective was across from me, but almost at the other end.
"Not just any white girl." He glared at me.
"What does that mean?" I looked from Detective Comeau to Schiller, to Montgomery, to Sherman, then my eyes landed on Robert Morris.
"Certainly you can read between the lines, Sissy," Robert reached forward and patted my hands, which were still folded on the table in front of me. I looked at all the men around the table, questioning: what were they getting at?
Maybe I have a blind spot when it comes to James. But my mind couldn't wrap itself around the insinuations being made. I blew them off, and we all sat in silence for the longest time. I had the distinct feeling they were waiting for me to say something, for a light to go on in my head. But that didn't happen, and eventually, Robert disbanded the meeting.
After everyone left the room but Robert, he reached out and took one of my hands.
"I'm sorry if that was difficult, Sissy. You helped us a lot. You have a great deal of information that you don't realize is important." He was kind and understanding, but I was angry because I'd been ambushed. "That's not uncommon, which is why it takes skilled detectives who ask the right questions, to get you to remember things you stored away."
Robert invited me to go home with him and have dinner with his family, but I declined. He almost begged me and told me Brenda would be livid if I didn't show up, but I stood my ground and drove to the Capital House Hotel. I'd originally planned to drive to Jean Ville after my meeting, but it was seven thirty, and dark, and I was tired and angry.
I went straight to the bar without checking into my room first. I ordered a Martini. I'd never had one, but it was my mom's drink of choice, and it seemed appropriate.
Two Martinis later, I made my way to my room and flopped out on the bed. I wanted to cry, but I was still too angry, and a bit drunk. The phone started ringing, and I ignored it. Who would know where I was, anyway? It had to be a wrong number. I went to the bathroom and when I got back in the room, the red light was blinking on the phone. I punched '0' and listened to the prompts until it played the message. It was Brenda.
"Sissy. Please come over for dinner. Call me." She left her number, but I didn't return the call. I couldn't remember ever being so angry.
The next morning I checked out of the hotel with a headache. When I got to my car in the parking lot across the street, there was a white slip of paper under the windshield wiper. I thought, Geez. All I need is a parking ticket.
I took the ticket off the windshield and stuffed it in my purse, which I slung on the other front seat. I started the car and let it run a minute so the motor could warm up. I reached over and pulled the ticket out of my purse so I could stuff it in my glove compartment. The folded paper opened and I saw bold, red print: Stay out of this investigation, or you'll end up like your sister!
Now, I was really angry!
*
When I got to Jean Ville, I called Marianne to find out how the family barbecue went.
"Warner sort of invited himself over to meet everyone." She sounded tired, and it was only noon. "Lilly followed me to the door when the doorbell rang, and when she saw Don Warner standing there, she thought he'd come to give us bad news, and she became hysterical. Once we explained that he had come as a friend to meet our family, things calmed down.
"What else?" I took a long swallow of water.
"They all loved him, and he seemed to enjoy himself."
"Is that all? I have a feeling you aren't telling me something." I took another long swallow of water and refilled my glass.
"Well, I spent the night at his house."
"You what?" I stood up, and the phone cord got all tangled around me, but I held onto the receiver.
"Well, there were so many people at the house on Jules Avenue, and he said he needed to convince me he wasn't a scumbag." She took a deep breath, and I heard her take a sip of something, probably coffee. I needed some caffeine. "We started talking, and he asked me why I'd never had a boyfriend. I told him that I'd been abused when I was young."
"Is that all you told him?"
"Yes, because I started to cry and couldn't stop, and ended up falling asleep in his arms." She took a deep breath and sounded like she was about to cry again. "I woke up this morning in the guest room. He didn't touch me."
"That means a lot."
"Are you sure? I'm confused."
"You're confused because you aren't being totally honest with him, and it seems like he's been transparent with you."