Louella LeBoeuf stood before a stove in the modest but cheery kitchen of her compact but cheery house and spooned boiling water into the drip basket of a blue-speckled porcelain coffeepot. As the coffee dripped and gurgled, Louella contemplated her next move in life. She was unemployed—happily so!—yet in the luxurious position of knowing that she had lots of options when she decided to go back to work.
Louella herself would have been too modest to say it, but her legendary efficiency was remarked all over the business corridors of Black Bayou when businessmen met, over plate lunches, po'boys, sweetened iced tea or beer, to talk shop and complain about this or that (or about their own secretaries). Good secretaries were always hard to find, and Louella was considered among the very best.
Twenty-four hours after she had left Big Tex's employ, she had six job offers.
Thanks to Daisy Ledet's breathless (and indignant) retelling of the tale to the Big Tex office grapevine, the nature of the breakup was instantly known as well. And five of the six people making job offers were willing to assume, without asking Louella a single question, that Huff had provoked her. The sixth, the owner of a pipe yard that was in a protracted lawsuit against Big Tex over a very large bill, had made his offer just hoping to get intricate details of how Louella had smashed a po'boy, with tomatoes, pickles, and mayonnaise, in Huff 's face.
Louella, her rage having subsided, demurred. She was taking a couple of weeks off to think things over. Her husband, Ed LeBoeuf, had died of a heart attack six years ago. After two years of abject grief, she'd come out of the fog and, with the support of her two grown daughters, carried on. She had invested her husband's insurance money so wisely she could contemplate an early retirement. But she liked working—well, had liked it until she'd been gulled into working for Tom Huff.
Louella, coffee in hand, walked from her kitchen to her living room, placing her cup on a low table next to the documents she had smuggled from Huff 's lockbox. She'd wondered at her own audacity, not to mention the wisdom of her action. No doubt what she'd done was illegal, and Huff, if he ever found out, would seek revenge.
Still, the deed had been done, and as her late husband used to say, “In for a crawfish, in for a sack of 'em.” She reached for a pair of reading glasses hung on an ornate chain around her neck, took the first page from the folder, and began to read slowly.
An hour later, Louella's apprehension had turned to something else: shock and outrage.
Huff was an honest-to-goodness crook!
It was ten times worse that she'd thought!
He was bribing the governor, for God's sake!
He was up to his fat ass in some scheme with that sleazy B.J. Duplessis to dump poison in the marsh!
The man who had hemmed and hawed about giving her a raise was lavishing great sums upon Juke Charpentier, who in turn was blowing tons of money to buy the favor of some of the sleaziest people in Chacahoula Parish on Tom Huff 's behalf.
There was even a list of women procured on behalf of Sheriff Go-Boy Geaux!
Louella set the documents down on her table, removed her glasses, rubbed her temples, and tried to make some order of her outrage. So many things thrown at her at once!
Li'l Huff-'n’-Puff must be made to pay for this!
The only thing that tempered Louella's outrage was a sudden worry. This was big stuff, involving big people.
If these people knew what she had, she could be in danger!
Louella tried to calm herself. Just be cool, play these cards right. Get these documents into the hands of someone who could use them, without giving yourself away. She needed advice. Quickly.
The first person she thought of was her sensible young neighbor, Wanda Dugas, who rented a small Creole cottage across the street from her. Despite their age difference, she and Wanda had become fast friends since meeting two years earlier on the stoop picking up early-morning newspapers. Wanda had proved to be a refreshingly bright and independent-minded young woman working her way through college. She had a quick sense of humor and disarmed Louella's own misgivings about the job she'd chosen—waitressing at the Alibi—by regaling Louella with a sitcom-like rendition of the things that went on there. Wanda, eldest of eight children to a hardworking Cajun farm family, was tougher than she looked, and worldly beyond her years.
Wanda would know what to do!
Louella rose and went to her living room window. She peeped through her blinds, wondering if Wanda might be home. Not seeing her car, she walked to her phone and dialed the number she knew by heart.
Seven rings later, Wanda's answering machine picked up.
“Call me, cher,” said Louella. “Right away.”