TEN

The ambulance took us to the emergency room and they stuck us in two curtained cubicles, side by side. After checking our vitals (excellent) and examining us for burns (minor), they gave us oxygen to inhale and then let the West Baton Rouge deputies interview us. Pepper drew a middle-aged Cajun named Sonnier. I got a wiry man with white hair whose name tag said Spano. I told him we’d gone to Désirée to see Flowers about our archaeological investigation and that he needed to call Nick DeLage.

“You friends of his?” the deputy asked.

“Not especially.”

Spano grunted. “Man’s got a bad reputation in our parish. They say he’s into drugs.”

He squinted at me with sky blue eyes, but I tried not to react.

“You know Miss Ouida?” he asked.

“We’ve met.”

“Nice old lady. She didn’t deserve what that bastard did.”

He seemed to be daring me to disagree, but I didn’t.

“You know anything about people digging up the grounds?” he asked then. “DeLage called us the other day to complain.”

“No.”

“But you dig, don’t you? That’s what archaeologists do.”

“I saw the holes. They were round.”

He frowned. “So?”

“Archaeologists make square holes.”

“So you don’t know nothing about this.”

“Somebody sent me an anonymous letter by E-mail,” I told him. “And somebody trashed my car. You can check the Baton Rouge police report. I don’t know if it had anything to do with what happened tonight, though.”

“You got any idea why anybody would kill old Flowers?”

I thought about the lock box. But bringing it up would only lead to a horde of deputies digging up the grounds.

“It must’ve been burglary,” I said. “Somebody opened the front door right after the fire started.”

“But why would they try to burn the place down?”

“Destroy the evidence?” I asked. “Maybe Flowers caught him in the act and the burglar killed him and then decided to try to burn everything up to cover his tracks.”

He stared at me with the ice-cold eyes.

“He had a piece of paper in his hand,” Spano said. “Looks like the killer tried to get it away from him and he ended up holding an edge.” He scratched his chin. “From the looks of it, the paper’s pretty old.”

I tried not to show any reaction, but the blue eyes bored into me.

“What does the paper say?” I asked.

“I thought maybe you’d know.”

“It’s hard to read something while you’re trying to get your breath,” I equivocated.

Spano brought out a pocket notebook and showed me what he’d copied. “It says something about the law. Some kind of threat, maybe?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. But you might want to have it looked at by an expert.”

“I thought you were an expert.”

“In archaeology, not documents. You need a forensics document examiner.” I thought for a moment. “There was a dark-colored car up the street. It may have belonged to the killer. And there was a kid on a bike. He may have seen something.”

Spano shook his head. “Nobody saw nothing. The other deputy knocked on some doors and called me while you were waiting for the doctor.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “Any other ideas?”

“Yeah,” I told him. “Look for somebody with burns. Whoever splashed that solvent and set fire to it probably got singed.”

He nodded, put away the notebook, and left me to the nurses.

When they let us go it was almost midnight. It was too late to call somebody to pick us up, so we took a cab. Pepper was groggy and I wasn’t much better. When the cab stopped at her apartment I had to help her out.

I told the cabby to wait and gave her my arm as she went up the steps one at a time. When we got to the top she fumbled for her key and I had to take it out of her hand and open the door.

She stared into the dark room for a moment and then turned around.

“Alan, don’t go.”

“I’ll pay off the cab,” I said.

When I got back to the room she was slumped on the couch. Her flowered Mexican blouse was smeared with soot and her hair was an ashen tangle. A black smear striped her forehead like Indian war paint. She looked very small and very vulnerable.

“There’s some wine in the cabinet under the sink,” she said. “Would you get me a glass?”

I came back with two glasses of burgundy. Jealously, I wondered who she drank with when I wasn’t there.

She took the glass and sipped. I collapsed into the armchair, an involuntary groan escaping me.

“Are you hurting?” she asked. “I hardly asked about your burns.”

“They aren’t anything,” I said. “Only my hands got a little singed.”

“You saved me, you know.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “You’re the one who put out the fire.”

“Seemed like a good idea,” she said sleepily.

“You know, I was thinking about that piece of paper Flowers had in his hand,” I said. “I wonder if it could have come from the box.”

But she was already asleep.

I went to the couch, moved the wineglass, and started to cover her with the afghan, but her eyes opened halfway as I touched her.

“I want to go to bed,” she mumbled. “I want to sleep in my room.”

She let me help her up and made her way through the doorway into the dark bedroom, with me just behind in case she stumbled. She fell onto the bed and I lifted her feet the rest of the way.

“Good night.”

“Where are you going?” she asked in a small voice.

“To the couch,” I said.

“I don’t want you to.” Her hand reached up out of the darkness, touched my own. “Please.”

“All right.” I kicked off my shoes, took off my mangled guayabera and settled down onto the bed next to her.

“Ummm,” she mumbled and turned toward me, already falling back into sleep.

I lay beside her, listening to the branches scraping the window in the midnight breeze. My life with Felicia seemed like a distant dream now, something that had happened in my imagination. What was real was tonight, and the woman beside me. I turned my head to look at her.

Just think of her as your daughter.

Right.

I fell asleep.

When I woke up, sun was streaming through the window and I heard water running nearby.

I turned my head to Pepper’s side.

She was gone.

I raised myself, moaning from the stiffness of my joints, hauled myself to the side of the bed, and fumbled on the bedside table for my glasses.

The running water sound was coming from the bathroom. She was taking a shower. I glanced down at the floor by the closed bathroom door and saw her clothing from last night in an untidy little heap. Then I looked at my arms.

They looked like I’d been playing in a charcoal bin and my jeans weren’t much better. My body reeked of gasoline and wood smoke. When I ran my hand through my hair I felt soot particles.

I had a sudden urge to sneak away before she could see me like this.

Then the running water stopped.

I got up quickly and slipped into the front room. After all, she might come out of the bathroom half dressed, forgetting I was there.

I busied myself looking over the books on her shelf (the standard archaeological works plus an assortment of biographies and, amazingly, romance novels) and the CDs beside the stereo. I was looking through the names of unfamiliar rock bands when I heard the door open behind me and turned.

She was wearing a pair of cutoffs and a T-shirt, sans bra.

“Hi,” she said. “I was scared for a minute you’d taken off.”

“I heard you in the shower,” I said, sliding the book back onto the shelf. “I didn’t know …”

She smiled and then walked over and, quite unexpectedly, reached up for my head, brought it down to her level, and gave me a kiss on the lips.

“You’re so old-fashioned,” she said.

“Sorry, but—”

She touched my lips with her fingers. “Please, Alan. Don’t change.”

I waited, unsure what to say.

“So how do you feel?” I asked finally.

“Fine,” she said. “But you’re a mess.”

I nodded.

“You can shower, if you want to,” she offered. “But I don’t have any clothes for you to wear.”

“I better get home.” I sighed. “And Digger’ll want to be fed.”

“Little problem,” she said. “My car’s still across the river.”

It took an hour for the cab to come and another half hour to get to Désirée. Pepper’s white Integra was still parked where we’d left it, but now there was a sheriff’s cruiser beside it on the grass, a bored deputy reading the Sunday newspaper with his door open. After some argument and a call to his superiors, he released the Integra and we drove back across the bridge.

We passed down Park Boulevard, quiet and shaded in the morning light, and she made a U-turn around the median and pulled in before my house.

Sudden inspiration hit me.

“Want to come in for some breakfast?” I asked. “I’m a pretty good cook.”

“Huevos rancheros?” she asked, opening her door.

“A snap,” I answered.

I let us in and turned off the alarm. Digger was pawing at the back door and I let him in. He rushed in to nuzzle my hands and then went to inspect Pepper. She let him sniff her hands and legs and smiled when he tried to jump up to lick her face.

“You passed the test,” I said. “He likes you.”

I went to the cabinet, took out a couple of cans of dog food, and started to open them.

“I’ll feed him,” she offered. “If you want to get your shower.”

She was offering to feed my dog. A good sign. I nodded and made my way upstairs to my room, the room where I’d grown up, still adorned with some of my airplanes and ships and a baseball autographed by the 1960 Pirates.

I hummed a little tune as I lathered myself, taking comfort in the warm water as well as in the thought that she was still here, hadn’t left, was even doing one of my chores.

And I’d always found Digger to be a good judge of character.

When I came down twenty minutes later she was frying the eggs.

“Thought I’d get a head start,” she said.

I put some frozen tortillas in the skillet with oil, and started to slice a tomato. Five minutes later we were seated on the screened back porch, our plates in front of us.

“You know, this is the first time I’ve been in your house,” she said. “I mean, besides just inside the front door.”

“An oversight,” I said, lifting my glass of orange juice. “As you can see, the garden could use some work.”

She eyed the tall grass in the backyard.

“It has a lot of potential. I like the banana plants. You could put in a deck …”

“And a swimming pool,” I suggested.

“In the corner,” she said. “But not so big that it would take away some of the area from the rock garden.”

“Rock garden?”

“I love rock gardens. And, of course, the pool would have a hot tub.”

“I wouldn’t build one without it.”

She pushed aside her empty plate and wiped her mouth with a paper napkin.

“Mind if I inspect the grounds?” she asked and went down the steps into the yard. Digger gamboled over and I watched, thinking how she looked almost as if she belonged here. Then the dog whined and ran to the water oak in one corner of the yard.

“What’s wrong with him?” Pepper asked.

“He’s been after a possum for the last week or so. It comes down into the yard at night and steals the food out of his dish. I think it’s got young ones.”

“It’s pretty brave,” she said. “Digger’s a big dog.”

“Ever see a mad possum?” I asked, walking down the porch steps and into the sunlight.

“I thought possums just played dead,” she said.

“When nothing else works. But generally they put up a pretty good fight.” I reached down to scratch Digger’s ear. “The old fellow’s got a scar on his nose to prove it.”

She patted the dog’s head.

“Poor Digger: He ought to know not to oppose a female.”

I followed her to the board fence that divided the back of my yard from the service alley between my house and the neighbors.

“I like this fence. Did you build it?”

I nodded. “I like privacy. When I was little the old lady who lived across the alley could see everything I did. I got in trouble a lot because of her.”

“Is she still there?”

I laughed gently. “God, no. She’s been dead twenty years.”

Pepper half turned and looked up at me with a twinkle in her blue eyes.

“Then there’s nobody who can see us back here now.”

“No,” I said, my throat suddenly dry.

That was when Digger started barking. Someone was at the front door, ringing the doorbell.

“Hell,” I muttered. “I’ll be right back.”

I went into the house, prepared to kill whoever was outside and couldn’t wait.

I jerked open the front door and saw Nick DeLage.