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BOON PULLED INTO THE dirt lot of a weather-beaten little strip mall just outside Lafitte city limits. The mall featured a check-cashing window, a medical office, an express pharmacy, a convenience store, and the Dixie Diner. It was Sunday, so only the diner was open.
“It’s awfully nice of you to offer to drive, Boon,” Mary-Alice said as Boon helped her down from the passenger side of the cab.
“Well, I imagine the truck’s a lot less conspicuous than the green beast, Mary-Alice. We don’t want to be attracting a lot of attention.”
Boon was right, of course. Mary-Alice’s gleaming Oldsmobile 88 in Dark Caribe Metallic was her pride and joy, and she loved driving it. But a mission like this one required a low profile.
Mary-Alice had invited Boon St. Clair to accompany her to Lafitte. She didn’t see any reason to conceal her purpose from him; he’d already heard the rumors about Mary-Alice allegedly putting Celia in the hospital. Boon had accepted Mary-Alice’s invitation without hesitation. He told her he wanted to help her clear her name, but Mary-Alice suspected that he was just as eager for an adventure as she was.
Mary-Alice and Boon entered the diner and got a booth by the window. They had a clear view across the road to a red-white-and-blue Tyvek banner stretched between two metal poles.
“Willie’s Wheels” Boon read from the banner, “Don’t be ‘sillie’, buy from Willie.”
“I imagine the folks around here don’t have much choice,” Mary-Alice observed.
Lafitte’s only car dealer was a dirt lot with about a dozen ramshackle cars and trucks parked seemingly at random, all pointing in different directions. Next to Willie’s Wheels was a whitewashed bus depot that looked like it used to be a gas station.
The woman who came to take their order was like an alternate-universe Francine. While the proprietor of Francine’s Diner was tall, blonde, and curvy, this woman was short and spare. She sported a towering jet-black beehive and tough, brown skin that looked like the reward of decades spent in a tanning bed. Her name, Viola, was embossed in white letters on a wood-grain name badge.
“It’s not often we get out-of-towners in.” Viola remarked. “Where y’all from?”
“We drove in from Sinful,” Mary-Alice said.
“Sinful!” she exclaimed. “Y’all know that woman who got beat to death by her cousin?”
“Death?” Mary-Alice gasped. “Are you saying she...the poor woman died?”
“Well now, I might be misremembering. Y’all wait right here. I believe I still have the paper.”
Boon placed his arm around a hyperventilating Mary-Alice.
“Boon, do you think it’s true?” Mary-Alice whispered.
“No,” Boon whispered back. “I don’t. Look, here she comes. Look at her expression. See how disappointed she looks?”
“Her name’s Celia Arceneaux,” Viola announced as she pulled up to the table. Boon was right; she did look disappointed. “She’s not dead, but someone put her in the hospital. Y’all know anything about it?”
“We might,” Boon said mysteriously, earning a puzzled look from Mary-Alice.
“Are you investigating?” Viola plunked down in the booth next to Boon, neglecting a trio of men in trucker hats who had just sat down. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“Well, now, I really can’t tell you that. But we have reason to believe that Celia Arceneaux may have visited here recently.”
“Here?” Viola lifted her penciled black eyebrows. “She was at the Dixie Diner?”
“We think she may have come to Lafitte,” Mary-Alice chimed in, tired of playing the spectator. “But it would be ever so helpful if you could try to recall whether you’ve seen her in here.”
“Well I don’t recall recognizing her when I saw the picture in the paper,” Viola said. “But of course she wasn’t exactly at her best now, was she?”
“Mary-Alice, darlin’,” Boon asked, “Might you have a picture of Miss Celia?”
Mary-Alice was ready. She took out her phone and pulled up Celia’s official portrait from the Sinful Mayor’s Office website. Marie, the elected mayor, hadn’t gotten around to fixing the site yet.
Viola tilted her head and squinted at the phone.
“Ay Miss Viola?” One of the men in the trucker hats called out.
“Be there in a minute,” Viola called back without looking in their direction. “Y’all know where the coffee is. Help yourself.”
Viola thought for a moment, then shook her head.
“We get a lot of people coming through, so I can’t recall everyone. Let me think about it. I gotta get back to work.”
“Well, Lafitte was a long shot,” Boon said when Miss Viola had left. “You about ready to go back home, Mary-Alice?”
“Why Boon, we’re just getting started. And I’m not certain Miss Viola was telling us the whole truth.”
Boon glanced at the waitress, who was laughing and flirting with the men in the trucker hats.
“You believe she’s hiding something, Mary-Alice?”
Mary-Alice wasn’t sure. She had no reason to suspect Miss Viola of lying. The waitress really hadn’t seemed to recognize Celia’s photograph. But Mary-Alice had read that a good detective accepted nothing at face value.
“Now Boon,” she said, “I can’t say yet for sure whether she’s hiding something or not. But so long as we’re already out here, we may as well do a thorough job of it. Why don’t we just have a look around that car lot?”