Creole Belle by Burke James Lee

Author:Burke, James Lee [Burke, James Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Dave Robicheaux
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Published: 2012-07-17T05:00:00+00:00

CLETE HUNG UP his desk phone and gazed out the back window at the bayou. A black man seated on an inverted bucket was fishing with a cane pole in the shade of the drawbridge. Water hyacinths grew thickly along the banks, and on the far side was the old gray hospital and convent that had been converted into business offices, all of it shadowed by giant live oaks. The wind was up and the moss was straightening in the trees and the oak leaves were tumbling on the manicured lawn. Clete rubbed the heel of his hand into his eye and felt a great weariness that seemed to have no origin. He lit his Zippo lighter and placed it in the center of an ashtray and, with a pair of tweezers, held the memory cards he had retrieved from Varina Leboeuf’s property over the flame.

He had left his office door open. He failed to notice that Gretchen Horowitz had returned from the errands he had sent her on. She tapped on the doorjamb before entering his office. “I wasn’t deliberately listening, but I heard your conversation,” she said.

He watched the second memory card curl and blacken in the flame of his Zippo. He dropped it into the ashtray. “What about it?” he asked.

“I wish you would trust me more.”

“About what?”

“Everything. If you trusted me, maybe I could help.”

“You’re a kid and you don’t know what you’re talking about, no matter how much you’ve been around.”

“I told you not to call me that.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a kid. That’s what we all want to be. That’s why we screw up our lives, always trying to be something we’re not.”

“I don’t like to hear you talk like that. I don’t like what this woman is doing to you.”

“Did you get the mail?”

“Yes.”

“Did you go to FedEx in Lafayette?”

“Yes.”

“Then you did your job. We’re done on this subject.”

“Can I have the rest of the afternoon off?”

“To do what?”

She leaned down on his desk. Her shoulders were too big for her shirt, her upper arms taut with muscle. The violet tint of her eyes seemed to deepen as she looked into his face. “Personal business.”

“I think you should hang around.”

“I want to buy a vehicle for myself. Maybe a secondhand pickup.”

“Stay away from Varina Leboeuf,” he said.

“How about taking your own advice? You’re unbelievable.”

He watched her walk out the front door into the brightness of the day, a cute olive-drab cap tilted on her head, her wide-ass jeans stretched tight on her bottom, her tote bag swinging from her shoulder.

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