House of Blues (26 page)

"But we made sure it was all legal and perfect—a
real adoption, none of this messing around. So little Sally came and
we fell in love with her; we gave Evie some money for school, and
everybody was happy—"

Skip remained silent.

"
Till she walked in with a gun."

"Okay. She walked in, said she'd come for Sally,
and then what?"

"
Nothing at first, I guess. We all just stared
at her. Then Reed said, 'What do you mean?' and she said, ‘She's my
baby and I'm taking her back.' About that time Arthur grabbed her."

"Evie or Sally?"

"
Sally. And then she started yelling." For
a moment his face arranged itself in a half smile. "She hates
that shit."

Skip was quiet.

"So then Arthur's holding her face—out, like
she's a bag of groceries or something, but real tight, so she's
crying, and Evie holds out her arms, like 'come-to-Mommy,' and of
course the kid's never seen her before in her life, so not only does
she yell louder, she balls up her fist and hits Evie." He smiled
again, just for a second.

"Then Evie says, ‘Put her down, Daddy,' and he
says, 'You leave this house, young lady,' or something pompous like
that, and all of a sudden she's holding a gun. I never saw her take
it out of a purse or anything—just all of a sudden she was holding
it. Reed said, 'Daddy, put her down—now.' You could tell she was
scared to death, and so was I." He stopped. "You wouldn't
have a cigarette, would you?"

"There's no smoking in here."

"Shit."

Skip had a moment's sympathy for him. If his story
was true, he'd been through hell.

"Forget it; I'll get you one."

When she came back, having bummed one from another
officer, Dennis was staring into space, as if trying to find his wife
and child somewhere in the distance.

"Then what?"

"Arthur put her down. Evie reached for her hand,
but she wouldn't take it. So there was nothing to do but pick the
baby up, and while she was doing it was the perfect time to knock her
off balance. I saw it, but I was too far away. I don't suppose Reed
even thought of it. Arthur took a step forward and she looked up and
shot him. Just like that. Like she didn't give it a second's thought.
He was hit in the leg, I think. I don't know, she must have hit an
artery—blood started spurting everywhere. You know what I remember?
How furious he looked. Like he was going to kill her. He lunged for
her, and somehow or other he pushed over the table. I guess it scared
her, because she shot him again, and that time he went down.

"Then all hell broke loose. I don't know, I just
sort of went on automatic pilot. I went and bent down by Arthur and
tried to help him. Evie must have picked up Sally. I heard her say
she'd kill us if we tried to follow, but I was holding Arthur's hand
and he was making these weird moaning sounds. I was kind of
paralyzed, I guess, but I couldn't look up, I couldn't let go, all I
thought was that he was dying right then and I needed to help him
through. I mean, I didn't consciously think that, but when I look
back, I don't really remember being aware of anything except Arthur.
Then I heard Reed leave. I guess Evie must have backed out of the
dining room, then when she got to the front door, she turned around
and ran. And Reed followed, I guess. It was all sort of in my
peripheral vision. I didn't really know anything except what was
going on with Arthur; I just held onto him and said things like 'Take
it easy' until finally he closed his eyes and died. And even then I
sat there awhile.

"By the time I realized I was alone, everybody
was gone. And so was our car—Reed's and mine. I guess Reed followed
her, but—" He stopped talking and took a puff of the
cigarette. He held it for a long time, staring at the wall, as if
trying to come to a conclusion.

"
But what?"

"Well, she had her own car. If Reed followed
her, why didn't she just call the police when they got there? I
mean—where the hell is she now? This is what I can't get to the
bottom of."

"
Why did you leave the crime scene, Dennis?"

"
The crime scene? Oh. You mean Arthur. Well,
that's a real good question, officer. Why did I? Why did I do
anything I've done in the last few days? Because all those years of
being sober fell away, that's why. Because I couldn't think of
anything at all except getting fucked up." He stopped and
thought again. "No. No, I wouldn't put it that Way. I don't
remember thinking of a damn thing. It was like I was comatose. I just
walked till I got to a bar, where I got drunk enough to make it to
the next one. It was like wasting good booze on a dead person. But of
course that wasn't the half of it. What I really wanted was to chase
that ol' dragon."

"
Are you back on heroin?"

"
Yeah."

"Where'd you get it?"

He shrugged.

"You got it from Turan, didn't you?"

"Turan?" He looked so puzzled she thought
he probably was.

"Turan."

"
Never heard of him."

"Who then, Dennis—who'd you get it from?"

"I can't talk about that."

"You got it from Delavon."

"I got it from who?
Are you speaking English, lady?"

* * *

Jesus shit, thought Evie, I haven't had a drink in
three days and I haven't halucinated or convulsed. Maybe things
aren't as out of hand as I thought. She realized, further, that
despite her desperate circumstances, she was possessed of a suddenly
optimistic spirit. The thought came to her that maybe there was a way
out. But looking down at her handcuffed wrist, that seemed
preposterous.

Shit. How'd I get into this?

Mo's face swam before her. The face of her lover.

Its always a man, isn't it?

That and alcohol.

This time you really blew it, toots. This has got to
be your all-time dumbest. Shit! I swear to God if I do get out of
this I'll never touch another drop. Even though she was sure she
hadn't hallucinated, there were things about her current circumstance
that could hardly be explained any other way.

The fact that her lover was holding her prisoner, for
instance. Because it was Mo's house that she was in. He was a lawyer
with a beautiful house; a perfect marriage candidate .... .

Right.

Well, hell, I lied to him, maybe he lied too.

She had told him she was Yvette Johnson, a laborer's
daughter from Mississippi. It was a persona she'd had for a long
time; being Evie Hebert just hadn't worked out for her. She didn't
like a single damn member of her family and she didn't see why she
should use their name.

She'd looked pretty damn good the day she met him,
wearing tight jeans and some sort of low-cut blouse, her hair in a
ponytail like a kid's. Because of her private-school accent, she'd
made her dad a carpenter this time—it was the kind of job that an
educated man might do—and she'd said her mother was a schoolteacher
and that she herself had gone a semester or two to Millsapps.

She knew he was hooked the minute she walked in that
house. Before she left, he'd asked her to dinner, and before the
date, he sent her a dress and shoes to wear; he had a thing about
shoes. She didn't know if she should wear the outfit, thinking he
probably expected a quid pro quo, but then she figured, what the
hell, who cared what he expected, she could still say no if she
wanted.

But he didn't even hit on her.

It was a while before he brought her here, to the
mansion.

He'd treated her like a princess.

Of course, she did have to contend with Mrs.
Garibaldi, the terrifying housekeeper, who acted more like she owned
the place than like a servant, but that was the only bad thing.

That and the fact that Mo traveled a lot. Sometimes
she wouldn't see him for a couple of weeks at a time, or even longer,
though in the meantime he'd phone from whatever far-flung place he'd
landed in. He could always make her laugh when he called, but then
when she hung up, she got this empty feeling.

This sort of lonely, desperate,
bouncing-off-the-walls kind of feeling. And what she'd do then was
drink a lot to ease the melancholy.

Drink and fantasize about how her life ought to be.
She ought to be with Mo in this house, for instance. With the man she
loved, and who loved her.

And she ought to be with Sally. For some reason,
Sally had loomed large in her thoughts lately.

Not the real Sally, whom she didn't know at all, but
a kind of perfect, blond, laughing baby with the tiniest toenails
anyone could imagine.

She loved babies' toenails.

She wanted her own baby.

If they were going to be together, she and Mo, she
could have Sally. They'd have enough money, and Sally would have a
father, and there would be no reason why not. Surely Dennis and Reed
understood that Sally was just sort of on loan to them until she
could get her life together.

Well, actually, she hadn't really thought that would
ever happen, but it was about to, that was obvious. She was more or
less Mo's hostess, and that was only one step from being a wife. When
he had parties at the mansion, she was his date, and she did the
hostess thing damn well.

Mo told her so all the time.

She ought to be good at it. As a little girl, she'd
walk around Hebert's with her dad, watching him welcome the guests,
shaking hands with everyone, making small talk. Then later, she'd
done all that preteen crap, dancing lessons at Miggy's and
everything. She ought to be able to handle herself at a party.

She looked classy too, when she was dressed up. That
was Mo's word.

She looked like her mother, when Sugar was thin.

But Mo didn't know that, he thought she was from
Mississippi, and he talked like he was from the Ninth Ward or
something. But his friends were pretty impressive. A lot of them were
politicians whose names she knew; plenty were businessmen and
lawyers, from the looks of them.

Who knew who they all were? They seemed to have
money. For once, she'd fallen in love with a man who had it together.
She kept looking for flaws in him but she couldn't find any. The guy
was perfect.

Yeah, and I was drunk most of the time.

He was perfect and he loved her, he told her so all
the time. It would only be a matter of time till they were married,
that was obvious.

She couldn't wait. It would be the perfect life, the
three of them living here together. Of course she'd fire Mrs.
Garibaldi; that was going to be the first thing she'd do.

Then she'd redecorate, get Sally in a good school,
and then . . .then she thought she'd travel. She and Mo. Maybe she'd
go with him on some of his business trips. And maybe she'd get him to
go with her to some of the places she wanted to see.

China.

The Amazon.

Lots of places.

Or maybe she'd just go alone. Whatever she wanted
would be fine with Mo. That was the way he treated her. He bought her
clothes, he bought her shoes, he bought her underwear, and flowers.
He took her to nice places. He always noticed if there was a draft
blowing on her, or if she was tired, or if she wanted another drink.
He knew things like that before she did, he was that carefully
attuned to her.

He was far and away the most generous lover she'd
ever had. That was the kind of man he was, and that was the way he
felt about her.

What she wanted, he wanted for her.

Still, she didn't want to spring Sally on him.

He already knew she had a daughter who didn't live
with her, and she'd told him how much she missed her.

"Maybe you should think about getting her back,"
he'd said. As if he'd read her thoughts. As if his thoughts were her
thoughts.

The plain fact was, three nights ago, she'd gotten
drunk and gone to get her daughter.

Oh, man. Drunk doesn't begin to cover it. What the
hell did I think I was doing?

It made her cringe to think of it. She'd thought
she'd just go get Sally and bring her home and that would be that.
And then, when things got out of control, she'd acted perfectly
rationally, even in her polluted state. She'd gone right to Mo, her
dependable helper and protector who always knew what to do.

The part that made her cringe wasn't that, though. It
was the way she'd had visions of Sally crying, "Mommy!" and
leaping into her arms.

The child had never even seen her, not since the day
she was born.

The other thing that humiliated her was her surprise
when they'd all been awful to her. They treated her like dirt. Like
she was some distant relative who embarrassed them. They'd always
been that way. Why had she imagined they'd be glad to see her, or
even civil to her?

She didn't know exactly how or why, but she'd found
herself holding the gun Mo had given her, that he insisted she carry
because her neighborhood was so dangerous.