The Axeman's Jazz (Skip Langdon Mystery Series #2) (The Skip Langdon Series) (21 page)

As arranged, Cindy Lou did the talking. She gave her real name and real credentials, claiming Di had applied to Tulane in some sort of therapist’s capacity and they were checking her out—the Rob Gerard ploy slightly modified. She introduced Skip as her colleague.

The thing not only worked, Mrs. Breaux apparently couldn’t have been more delighted if the Queen of England had come calling. For a while she bustled about, settling them into a formal living room with glasses of iced tea. Then she sat down herself, snuggling well-padded posterior into wing chair and making no bones about the fact that her day was made.

“You have a very nice house, Mrs. Breaux,” said Cindy Lou.

“Isn’t it lovely? It was Jackie’s, of course—Diamara’s, I mean. I got it in the divorce settlement. She likes the action down in the Quarter and I like the quiet out here.” A shadow came over her face. “Or I thought I would. I never lived anywhere quite so fancy. Sometimes it gets a little too quiet.”

She paused to repair her smile. “I’m so glad Jackie’s going to use some of those courses she’s always taking; she’s such an intelligent girl. I’ve always said how much potential she had. But then you won’t believe me—I’m her mama.”

“That’s why we came. Who could possibly know her better?”

“Well, you’re right about that. What can I tell you?”

“Oh, I just thought we’d talk informally. The whole idea is just to get to know what kind of person she is. Why don’t you tell us about your family? Starting with you, for instance.”

Cindy Lou made it seem so easy—just a friendly conversation over tea.

“Oh, gosh, there’s nothing interesting about me.”

“Well, you know, I’d never pick you for Di’s mother. She has such exotic looks, and the Cajun name—”

“Oh, Lord, yes. I was Louise Wood from Cullman, Alabama. Met Jimmy Breaux and thought I never saw anything so tall, dark, and handsome in all my days. And charming! The man could talk you out of everything you owned, and did, most of the time. He was in sales. There was a downside, though. Isn’t that what they say today?”

Skip and Cindy Lou nodded, spellbound, knowing she was going to talk until she was talked out and that they were soon going to know enough about Diamara Breaux to write her biography.

“What was the downside?”

“Well, I moved here with him and everything went real well for a year or so. Then, I don’t know, Jimmy just seemed to lose interest in everything; couldn’t seem to get out of bed, even. Then all of a sudden he got better and next thing you know he disappeared.”

“Oh, no.”

“Well, that wasn’t the worst of it. He started writing bad checks. Dear God, what a nightmare!”

Skip said, “Tsk tsk,” but nothing else, not wanting to stem the flow.

“It kept happening, that was the really sad part. That time I was pregnant and I was still in love with him. Later on, I don’t know if I was in love or not, but I had two kids—Jackie was the oldest. It was only years and years later somebody put a name to it. The long and short of it was, I married a manic-depressive.” She stopped, nodded, and let it sink in. “A manic-depressive. Can you imagine?

“He’d get manic and he’d go off and, frankly, he’d turn into a con man. Then he’d get depressed and he’d come home and just lie there.”

Cindy Lou said, “Sounds kind of hard on the kids.”

“The amazing thing is, they took it better than any kids you could ever imagine. Now, Mary Leigh, she had some problems, but Jackie never did. You’d have thought she came from the best home in the world. Funny how kids can adjust, isn’t it?”

“What was she like as a child?”

“Oh, always dreaming, always making up stories. And into everything—curiosity almost killed her—you know, like the cat? She’d do anything just to see what it felt like. More scrapes and bumps than any kid in the neighborhood—any girl, anyhow. But the main thing about her was she was always so optimistic. Mary Leigh’d make bad grades and do bad things—break things, sometimes on purpose, it seemed like. Jackie just always saw the good side—always thought things were going to turn out all right. Never had a sad day in her life, that child. Even when the girls were at the Ellzeys’.”

She stopped to sip from her glass, a lecturer in mid-performance. “Jimmy’d go and he’d come back and then he’d go again, and when he came back he’d be real sick, and I could tell he really needed me. So somehow I never got around to thinking about getting divorced and maybe finding someone new. But that meant I had to keep things together the best I could. I really wasn’t trained for anything, but I could get a job now and then, when I needed to. But I couldn’t afford to pay very much for child care. So when the girls were real young, Jackie in second grade and Mary Leigh in kindergarten, I think, I arranged for them to go and stay with some neighbors after school. That was the Ellzeys. Mary Leigh started wetting the bed a few months after they started staying there. I didn’t know much about child psychology, but I knew
something
was wrong. Wouldn’t you have thought that?”

“Um,” said Cindy Lou. “What
was
going on?”

“Well, I never found out. Mrs. Ellzey said she didn’t know and the girls never would say, only just shrugged. But when I asked if they wanted to stop staying there, they both said yes, and then I quit work for a while so I could be with them and Mary Leigh stopped wetting the bed. Whatever it was, Jackie never seemed bothered.”

“It sounds like you had a really tough time.”

“Oh, it wasn’t all bad—not even mostly. We had some good times too. Especially when Jimmy was home and he wasn’t depressed.”

“Whatever happened to Jimmy?”

“Nothing good.”

“I wonder if you could tell me, though. For my records.”

“Well, he died. Had a heart attack when Jackie was about fifteen.”

“I’m sorry,” said Cindy Lou.

For the first time, Mrs. Breaux’s eyes misted over. “It was probably for the best, in the end. He was a very, very unhappy man. A lot of the time, anyhow.”

Skip thought of Tom Mabus, seemingly so unhappy, so deeply depressed for so many years and then rallying, making one last stab at life just before he died.

“And Mary Leigh? Where’s Mary Leigh now?”

“Mary Leigh died. Now, that really is a sad story.” Her eyes were dark pools of regret.

“Oh, dear.” Cindy Lou looked so sympathetic probably even O’Rourke would have spilled his guts. “When did it happen?”

“When she was nine. Or ten, was it? Nine. She was hit by a train. You have to remember this was over forty years ago and we had trains then. It was in Alabama, when we were visiting the girls’ grandparents. She was on her way to the swimming pool to meet a friend. Only one person saw it, old Mrs. Cleland on her way home from the grocery store. She said Mary Leigh just stood too close to the tracks—one minute she was there and the next she was gone.” She put her hand over her face, apparently to hide tears. “Mary Leigh always was in too much of a hurry. She was an impatient child right from birth. If she didn’t get her bottle right then, she’d tune up and cry.”

Skip was frankly reeling, but Cindy Lou remained impassive. She smiled, bringing Mrs. Breaux back to the present. “Di’s certainly done well,” she said.

Mrs. Breaux sent back the smile. “She was the first in her family to go to college. Always smart, Jackie-girl. But she didn’t finish—smart, but she had a short attention span. She ended up going to nursing school instead.”

“And she did finish that?”

“Oh, yes. Not that I really wanted her to. Frankly, I raised her to marry well. I never did, so I wanted my daughter to have the opportunity.”

“I see. And did she?”

“She sure did.” She looked as proud as if it had happened yesterday. “Married Walt Hindman. You know, of Hindman Construction?”

Skip did know, having been told by the D.A. who’d handled Di’s child-abuse case. When Cindy Lou raised an eyebrow at her, she nodded ever so slightly. The Hindmans were very big in New Orleans. Their firm had been used at one time or another by practically everybody who was socially important.

“The Hindmans are a fine family,” said Cindy Lou, winging it.

Mrs. Breaux nodded. “Wealthy. But in the end he turned out to be one of Jackie’s bad ideas.”

“He drank?”

“No, it wasn’t that. He was abusive.” She looked away when she said it, not meeting either woman’s eyes. The momentary role of proud mom had evidently crumbled under a desperate need to talk turkey—which seemed to fade as swiftly as it had emerged. “Jackie sure got two lovely children out of it, though.” She got up and walked to a table at the rear of the room, extracting two framed pictures from a large collection. One she gave to Cindy Lou, one to Skip. Skip got a brown-haired, wholesome-looking girl, somewhere in her late twenties or early thirties. “That’s LiLi,” said Mrs. Breaux. “Isn’t she a beauty?”

“A doll.” Cindy Lou traded with her.

“And that’s Bennett.” The young man in the picture was a little younger—twenty-five, perhaps—and nearly blond. He looked so much like Sonny Gerard that Skip gasped before she caught herself.

“What a hunk,” she said.

When Di’s mother had returned the photos to their altar, Cindy Lou said, “Tell me, Mrs. Breaux, where did Di study hypotherapy?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t know. I suppose that was one of those courses she took and just never mentioned—she takes so many, you know.”

Skip spoke up. “There’s a question I’m afraid we have to ask—just a formality, of course, but it’s one of those things. I wonder … has Di ever been arrested?”

Mrs. Breaux flushed slowly scarlet, from neck to hairline. Tears sprang to her eyes. “How dare you bring that up!”

Skip said nothing, silently entreating her companion to continue the role of the nice cop. Cindy Lou was a natural.

“Oh, Mrs. Breaux, we’re so sorry to upset you,” she said. “May I get you a glass of water?”

Mrs. Breaux shook her head, probably now as much in the grip of embarrassment as anything else.

Skip said, “I’m sorry, it’s just something we have to know.”

“I know it can’t be all that bad, Mrs. Breaux,” said Cindy Lou. “It doesn’t mean we’d keep her from getting the job. We just have to know, that’s all.”

“The charges were dropped.”

“You see? I knew it couldn’t be that bad.”

“I’m sorry, I really can’t talk about that.” And even Cindy Lou couldn’t persuade her.

When they were in the car, Cindy Lou said, “I wonder what it was like growing up in that family? I’ll bet those kids had a hell of a ride.”

“Manic-depressive dad, you mean?”

“And the day-care debacle. But there might be more. I mean, Mary Leigh did kill herself.”

“Mary Leigh killed herself? How do you get that?”

“She was standing too close to the tracks and then she wasn’t there? How does a train run over you if you haven’t actually stepped onto the tracks?”

“Jesus. I missed that.”

“Every family’s got one—an accident that was really a suicide, a suicide that was obviously a murder…”

“Oh, come on.”

“We had one in ours—a generation back. Great-Grandma is supposed to have walked right into the furnace in her house, but guess what? Great-Granddaddy was home all the time.”

“You think he pushed her?”

“She had no history of sleepwalking, drugs, or alcohol. Just one day she walked into the furnace.”

Skip shrugged. “Could have happened.”

“Well, how come she didn’t walk right out again? Or how come he didn’t hear her screams and come pull her out? ’Cause he closed the door and leaned against it, that’s why.”

“What kind of furnace was that?”

“Oh, who knows? Maybe it was really a fireplace of some sort—it’s oral tradition, that’s all.”

“And you think it really happened.”

“All I know is, when the old folks get drunk, they get to whispering. They think it happened. All except my grandpa and my great-uncle—their kids, get the point? You can never believe it of the people you’re close to. Suicide’s worse—to admit it happened means you contributed to it. And Di’s sister committed suicide. So by definition, Di grew up in a family situation that was pretty intolerable.”

“She’s sounding more like a victim than a criminal.”

“Criminals
are
victims, haven’t you heard?” Though Skip didn’t speak, she held up her hand—a gorgeously manicured one. “I know it sounds like some knee-jerk liberal axiom, but it happens to be true. They come from nasty families. And not all of them are from the ghetto either.”

“So you think Di’s family could have produced a murderer?”

“After what we just heard? Not a doubt in my mind.” They drove in silence for a few minutes. And then Cindy Lou said, “But just about any American family might. Particularly any Southern family.”

“What makes you think we’re worse than the rest of the country?”

“Living here. You’re such a bunch of blamers. I swear to God I’ve never seen anything like it. Somebody’s always taking the heat for something, and if they’re not, they’re cringing and saying, ‘It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me,’ hiding under a table and scared to death.”

For the second time since she’d met him, Skip thought of old Mr. Ogletree, the manager of Linda Lee’s apartment house. He’d seemed terrified he was going to be accused of something.

Come to think of it, she’d spent her childhood in a similar state.

“DRESS ME, DEE-DEE.”

It was a ritual they’d played out repeatedly—Jimmy Dee smoking a joint while Skip got ready to go out, picking out her outfit as he had when she went out with Abe. The conceit was that although she was a woman and supposed to be born to it, she didn’t know the first thing about clothes; the truth was, it was more than a conceit.

He delved into her closet. “Hmm. No leather.”

“Too hot for it, anyway.”

“Oh, hell. Jeans and a T-shirt. What else can you wear on a motorcycle in August?”

“You disappoint me.”

“Not half as much as your wardrobe disappoints me.”

Casually, she flipped him off and went into the bathroom to pull on her jeans.

This was part of the ritual also—her dressing in the bathroom, both of them hollering through the door. “I’ve decided to have an Axeman party.”