Joe bellowed the only two words he knew that would make her go back. “The baby!”
Her stride did falter. She looked at him, looked over her shoulder, then fastened her gaze on Amande. The girl had risen from her seat at the picnic table and paused, momentarily unsure, but she would regain her wits in seconds. When that happened, she’d be at her grandmother’s side.
Joe did not want that girl in the same county as the man hollering at Miranda. He needed to get to Amande before she moved, then he needed to do something about the man harassing her grandmother.
The look on Faye’s face said that she’d made a decision, and that decision was to keep going. She ran twenty more yards in the wrong direction, away from their baby, hooked an arm around Amande’s waist, and started back to the cabin before the girl even knew what had happened.
It almost worked. Amande was going with Faye, but still looking over her shoulder for her grandmother. Suddenly, Joe saw her dig in her heels. The girl was a full foot taller than Faye, and more than fifty pounds heavier. When she decided to stop running, there was nothing little bitty Faye could do about it. The two of them jerked to a halt.
“My grandmother. I’m going back for her.”
Joe stopped and turned, balanced on the balls of his feet. He was not constitutionally suited to deal with three women in jeopardy, let alone a baby left alone in an empty cabin. Who should he help?
Fortunately, Faye was dealing with only one person.
“No!” she said to Amande. “Just no.”
Amande was still pulling her arm away from Faye’s grasp. Faye kept talking. “Let Joe take care of your grandmother. Michael needs me, and I have to go back. You need to come with me.”
Amande was listening, but still she pulled against Faye’s firm grasp. Faye didn’t tug any harder, she just spoke in a voice so low that Amande was forced to lean down if she hoped to hear. “Come with me.”
The girl towered over Faye. There was nothing to keep her from ignoring this little woman she barely knew, nothing to keep her from running headlong into danger, but she backed down. And Joe was painfully grateful.
***
Michael was standing up in his portable crib, probably awakened by the sound of his mother rushing out the door. Faye was glad she hadn’t stayed away longer, because she didn’t trust the portacrib to keep him penned up. The child had barely started crawling when he’d learned to walk, and she’d already found him clambering up an overloaded bookcase. He needed her around to protect him from himself.
Amande was standing in the open doorway, peering out at the houseboat. Reaching into her equipment bag, Faye pulled out her binoculars and looked over the girl’s shoulder. She couldn’t get a clear view of Joe, Miranda, and the dark-skinned blond stranger, but it didn’t look like any punches had been thrown. She saw no sign that Miranda had taken a swing at anybody with her cast-iron skillet, either. This was an encouraging sign.
“This is about to get more interesting,” Amande said.
Faye thought it was already pretty interesting, so she said, “How so?”
“Two more of my worthless relatives showed up late last night. They were still asleep when I came outside because, well, they’re my relatives and that means they’re worthless. But nobody could sleep through one of my grandmother’s rants, and those two love drama. They’ll be outside as soon as they crawl out of bed. Or off the couch, as the case may be.”
“Men or women?”
“One of each. But if you’re asking because you think they might be some help to Joe…hmm. Aunt Didi makes her way in the world with her pretty face. She’s not going to risk a broken nose. Uncle Tebo? He might help Joe if he thinks the fight would be fun. And he might help Joe if he thinks there’s something in it for him. But he won’t lift a finger just because Joe’s in trouble and needs help.”
Trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t damn one of Amande’s closest relatives, Faye said, “Joe is a stranger to him—”
Amande interrupted her to say, “I wasn’t clear. Uncle Tebo won’t be lifting a finger to help his own mother, not unless he thinks the fight will be fun or unless he thinks there’s something in it for him.”
Faye pulled the girl inside the cabin, just in case the intruder had a gun he hadn’t pulled yet. This thought made her wish that Joe was wearing full body armor. She decided she was willing to take a tiny risk of catching a bullet herself, because she really needed to know he was okay. If she took a few steps through the open door, the binocs gave her a perfect view down the hill between the cabin and the scene unfolding on the houseboat’s deck.
If Faye hadn’t been so worried about her husband, she’d have been fascinated by the body language on display. Joe had stepped into the stranger’s personal space and was looking down at him, silently making the point that, though they were both very large men, Joe had the advantage of height and reach.
Miranda, taking advantage of Joe’s presence, took a step forward as Faye watched. She was still brandishing the skillet. Faye could see her shaking her head slowly back and forth, her lips moving constantly.
Faye gave the stranger credit for guts. He didn’t back down, not even when faced with Joe at his scariest or Miranda at her craziest. He did finally flinch, but not until two more players joined the home team.
Amande’s Aunt Didi didn’t carry a single ounce of extra flesh, yet the sun behind her revealed a remarkably curvy silhouette. Her hair, as dark as Joe’s, was cropped into a wispy gamine shape. As Amande had predicted, she lingered just outside the doorway, far out of reach of fists and frying pans. Somehow, she managed to look like Miranda and be beautiful at the same time.
A small, wiry man pushed past Didi and stepped outside. His profile, stance, bone structure…everything said that he was Miranda’s son. He looked fortyish, but Didi looked much younger. Early twenties, maybe. Amande had said that she and Didi had shared a room until fairly recently.
Faye tried to do the math. “The man’s just your uncle by marriage, like Hebert. Right? And what about the woman?”
“Yeah. Tebo and Hebert were my mother’s older stepbrothers. Uncle Tebo is a lowlife, but not as much of a lowlife as his brother Hebert, since Grandmère still speaks to him now and then. I’ve met him maybe four times. Didi was the only child she and my grandfather had together—so that makes her and my mother half-sisters, because they had the same dad. Is there such a thing as a half-aunt?”
Faye shrugged her shoulders. “I think so. But I don’t think you can go to the drugstore and buy cards that say, “Happy birthday to my favorite half-aunt!”
“My family is such a mess. Even Grandmère isn’t really related to me. She’s my step-grandmother. Anyway, I’m actually blood-kin to Didi, if that’s what you were asking. Other than my mother, and I don’t count her since I don’t even remember when she left, Didi’s the only blood-kin I’ve got. Well, there’s my father, but if anybody knows who he is, they’re not telling me.”
Faye nodded, more concerned about Joe’s safety than Amande’s complicated family tree. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and stared at the screen. It had only been a few minutes since her 911 call.
Amande said, “I wish the sheriff would send somebody quick.”
Faye was thinking the same thing.
***
Joe was slowly figuring out the cast of characters surrounding Miranda, just by listening to them yell at each other. The skinny girl wearing short hair and shorter shorts was named Didi, because he’d just heard Miranda holler, “Shut up, Didi!” The seedy-looking middle-aged man had responded with, “Settle down, Mother,” so he was apparently one of Miranda’s older children. Miranda had then barked, “Shut up, Tebo!’ so now Joe knew his name, too.
The dangerous-looking stranger was the wild card. As best Joe could tell, none of the others knew who he was
.
“Justine left everything to me. All of it. Her share of the boat, her father’s stock, money…whatever you’ve got that belonged to Justine is mine now.” He stuck a sheaf of legal-sized paperwork in Miranda’s face and shook it. “You take care of this boat. You may be living in it now, but it’s mine when you croak.”
“Hardly,” Didi said, taking a step out the door.
She struck a pose, one bare knee bent so that her hip cocked alluringly. It was possible that she didn’t even know she was doing it. Joe sensed that every movement, for Didi, consisted of shifting from one pose to the next.
“Half of this boat is mine, and I’ll get it when Mother dies,” she said, “not to mention half the oil stock Daddy bought while he worked in the oil patch. The other half will go to Justine.”
“You weren’t listening, baby girl,” Tebo said. “This man’s holding something that he says is Justine’s will. A will ain’t all that interesting when the woman that wrote it is still alive. Is she? Is Justine still alive? What have you done with her? Goddamn punk.”
The so-called punk’s head jerked back and he moved to take a step forward, but Joe was standing in front of him. Joe spread his hands in a “we’re all friends here” kind of way, and asked blandly, “What’s your name? And tell us again…what’s your business here?”
“My name is Steve Daigle. I was Justine’s husband until the cancer got her last week. I came to tell her family she was gone, and I came to put my name on what’s rightfully coming to me. Half of this boat is mine. And everything else that was Justine’s is mine, too.” He waved the papers yet again.
Joe looked Steve up and down. Was he Amande’s father?
Maybe. Amande’s dark skin tone certainly stood out in her lily-white family. Joe couldn’t tell exactly what Steve’s ancestry was, but it clearly didn’t all come from northern Europe. Other than his mid-dark skin, he didn’t look much like Amande, but yeah. He could be her father.
Didi’s pose had failed her. She’d pulled the cocked hip into a more normal position and was standing, hunchbacked with her arms hugged across her small breasts. The short-shorts revealed trembling legs. Just when Joe realized that those legs might fail her, they did. Tebo, who was standing right behind her, did nothing. Joe’s hands shot out of their own accord and caught her under the arms. He lowered her gently to the deck.
The stranger could have taken this opportunity to slug Joe while his hands were full of woman, but he didn’t. Joe took this as a good sign.
“Justine’s dead?” Didi melted into tears. Miranda and Tebo stood by, curiously unmoved.
“Was there a funeral?” Didi demanded. “She died last week? You should’ve told us then.”
“That’s what I come to do.”
“No. You come to wave those papers around.” Tebo said, watching Justine’s widower through squinted eyes. When he saw that Steve was sufficiently distracted by the weeping woman on the deck, Tebo took the opportunity to snatch the paperwork right out of his hand.
Tebo looked the first page over, then the second, then the third and last. “The will’s just one page. You brought three copies.”
“You know lawyers. Everything in triplicate.”
“It don’t say anything except that you get everything she owned.” Tebo handed two of the sheets back to Steve, pointedly folding up one copy and sticking it in the pocket of his t-shirt.
“That’s all it needs to say, dumbass…everything goes to me. She was my wife and she left me everything she had.”
Didi, who was working herself into a state of hysteria and who was doing a good job of it, suddenly wailed, “Amande! We’re going to have to tell Amande her mother’s dead!”
Miranda looked down on her daughter with eyes that seemed to have retreated to another world. Tebo just looked uncomfortable.
“Mother?” Steve looked from face to uncommunicative face. “Who’s Amande? And whattaya mean when you say ‘her mother’s dead’?”
Tebo pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and lit one. “What do people usually mean when they say ‘mother’ where you come from? Idiot. Amande is Justine’s daughter. How long did you say you two were married? She never mentioned her own daughter?”
“Eight years. And no. She didn’t. She didn’t mention anybody named Tebo or Didi, neither. Just somebody named Hebert that she said was a wonderful brother and a sweet man.”
“She damn sure didn’t talk to you much, then, did she? Not if she forgot to tell you about a sister, a brother, and a daughter. Anyway, you missed Hebert by about twenty-four hours. He’s dead.”
Steve just looked at Tebo as if he’d never seen anybody that he wanted to pound so bad.
Suddenly, Miranda stirred. If Joe hadn’t been between her and Steve, he believed she would have gone for the intruder’s throat. As it was, he was forced to take the woman by both shoulders to keep her a safe distance from Steve. Joe hated manhandling women, but he did it when necessary. Like now.
“You’ll get this boat when you’re man enough to throw me overboard.”
Joe knew that Miranda was accustomed to being feared by people who believed in her voodoo-practicing mystique. Her hand went to her apron pocket and didn’t come out. Perhaps she had a protective talisman like Dauphine’s in there, but Joe thought this was just as likely to be an offensive move as a defensive one. People who believed that Miranda could curse them would cower at the possibility that her hand would come out of that pocket full of hexing powder or graveyard dirt. Nonbelievers couldn’t care less what a woman half their size did with her hands.
Steve did stop short of throwing her overboard, but Joe doubted he was motivated by fear of a curse. He’d credit the arrival of two sheriff’s deputies for the fact that Miranda remained safe and dry.
Chapter Nine
The responding deputies had handed Steve Daigle over to the detective investigating Hebert’s murder as soon as he arrived. The detective then released Daigle so quickly that Joe figured he’d said nothing to the man beyond, “What were you doing yesterday while a man was being knifed? You were busy not killing anybody? Cool! You’re free to go!”
The detective and deputies hung around for a few minutes to say nice things to Joe about the way he’d defused the situation.
“Thanks to you, Sir, nobody got hurt here today.”
This had felt real good, until Joe realized that Steve was now walking around free, perfectly capable of showing up again and causing trouble for Amande and her family. Just thinking about Steve coming within fifty feet of Amande gave Joe the creeps. The scumbag seemed like the kind of guy who’d really get into pretty sixteen-year-old girls.
Joe was beginning to think that he should have egged Steve on. If he could’ve gotten the man to throw a punch, maybe the deputies would have charged Steve with assault and hauled him off in handcuffs. As long as Steve was punching Joe and not Miranda, it would’ve worked out fine.
But no. Joe’d just had to have a Gandhi moment. In this case, it was possible that peaceful resistance hadn’t been the best way to go.
The good part of all this, though, was that Faye was proud of him. As soon as the deputies were gone, Joe’s irrepressible wife had appeared in the dining room of the houseboat, where Joe sat with Miranda and her older children. His fierce little woman now stood framed in the doorway with Michael balanced on one hip and Amande at her side, and she looked just as confident and strong as she did when she was squatting in an excavation and doing the work she loved.
He wasn’t at all surprised to see her. It must have been hard for her to stand aside during the crisis, and he was more than a little grateful that she’d let him handle this incident alone. Maybe she was mellowing in her old age. Hmm…bad choice of words. Any wise thirty-two-year-old man with a forty-one-year-old wife would do well to erase the word “old”
from his vocabulary, and Joe thought he was pretty wise. Wise enough, anyway.
The sight of Amande troubled him. Just because she’d never known her mother didn’t mean that the news of Justine’s death was going to be easy for her. He wondered if he and Faye should stay, so that they could be there for Amande when she heard the news.
He decided it would be strange for them to intrude on that moment, being as how they’d only known the girl for three days. Turning to Miranda, he asked, “Will you be all right if I leave? Or would you like me to stick around, in case that creep ignores the deputies and comes back?”
Tebo butted in before Miranda could answer. “I hope he does come back. I’ve got two fists and a knife with his name on ‘em. Nobody talks to my mother that way.”
To the best of Joe’s knowledge, Tebo hardly talked to his mother much at all. Also, Joe considered the sentence “I’ve got two fists and a knife with his name on ‘em,” to be in exceedingly poor taste when said in the company of a woman whose son had been knifed to death the day before. It was even worse when that woman was your mother.
Joe dealt Tebo the blow that blustering losers enjoyed least of all. He ignored him.
“Ma’am? Will you be okay if I leave? I’ll just be up the hill in our cabin. If you holler, I’ll hear you.”
Miranda was as experienced in dealing with blustering losers as Joe was. She managed to insult her son with her reply, merely by leaving him out of it. “I’ll be fine, but it’s a comfort to know you’re close by.”
In other words, having Tebo close by was no comfort at all.
With that statement, she picked up a banana off the dining room table and walked out of the room without taking their leave. Joe could see the half-made dolls that hung from the ceiling of her bedroom on their swaying strings. They disturbed him in a way he couldn’t describe. In his mind, he knew they were only woven straw, but their motion had a gallows swing that gave him an electric shock of revulsion.
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