Putty in Her Hands

by Lynn Shurr

  He didn’t miss that she’d used the word home, one he had avoided. No sex last night, though Remy suspected they both wanted it, but at the moment, they negotiated a rocky stretch of road in their relationship, one that had to be traveled cautiously. To have her snuggled deceptively soft and tame as a kitten against his backside would do for now, not for too long. To see Julia sipping coffee at his table in the morning and sharing a plate of eggs and toast with her seemed a privilege since she’d stormed out on him two days ago. No more taking Jules for granted, he promised himself.

  The two them were early on the work site. Remy inspected the kitchen annex, good solid framing, the smooth concrete floor pierced by the conduits for plumbing the sinks, dishwasher, icemaker, prep area. Once the concrete floor cured, they’d move to wiring and insulation, set in place the metal lath to hold the keys of the plaster walls, raise the brick exterior and stucco it over to blend seamlessly with the Queen under its own slate roof. Still a way to go, but coming along.

  Afterward, he’d gone to the upper floors and found more shoddy carpentry work. This time Remy didn’t chew out the foreman. He called his sub-contractor and reamed his ass, handed the phone to the foreman who had the same done to him by his boss.

  “Yes, sir. Yes, the guy will be gone by the end of the day.” The foreman mopped his face with a bandana hanging loose around his bull neck, ready to soak up the sweat of the day. “Better to fire a person late in the shift. Not as much upheaval then. He can just walk out like nothing happened and save his dignity. Meanwhile, I’ll have him fix this mess he made. Claimed he’d been to trade school, and gave a decent demonstration, but it sure doesn’t show now.”

  “Next time, check the references.” Remy left him to it. Micromanaging seldom went down well with construction crews who often considered architects to be suits or sissies. He had an appointment with the electrician, delayed because of the trip to New Orleans. He looked in on the ballroom where Todd and Julia plus the uncles were setting up the rolling scaffold again, but didn’t linger. Remy returned at the lunch break where he convinced Julia if they ate leftover pasta salad, they’d have time for afternoon delight as a dessert. Despite a bad start, the day improved hourly.

  As the time came to knock off in the heat of the afternoon, Remy sought the foreman again. “Is he gone?”

  “Yeah, I gave him the heave-ho a half hour ago.”

  “Did you make sure he left the property?”

  “He was walking toward the road last time I checked.”

  “Pissed off?”

  “Not happy for sure, but I don’t think he’ll make trouble.”

  Remy had to accept that. With Sam and Sal and even Todd living at the site, not likely the man would come back in the night to take revenge on the project. As usual, Jules was among the last to leave the building. He waited for her by the kitchen annex while her men split off for the trailer. With no one else around, Remy pressed a quick kiss onto lips tasting of the salt sweat of the day and ran his fingers through the mass of her damp dark hair, flattened from being under the hardhat dangling from her fingers. “Shower together?” he asked.

  “You bet. You’d think I’d be too dehydrated to pee, but I’ve been up on the scaffold for hours. We’re running new channel iron to stabilize the existing coffers and reinforcing the ties before we start hanging the new units. I didn’t want to climb down in the middle of all that. Let me use my personal Port-O-Let before we leave. No need to get it for me, but I admit I enjoy having it all to myself.”

  Remy had learned well enough not to comment she always used her private john at the end of each work day before they left the site and once the other workers had gone. Still smiling his way, Julia opened the door stenciled with Ladies and stepped inside the dim interior. She slammed it shut with such force, the structure rattled. The unit rocked as elbows rammed against the molded plastic walls and feet kicked at the entry trying to escape. A snake inside, Remy thought at first, gauging the distance to his shotgun mounted in the truck against the number of steps to the portable outhouse. He ran toward Julia’s struggle. Get her out first. Murder a snake later.

  When still feet away, the slide lock popped, and Julia stumbled forward, her body moving, struggling, but her neck in the grasp of the fired carpenter who held a knife to her throat. He stepped down and kneed her in the back. “Stay still if you want to live a few seconds longer, bitch.”

  Not a snake, a snake in the grass, NuNu had changed his appearance enough to fool Remy from a distance, but not up close. He’d seen the narrow-shouldered, hunched form, head bowed before the foreman tearing into him, but no dirty blond ponytail hung down that back. Sideburns of dark brown showed below the rim of the hardhat, and a sparse dark mustache crawled along his upper lip. The guy wore shades indoors, a sign of drug use, Remy believed, which explained the erratic carpentry. Now the shades were off, the pale blue eyes dilated, wild, and crazy. Sweat from the time NuNu spent hiding in the plastic sauna of the toilet leached the dye from his lip hair and sideburns and sent it streaking down his pale face in dirty rivulets.

  “Stay still, Remy. I got your woman, and she’s gonna pay for your mistakes.” NuNu jerked Julia’s head higher with the arm under her jaw and exposed more of the graceful, tanned column of her neck. “Y’all think you’re so smart with your college degrees. I been here weeks messing with the framing, wasting your time and money, and you never caught on. Hoped the trash fire would spread to the hotel, but it never did. If Slick hadn’t held me back when we give you that beating, I’d a kicked your pretty white teeth up into your brain and left you dead. But, the family turned its back on me, not you.”

  For doing crystal, not his other transgressions, a fact Remy left unsaid. NuNu probably had himself hopped up on the drug right now, making him paranoid and violent. Remy made an offer he hoped the man could not refuse. “Julia has no part in this. Come on, cousin. I’ll take you on unarmed.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw the reinforcements stumble from the motorhome, Sal with a pistol, Sam holding the two-by-four he used as footrest, and Todd, a cell phone pressed to his ear. So did NuNu.

  “Drop that shit, all y’all.” He pricked Julia’s neck to make his point. The droplet ran down her neck and left a small purple stain on her blue Regal Restorations shirt. They did as he told them, but Remy moved a foot forward before NuNu’s eyes swiveled back to his. “Stay put! She has to pay for coming here and stirring up the people against the old man’s project. With her gone, this one is dead in the water—like Julia’s gonna be.”

  “Not so. I went out to the barn after the trash fire to make peace. Nonc is buying into the Queen, paying for the bar and restaurant. We’re going to build Black Diamonds on some property he owns around the Indian mounds. Our quarrel is over. Now, let Julia go.”

  “It’s not over for me. All my life you treated me like dog shit you had to wipe off your boots. Always had a fancy car and the prettiest girls like this one, but I got her now.” NuNu pricked Julia again for the sheer pleasure it seemed to give him. She didn’t flinch. In fact, her hand inched toward the tool belt she’d been in too much of a hurry to shed before entering the Ladies Port-O-Let.

  Remy had to keep NuNu talking and be ready when Julia made her move. “You were a little kid I hardly noticed, and I wanted to be the coolest guy in town at seventeen. I didn’t hang out with children. It wasn’t personal.”

  “I had to listen to my own daddy saying he wished he had a son like you, so sharp, so cool. He didn’t run your Mustang off the road. I did. But, it didn’t do me no good. Just wasted a nice ride. You got luck, Remy, and I got none.”

  “What? You couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen.” Keep him talking. Keep him talking.

  “You think it takes any skill to drive an automatic? Daddy let me drive his car around on the cane roads from the time I could reach the pedals. One night, I took it out by myself, tracked you down, and scared you into that ditch. Not a scratch on my daddy’s car. Now that takes sk
ill.”

  “It does. You can cook and do carpentry work too. Those are good skills to have.”

  “Ha! You went off to get a fine education, and I went to jail trying to be cool like you, boosting hot cars to get the girls. Made some great money with a chop shop and showed the ladies at good time until I got busted. Seventeen, and they tried me as an adult. I didn’t lose my front teeth in a barroom brawl like I told the old man. I lost ’em in prison. Skinny guys like me, they make you their bitch.”

  As if she’d heard enough of that word, Julia palmed the crack cutter from its holder and drove the blade—so sharp it could cut through plaster—into NuNu’s thigh. His knife hand jerked across her throat. She fell at his feet as his lock on her neck released.

  Remy charged forward, shouting, “Julia!”, unable to aid her because NuNu raised the hunting knife, heavy and sharp enough to skin a six-point buck, with the intent to drive it into her chest. He did the flying kick he’d wanted to use when this criminal helped beat him unconscious. Jeans were not designed for motion like the karate gi, nor were boots for great purchase on the ground. Remy hit NuNu’s elbow, not his knife hand, maybe for the best. The knife dropped into the dirt on Julia’s far side. His opponent scrambled to make a grab for the weapon with his left hand and got a clumsy grip on the handle. Remy landed another kick under NuNu’s jaw that should have stunned him or possibly snapped his neck, which wouldn’t have been a shame, but the man seemed to feel no pain. NuNu shook his head, still looming over Julia in a fighter’s crouch like a hungry wolf guarding his prey.

  A bullet whizzed past the two of them and buried itself in the front of the outhouse. Todd yammered on his phone, an odd distraction, while Sammy advanced with his two-by-four trying to find an opening. Remy wanted to give him one, but with NuNu backed against the Port-O-Let and still too close to Julia, he didn’t dare give him any room to move. If necessary, he’d block any attack on her with his own body—if she still lived. Remy’s eyes flickered toward her oozing neck, not spurting, and that was good, but he noticed something else, her hand moving again toward her tool belt where one of her sharply pointed steel finishing trowels hung. He took the hint and whipped it out of its holder. Did Julia smile?

  Sensation returning to his elbow, NuNu flipped the knife to his right hand and smirked. “You gonna take on a hunting knife with a trowel? I guess you ain’t that smart after all.” He feinted at Remy over Julia’s still form, found himself blocked by the triangular piece of steel, and cursed. “She-it.”

  Remy prayed the trowel could stand up to the heavy tempered blade, at least long enough for Sal to get a good bead on NuNu. Their arms were locked in the struggle when Julia rolled backward and grabbed the leg of the man who had tried to murder her. He pitched against the Port-O-Let. Two-handed, Remy drove the point of the trowel deep into NuNu’s chest. Surprise registered in the wild blue eyes before they went blank. His last word, “Bitch.”

  Julia pulled herself from under the fallen body and rested on her elbows. “Now, I’m tired of people calling me a bitch.”

  “I’ll remember that always.” Remy knelt beside her, taking her into his embrace. “Promise you won’t die in my arms.”

  “The cut didn’t go deep. I thought I’d better play dead.”

  “That’s our Jules,” Sal said, as proud of his niece as if she’d just completed another plaster masterpiece. “Want me to put a bullet into that little shit’s head just to make sure?”

  “No, I think we are done with NuNu for good this time. Leave something for the undertakers.”

  Todd came running with the first aid kit. “Let me put pressure on your wound until the ambulance arrives. Should be here any minute along with the cops.”

  “It’s nothing, I tell you. Just help me up.”

  “Stay down!” all three men shouted and kept her there with Todd holding a gauze pad against her neck, Remy grasping her hand, and the uncles looking as if they’d tackle her if she moved. The medics arrived, put Julia a gurney, and rushed her to the local clinic. The doctor used fourteen stiches to close the gash, assured her the scar would fade, and sent her back to the Black Box with a bottle of painkillers she promptly threw away.

  “You are one tough woman, Julia Rossi,” Remy said. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “Yes, run a deep, hot bubble bath and join me there.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Despite the suffocating summer heat, Remy dressed in a lightweight pale gray suit and knotted a blue tie the same shade as a Regal Restorations shirt around his neck. Most of the Broussards attending NuNu’s funeral would be far more casually dressed, but he intended to show his respect for the family if not the person lying in the casket. Not likely they’d attack him at Moity’s low-end funeral home selected for the burial rather than ponying up for classy Duchamp’s, even if Blackie Tauzin’s brother-in-law who owned the place offered them a good discount.

  Julia walked him to the door of the Black Box. “I’d be willing to go with you.” She wore a necklace of dark stitches around her throat.

  “No, it’s a family matter.”

  “Okay.” She backed off. Both were learning their boundaries. “I realize I’m not a family member—yet.” That and a farewell kiss filled him with optimism and hope for their future.

  The coroner found the trowel embedded in NuNu’s chest and enough drugs in his system to explain the reason for his rage. Easy to ascertain the cause of death as a severed artery. After a week, Malcolm Moity drove his circa 1960s hearse to the morgue and picked up the body for embalming. The sheriff interviewed all the witnesses, declared the incident self-defense, and declined to press any charges. A few said the Broussards could get away with murder—most that NuNu had been in trouble since the day he came into the world and went out the same way. The talk would die down eventually, and be raked up from time to time as the occasion demanded.

  The truck barely cooled off by the time he parked in Moity’s gravel lot by the railroad track. Remy stopped in the restroom before entering the parlor assigned to Nolan Broussard. Not wanting his family to think it was flop sweat, he wiped the perspiration from his face and made sure his hands were dry before walking on the worn runner toward NuNu’s coffin. Chilly as the grave inside the mortuary.

  Dozens of dark, nearly black Broussard eyes turned his way when he entered and tracked him to the front of the room. Not a chair stood empty, but not a tear in any of those eyes. Flower arrangements sat on either end of the casket, nowhere else in the room. He stood behind two of NuNu’s pals. One dropped a roach of marijuana, still in its clip, by the pale hands crossed at the waist. The other placed a six-pack of beer at the shiny shoes of the corpse who, judging by the way it hung on the thin body, wore a suit that probably belonged to someone else. The cosmetologist had washed away the dye job and returned the hair to dirty blond. The two druggies slinked past the family in the first row and left the hall.

  When Remy’s turn came, he bowed his head and committed NuNu to hell in his mind, but crossed himself as he’d been taught since childhood. He guessed he’d have to confess that someday, being unable to forgive. He turned to face Old Broussard sitting in his chair brought from the Barn and the long row of people beside him consisting of Slick, a few of his brothers, and a couple of his older sons—the pallbearer brigade. All of them wore their black Barn attire while the old man had donned his Sunday best.

  Nonc took his offered hand without uttering a word and jerked his head toward Slick sitting beside him. The old man held up an arm that brought Mal Moity running on his stubby legs, his pot-belly shaking like newly unmolded aspic beneath his white shirt and black suit. “Get dat crap out da coffin. It’s disrespectful.” Mal reached into the casket and removed the beer and roach, carrying off the offerings.

  Shoulders back, jaw firm, Remy stood before Slick. “I regret I had to kill your son. He tried to murder Julia.” To say he was truly sorry would have been a lie, though he would rather have sent NuNu to prison t
han the grave. Remy held out his hand to NuNu’s father. They shook. The tension leaked from the frigid, floral-scented air of the funeral home.

  “Come talk wit’ me.” Slick rose and led the way outside, offered Remy a cigarette, got a refusal, and lit one for himself. “Not so sure he was my son. His mama was one of our whores. Leila she called herself. We caught her shooting up and were ready to toss her out when she claimed to be carrying my child. I was sixteen. Scared the crap out of me. No telling who the father really was, but yeah, it could have been mine. I never could resist a big-haired, bosomy blonde. So we kept her on. Had to detox both of them when the kid was born. He didn’t look nuttin’ like me. Put the baby in day care and in the hands of my mama at night. I guess Leila thought the family would set her up somewhere nice. When that didn’t happen, she took off with one of her johns, left the baby behind.”

  “You never did a blood test?”

  Slick took a deep drag on his cigarette. “No point after she abandoned the kid. Ma had a heavy hand with children, and he cried all the time. Never was right in the head. After a while, the day cares wouldn’t take him neither. Too much trouble. He got passed around the family, didn’t last too long in any home. Good thing we have a lot of relatives. Anyhow, we tried to raise him, and he ends up in jail before he finishes high school. The old man and me thought working at the Barn after he got out might settle him. It didn’t. So, he’ll be buried under a headstone calling him Nolan Broussard and his dates. That’s all. Beloved by nobody and regretted by none.”

  What a terrible epitaph for anyone. Remy felt a twinge of pity for the child. He might have been nicer to the kid if he hadn’t been a typical self-involved teen. As for the man NuNu became, no sympathy there. He could have stayed clean, followed orders, and remained safely under the dark wings of the Broussard family for the rest of his life, but wasn’t capable of that.

  “Just wanted you to know the whole story, Remy. No one is coming after you about this. Hell, you’re one of our success stories. NuNu was a screw-up.”