Now Let's Talk of Graves

by Sarah Shankman

  “You think we ought to believe him,” she asked Kitty, “when he says all’s forgiven and forgotten? You don’t think this is his way, dropping the suit, of his covering up something else? His conversion to the Lord notwithstanding?”

  “I don’t know.” Kitty shook her head.

  Sam turned to Ma Elise. “You’ve known him forever. What do you think?”

  “Cole always was a big bag of wind. Actually, men like that, I always felt kind of sorry for them. I’d say we could count him out.”

  “Praise the Lord,” Kitty piped up from her chaise. “I just don’t think I have the strength to deal with that malpractice business.”

  “Which brings me to the question of Church’s finances,” said Sam. And then she recounted all that Cissy had said, trying to soft-pedal the role of Zoe’s debut and Carnival expenses.

  But none of it was lost on Church’s daughter. “Oh, my God,” the young girl moaned, her eyes dark holes in her too-pale face. “My God, my God. I never suspected any of that. I bet he was worried to death.” Then she bit her lip. “And God knows I could have helped him.”

  “What do you mean?” Ma Elise asked.

  “There was never any need for Daddy to worry about money. Just like I’ve been telling you there’s no need for us to pursue the insurance. I said I’d be okay.” She took a deep breath, polling their faces. “Don’t you understand what I’m saying? I’m rolling in cash. Don’t you know anything about drug dealers?”

  Sam nodded, Go on.

  “Especially drug dealers with investment portfolios who take great pleasure, as I do, in watching the numbers grow. Totting up all those zeroes.”

  “And what are the numbers, darling?” Ma Elise asked the question as if she were inquiring what Zoe would like for supper.

  “About six million. Give or take a couple hundred thou each day depending on the market.”

  “Sweet baby Jesus,” said Ida.

  “Holy shit,” said Kitty. “Church would have been awfully proud of you.”

  “Do you really think so?” Zoe’s grin was unnerving. Sam had seen corpses with prettier rictus. “Think he would have been pleased knowing how his little girl made her fortune?”

  Ma Elise moved over closer to Zoe on the sofa, put her thin old arms around her, gave her a big hug. “Shhh,” she whispered. “Hush.”

  Sam shot Ma Elise a questioning look. Should she stop the questions here for a bit? The old lady snuggled Zoe closer and nodded to Sam to go on.

  G.T. beat her to it. “The cops done anything more tracing that Buick?”

  “You mean Blackstone and Shea, our brave men in blue?” Sam shrugged. “I checked this morning. They’re both out of town. I figure either they’ve hit the jackpot, lying low with their info till they negotiate with the highest bidder, or they’ve gone fishing.”

  “Looks of them, I’d say the latter,” said G.T. “How ’bout you?”

  “I don’t think they have zip,” Sam concurred. Then, “Now, G.T., did you know your friend Lavert Washington is working this case?”

  “Whose friend?”

  “Too quick, girl,” her great-grandmother snapped. “I saw that big old boy yesterday over to Kush’s. Your name came up, he like to fainted. You know, I think he might be okay, even though his mama been talking trash about us for years. He’s certainly a gentleman. Gave us a ride home, didn’t he, Ma Elise?”

  “He sure did.”

  “He didn’t tell me that,” said G.T.

  “Ah-ha!” said Ida. “Tell you when?”

  “I called him yesterday to tell him I saw that little white boy, the one who jumped out of my ambulance that time coming from the airport. Saw him when I was coming to pick you all up.”

  “Why’s Lavert care?” asked Ida.

  G.T. flushed. “He seemed to want to help me find him.”

  “Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

  “Hush with your uh-huhing, old woman.”

  “Uh-huh. Smoke there’s fire’s all I know.”

  Sam couldn’t wait to tell G.T. “Do you know who that is?”

  “Who?”

  “That boy from the airport?”

  “Who?”

  “Billy Jack Joyner.”

  “What?” Zoe sat up.

  “That’s right,” Sam turned to her. “Your Billy Jack, last name Joyner, the same person G.T.’s been looking for—the one who jumped out of her ambulance, left her with a handful of paperwork.”

  “What on earth?” Zoe said.

  “What do you mean, her Billy Jack Joyner?” Kitty asked.

  “My supplier,” said Zoe. “Where I got my coke.”

  “Oh.” Kitty slumped back.

  “And you know what?” Sam continued. “Harry and I discovered that your dad and Billy Jack had a drink together in the Pelican back several months ago.”

  “What?” Zoe cried. “Daddy and Billy Jack? I can’t believe that.”

  Sam described the scenario as told to her by Calvin, the Pelican’s barkeep, of Church and Billy Jack in the Pelican. “Doesn’t it sound like that night you were telling me about? The night you said Church was mugged?”

  “It does. But it doesn’t make any sense. Why would he go for a drink with somebody who’d attacked him? And why on earth would Billy Jack mug him in the first place? And then why would Daddy come home and not mention that part?”

  They all shook their heads.

  “It must have been something else. Somebody else,” said Kitty. “That doesn’t sound like Church.”

  “Not even at his drunkest?” Sam asked, thinking of some stunts she’d pulled on the booze she wished she didn’t remember.

  “I can’t imagine,” said Ma Elise.

  “Who told you all this anyway? Where’d you hear this story?” asked Ida. “And what does it mean?”

  “What I want to know is how Maynard Dupree fits into all this? Did he have something to do with Billy Jack mugging Church?” Sam looked at them all in turn as if any or all of them had the answers.

  “What do you mean, Maynard Dupree? What on earth are you talking about?” asked Ma Elise.

  So then Sam told the story once again of Harry and Chéri and Maynard and Jimbo in the Pelican the night before Mardi Gras.

  “Oh, Lord,” said Ma Elise with a look on her face like she tasted something bad. “Maynard Dupree.”

  “Yes,” said Sam, turning to her. “Maynard Dupree. You ladies weren’t very helpful, you know, holding out about Maynard.”

  Kitty and Ma Elise exchanged a look. Then Ma Elise’s eyes slid over to Ida’s.

  “Don’t look at me,” the old woman snapped. “I told you years ago you’re doing the wrong thing there. I told you and I told you and you wouldn’t listen.”

  “What?” Zoe asked. Zoe searched all their faces. “What? What?”

  “Now,” Ida said, her black eyes darting at Ma Elise, “you gonna tell her now?”

  “What?” Zoe again.

  “Oh, darlin’,” said Ma Elise. “My little darlin’ girl.”

  And then it all came tumbling out, the sad and sordid tale of Church and Maynard and their rivalry over Madeline, how they’d both used her, why she’d run away. Ma Elise and Kitty and Ida told the story together, each taking turns. “No!” Zoe cried again and again. “No! No! No!”

  “But they both loved you so,” said Ma Elise. “Both your mama and your daddy. Everything else was just—”

  “Just their own madness,” Kitty offered. “Your daddy’s and Maynard Dupree’s. Fueled by Maynard’s awful daddy and our mother and father’s boozing—and well, it goes on and on, doesn’t it, our obsessiveness with history and family, our skeletons, our—”

  “But it was my family,” cried Zoe. “My life.”

  “And it still is,” Sam said softly.

  “What do you mean?” Zoe, who’d leapt to her feet, whirled, her curls wild and loose about her head. “They’re both gone.”

  “Kitty and Ma Elise are still here. And Ida. And your mother wan
ts to come back. Not here”—Sam gestured around the room—“but to you. To see you. To get to know you.”

  “She does, does she! Oh, really? How nice for her!” Zoe’s arms flailed back and forth, and her mouth worked. She was on the edge of hysteria. “She wants to come back and see what she can pick from my daddy’s bones?”

  “Zoe!” Kitty cried, grabbing for but missing Zoe’s arm as the girl wheeled past.

  “Leave me alone. You all leave me alone! I hate you—” Zoe screamed and raced from the room.

  Ma Elise rose to her full height. “I’ll go see to her.”

  “Ma Elise—” Kitty started.

  “No. Sit down. It was my decision to keep these secrets all these years. And I see now that probably I was wrong. So I’ll take the responsibility for setting it to rights, as much as I can. Starting this minute.” And she followed in Zoe’s footsteps, out and up the stairs.

  “Oh, my God.” Kitty collapsed back into her chaise. She closed her eyes. “Aren’t we Lees just bad Tennessee Williams? Lord, Lord, Lord.”

  G.T. shook her head. “Yep. Well, we’re all something, aren’t we? Families—”

  Ida nodded. “I’m not going to say I told her so.”

  “But you did tell her. And you told me,” Kitty said. “I don’t know why we didn’t listen to you, why we didn’t know there’d be hell to pay one way or the other. Poor Zoe. Oh, God, we’ve made such a mess of Zoe.”

  “Whole family’s stubborn,” said Ida. “Always has been. Streaks like that go in families.” She paused, stared off at nothing they could see. “It does make you wonder, don’t it, what that Billy Jack got from his mama.”

  “What do you mean?” Sam asked. “His mama?”

  “It gives you pause, don’t it?”

  “What, Maw Maw?” asked G.T. “What you talking about?”

  “Billy Jack’s mama.”

  “Who is Billy Jack’s mama? What you saying?”

  “Joyner. Billy Jack Joyner?”

  “Yes, Maw Maw.”

  “Well, nobody ever told me that scrawny white boy you been talking about’s name before.”

  “And now that they have?” G.T. was barely holding her impatience with her great-grandmother under control. “So what? So what about his mama?”

  “Well, don’t it make you wonder how a sweet angel like that could raise such a troubled boy?”

  “Who?” G.T. and Sam and Kitty chorused.

  “Sister Nadine. Sister Nadine Joyner. Now that you told me who Billy Jack is, don’t you see the family resemblance? That’s got to be her son. I’d bet money on it.”

  “Sister Nadine Joyner?” Sam cried. Her last name had never been mentioned before. And Sam had never asked.

  She leaned her forehead against her fists, banging her head softly.

  Billy Jack—Zoe’s supplier, who, it looked like, had mugged Church and then gone with him for a drink at the Pelican, who’d put on that show at the airport, who’d done God knows what else—was Sister Nadine’s son? Sister Nadine, who was Church’s lover. Probably Maynard Dupree’s, too, if things were running true to form. Sure. Oh yeah. Uh-huh. Why not? Throw one more stone in the soup, one more mess of shrimp in the gumbo pot. It was too bad she didn’t still drink. Disaster like this just cried out for a snort.

  Nope, nope, she’d learned to look at it the other way. There was nothing so bad that a drink wouldn’t make it worse. And this was bad.

  Give her your basic garden-variety homicide any day. She still didn’t even know whether Church had been killed with malice or if this was your basic hit-and-run.

  This was terrible.

  This was nuts.

  Now, from across the room, she felt G.T.’s gaze on her and she looked up. G.T.’s golden eyes were ablaze, trained on hers as if she were willing Sam to see what she saw. And she was saying, “’Member how short I said that guy was driving the Buick that night, Sam? How he could barely see over the wheel? You know, that Billy Jack Joyner is an awful tiny little dude.”

  Thirty-Seven

  “I STILL THINK their oyster po’boys are far superior,” said Marietta.

  “And that’s why this is a free country.” Chéri was taking a big bite out of her own French loaf loaded with shrimp.

  They were sitting at the bar in D.J.’s, one of two or three big brawling family seafood places in Bucktown, right out on the south edge of the lake.

  “Sometimes I think you could eat shrimp six times a day,” said Marietta.

  “Well, you know, sugah, you think that, and you’d be right on the money.” Chéri ticked items off on her long fingers tipped with a bright orange manicure. “Yesterday I had Manale’s shrimp barbecued, for dinner I was at the Bon Ton had the remoulade, lunch today I had me a big shrimp salad I made myself to my house.”

  “Erasers.”

  “I beg your pardon.” Chéri’s eyes got real big though she knew exactly what Marietta was talking about. They’d had this conversation more than once.

  “Shrimp these days taste like rubber erasers. They’ve gone and bred the flavor right out of ’em,” Marietta said. “And you’re telling me oysters are different.”

  “I am.”

  “Honey, you ain’t got a drop of Cajun blood in you. What do you know?”

  “I know I’m about to be one of the happiest widows in the state of Louisiana. That’s what I know.”

  “Shhhhhh. What are you—”

  “Oh, darlin’”—Marietta winking at the big man to her left who was working on his sixth Dixie, but talking to Chéri—“don’t you even know when I’m joking?”

  Suddenly Chéri perked up. “Would you look at that?” she said, pointing past Marietta’s shoulder.

  “What?”

  “Is that Paul?” Pointing at a hugely fat man getting up from a table covered with what looked like the wreckage from a Tulane football banquet.

  “Prudhomme? Honey, what would he be doing eating somebody else’s cooking? I swear to God, I think you’ve lost your senses. Besides, that man idn’t big enough to be Paul. And where’s his cane?”

  “In the movie,” said the tattooed man around a gargle of Dixie.

  “What?” Chéri batted her eyes.

  “He played Paul in the movie.”

  “What movie?” Now Chéri gave him a little cleavage. She couldn’t help herself, would flirt with anything that was warm and could crawl.

  “The Big Easy. You see that movie?”

  “That’s right!” said Marietta with a snap of her fingers. Then waggling them in Chéri’s face. “That’s the man played the chef in Tipitina’s. Looks like Paul. But anybody could see it ain’t Paul.”

  “Well, fuck me very much,” said Chéri, who didn’t like to be wrong.

  “Well, ma’am, I’d be happy—” grinned the tattooed man with the Dixie.

  “Not you, honey.” Chéri took back her cleavage, giving him her shoulder instead, then slid her eyes to the TV that was always on up behind the bar. “And who you think that looks like, sugah, you so smart?”

  “Who?” Marietta was trying to figure out if she was mad at Chéri or not, flirting with that old boy when she ought to be flirting with her.

  “You think that man talking on the TV looks like the man you married to? Your about-to-be-dearly-departed Maynard?”

  “Lord, would you look at that!”

  Sure enough, there on a cable station was Sister Nadine in a long silver robe, her blond hair damp and streaming down around her shoulders, shaking that tambourine, singing and shouting those songs. And there beside her, red-faced and sweating through last year’s seersucker suit, was Maynard.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Maynard was saying, his eyes sliding back and forth like he wasn’t quite sure which camera was rolling, but going on ahead anyway with his volume turned full up, “you’re gonna see the show of the century you come out to Lake Shore Park tomorrow at one P.M. sharp.”

  Marietta stared at Chéri. Her lover stared back. The air between the
m was a blaze of blue. Then Chéri waved her orange fingertips in an easterly direction.

  “Right over there, May-retta,” she said. And she was right. Lake Shore was about a half mile away.

  “Shhhhhhh.”

  MAYNARD: “Now, I know you’ve seen Mardi Gras. And you’ve seen the Superdome. And lots of you have been to New York and farther. Lots of you’ve seen the wonders of the world.”

  CHÉRI: “And some of you have seen England, France, and little girls’ underpants.”

  Marietta slapped her on the arm. “Would you hush!”

  “But you ain’t seen nothing till you have seen Jimbo King and his Fabulous Flying Lawn Chair. Brought to you by Dupree Productions.”

  “The what?” said both women close up in each other’s faces.

  Then Marietta started laughing.

  “Hush. Now you hush,” said Chéri.

  But Marietta couldn’t.

  “What you are going to see if you come, and I hope you all do come out to Lake Shore tomorrow, is something you’ve never seen before. The mayor’s going to be there. The governor’s gonna be there. Representative David Duke is going to be there.”

  “Owwww. Owwww,” Marietta howled. “Is he going to wear his designer bedsheets?”

  “Quiet down, lady,” said the man who was now intrigued by Nadine and Maynard. “George, cut up the volume on that thing.”

  “There is no telling who else might fly in for the event from Washington.” Maynard giving it the big wink, lowering his voice to his idea of real sexy.

  Marietta howled. “Would you listen to that? Chéri, honey, I think he’s been watching too much Jimmy Swaggart.” Noticing at the same time how easy it was for a fat boy like Maynard, get a little worry, little bad times on him, look all raggedy-assed.

  “Lady! Would you hush!” The tattooed man was definitely pushed.

  “You all really ought to come.” Sister Nadine was throwing in her two cents now. “Sister Nadine’s gonna be there. It’s gonna be something. Day before Easter, man rising into the sky on a blast of hot air.”

  “You can say that again,” cried Marietta. “Jesus Christ and Jimbo King. Can you believe it, Chéri?”

  “Gonna fly out over the lake, over the Gulf, why, once he gets over the Gulf Stream, there’s no telling where this boy’s gonna stop.” Maynard was holding one arm up in the air toward the heavens.