"Were you able to help him find his sister?"

"I would've been happy to, but I just couldn't help him. He became very abusive. Lloyd like to threw a fit." She nodded her head toward Lloyd, as if one of Lloyd's fits was quite a spectacle. Lloyd, sitting in a heavy chair that had been covered with a bedspread, had fallen asleep as we talked. She said, "You're trying to find some kind of organ donor, aren't you?"

"Yes, ma'am. A marrow donor."

She shook her head. "That is so sad."

"Mrs. Jorgenson, this guy who was here, was his name Jeffrey?"

She had more of the coffee, thinking. "Well, maybe. He had red hair, all piled up on his head and oily." She made a sour face. "I remember that." "Ah." "I've never been comfortable with a red-haired person.

People say the d.a.m.nedest things, don't they?

I left Charleen Jorgenson's home at twenty-five minutes after four that afternoon and stopped at a bait and tackle shop on the road leading back to town. They had a pay phone on the wall under a huge sign that said LIVE WORMS. I tried calling Mrs. C. Thomas Berteaux to ask if Jeffrey's hair had been red, but I got no answer. Probably out. I tried Virginia LaMert again, but also got no answer. Virginia LaMert was the last name on my list, and if she didn't come through it was drawing-board time. I called Information and asked them if they had a listing for Martha Guidry. They did. I dialed Martha Guidry's number and, as I listened to her phone ring, the same white Mustang I'd seen at the Pig Stand turned into the parking lot and disappeared behind the bait shop.

Martha Guidry answered on the sixth ring. "h.e.l.lo?"

I identified myself and told her that Mrs. C. Thomas Berteaux had suggested I call. I said that I was trying to find someone who was born in the area thirty-six years ago, and I asked if I might pay a visit. She said that would be fine. She told me her address and gave me directions and said that, as old as she was, if I didn't hurry she might be dead before I arrived. I was going to like Martha Guidry just fine.

I hung up and stood at the phone, waiting. A blue Ford pickup pulled in and a young guy with a scraggly beard went into the bait shop. An older man came out of the shop with a brown bag and got into a Chevy Caprice. The young guy came out with a Budweiser Tall Boy and hopped back into his truck. The Mustang didn't return.

I climbed back into my car and followed the directions toward Martha Guidry's house. Maybe this business with the Mustang was my imagination, like the heat.

I had gone maybe three-quarters of a mile when the Mustang swung around a Kleinpeter Dairy milk truck and eased in behind me. He came up so close that I could see the driver in my rearview mirror. He had a scoop-cut pompadour maybe six inches high and long nasty sideburns carved down into points so sharp you could cut yourself.

And he had red hair.

Chapter 5.

T he guy in the Mustang wouldn't let anyone get between us, as if he wanted to follow me and thought he had to stay close to do it. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled, and he drove with his left hand hanging down along the door. One of those. I turned off the state road and headed back toward town, and the Mustang turned with me. I pulled into an Exxon station and topped off my tank and asked a kid in a grease-stained uniform about the local ba.s.s fishing. The Mustang drove past while the kid was telling me, but a couple minutes later it pulled up to a stop sign a block away and sat waiting. Following me, all right.

I took it easy up through town, letting him follow, and twice managed to stop for traffic lights. Each time I stopped he eased up behind me, and each time he made a big deal out of staring off to the side. The ostrich technique. If I don't see you, you can't see me. I had to smile at this guy. He was something. At a four-way stop a kid in a red Isuzu pickup tried to turn in behind me, and the guy in the Mustang jumped the stop sign and blew his horn, cutting him off. Maybe he thought I wouldn't notice.

A set of railroad tracks ran through the center of town. The tracks were prominent and the road was old, so everybody was slowing to ease their cars across the tracks. On the other side of the tracks there were several businesses and a couple of cross streets and, still further down, a little bridge where the road crossed the bayou. Cars were waiting at most of the cross streets, people getting off work.

I eased the Taurus across the tracks, then punched it, putting enough distance between me and the Mustang for a woman in a light blue Acura to get between us. The Mustang came up to her fast, swerving into the oncoming lane, but there was too much traffic for him to pa.s.s. I swung to the right onto the shoulder, floored it past six or seven cars, then jerked it back into the traffic lane and then right again around a bread truck and into a Dairy Queen parking lot. He wouldn't have been able to see me turn past the bread truck. I pushed it around the back of the Dairy Queen, threw it into park, then jumped out and ran up the side past a couple of kids sucking malts in a '69 VW Bug. The Mustang was still behind the woman in the Acura, blowing his horn and swerving from side to side, until finally she couldn't take it anymore and pulled to the side. He horsed it past her, giving the finger and screaming that she should get her head out her b.u.t.t, and then he blasted away up the shoulder, spraying gravel and dust and little bits of oyster sh.e.l.l. I wrote down his license number, went back to my car, and turned again toward Martha Guidry's. I checked the rearview mirror from time to time, but the Mustang didn't reappear. You had to shake your head.

I drove up the center of Evangeline Parish through dense stands of hardwood trees and sweet potato fields, pa.s.sing small frame houses set near the road, many with rusted cars and large propane gas tanks and chickens in their yards. Martha Guidry lived in such a house across the street from a strawberry stand. She was a small bony woman with skin like rumpled silk and cataract gla.s.ses that made her eyes look huge and protruding. She was wearing a thin housedress and socks and house slippers, and when she answered the door she was carrying a large, economy-sized can of Raid Ant Roach Killer. She squinted out the thick gla.s.ses. "You that Mr. Cole?"

"Yes, ma'am. I appreciate your seeing me."

She pushed open the screen door and told me to come in quick. She said if you don't come in quick all kinds of G.o.dd.a.m.ned bugs come in with you. As soon as I was in she fogged the air around the door with the Raid. "That'll get the little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!"

I moved across the room to get away from the cloud of Raid. "I don't think you're supposed to breathe that stuff, Ms. Guidry."

She waved her hand. "Oh, h.e.l.l, I been breathin' it for years. You want a Pepsi-Cola?"

"No, ma'am. Thank you."

She waved the Raid at the couch. "You just sit right there. It won't take a moment." I guess she was going to give me the Pepsi anyway. When she was in the kitchen there was a sharp slap and she said, "Gotcha, you sonofab.i.t.c.h!" The thing about this job is that you meet such interesting people.

She came back with two plastic tumblers and a single can of Pepsi and the Raid. She put the gla.s.ses on her coffee table, then opened the Pepsi and poured most of it in one gla.s.s and a little bit in the other. She offered the full gla.s.s to me. "Now, what is it you want to know?"

I lifted the gla.s.s but noticed something crusted down in the ice. I pretended to take a sip and put it down. "Mrs. Berteaux said that you're a midwife."

She nodded, eyes scanning the upper reaches of the room for incoming bugs. "Unh-hunh. Not in years, a'course, but I was."

"Thirty-six years ago on July ninth a baby girl was born in this area and given up for adoption. Chances are that the child was illegitimate, but maybe not. Chances are that the mother was underage, but maybe not."

Her eyes narrowed behind the thick lenses. "You think I birthed the child?"

"I don't know. If not, maybe you heard something."

She looked thoughtful. "That was a long time ago."

"Yes, ma'am." I waited, letting her think. Probably hard with all the nerve damage from the Raid.

Martha Guidry scratched at her head, working on it, and then seemed to notice something in the far corner of the room. She put down her Pepsi, picked up the Raid, then crept across the room to peer into the shadows behind the television. I got ready to hold my breath. She said, "G.o.dd.a.m.ned ugly bugs," but she held her fire. False alarm. She came back to the chair and sat. "You know, I think I remember something about that."

Well.

She said, "There were some folks lived over here around the Nezpique." She was nodding as she thought about it, fingering the Raid can. "They had a little girl, I think. Yes, that's right. They gave her away."

Well, well. "You remember their names?" I was writing it down.

She pooched out her lips, then slowly shook her head, trying to put it together. "I remember it was a big family. He was a fisherman or somethin', but they might've cropped a share. They lived over on the bayou. Right over here on the Nezpique. Wasn't no b.a.s.t.a.r.d, though. Just a big family with too many mouths to feed."

A name?

She looked sad and shook her head. "I'm sorry. It's right on the tip of my tongue and I just can't remember it. You get old, everything goes to h.e.l.l. There's one!" She raced to a potted plant beneath the window and cut loose with the Raid. Clouds of gas fogged up around her and I walked over to the door, leaned out, and took deep breaths. When she was finished with the Raid I went back to the chair. Everything smelled of kerosene and chemicals.

I said, "These bugs are something, aren't they?"

She nodded smugly. "They'll run you out of house and home, let me tell you."

I heard the crunch of a car pulling off the road. Not in her yard, but farther away. I went back to the door. The white Mustang was sitting across the street by the strawberry stand. I said, "Ms. Guidry, has someone else approached you about this?"

She shook her head. "Unh-unh."

"A few months ago."

She got the thoughtful look again. "You know, I think a fella did come here." She made a face like she'd bit into something sour. "I didn't like his looks. I won't deal with anybody I don't like the way they look. No, siree. You can tell by a person's looks, and I didn't like that fella, at all. I ran 'm off."

I looked back out the door. "Is that the man?"

Martha Guidry came over next to me and squinted out through the screen. "Well, my goodness. That's him. That's the little p.e.c.k.e.rwood, right over there!"

Martha Guidry charged through the screen door with her can of Raid as if she'd seen the world's largest bug. She screamed, "Here, you! What are you doin' over there?!"

I said, "Oh, G.o.d."

She lurched down the steps and ran toward the highway, and I was wondering if maybe I should tackle her before she became roadkill. Then the Mustang fishtailed out onto the highway and roared back toward Ville Platte, and Martha Guidry pulled up short, shaking her fist at him. I said, "Martha, do you remember his name?"

Martha Guidry stalked back up the steps, breathing hard and blinking behind the thick gla.s.ses. I was hoping I wouldn't have to dial 911. "Jerry. Jeffrey. SomeG.o.dd.a.m.nthing like that."

"Aha."

"That rotten sneak. Why do you think he was out here?"

"I don't know," I said. "But I'm going to find out."

She took a deep breath, shook herself, then said, "G.o.d d.a.m.n, but I feel like a drink! You're not the kind of fool to let a lady drink alone, are you?"

"No, ma'am, I'm not."

She threw open the door and gestured inside with the Raid. "Then get yer a.s.s in there and let's booze."

Chapter 6.

A t twenty minutes after six that evening I checked into a motel in Ville Platte and phoned Lucille Chenier at her office in Baton Rouge . I only had to wait eight or nine minutes for her to come on the line. She said, "Yes?""Guess who?" Martha had been generous with the Old Crow.

"I'm very busy, Mr. Cole. Is there some way I can help you?" Some people just weren't around when they handed out laugh b.u.t.tons.

"Can your office run a license plate check for me?"

"Of course."

I gave her the Mustang's number and told her about the red-haired man. She said, "He was also asking about a child?"

"Yes"

You could hear her fingernails clicking on her desk. Thinking. "That's odd. I wonder why he would be following you?"

"When he tells me, I'll pa.s.s it along."

"It's very important that this not be a.s.sociated with Jodi Taylor." She sounded concerned.

"I'm telling people that I'm searching for a marrow donor. In a case like this, you have to ask questions. People talk. This kind of thing can be exciting to folks, and they like to share their excitement."

"And people with secrets want to protect them."

"That's the point. But I've no reason to believe that anyone I've yet seen has secrets."

"Except, perhaps, for your red-haired man."

"Well, there is that. Yes."

She told me that she would have the information on the Mustang's owner by ten the next morning, and then she hung up. I stared at the phone and felt strangely incomplete now that the connection was broken, but maybe that was just all the Raid I had breathed. Sure. You spend most of the afternoon breathing Raid and drinking Old Crow, it heightens your sense of dissociation. It also puts you to sleep.

At eighteen minutes after nine the next morning, the phone rang and Lucy Chenier said, "Your Mustang is registered to someone named Jimmie Ray Rebenack." She read two addresses, both in Ville Plane.

"Okay."

"Mr. Rebenack lists his occupation as a private investigator. He was licensed two and a half years ago."

I was grinning. "If this guy's for real, he has to be the world's worst detective."

"Prior to licensing, he was employed as a full-time auto mechanic at an Exxon station in Alexandria. His tax records indicate that he continues to derive the majority of his income from part-time mechanic work."

"Wow. You guys work fast."

"The firm is well positioned. You'll keep me informed?"

"Of course, Ms. Chenier." Elvis Cole, Professional Detective, discourses in a professional manner.

I located Rebenack's addresses on my map of Ville Platte, then went to find him. One was a business address, the other a residence. The residential address put Jimmie Ray Rebenack in a small frame duplex on the east side of town, four blocks north of a switching station for the Southern-Pacific Railroad. It was an older neighborhood, and it wasn't particularly proud, with small unkempt houses and spotty lawns and cars and trucks that were mostly Detroit gas guzzlers in need of paint. Jimmie's Mustang was not in evidence.

I cruised the block twice, then drove to Jimmie Ray Rebenack's office two blocks north of Main above a fresh-seafood market. The seafood market was set between a barber shop and a secondhand clothes store, and there was a little stairwell between the seafood and the clothes, and a black felt and gla.s.s directory for the offices up the stairs.

I circled the block, looking for the Mustang, but as with the house the Mustang was not there. I parked around the corner, then walked back to the little directory. There were five businesses listed, and Rebenack Investigations was the third. You had to shake your head. Jimmie Ray Rebenack in his brand-new Mustang, thinking he wouldn't be noticed as he followed me all over town.

I crossed the street to a little coffee shop opposite the fish market. There was a counter and a half-dozen Formica tables spread around the place sporting overweight men in thin cotton shirts drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. A napkin dispenser sat on each of the tables, alongside a bottle of Tabasco sauce. I sat at a table in the window, watching the fish market until a st.u.r.dy woman with about a million miles on her clock came over with a coffeepot. She poured without asking, and said, "You wan" some breakfast, sugah?"

"How about a couple of hard poached eggs, toast, and grits?"

"Wheat or white?"

"Wheat."

She walked away without writing anything and left me to sip at the coffee. It was heavy with flavor and about a million times stronger than the coffee people drink in the rest of the world, sort of like espresso that's been cooked down to a sludge. Mississippi mud. I tried to pretend that I enjoyed it, and I think I did a pretty good job. Maybe the Tabasco was on the tables for the coffee. I sneaked glances at the men with their papers. Okay. If they could drink it, I could drink it.

When the waitress brought the food, I said, "Mm-mm, that coffee's some kinda strong!"

She said, "Uh-huh."

I smushed the eggs into the grits and mixed in a little b.u.t.ter and ate it between bites of the toast. The grits were warm and smooth and made the awful coffee easier to drink. I watched the fish market. People came and went, and a couple of times people climbed the stairs, but none of them was Jimmie Ray Rebenack. The front of the fish market was covered with hand-lettered signs saying CATFISH and LIVE CRABS and GASPERGOO $1.89. The people who patronized the fish market came out with brown paper bags that I took to be the catfish and the crabs, and, as I watched them, I wondered what a gaspergoo was and why someone might want to eat it. Another little sign had been painted on the door. WE HAVE GAR b.a.l.l.s; These Cajuns know how to live, don't they?