My Juliet (28 page)

The detective, still staring, doesn't say anything.

“Here's another one for you. When I was about four or five she caught me in the bathtub touching myself in a manner that she found unacceptable. In actual fact I was just washing my . . . well, my genitalia, using a rag and soap. Anyway, Mother yanks me out of the tub and spanks my naked bottom, then she showers rice on the kitchen floor and makes me kneel on it and pray to a crucifix up over the door. I'm still naked, understand? I spend hours on that rice and I suppose I'd still be kneeling there today had Daddy not come home and saved me. Tell you about my mother, Lieutenant? Have a seat, sir.”

The detectives exchange glances.

“Does that help any?”

“Yes, it does. The picture is starting to clear up.”

“I could make a list,” she says, “all this proof why I had every reason to kill her.”

“Yes,” says the lieutenant, removing his notebook and starting to write. “Yes, we could make a list. Let's start one now, if that's okay with you.”

“Fine. Let's start at the beginning, when I wasn't breast-fed.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. And you'll have a list but nothing else. No evidence, anyway. No
proof
. You think those icicles made me kill her? Or was it the bathtub incident? Which one threw me over the edge?”

Peroux puts the notebook back in his hip pocket. “Miss Beauvais, are you using drugs?”

“None that's illegal, unless the state of Louisiana's got a law against Midol.”

From the pocket of his jacket Peroux removes a neatly folded sheet of computer paper. “In June of 1984, then again in August of that year, you were charged with unlawful possession of marijuana. In January 1985 it got a little more serious: criminal possession of a controlled substance. You violated probation and subsequently spent thirty days in jail.”

“Yes, that's true.”

“You also had an arrest for shoplifting.”

“I had to eat.”

“You stole food?”

“No. I stole a watch from a pawnshop then sold it to some people I knew and used the proceeds to put food on the table. Lieutenant, is there anything on your list about parking tickets? I got a bunch of those.” Juliet drops the towel on top of the wet clothes piled on the floor. “You should've read me my Miranda rights, by the way.”

“We're conducting an interview, Miss Beauvais.”

She points at his notebook and gestures for him to write. “Then leave California alone, please, and ask me about last night?”

“Okay, Miss Beauvais. Tell me about last night.”

“Last night Sonny and I shared what I thought was a very romantic, very gratifying evening together. At around midnight he left me at his place in Bywater to run an errand. My mother owed me some money, and Sonny generously offered to get it from her. Long story short, it was two thousand dollars, the amount I spent to fly here from Los Angeles, rent a car and hotel rooms, and feed myself.”

“Go on.”

“Sonny was gone for little more than an hour and when he came back he immediately went into the bathroom and changed his clothes and took a shower. Immediately after that he walked back to the laundry room and put his clothes in the wash. Believe me, nobody was more surprised than I when he came into the bedroom and presented me with that check.”

“Why's that? It's what you sent him here for.”

“Mother, Mother's why. I'd tried everything to get her to pay me and time and again she'd refused. Just the other day, for example, I stopped by and politely asked her for the money. She pretended I wasn't there and read aloud from a book as I tried to reason with her. I threatened to break one of her lamps if she didn't pay me. I told her the same about a clock. Mother was so determined that I ended up destroying both the lamp and the clock and she still wouldn't give me the money.” Juliet tosses the shoes out toward him in the middle of the room. “Lieutenant, I'll answer your questions but only if one of you goes upstairs and gets me some shoes that fit.”

“You still have that check?”

“I returned it to the bank this morning. I knew it wasn't any good. Mother had closed her accounts there years ago. She'd duped Sonny. As a further insult she wrote the check out for five thousand dollars—three more than I told Sonny I needed. I don't know how he got her to do that. Or maybe she did it without his asking. Whatever the case, Mother had the last laugh. When Sonny gave me that check—” She stops, suddenly overcome.

“When Sonny gave you the check?”

“Forgive me, Lieutenant Peroux. When Sonny gave me the check I said, ‘Sweetie, what did you have to do to get this? Beat her over the head with a pipe?'”

“Sergeant? Please go upstairs and get Miss Beauvais some shoes.”

“Make sure they're eights,” Juliet calls after him.

Sonny finds him sitting on the back stoop of his apartment house, reading the
Times-Picayune
sports section and sipping coffee. He's wearing a Tulane sweatshirt and sweatpants without shoes or socks, and Sonny can see the foot and ankle of his prosthesis—some parts wood, some plastic, all of it hard for him to look at.

“I told her about the club,” Sonny says as he climbs the rusty metal stairs.

“Huh?”

“Then I told her about whacking the vet. I didn't name you, but I did say I was with a friend. Which friend won't be hard for the police to figure, since you and Roberts are the only ones I have.”

Louis lowers the paper and brings the coffee to his lips. He seems to be trying to decide whether to drink it or to throw it at Sonny. “Bubba, what's wrong with you?”

Sonny stands only a few feet away, one hand firm on the railing leading up the steps, the other pulled in a loose fist. “She set me up. She's trying to make it look like I did it.”

Louis is quiet, waiting. “Bubba, what's wrong?” he says again.

Sonny's nose has begun to run and he wipes it against the sleeve of his shirt. His gaze travels from Louis's face to his prosthesis then off to a sky dull with scudding clouds. “Somebody went in the Beauvais last night and beat Miss Marcelle with that club you made.”

“Is she all right?”

“No, man, they killed her.”

“Don't fuck with me, Sonny. I got a bad hangover.”

“Now get this, Louis: the cops are acting like I did it.”

It seems Louis wants to speak but is unable to. His face grows red and veins show thick and blue in his neck. He lowers the cup through the rails and throws the coffee out into the yard, a brown curtain melting in the grass. “Jesus.”

“I was there a while ago when the cops found the club. Then they come down the stairs hauling her body out in a bag.”

“Jesus,” Louis says again. His artificial leg bangs against the rails as he struggles to stand. “Sonny, come inside. Here. Help me up.”

They sit at the dinette table in the kitchen and the apartment feels as cold as a freezer after the hot, moist air outside. Louis pours Sonny a cup of coffee and Sonny sips it while quietly examining the knots in the face of the cedar cupboard, the checkerboard pattern of the tiled floor, the lines in his hands. Tears grow large in his eyes and he tries to keep from blinking.

“Sonny, you want something to eat?”

“Huh?”

“I could fix you breakfast.”

“Who can eat after what I just went through?”

But Louis cooks for him anyway. In a crockery bowl he blends half a dozen eggs with milk, sugar, cinnamon and vanilla, then he dunks pieces of stale French bread in the rich, golden-colored mixture. After letting the bread soak he moves it with a spatula to an iron skillet bubbling with grease. “The cops want to see me again this afternoon,” Sonny says. “Can you believe that?”

“If you didn't do it you have nothing to worry about. Tell them everything. Well, tell them everything but what you know about the club.” Louis nudges the steaming bread. “You need to see this, brother. You need to see how pretty this is coming out.”

Sonny stands at the stove and looks down at the skillet and the bread cooking against the black iron. “The browns and the yellows,” he says. “The hot oil.”

“You should make a picture.”

“It would be a good one,” Sonny says as if it were his idea.

After a while he can feel himself beginning to settle down. The fear and the pain wash away and something else takes their place, a kind of quiet. Sonny stops seeing the police investigator duckwalking into the privet hedge and the Vaudechamp knocked crooked and the face of the handsome detective under the magnolia dripping water from last night's rain.

He wonders why Lieutenant Peroux, an intelligent black man in a position of authority, would choose to sound like a redneck and call people “podna.” But then Sonny decides it doesn't matter what the man calls anyone. He is aware only of the smell of the bread frying and of the cold air blowing and of the taste of the chicory coffee. He is safe in the kitchen with Louis Fortunato at the stove and sunlight streaming in through the water-stained counterpane. And it comes to him that what awaits outside will never find him as long as he remains here and the air is cold and the coffee's hot and the colors in the skillet are brown and yellow.

Louis serves him a plate. He sprinkles confectioners' sugar on the fried bread then adds a generous coating of Steen's cane syrup from a can.

“Pain perdu,”
Louis says. “That's how you call this in French.”

“I didn't do it. I swear to God, Louis, I didn't kill that lady.”

“And you thought I just waited tables. Look at me, Sonny. Look what I did.”

Sonny eats and when he's done Louis clears the table. Sonny starts to get up to help but Louis pats him on the shoulder. “I got it.”

“The doors to my truck don't lock. They're broken. She must've gone in there last night sometime after she left me.”

Louis is standing at the sink with his hands in sudsy water. He looks back at Sonny and nods but he doesn't say anything.

“One other thing I keep thinking about,” Sonny says. “Juliet sent me to the mansion last night to get something from her mother. She said her bedroom was the third door to the right off the stairs. I get up there and open the door and it's the maid's room. It wasn't even her room, Louis, and she knew it wasn't her room. She wanted Mrs. Huey to see me. Have her wake up and see me prowling around the house like a burglar and not say anything.”

“You want some more coffee, Sonny?”

“Louis, I'm trying to tell you something.”

“I'm listening.”

“Why would Juliet leave me this morning the way she did?” Louis starts to answer but Sonny interrupts him. “I know why she did it,” he says, “I know exactly why she did it.”

Louis turns back from the sink, waiting for the answer. “I'm the one person who'd do anything for her. I'm the easiest. The reason she did it, Louis . . .”

“Yeah?”

“Because she could.”

Louis dries his hands and watches Sonny with a look of great sorrow. “Hey, Sonny? Hey, listen, brother. Why don't you go in my room and take a nap? You must be exhausted. You seem like anyone but yourself. Go in there and lie down and close your peepers. I've got two hours before work. I'll wake you up when it's time to get a move on.”

“I don't think I can sleep.”

“Do it for me, Sonny. Sleep for old Louis.” Louis walks over and stands behind Sonny and pulls his chair back. “Sleep and don't worry about a thing. If you want to stay longer than two hours, that's fine, too. Stay as long as you like. Move in, I wouldn't mind.”

Louis rests his hands on Sonny's shoulders and guides him to the bedroom. He helps him out of his boots and clothes and when Sonny falls back on the bed Louis covers him with a blanket.

“She set me up,” Sonny says, laughing. “She framed me.”

“Okay, boy. Okay.”

The small room holds two of Sonny's paintings from when he was new to the fence, efforts that display as little talent as technical proficiency. Louis was his first customer, and his first to buy anything. For fifty dollars he got pictures of the Old Brulatour Courtyard and the Saint Louis Cathedral, Vieux Carré landmarks that Sonny has since painted a thousand times, though never as badly again. Sonny's signature was large then, back when he was destined for things.

A pennant from their high school days at Holy Cross, a collection of Robert Ruark paperbacks, a mammy doll in a soiled linen dress. And this on top of the chest of drawers: a framed black-and-white photograph showing would-be track star Sonny LaMott handing a baton to Louis Fortunato. An old photograph from when Sonny ran third leg, and Louis anchor, on quite possibly the slowest mile-relay team in New Orleans history.

Sonny tries to remember whether they even finished that race. Doubtful, since they finished so few. In the picture he looks like a child, only fifteen years ago. And it occurs to him that he was involved with Juliet at the time and he felt like nothing if not a man.