The Red-Hot Cajun (9 page)

“No way!”

“Absolutely.”

“Why isn’t anybody doing anything about it?”

He laughed.

“Okay, I get it. That’s what you’ve been trying to do as a lobbyist and getting knocked on your patoot at every turn.”

“Yep.”

“How can you just give up?”

He shrugged as color filled his face.

She realized something then. “You’re not giving up, are you?”

“Of course not. How can I?” He looked at her and said, “Maybe I’m being overly pessimistic. There was a commission formed a few years ago and it came up with a proposal called ‘Coast 2050: Toward a Sustainable Louisiana.’ It’s a coalition of eleven state and federal agencies that are going to try to rebuild the wetlands, but it would cost a whopping fourteen billion dollars.”

“What will
you
do?”

“I’m not sure yet. That’s why I came down the bayou, to think and regroup. I’ll never give up, though.

I’m kind of offended that you thought I would. That would be like knowing a family member is dying and doing nothing about it.”

Just then, something happened that surprised them both. The radio announcer interrupted Toby Keith’s “Whiskey Girl” and said, “We have a news bulletin regarding missing Trial TV analyst Valerie Breaux.”

They looked at each other and froze.

Rene shoved away from the porch rail and went over to turn the volume up on the radio.

“Houma Realtor Simone Breaux, Valerie Breaux’s mother, held a news conference today, along with her aunts, Congresswoman Inez Breaux, and herbal tea moguls Madeline and Margo Breaux, and her grandmother, oil lobbyist Dixie Breaux, along with FBI agents and local law enforcement officials, declaring Valerie Breaux a missing person.”

Well, at least, they know I’m missing. And care.

“Oh, shit!” Rene said.

The FBI agent spoke up on the radio. “Ms Breaux is officially missing under suspicious circumstances. Her car was discovered at the airport with her handbag and all her luggage. However, there has been no ransom note or other indication of a kidnapping. Not yet.”

How about two days without contact? How about
any
woman leaving without her purse, you
idiots?

“Oh, shit!” Rene said again.

“Please let my darling daughter come home,” Simone Breaux said tearfully.

Darling daughter? That’s a laugh.
Her mother, and all the other relatives, would find a way to profit from this disaster.

“This is a friggin’ nightmare!” Rene shouted.

She started to tell him that she had told him so, but decided he already knew that.

“Trial TV president, Amos Goodman, announced today that they are offering a hundred thousand dollar reward for information on Ms Breaux’s whereabouts that leads to her return.”

“Now that is interesting,” Valerie said. Mr Goodman must have found out about her firing. The fact that he’d put up a reward must mean he wanted her back. She smiled with self-satisfaction. Some small-dick producer must be squirming big-time about now.

“But wait a minute, we have some breaking news here,” the radio announcer continued. “The environmental organization Bayou Unite has just announced that Ms Breaux is safe and in hiding as she prepares a TV documentary that will crack this state wide open once it airs.

Here is Joe Bob Doucet, a spokesman for that organization.”

“I am going to kill him,” Rene said.

“That’s two of us,” she agreed.

“Bayou Unite is proud to announce that Valerie Breaux, famous Houma lawyer and successful Trial TV analyst, will be doing a documentary about the destruction of the Southern Louisiana ecosystem.”

“What!?” she screeched.

Rene just shook his head at the nerve of his good buddy.

“This documentary will be a wake-up call to all Americans,” J.B. continued, “and a warning to oil companies, developers, and sport fishermen that their free ride is over. Further questions should be directed to our company headquarters in Baton Rouge.”

“They have company headquarters in Baton Rouge?” she asked Rene.

“My garage,” he said.

“You told me this was your only home.”

“I lied.”

She made a low growling sound of outrage—outrage at him and the nutcases who had kidnapped her, then used her for their own publicity purposes, the Trial TV bigwigs who would also make hay out of this debacle, and her mother and other relatives who no doubt saw dollar signs waving in the wind. Not one person worried about her safety or what she wanted.

Then another amazing thing happened.

Brrrrr-ing.
A phone rang.

Inside the cabin it could clearly be heard.

She and Rene locked glances and simultaneously asked, voices shrill with surprise, “We have a phone?” They both dove for the screen door.

A
lady’s purse: mirror to her soul. . .

Tante Lulu’s pocketbook was ringing like crazy.

Rene was thoroughly disappointed in himself. They’d had a phone all along, and he hadn’t even known it. He should have guessed Tante Lulu wouldn’t stay here without some means of communicating with the outside world.

Val was leaning over, about to lunge for the purse, which he couldn’t allow to happen. Not till they’d had a chance to decide who she would contact and what she would say. So he tackled her from behind, landing them both on the floor, barely having time to register how much that hurt, before wrestling her for the bag. In the course of their tussle, the phone stopped, and so did Rene”.

He was staring, wide-eyed, at Val’s breasts, which had come loose from her tube top.
Holy crawfish!

Son of a gun! Lordy, Lordy! It’s Christmas in friggin’ July! Merry Christmas to me!
Turns out Valerie Breaux had two of the sweetest breasts he’d ever seen—full and uplifted and pink-tipped. Needless to say, he was imprinting them on his brain forever.

“You jerk!” she said, shoving him off her and pulling up her top.

“It was your fault for not handing over the purse.”

“I want that damn phone.” She advanced on him, claws raised.

He held the purse behind his back, and, man, was it heavy! What did his aunt carry in this thing—bricks? “Not yet. We have to talk first.”

“I am all talked out. Listen, big boy, you might have had a chance up till now, because you hadn’t actually been involved in my kidnapping. But from this moment forward, denying me that phone makes you an accessory to a felony.”

Several things happened at once then. Val got up close and personal to his body as he tried to hold the phone out of reach; it rang again; toilet flushed; and water ran in the bathroom. Then Tante Lulu came out and exclaimed, “Oops!” as if she was hearing the phone for the first time.

“Oops? That’s all you can say?” Val snarled at his aunt.

“Tante Lulu, you should have told us you had a phone.” Rene chastised her with a little more finesse.

The phone stopped ringing. The rain had stopped, too, which meant the heat would be rising again.

“What? I’m almos’ eighty years old. I could have a heart attack any minute and fall over deader ‘n a June bug. Ya thought I wouldn’t want a phone to call Remy to take me to a hospital or morgue or somethin’? Jeesh! Talk about!”

“You are an accessory to a felony, too,” Val told her. “I don’t care if you’re a hundred years old, you old biddy. You are going to the slammer.”

Tante Lulu cocked her head to the side and seemed to be thinking on Val’s threat. “Hmmm. Do you think one of those lifers will make me her bitch?” She shivered then, whether with fear or enthusiasm, it was hard to tell.

Val held out her hand to Rene for the phone.

Not a chance!

Instead he set Tante Lulu’s bag on the table and began to empty it, item by item. A wallet that weighed about five pounds, stuffed to overflowing with cash, credit cards, and coupons. Several little Baggies that probably contained medicinal herbs for her
traiteur
practice; either that, or his aunt was smoking weed.

Tissues. A see-through makeup case. Condoms, which made Val blush. KY Jelly, which made him blush.

A blow-dryer. A box of Blonde Bomb hair dye. Three Richard Simmons CDs. Six parking and one speeding ticket, all overdue. A romance novel entitled
The Very Virile Viking.
A bag of rice and three Snickers bars. A bottle of My Sin perfume. A miniature vibrator, which he hoped was for some muscle problem. A
Star
magazine with a banner reading, “Headless Elvis Spotted in Bayou Swamp, Blue Suede Shoes Gave Him Away.” An address book. A calendar. A palm-sized statue of St. Jude. A pair of shocking pink, velvet handcuffs, for chrissake. A bottle of Avon Skin-So-Soft bath oil, which was often used by hunters and fishermen as a mosquito repellent. And, finally, at the bottom, his phone.

He had to ask, “Tante Lulu, what are you doing with condoms, KY Jelly, and a vibrator?” He refused to mention the handcuffs.

“Took ‘em away from Tee-John las’ time he was at my house,” she answered matter-of-factly. “Found ‘em in his book bag.”

Tee-John was his sixteen-year-old half-brother and a wilder rascal there never was. Not even he and his two brothers could beat the boy with his antics at that age.

“You people are all nuts,” Val opined.

“Join the club,” he said.

“Doan tell me ya thought they was for me,” Tante Lulu said, making taking sounds at the two of them.

“I din’t even know that thingamajig was a vibrator. Looks like red lips to me. How do ya use that thing?”

The last question she addressed to Val, who looked as if her flushed face might explode.

“Yeah, Val, how
do
you use that thingamajig?” he asked, batting his eyelashes with innocence.

“You stick it where the sun doesn’t shine,” she replied.

“Where is that?” Tante Lulu wanted to know.

Val very succinctly said, “Aaarrgh!”

Rene flipped open his phone and checked the queue. “Twenty-seven messages!” Talk about vibrations! His phone must have been set to vibrate underneath all the clutter in her handbag.

He was about to put the phone to his ear when Val said, “I want to hear the messages, too. They probably concern me.”

He tapped the switch for speaker phone.

The first one was from Luc. “Rene”, what the hell is going on? Remy was just here, and he told me that Tante Lulu said you kidnapped Valerie Breaux. Is this another one of your sexual fantasy weekend thingees?...”

Rene’s jaw dropped open with shock. “I never engaged in a sexual fantasy weekend in all my life,” he protested to a frowning Val and Tante Lulu.

“... Like that time you and Celie LaBelle played cowboy and saloon girl for one whole weekend in that French Quarter motel?...”

Iam going to kill my brother.
“Except for that one time,” he told Val and Tante Lulu, who were frowning even more.

“... Nah, I can’t see you riding the ice princess. She always looked at you like you were soft stuff on the soles of her shoes...”

So he hadn’t been the only one to notice Val’s low opinion of him. It was Val’s turn to be uncomfortable.

“... Give me a call, little brother. I’m thinkin’ you might need my legal advice. Oh, and Sylvie says to tell you to be nice to her cousin Valerie. I’m not precisely sure what she means by nice, but— Ouch! Why’d you pinch me, Sylvie?”

The next call was from Luc, too. “Holy shit, Rene! Those goofball friends of yours, J.B. and Maddie, were just here, babbling stuff about Val and a documentary and thong panties and your smoothness and Tante Lulu falling in love with Richard Simmons.”

All of them blushed a little over that message.

Next up was J.B. himself. “Not to worry, Rene. We have all bases covered here. You do your job there, good buddy.” In a lower voice, he added, “Did you get in her pants yet? I’m tellin’ ya, smoothness is the key. When you lay on the LeDeux charm, you could get a nun to do the hula. Oops. Maddie’s comin’.”

His message ended abruptly.

Val looked at him as if he were still soft stuff under the soles of her shoes—
surprise, surprise!
“You were going to try to seduce me into helping you?” she accused him.

“I... was... not. Never did I ever suggest or agree to such a thing.”
The subject might have come up,
though.

“It wouldn’t have worked anyhow, but I’ll bet you thought I’d succumb when I told you I hadn’t had sex in two years.”

Oh, man! Did you have to say that? Don’t you know that any Cajun man worth his salt has torise to a challenge like that? And I do mean “rise.”

“Two years?” Tante Lulu remarked. “Things mus’ be mighty slow in the big city.”