The Quiet Game

Though I can't see how, I am strangely certain that I've taken one step closer to Leo Marston.

CHAPTER 17

"Daddy, look at the crawdads! They've got humongous claws!"

Annie races across the patio and leaps into my arms like a thirty-pound bullet. Though petite for her age, she is wiry and strong, like her mother.

"You'd better not let one get your nose!" I warn her. "It'll thunder seven times before he turns loose."

"Your daddy's lying to you, girl," Ruby calls from beside the pool. "That's a snapping turtle he talking 'bout. Crawfish can't hurt you none."

"One already pinched my finger!" Annie cries. "It didn't even hurt."

Dad is tending a five-gallon boiler near the house, and the roar of burning propane makes my stomach rumble, a Pavlovian response that remains automatic even after twenty years away. A cooler full of live crawfish sits beside the boiling water.

"Sam Jacobs brought these by," he explains. "He went over to Catahoula Parish to look at a stripper well and brought them back. They're good-sized. Pretty too."

"Did you ask him to stay?"

"He said he had to get home, but that you should call him one night and go get a beer."

"I could use one now."

"There's a six-pack of Corona in the fridge. Limes too. Bring me a Heineken while you're at it."

"On the way."

I walk over and hug Ruby, then go inside. My mother's in the kitchen, washing corn and potatoes for the crawfish pot. She asks how my day went, and I say something inane about how little the town has changed. During the past hour I photocopied the Del Payton police file, rented a safe deposit box and stored the original inside, bought packaging material at Fred's Dollar Store, and delivered the fragments of Del's engine to the UPS office five minutes before they closed. I also spoke to Huey Moak, whom Cilia tracked down in Lexington, Kentucky, where he is investigating an explosion at the university. Huey could not conceal his pleasure at the prospect of solving a bombing case the FBI had bungled, even if it was thirty years old. The engine fragments will arrive before noon tomorrow at the Holiday Inn where he and his BATF team are staying. All that activity left me only one task to complete: the felony I started this morning.

I carry a Heineken out to my father and sit in a lawn chair at the edge of the pool. Annie has taken two crawfish from the cooler and is trying to make them race across the patio. She quickly learns that the only direction crawfish will move under duress is backward. I sip the Corona and watch the crustacean derby while Dad purges the mudbugs in the cooler by dumping salt water over them. Mom brings out a huge bowl of new potatoes, corn, and onions, which she dumps into the steaming pot along with three bags of Zatarain's crab boil. The sharp aroma of spices fills the air, making my mouth water, and Annie stares with saucer eyes as Dad loads the wire-mesh inner boiler with brown crawfish and submerges them in the boiling water. When he hauls them out twenty minutes later, they are a flaming red-orange.

"Wow!" Annie marvels.

"Time to eat 'em!" Dad says.

Mom covers the wrought-iron patio table with newspaper, and Dad dumps the steaming crawfish onto the center, making a small mountain. I spear some potatoes and corn with a fork and make a plate for Annie, assuming she likes the look of crawfish better than she'll like the taste. But I'm wrong. She isn't strong enough to crack the tails efficiently, but with Dad peeling for her, she goes through a half pound of a pound of tails before she's done. As I watch her joyful eyes, the Payton case recedes in my mind. I should have brought Annie here right after the funeral. My mother's matter-of-fact attitude toward the mysteries of life has already brought her out of her melancholia. When Annie announces that her tummy is full, Mom leads her over to the faucet to wash the hot spices from her hands.

"Annie wants ice cream," Mom calls from the faucet. "Anybody else?"

"Y'all go ahead," Dad shouts back. "We'll clean up this mess and be inside in a minute."

He slides a cigar from his pocket and puts it in his mouth, but doesn't begin the ritual of lighting it. "You want another beer?"

"I'd better skip it. We need to take a ride."

He raises an eyebrow. "We do?"

I raise my hand and make a mock pistol with my thumb and forefinger, then drop my thumb like a hammer.

"I see. Let's clean this mess up for your mother first."

As he begins wrapping the crawfish shells in newspaper, I carry the heavy boiler to the edge of the yard to dump the water. The gun is only twenty feet away from me, in the pool house, preparing for its final journey.