82 Desire

clinging to his mom like panty hose. “Daddy?” he said. “Did you kill Uncle Beau?”
    Douglas tried to lunge at him. “You little shit! You goddamned ungrateful little shit!”

Twenty-eight
    “DO YOU SUPPOSE,” Skip said to Steve later, “he actually thought he was doing it for the kid?”
    “Naaah. He’s just got to justify it to himself now that it’s over. What I think, he’s just an arrogant asshole who’s always had things his own way.”
    “Amen. All the Skinners were, even Beau. But it doesn’t really explain murder.”
    “Ah, who cares? Leave it to the DA to figure out.”
    Instead, she ran it by Cindy Lou. “As it happens,” her friend said, “I had occasion to do a psychological evaluation of the gentleman, and one thing is abundantly obvious. He thinks he’s right. He’s just one of those guys who has to be right all the time. People like that scare me to death. Something else, too—he’s very image-conscious. If he hadn’t been the big exec, he would have had no identity.”
    “Uh-huh. Like Steve said.”
    “What did Steve say?”
    “Arrogant asshole who feels entitled.”
    “Sounds right.”
    Skip went through all these machinations because she was never going to get a chance to hear it from Seaberry. He had most assuredly not waived his rights, had had a lawyer on the scene within minutes, and had clammed up and stayed clammed.
    Favret had survived, but he wasn’t up to talking for a while.
    And Russell, who turned himself in for fraud, had his own opinion. “He had no soul. None of us did.”
    “What does that mean? Everybody’s got a soul.”
    “Douglas became the job, the socialite, the high-achiever. There was no Douglas, only words that described him.”
    “And you?” she said.
    “I was the same.”
    It didn’t matter much that Seaberry wasn’t talking: the gun he shot Favret with was the same one he’d used on Allred.
    As well as she could piece it together, Jane’s story had precipitated the confrontation between Seaberry and Favret. Jane called them both for reaction, thereby sounding the alarm. Favret went over to Seaberry’s to discuss strategy, and they got into it. Favret wanted to come clean; Seaberry, by this time having a lot more to lose, wanted to stop him.
    ***
    Coming out of his near-coma, Russell had felt more like Rip Van Winkle than a man who’d been gone less than twenty-four hours. It was like being upside down on the damn boat again. His whole life had once again shifted. Or maybe it had just settled; maybe this was an aftershock of an aftershock—the original quake being the one caused by the boat accident, and the next upheaval the crazy, cowardly flight to Fort Lauderdale.
    The man who woke up that Monday and was brought back to life by two cops with a burger and fries was as different from the one who’d fled New Orleans as from the original man who’d been a Skinner.
    When he went to sleep that night, after long and arduous talks with cops and calls to lawyers, he couldn’t imagine not going home; not being Bebe’s husband; not living in Lake Vista; not turning himself in for his crimes and serving his time. Simply couldn’t imagine it. Couldn’t think what had come over him.
    Dina had kept sleeping, waking briefly now and again to go to the bathroom or murmur or even nibble something, and then going right back to sleep. He watched her and he thought about her, and he felt warm, bittersweet surges of love for her, but he knew she wasn’t his mate. In some kind of cosmic, preordained thing, Bebe was. Or maybe he was just so used to her he’d miss her forever if they weren’t together.
    “Russell Fortier,” she had said when he phoned, “you get your butt home before you get in any more trouble.” And a lovely thing like an electric current, except nice and soft and cozy, started at the top of his head and spread through his body.
    He wanted to leave it at that. But he had to say what had to be said. “Bebe, there’s a whole lot of stuff you don’t know. I’m probably going to jail.”
    “You didn’t kill anyone, did you?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Well, then, maybe I can handle it.”
    “What about your career?”
    “This is Lousisiana, baby. If it’s bad enough, I might end up governor.”
    Something had happened. “Uh, Bebe, what’s going on? You’re taking this way too lightly.”
    “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll beat you up later. I’m saving my best shots for face-to-face. I just sound calm because I