Big Easy Bonanza

names—LaBelle Albert, LaBelle St. Amant, LaBelle Doucette, LaBelle Villere, and LaBelle Campeau. For mother’s maiden name, she tried Caroline Mayhew (aka “Bitty”), Jaree Campeau, and Estelle Villere. Date of birth was a problem, but the computer program could make checks within five years of an approximate date.
    None of the combinations yielded a birth record. That made two dead ends in one morning.
    She was still so shaky from talking to Stelly that she did something she rarely did—had a beer with lunch. Then she bought some breath mints and drove to the Harmeyers’ house in the Garden District.
    A graceful old iron fence enclosed the yard, as if for children, but Judith and Arthur hadn’t had any. And no wonder, in Skip’s opinion, as she couldn’t imagine either of them mating with anyone. Arthur was a small, stoop-shouldered man with wispy hair and a great number of broken veins on his face. Tolliver’s sister was the personification of “battle ax.”
    She had iron-gray hair, permed into quiescent waves away from her face and sprayed so stiff a hurricane couldn’t dislodge them. Her makeup was peachy-pink and inches thick, as if exposing the skin on one’s face was tantamount to public nudity. Her bosom was deep as quicksand (and probably similarly textured once you removed the armor), her hips a mighty fortress—the whole, neck to knee, was corseted so tightly that bumping into her would bruise. She couldn’t have been more than sixty, and probably not that, but she seemed frozen in time, an old trout from the Eisenhower era. Probably, Skip thought, Judith had simply turned into her own mother.
    A uniformed maid assigned to door duty led Skip into “the front parlor,” where the clan was gathered, along with various friends. To her horror, Skip saw that her parents were there. Well, it would be only half awkward. Since her father wouldn’t talk to her, there was only her mother to fend off, and fend her off she must—if mixing boyfriends with police work was difficult, how much worse was having your entire family around to supervise?
    Bitty and Henry were here, but not Marcelle. And not Bitty’s father—he had probably been over earlier. Not John Hall Pigott either; he probably hadn’t known Tolliver, but with a twinge of disappointment, Skip realized she’d been hoping to see him. Bitty was seated in a wing chair, just as she’d been at her own house a few days ago, and this time Henry stood behind her instead of Tolliver. It seemed odd to have Tolliver missing.
    Skip felt a surge of sympathy for Bitty, for her having lost two men she loved in less than a week. And yet if you read between the lines of the note, you could make an argument that she had been the cause of both deaths. If Tolliver’s death was what it seemed, she must have given him cause to believe she was in love with him.
    Skip’s mother had made her way over. They hugged mechanically—Skip found it hard to feel warm toward someone who nearly always greeted her with disapproval. Today’s hello was, “Oh, Skippy! Not that old suit again.”
    It was on the tip of her tongue to say, “It’s all I have,” but she knew what that would start. She said, “Hello, Mother. How’s Daddy?”
    “He’s sitting right over there.”
    “He looks fine.”
    “Why don’t you go over and speak to him?”
    “I don’t think so.” In a different mood she might have. But after what she’d learned this morning, she was glad to have an excuse for avoiding him. She stared for a moment, though, trying to decide if he looked like a criminal. What he had done—if it had been he—was something like rape. She thought you could also make the case, as Stelly had said, that it was something like murder as well, but as a pro-choice woman, Skip figured she wasn’t the one to try. It certainly was an invasion of a woman’s body it made her sick to think about. It implied a heartlessness, a being out of touch with others, with their feelings, and with your own, that was almost unfathomable. Did her father look heartless?
    No. Not to her. Old Haygood Mayhew looked as if he had long since made the Faustian bargain, and probably hid cloven hooves under his custom-made shoes. Her father looked so completely like what he was that her heart went out to him—he looked like a man trying to keep up appearances. But not merely the superficial sort of appearances that obsessed him. He looked as if he was trying to hide from himself the