Big Easy Bonanza

her cheeks as if she had turned on a faucet. She buried her face in the man’s shoulder and sobbed, “Oh, Jonathan, I jus’ don’t know how I’m gon’ make it through this.”
    You could make it through the Hundred Years’ War without even getting wrinkled, you bitch.
    She clattered down the front steps in the horrid brown shoes, walked fast till she was out of sight, then ran to her car and kicked it. She felt like pounding it as well, but someone might see. Instead, she got in and took deep breaths.
    Well, it had to happen sometime. New Orleans was simply not going to put up with a police spy in its midst. But it wouldn’t have happened today without the intervention of asshole Henry St. Amant.
    Damn the little twit!
    She kicked out again and bruised her instep on the brake.

2
    Marcelle was folding laundry in her bedroom. André had a case of the stomach flu—poor baby, it wasn’t surprising, considering the stress he’d been under lately—and he was watching TV in the living room. She had had two hours of TV already and couldn’t hack it any longer. Besides, she needed some time to mourn Tolliver.
    Since she couldn’t get out today, she couldn’t do that with her mother and Henry; she certainly couldn’t do it with André. She didn’t even want him to know yet about Tolliver’s death. One death was almost too much to bear at his age; she didn’t know how he could handle another. She would have to think of a way to tell him, would have to choose the time and place carefully. One of the other day-care mothers was a child psychologist—maybe she’d get some advice from her.
    Here, alone in her room, she could cry as long as she did it silently. And so, as she balled up socks and smoothed T-shirts, she was letting the tears go, snuffling into a tissue, using it to gag herself when the sobs came. What a mysterious, strange, dear man was Tolliver. The revelation of his being in love with Bitty didn’t surprise her in the least. She’d never considered it before, but now that she thought of it, it explained everything.
    It was so obvious now why he’d never married, why he stayed so close to the St. Amants, why he never seemed interested in women. Had Bitty had a years-long affair with him, she wondered? Her
mother?
God, it seemed unlikely, and not because Marcelle thought Bitty was any saint either. She just didn’t seem to have a lot of sexual energy.
    Something must have happened to Tolliver, though, to flip him over into violence—into killing her father. Marcelle knew she was still crying for her father, partly, and she hoped some of her tears were those of forgiveness for Tolliver, but she also felt a genuine grief and compassion for him. For her father’s murderer. It was so peculiar how things turned out sometimes.
    Now she could track perfectly their odd transaction on Saturday. When she had come in and asked for a job, he must already have been planning his own death—must have known he wouldn’t live out the day. And then, seeing her, he had remembered, or maybe realized for the first time, how much she loved her father, and he had been overcome with guilt on her behalf. And so at the last minute he had left her the store.
    Marcelle didn’t know how to respond to that, and thought she better not try to sort it out. It was a dream fulfilled, pure and simple. But at what a cost! And with emotional strings that could work themselves handily into a noose if she weren’t careful.
    The other thing was, it had come so suddenly. She didn’t know if she was really ready for it—not for the details of running a shop. (She didn’t know a thing about that, but she could learn.) For getting what she wanted. It felt so odd and unfamiliar. She didn’t feel she deserved it.
    She couldn’t think about that now. It was too much, just as two deaths were too much for André. For right now she was just going to feel crummy and cry as much as she wanted, and the hell with trying to make sense out of anything.
    “Mommy, someone’s at the door.”
    “Okay, say I’ll be just a second.”
    She looked in the mirror to see what repairs were needed but was instantly distracted by the sound of the front door opening. Damn! She’d meant him to speak through it.
    “Hi, Skippy. She said just a minute.”
    “Hi, André. How’s my boy, huh? How’s my big, gorgeous André?”
    She heard the sounds of a small boy being scooped into the arms of a doting auntie. She called, “Watch out, Skip. He’s