Big Easy Bonanza

one had told her the name of the baby before. Marcelle had given it the French pronunciation—“Ay-Lynn.”
    A variation of “Lynn,” “something like Lynn,” Sheree Izaguirre had said.
    Now she saw things in a way she never had before. Bitty must have borne the child—you couldn’t fool a whole hospital. (Of course there was the outside chance she’d never gone to a hospital, merely said she did, but Skip could see no point in that.) So if Hélène were Bitty’s child, she must have had a lover other than Tolliver. A black one.
Of course
the thing would be hushed up, the baby never brought home.
    Skip thought she could see the fine hand of old Haygood Mayhew himself on this one—people had probably been paid off, the nurses in money, the doctors in special favors. (At least her father, not being an obstetrician, probably wasn’t involved.)
    And then Tolliver, best friend of the family, would have been sent to find the baby a home, and he would have inquired among his friends and relatives as to whether anyone knew a smart, reliable young black woman who needed money. And the deal would have been struck, the baby condemned to the frightening world of the project.
    Skip got to the bureau with five minutes to spare and noted with relief that the clerk was the same one who’d helped her before. “Hi, remember me—all those LaBelles we looked up?”
    The clerk looked dubious.
    Skip produced her I.D.: “Officer Langdon. Listen, I really had to rush to get here and didn’t have time to type out a request. Could you give me some paper and let me write one out real quick?”
    “Sorry. It has to be on police-department letterhead.”
    “Shit!” she shouted, not caring whom she offended. With a quick glance at the clock, she raced for the elevator, hoping the state registrar would be in his office. She found the more lowly the bureaucrat the more trouble he gave you, and she always went to the top if she could.
    The man was there, and cooperative. Curious as well, once she told him what she wanted. In seven minutes she had what she needed: Hélène St. Amant was born to Bitty and (ostensibly) Chauncey St. Amant in 1968. No death certificate had been filed for her, not in 1968 or any other year.
    Elated, congratulating herself on her fine detective work, she nearly lived up to her name and skipped back to her car. She could imagine the scenario exactly as she was sure it had happened. Bitty had grown up with a harsh patriarch, a controlling old buzzard whom she longed to escape. In hopes of leaving all that behind, she married the seemingly sweet and gentle Chauncey, who was ever so eager to win the fair maiden. But Chauncey had ambition—to become a younger version of Haygood Mayhew. As his true, repellent self surfaced, Bitty rebelled in as thorough a way as she knew how. Her lover had probably been a gardener or … no, not a servant. Bitty was one of the few women in her circle who knew black men socially. Her lover would almost certainly have been one of Chauncey’s musical protegés, or perhaps not a protegé, maybe an equal. A man whom her husband admired, who could be waved tauntingly under his nose. Maybe John Hall Pigott himself.
    But she hadn’t counted on getting pregnant—or maybe that was part of the revenge, only Haygood and Chauncey wouldn’t stand still for it. Once they saw the baby, they weren’t about to live the rest of their days with Bitty’s scandal. And so the patriarchy had triumphed after all and Bitty, her spirit completely broken, had turned to the socially acceptable pleasures of alcohol. It was okay to be a drunk in New Orleans, it was even admired, Skip sometimes felt, and anyway, there wasn’t a damn thing either Chauncey or Haygood could do about it.
    But poor, sacrificed little Hélène had grown up in the noxious environment that had turned her into a prostitute and a blackmailer who reappeared to bleed Chauncey in his moment of glory.
    It was a gorgeous theory. Skip had the whole thing worked out in intricate detail, by the time she got to her car. But as she headed home, she addressed herself to the questions it brought up.
    How the hell did LaBelle find out her true identity? Even Jaree didn’t know, if she hadn’t lied.
    Why had Tolliver picked this particular time—the moment of Hélène’s reappearance—to kill Chauncey?
    Where had LaBelle gone? Had someone paid her off after all, her part of the deal being to get out of town by sundown? If so, who had?