Big Easy Bonanza

there. He never cared who I was or wanted me. I was just some potential ornament in the crown of the mighty King of Carnival. Only I never obliged him by turning into a miniature Chauncey. Therefore he had no use for me.”
    To his surprise, Skip said, “I can relate to that.”
    “And Bitty. Bitty was just a means to an end with him. He never wanted her, he wanted Haygood Mayhew for a father-in-law. The bastard.” He kicked a small footstool across the room. “That bastard!” This time he yelled it.
    “Tolliver knew all that—he lived through it. And, as if he hadn’t, the poor man had to listen to the whole thing again, ad infinitum and ad nauseam. I can be rather tedious on the subject, you see.”
    “Oh?”
    Condescending bitch. He hated her. “Anyway, to make a long story short, when Tolliver threw the temper tantrum, he threatened to kill Chauncey. I’m not kidding when I say I’ve never seen him so mad, but that’s not the whole story. A weird thing was going on. He was having these really bad headaches and popping all these pills—I was really worried about him.”
    “What are you saying?”
    “Let me finish, please. I don’t know what was going on— or if anything was—but it wasn’t like him to have a temper tantrum. And other things were strange. He’d get depressed for days, seemingly over nothing. He’d get mad at the slightest little thing. He’d forget things. I don’t know if it was the drugs or what—”
    “But in short he wasn’t himself.” She said it as if she’d been expecting this from him, of course he’d pull out that old saw.
    “No, Miss Superior Attitude, he wasn’t. But before you get too know-it-all about it, maybe you should remember he did kill my father and himself.”
    “I didn’t mean anything. I was just asking.”
    “Look, I went to Tolliver. I confronted him.”
    “With killing your dad?”
    “Yes.” He spoke almost in a whisper, and tried to repeat it in a normal tone, but this time the words came out in a shout. “Yes! Yes, God help me I did, and I swear I’d die myself if I could just take it back.
I
killed him, do you realize that?
I
killed Tolliver!” To his surprise, tears poured out; he was crying for the first time.
    “He didn’t commit suicide, then?”
    “Of course he did, stupid. Can’t you hear what I’m telling you? I broke off the relationship—he killed my father, goddammit! How were we supposed to live happily ever after with that one between us?” He was blubbering.
    “Do you think that’s what I wanted? Any of it? Beginning with my dad … do you think I wanted that? Do you think I wanted you digging around in the muck? For a while after my dad died I couldn’t feel anything. It was easier to be mad at you than at Tolliver, to admit to myself that he really did it. And I got kind of obsessive. All I wanted was for you to go away and leave us all in peace.” He looked at her fat ugly face, now dark with pretended sympathy. He could feel the tears abating, his voice becoming clearer, close to normal. “That’s why I tried to scare you. That was all I wanted.”
    “I see.”
    He didn’t answer and for a while she said nothing else, just sat there doing what probably passed for thinking in that pachyderm brain of hers. “That was all you wanted?”
    “Do you blame me?”
    “Then why did you break into LaBelle’s apartment?”
    “LaBelle? The black woman you asked about? Who the hell is she, anyway?”
    “Hélène,” said Skip. “Your sister.”
    “Hélène? Hélène’s dead. Marcelle…”
    “Hélène is not dead. Hélène is a prostitute known as LaBelle Doucette, and she was seen at your father’s house a few weeks before his death.”
    “You’re crazy.” He got up and started to pace, to range aimlessly about, the tension finally turning into body energy.
    “You borrowed a car—or maybe stole it, I don’t know—and you ransacked her apartment, looking for something. But you didn’t find it because I interrupted you. So you later broke into my house looking for it—not very smart, Henry.”
    “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I don’t know any LaBelle and—”
    “Are you going to deny it? I saw you, Henry. Twice.”
    “Shit, yes, I’m going to deny it.” He stopped pacing and turned on her. “You didn’t see me, Miss Bitch, because I wasn’t there. I don’t know what the fuck you’re trying to pull, but my sister has been dead for twenty-one years, have you