Big Easy Bonanza

finished it. (Or so Skip’s theory went.)
    Mrs. Doucette brought the tea on a tray, in glasses that looked as if they had once held jelly and were at least as old as some of the china gewgaws. Lemon slices were rakishly attached to them. Skip’s hostess handed her her tea with a coaster that had a cat’s face on it.
    When Mrs. Doucette was comfortably seated in the rocker, tea held ladylike in her lap, she said, “LaBelle in jail again?”
    “No. Nothing like that. We need her for questioning in a case we’re working on. But I can’t find her. Frankly, I’m getting a little worried.”
    “She ain’ been home?”
    “No.”
    Mrs. Doucette’s lips set in a tight, straight line. “Tha’s LaBelle. The good Lord forgive me, sometime I be sorry I ever took her.”
    “Took her? She’s not your daughter?”
    “Oh, law, chile, LaBelle’s not but twenty-one. Do I look like I got a daughter that age? LaBelle’s my great-granddaughter. My daughter Verna Ruth passed away so long ago I cain’ ever hardly remember it; she didn’t have no husband, so I raise her daughter. Tha’s two generations of daughters and that was enough, I’m tellin’ you. By time LaBelle come along, I done be too old. The worl’ changed too much, I couldn’t do nothin’ for that chile by then.”
    “Did something happen to your granddaughter?”
    “Somethin’ good happen to her. She got a chance to go to college.” From the table nearest her, she picked up a framed photo of a moon-faced young woman. “See here? That’s my Jaree. She teach school now.”
    “You must be very proud of her.”
    “Sho’ am, honey. She’s my pride and joy. I feel real bad about LaBelle sometime.” Her face crumpled as the comparison came to mind, and she reached into a hidden pocket for a tissue. “That chile didn’t have no chance, with her looks and this kinda worl’ we got. Too pretty for her own good, that was LaBelle. Always boys, boys, boys, wasn’t nothin’ nobody could do about it. Men too. And they always had dope, boys and men either one. Only good thing ’bout these kinda’ days is they got birth control now. Shoo, honey! I had LaBelle takin’ them pills before she was leben. Just in time too. With all her misbehavin’, she never did get pregnant. Not so I knew about nohow.”
    “Mrs. Doucette, this may sound like a strange question, but what sort of person is LaBelle?”
    “Wild, honey! She a wil’ chile, pure and simple.”
    “I mean, her personality. Outgoing? Sullen? Sweet? Sour?”
    “I hear what you sayin’, I jus’ don’t quite know how to answer.” She thought a minute. “I don’ know if I’d call her mean, exactly—she grabby, though. She wants somepum, she takes.” She shook her head. “Baby, LaBelle ain’ got no conscience.”
    “Do you have any relatives named Villere? Or did LaBelle have a friend named Estelle Villere?”
    Mrs. Doucette rocked back in her chair, thinking. “No relatives. And I don’t think no friend girl either. Don’t b’leeve I know.”
    Skip sat down her iced tea glass, feeling the interview was drawing to a close. “How long has LaBelle been gone, Mrs. Doucette?”
    “Fo’ years, I b’leeve. Uh-huh, fo’. She lef when she was seventeen. Went to live with her mama was what she said. Didn’t, though. Just came ’roun now and then for money.”
    “Is she in contact with her mother now?”
    “Not that I know of.” Mrs. Doucette’s eyes looked into the distance. Skip thought perhaps she was tiring but was too polite to say so.
    She said, “I’d like to ask her if I could. Could you give me her name and address?”
    “Sho’, honey. Go see Jaree. She married now. Got a family of her own.”
    Which, thought Skip, doesn’t include Big Sis, product of a youthful indiscretion in a world Jaree had probably left far behind. She felt a momentary pang of sympathy for LaBelle.
    Jaree (aka Mrs. Purcell Campeau) lived in a neat house in Mid-City and was just leaving as Skip arrived. Or at any rate, someone was leaving, backing out of the driveway in a late model Toyota. Waving, so as to look friendly, Skip did the unforgivable and blocked the driveway.
    “Mrs. Campeau? Your grandmother sent me.” The woman in the car didn’t get out.
    Skip walked over and offered her hand, which the other woman disdained. “I’m Skip Langdon from the police department.”
    “Police! Oh, Jesus, not LaBelle again.” She was much lighter than her grandmother, slightly reddish, and she