Louisiana Bigshot

to do.”
    The man turned to his wife. “You’re all right, baby. Come on up now.” The woman stood.
    She said, “Why you want to meet Janessa?” For the first time, her face was genuinely curious.
    “I want to make amends to her. Truthfully, I want to know her. She’s my sister, after all. Did you ever know the Reverend Clarence Scruggs? He told me to find her.”
    “I don’t believe I did.” The curiosity was gone, and Simmons had apparently recovered some of her anger. “But you’re welcome to your precious Janessa.” She put a lot of angry emphasis on the word. “If you can find her.”
    Talba had started to realize the girl probably didn’t live with the lace-curtain Simmonses in their postmodern dream house. “You mean you don’t know where she is?”
    “Oh, I know where she’s s’posed to be. But let me tell you something, Ms. Sandra Wallis—oh, yes, I remember you—she’s bad to the core, just like you. Just like ya daddy. Just like all you Wallises. I never could do nothin’ with that girl. Isn’t that so, Matthew?”
    The doctor looked miserable, but he nodded as bidden. “She never has been a walk in the park.”
    “Left home when she was fifteen,” Mozelle continued. “Went to live with somebody else. I never could do
nothin'
with her.
Uh-uhhh.
Never could, not one day in her life. She could have had all these advantages.” She swept her arm to show what she meant. “But nooo. That wasn’t what she wanted. What she wanted was to be contentious and cantankarous. Well, see if I help her out when she come runnin’ back.”
    Talba made a quick calculation. The girl would be nineteen now—apparently she hadn’t come running back in four years. “Are you in touch with her at all?”
    The two Simmonses shook their heads in unison. “No. We’re not,” the doctor said.
    “Well, I wonder if you’d mind telling me how to find her? She is my sister, after all.”
    “She wouldn’t want to see
you,”
Mozelle sniffed.
    But her husband said, “Now, Mozelle. You don’t know what she’d want.”
    “Well, I know that about her. I raised that child from a baby. That poor little motherless child.”
    Talba just stood there, hoping the woman would become undone by her own rudeness.
    She didn’t budge. But the husband said, “Mozelle. This lady means well.”
    His wife flashed Talba a furious look and turned and went into the house.
    Talba raised an eyebrow.
    “You’ll have to excuse her,” her husband said. “She’s touchy on some subjects.”
    Neither of them—none of the three of them—mentioned the horrors of the past, a past that had included Talba as well as her father. Mozelle was moved by it, that was plain, and Talba was sweating gallons. But none of them spoke of it.
    “I understand where she’s coming from,” Talba said. “All I can do is try to do what I can now. I can’t change anything that happened.”
    “Well, one thing. Least Janessa doesn’t know.”
    “She doesn’t?”
    He smiled. “Mozelle gave her some story or other. Some things there’s just no point in knowing.”
    “I thank you for that,” Talba said.
    “You seem like a nice lady. I’m gon’ tell you how to find Janessa. She needs a positive force in her life.”
    “I promise I won’t misuse it.”
    “I don’t b’lieve you will. She went to live with her best friend’s family. Coreen Brown’s the girl’s name.”
    Talba’s heart sank, thinking of the investigative enormity of trying to locate a Brown. But he kept talking. “The family lives near the fairgrounds. On Mystery Street. They ought to be in the phone book, under Napoleon. Napoleon Brown.” He glanced toward the door. “I’d look it up for you, but I don’t think it’s a good idea under the circumstances. You understand?”
    Talba understood all too well.
    She stopped at a gas station and looked up Napoleon Brown. He was there, on Mystery Street. She copied down both address and phone number, then drove there and parked in front. But she didn’t go to the door.
    The house was a 1940s raised bungalow, with a few steps leading to a small front porch. It was in decent repair, but the owners weren’t house-proud. It looked closed up; deserted. But that probably meant either the occupants were away for the weekend or they simply liked to live with the front of the house closed off. A lot of people were like that. Still, she used it as an excuse not to go in.
    Well, actually she didn’t. She told herself she