Louisiana Lament

eighties, Talba figured. Anyone who’d been in school then probably knew Clayton.
    There were five African-Americans—Ebony Frenette, April Mullett, Reginald Oliver, Marshannon Porter, and Calvin Richard.
    Not that many, but at least three were boys, who probably wouldn’t have changed their names. She handed back the yearbooks, asked for the phone book, and looked up all five.
    Three of the names were there, among them, (glory be!) Ebony Frenette. The others were Marshannon Porter and Calvin Richard.
    Talba’s stomach grumbled, prompting her to look at her watch. Nearly two, and she was starving. Not wanting to be seen around town any more than she had to, she drove to the outskirts and found a Wendy’s, her unvarying choice when it came to fast food. At least there, she could get salads—not only were they good for you, there was so much to munch, such robust chewing to be done. And utterly without guilt. She didn’t give the dressing a second thought.
    As she worked her mandibles, she thought about things. She hadn’t yet bearded the judge in the scalping case, but she wasn’t up to it today. Today was a day for deep background, a good time to see if there were any loose tongues at all in this town. Because if there were, they’d almost certainly be attached to black bodies.
    I
wonder,
she thought.
I
just wonder.
    The person she was thinking of was the African-American woman she’d seen at the cemetery after the funeral. She was no spring chicken, though Talba couldn’t begin to guess her age. Still, she was probably old enough to have worked for the Pattersons sixteen years ago.
    Talba could feel her blood starting to race. If the woman had been there then, she was practically an eyewitness. White people talked about everything in front of the maid. Talba knew all about it from her own mama, who’d cleaned enough white women’s houses to start her own fortune-telling business, as she was fond of saying. Miz Clara claimed they said everything there was to say about each other. She knew intimate secrets about women she’d never even met. And some times she knew what the future held too—if Elsie’s husband was sleeping with Nina down the block, there was a divorce in somebody’s stars.
    “Law, the money I could make,” Miz Clara liked to say, and laugh; there wasn’t much about her job she laughed about.
    If this woman, the current cleaner, had actually been there when Clayton got scalped, there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t know about it.
    Talba figured chances were good the woman would get off somewhere between three and six, and that was now. Perfect. It would take her awhile to find the house, and Talba could just sit in the car and wait till she came out, then maybe get her license number and run it to get her name. Or maybe talk to her right then. Some opportunity would present itself.
    The Pattersons’ house was enormous, located on a block with several of its sisters and brothers and a whole lot of poor relations, brick houses from the fifties. Evidently, the small ones were now classed as “teardowns.” The others were all far too big for their lots.
    The Pattersons’ even had a circular driveway, though it hardly needed one so few feet from the curb. There was only a tiny patch of green at the front, planted with flowers of the season—mums, pansies, and a Calhoun-for-Governor placard.
    Not a bad sign,
Talba thought, wincing at the pun.
At least they aren’t racist assholes.
    The house itself made all the sense in the world. The Pattersons had money and Deborah was a decorator. Even though all their chicks had flown from the nest, they’d have to have a state-of-the-art domicile. This thing had fan windows, antique-style lighting fixtures, and a fall wreath on the door that rang false in the still-steaming weather.
    Talba was discouraged by the sheer size of it. Surely no cleaning lady could get out before six. She circled the block. She couldn’t comfortably park on this block—it was way too white, way too quiet.
    She circled again. She certainly wasn’t going to call the sheriff and say not to bother her because she was a big city PI doing a job in Clayton. Somehow, she just didn’t figure that was going to go down well.
    No car was parked in the circular driveway. One of the others on the block might be the maid’s, but Talba couldn’t pick out a likely one. Her own Isuzu, though, was conspicuous. It could pass just fine in New Orleans, but it was too old, too