Lousiana Hotshot

baron’s brother, and one of the other man, the man she didn’t know.
    Cassandra said, “So?”
    “Have you ever seen either of these guys?”
    Cassandra shrugged, not even deigning to answer.
    Slowly, as if she really hated to, Shaneel shook her head. “No’m,” she said, finally. “No’m, I don’t b’lieve so.”
    “I think one of them might be Toes.”
    Cassandra shrugged again, managing to pack so much contempt into a simple shoulder gesture that Talba wondered if she might have a future in the theater.
    This time Shaneel shook her head vehemently, apple cheeks shining in indignation. “No’m,” she said. “Absolutely not.” Talba looked at her quizzically, struck by a false note somewhere or other. “He don’t look a thing like him. Neither one of ‘em.”
    She was lying, and very poorly too. “Which one of them doesn’t look like him?”
    Cassandra said, “Neither one of them does,” each word a dagger. The girl was so full of hostility Talba thought she might burst into flame.
    “Girls. The man’s dangerous. What’s the deal here?”
    “Thought we was women.” Shaneel sounded disappointed.
    “I think you’re about to get demoted. If you’re afraid of this guy, let’s get him behind bars.”
    Cassandra was wearing overalls and a pink T-shirt. For once, she looked no older than her age. The little puffball atop her head gave her the look of a baby animal— fuzzy and vulnerable. She gave another of her mighty shrugs. “Who’s afraid of him? He was just somebody to fuck.”
    “Young lady, you might shock your mother, but you can’t shock me. At your age, I’d done more rebelling than you ever thought about doing.”
    “I’m supposed to care?” Cassandra could have been made out of caramel-colored stone. Shaneel looked panicked, as if she’d somehow been betrayed— whether by Cassandra or Talba herself, Talba couldn’t tell.
    “Shaneel, could you excuse us a minute, please?”
    Tears started to glisten in the girl’s eyes, but she turned back to rejoin the choir. Talba stopped her. “Can you wait a minute? Sit over there, will you?” She was embarrassed at having “young lady’d” the girls; it was the sort of thing she told herself she’d never say. She turned to Cassandra. “You remind me of somebody, you know that?”
    Not even a shrug this time. Just a blank stare.
    “It’s me, honey. I used to hurt as bad as you do. I used to hate the world as much as you.”
    Nothing.
    “It’ll get better, I promise you.”
    The girl turned faintly interested eyes on her.
    “Do you believe me? Fourteen’s the worst age in the world, unless you count twelve. I swear to God it’ll get better.”
    “No, it won’t.” There was still no expression on Cassandra’s face. She might as well have been a doll. But her voice had a slight catch.
    “I promise you.”
    The shrug was back, the contempt.
    “You’re smart to sing, you know that? It’s the way to get through. Here’s my phone number.” Talba ripped out a deposit slip imprinted with her home phone, something she hadn’t been willing to do for Millie. “Call me if you need me. I mean that; I’m there for you.” It was a lot like talking to one of the pews.
    She called Shaneel over again. “Honey, you’re not a very good liar.”
    “What you mean?”
    “You know one of those men is Toes.”
    “You ain’t no welfare lady— you Miz Scott’s detective, ain’t you?”
    “Yes, and I’m pretty good, don’t you think? I got past your principal.”
    She was amused. “Yeah. Yes’m. Guess you are.”
    “So which one is it?”
    “Ma’am?”
    “Which one’s Toes?”
    “I ain’ know.”
    “Yes, you do.”
    “I was asleep that day— when Toes come by the house.”
    “You went to his house with him. You already told me that.”
    “I ain’ remember.”
    This was going nowhere. Talba gave her a deposit slip, her “card”, and left feeling like a failure. There was no doubt in her mind that Eddie would have opened up the girl like a calzone— gotten secrets flowing out of her like cheese-and-mushroom filling. She missed the man.
    Maybe I should send him some flowers,
she thought.
By way of apology.
But she dismissed the gesture as too theatrical.
    If she got to thinking about Eddie, she was going to go into a funk. The thing to do was to keep moving, to do something constructive. She headed for the Bergeron house. Eddie hadn’t lifted his embargo on the dead woman’s family, but she felt a