Page 21 of Bayou Hero

Tension eased from his shoulders. “You would have been disappointed. Miss Viola was one of the great repositories of information in this town. She observed carefully, asked questions discreetly and shared judiciously. People confided in her because they trusted her. She knew all but never told it.”

“She might have made an exception this time to get justice for her dear cousins or vengeance against her hated enemy.”

“Hated enemy?” he echoed. “Isn’t that a little melodramatic?”

“I asked if she regretted his passing. She said that not regretting it would—quoting here—‘be unchristian of me, wouldn’t it? I’ve been a good Christian my entire life. God will forgive me this lapse.’”

It sounded just like Miss Viola. Of course God would forgive her for hating Jeremiah. She’d felt pretty certain that God Himself was none too fond of that particular reptile on His earth.

He envisioned the lower floor of the house, hidden now by cornstalks, and imagined the people working inside: a homicide detective, maybe more, a crime scene team, someone from the coroner’s office. A lot of people expending a lot of time in a city where deaths and crimes were always waiting for attention. Turning, he fixed his gaze on Alia. “Do you think she was murdered?”

She pressed her lips together, rubbing off what little lipstick remained there. “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

“But you have an idea.”

Evasively she looked toward the house, as he had, but her gaze followed the lines of empty windows marching in order across the second and third floors before turning back to him. “She told me yesterday that she doesn’t go upstairs, just as you said. And yet this morning I found her lying at the foot of the steps, with one of her slippers lying askew halfway up the stairs, leaving the appearance that she fell.”

Or was forced up and pushed down again. Carried up and thrown down. The how of it wasn’t important to Landry. It was the why. Why would anyone hurt Miss Viola?

Alia folded her hands in her lap and changed the subject. “I’ve known a few people in my life who practically qualified for sainthood, but even they had frenemies.” She gave the made-up word a sardonic twist. “People they were friendly but argued with. What about Miss Viola?”

Landry rubbed the ache in his temple. Too little sleep, too much drama, too much bright sun and loud noises and ugly thoughts. He needed the cool quiet of his bedroom for a few days, at least until Jeremiah had been planted in the family tomb.

“The only person I ever heard say anything bad about her was Jeremiah. They hadn’t had any contact with each other since—” He clenched his jaw shut on the words.

“Since you left home.”

He refused to answer.

Now Alia was watching him, curiosity in her eyes. “I’ve known some kids who left at home at fifteen, sixteen. I’ve investigated a few others. I even considered it a couple times myself, back in the day. But in my experience, it was never such a big deal that family members stopped speaking because of it, especially when it was a well-known fact that the kid was okay. So why are you different? What was special about your leaving home?”

He watched the cornstalks sway in a lazy breeze. Miss Viola had put the chairs back in this corner because, she swore, under the right conditions, the corn grew so fast that a body could actually hear it. He didn’t hear anything right now but the heavy cadence of his heart and Alia’s even breathing.

“There was nothing special about it. I’d had enough, and I moved out.” Miss Viola had helped him rent a tiny apartment in a French Quarter building owned by a friend of hers and had continued to give him money until he was grown. For a runaway, he’d had it damn good.

The only thing special was that at the same time, she’d coerced Camilla and Jeremiah into sending Mary Ellen to a boarding school in Europe.

“Where was the admiral stationed at the time?”

“He’d just come back here. He’d pulled some strings to be close to his family.”

Between the two of them, he and Miss Viola had made the string-pulling all for nothing, and Jeremiah had hated them since. Had it ever bothered him that neither of them had given a damn?

Abruptly Alia gestured to Landry’s clothes. “You have an appointment?”

“Funeral home,” he said shortly.

“I can accompany you. We can talk on the way.”

“I’ve got nothing else to tell you.”

As she stood, she smiled, a professional kind of smile, not insincere, exactly, but not really sincere, either. “Then you shouldn’t mind the company.”