Chapter 65
The incubator holding Clarice’s baby was a large plexiglass cube set away from the rows of little bassinettes for the healthy infants. To Luc’s mind, it looked like a transparent tomb.
The baby was so tiny, a wizened, wrinkled little doll, its skin a mottled purple. It didn’t move but lay still under a blanket looking too heavy for the frail body.
Luc felt something within him tremble as he saw the dark red fuzz covering the little skull.
It could be Michel’s child, he told himself desperately. Michel had red hair when he was born. I remember. He looked over to the crib where Gabriel lay. Are you cousins or brothers? Will you hate each other as Michel and I do? I was certain all that was going to be behind us, but now…
A hand touched his shoulder. Luc jumped, and stared at the Candy-Striper standing behind him.
“There a police officer asking for you, Mr. Deveraux. He’s in the waiting room.” She pointed down the hall.
A policeman? Why is a cop asking for me? With a nod, Luc walked away.
* * *
The police officer was young and Cajun, his accent thick as soft butter.
“Gus Hebert,” he introduced himself, displaying his badge for Luc’s inspection.
Luc glanced at it and back to the man’s face. Hebert was about his age, dark, and self-possessed. He’d been a cop for some time, Luc decided, for there was no hesitation in his movements.
“Metairie P’lice, Homicide Division.”
“Homicide?” Luc acknowledged his introduction with a raised eyebrow and a sideways glance at Michel, who still sat in the same spot.
“Tha’s raht. Ah’m here t’ ask questions pertainin’ t’ th’ death of Clarice Deveraux?” Fitting his badge into his jacket breast pocket so it hung in plain view, he consulted the small notepad in his other hand. “Yo’ wife?”
He looked from Luc to Michel questioningly.
“My wife.” Michel spoke up. “I don’t understand.”
“’Parently, th’ doctuh attendin’ Mrs. Deveraux when she died felt it occurred under myster’ous circumstances. He notified us.”
“Mark called you?”
There was a sudden wildness in Michel’s eyes. For a moment, Luc wasn’t certain what he was going to do.
“I can’t believe… There are no mysterious circumstances,” he said sarcastically. “My wife was pregnant. And clumsy. She fell down the stairs. That’s it.”
Oh God. He’s going to cover it up. He’s not going to tell him what really happened.
“Michel…” Luc began.
For an instant, the brothers stared at each other. Michel looked away, back to staring at the floor, hands together as if in prayer. Luc spoke to Hebert.
“There was more to it than that. What happened was my fault, I’m afraid.” He tried to make it a statement of fact and not sound as if he were guilty.
Hebert chose to hear the latter. “You push her or somethin’?”
Luc blinked. Put like that it shook him. “No, I—”
He took a deep breath. Michel raised his head. He could feel his brother’s gaze on him.
“You see, Detective Hebert, we were arguing.”
I’ll tell him the truth. I didn’t do anything wrong. He looks intelligent. He’ll listen and understand. I hope.
“An’ you pushed her,” Hebert finished for him. “It was an accident.”
Luc forced himself not to react. “Before Clarice married my brother, she and I dated. Exclusively.”
That was a nice, euphemistic way of putting it. Better than we fucked like a pair of wild rabbits every chance we got.
"Later, when I moved to Dallas, she and Michel married. I got married also, but whenever I came back to visit my grandfather, she seemed to think I’d come back specifically to see her. It became very embarrassing.”
Hebert was scribbling rapidly in the notepad. Luc wondered if he was writing in longhand or had his own code.
“Ah see.” His tone hinted he saw more than Luc was saying.
“I’ll verify what my brother says, Detective.” Michel looked up. “"No matter what he said or did, my wife refused to believe it was over between them. It was almost an obsession with her.”
He blinked slightly and wiped at his eyes, studying his damp fingers.
“Luc did nothing to encourage her. He loves his wife very much.”
“Wheah’s yo’ wife, Mr. Deveraux?” Hebert asked.
“She’s here at Metairie General,” Luc answered. “She gave birth to our son early this morning.”
Hebert scribbled some more. “That lets her out as a suspec’, then.”
Suspect?
“Detective Hebert, surely you don’t think…
“T’ use a tired ol’ cliche, Mr. Deveraux, Ah jes’ want to get th’ facts, an’ Ah assume tha’s whut you’re givin' me. Raht?” Hebert sent Luc a flash of a smile making him look very ingenious. “So you an’ Mrs. Deveraux were arguin’?”
Luc nodded, glad to get on track again. “I had just come from the hospital after seeing Julie.”
“Tha’s your wife?” More hasty writing.
“That’s right. Anyway, I went home to shower and change, and as I came out of my room, there she was.”
Again, he could see Clarice, so pathetic, desperate, and angry.
“She demanded to know when I was going to divorce Julie and marry her and… well, I just lost it.” For a moment, Luc looked ashamed.
“Go on.”
“I told her I didn’t love her and even if I wasn’t married, I’d never have anything to do with her again.” Luc forced his voice to be emotionless. “She was getting hysterical, yelling, and I guess I shouted back, and then—” He hesitated, looking back at Michel.
“Yeah?” Hebert waited.
“I’m not proud of what I did next. I told her to go to Hell and started down the stairs. Then I heard Michel call my name and—”
“I was in the study,” Michel explained. “I came to the door to see what all the shouting was about. Clarice followed Luc down the stairs. She was going to push him. I had to warn him, so I shouted. He turned and Clarice missed him. She lost her balance and fell. He tried to catch her. That’s how his hand got scratched.”
Hebert’s dark gaze flicked to Luc’s gauze-wrapped wrist and back to Michel.
“B-but she was too heavy and she kept falling.”
The silence was broken only by the sound of Hebert’s pen.
“I told the butler to call an ambulance.”
“There were othuh witnesses?”
“Our butler, Harrison Cartier, his wife, and the three maids.” He supplied their names.
Hebert wrote a final word and looked up. Neither Michel nor Luc moved as he flipped the notepad closed and retracted the point of his pen. He replaced them in his jacket pocket.
“Ah think tha’s all Ah need,” he said. “Ah’ll have to interview Mr. an’ Mrs. Cartier, an’ the maids, an’ then file muh report, but if their stories corroborate youah’s, Ah don’t see any problems. There’ll be a coronor’s inquest, as is th’ case in all violent deaths, but it seems straightforward enough. Mrs. Deveraux, who appears t’ have been a li’l unhinged…Ah apologize, Mr. Deveraux.” He glanced at Michel who gave him a bare nod. “Tried t’ push yo’ brothuh down th’ stairs an’ when he dodged, she fell t’ her death. Ah doubt any charges’ll be filed ’gainst anyone.”
“Thank you,” Michel said softly.
Nodding, Hebert buttoned his overcoat and walked out, leaving Luc and Michel staring at each other. Luc waited until the policeman’s footsteps had died away before he spoke.
“You were going to protect me. Why?”
“Same reason you gave me that insulin injection the other night.” Michel shrugged. “I didn’t want them making this into another three-ring circle with you as the main attraction. Again.”
He stopped, as if he wasn’t certain how to go on.
“That’s surprising, after the way you were talking a little earlier.”
“Forget what I said before. Damn it, Luc! I want my brother back. Clarice has destroyed too much of your life and mine. There was a minute this morning when it was like it used to be, and I want it back.” His laugh was bitter and ironic. “It’s like you said in the library. If you’re gone, who will I have to fight with?”
“Michel, about the baby…”
“I’m going to call him Michel-Clair. That’s the name Clarice chose.”
“He has red hair.”
“So did I,” he said, with finality.
Once more it got quiet.
“I should go see Julie, tell her.”
“God, yes. She doesn’t know.” Michel looked stricken all over again. “And someone has to tell Gran’père.”
He pulled his cell phone from his pocket.
“Go to Julie, Luc. I’ll man up and tell Gran’père. I’ll call Win and have him meet me in Gran’père’s room.”
Luc left him disregarding hospital rules and punching in the numbers for Win’s cell.