The Gates of Evangeline (17 page)

“Got one boob left,” she says, and I'm embarrassed that she caught me looking. “You ask me, that's still one too many. Even more people starin' at my chest now than when I had the two.” She shoos us into a tidy little living room.

“I'm so sorry.” I don't know if I'm apologizing for gawking or for the loss of her breast.

“Lost a boob, saved my life. Pretty good trade.” She sits down on an old, pet-scratched recliner.

Detective Minot and I hover for a moment before realizing we aren't going to get any invitations. We sit on opposite ends of the couch, and I do my best to tactfully ignore the thin layer of dog hair coating it.

“So you the writer, I guess,” Danelle says, addressing me. “Been wonderin' about you, how you gonna make a book with a whole lotta nothin'. Those fools never turned up head or tail of that chile. Why you wanna make a book on this, anyhow?”

I could tell her about my dream, which sounds more than a little crazy, or about Keegan, but she has no apparent use for sentiment. “It's an interesting case, and this is the job they offered me,” I say. “I have to earn a living.”

Wrong move. “You best watch what you do for money, girl,” Danelle advises me. “There's more than one kinda whore.”

Detective Minot purses his lips, but I can't tell if he's suppressing a laugh or getting frustrated that I'm not doing a better job at winning Danelle over. “I'm sure Miss Cates will try to tell Gabriel's story respectfully and accurately,” he says, taking over. “Thank you for seeing us today. You mind if I record our conversation?”

Straight off, there's trouble. “Yes, I mind. I don't want you people messin' with my words, pullin' sound bites that make it look like one thing when I meant another.”

“It'll be a more accurate reflection of the conversation if I tape it,” Detective Minot warns. “And I write slow.”

“Suits me fine,” she retorts. “I'm retired anyhow.”

And so they begin, both old pros at navigating Q & As.

I don't know why I thought this would be interesting. It's not. Detective Minot walks Danelle through a long series of questions she must have answered a hundred times before about her employment with the Deveaus, the routines of the house, and the night of August 14. He pauses periodically to jot things down, and I inwardly curse Danelle's mistrust of recording devices. Even worse, half of his questions concern seemingly pointless minutiae. I don't blame her when she rolls her eyes at “Can you tell me what you made for dinner that night?” and “Walk me through the steps of that recipe, would you?” I'm guessing that Detective Minot is establishing a timeline, but I hear nothing promising in her replies.

According to Danelle, Gabriel was getting ready for his bath when she left for the evening. It was roughly half past seven. The last time she saw him, he was running naked down the hallway while Maddie Lauchlin chased after him. Danelle spent the rest of the night in her cottage and noticed nothing unusual. The next morning, around seven o'clock, she headed back to Evangeline to make breakfast. Despite all the starts and stops, I'm listening anxiously now to her narrative, waiting for the inevitable discovery. Unlike the first time I learned the details of the case, I can picture it all now. I've
been
there.

“I was makin' waffles when Maddie came in, lookin' upset,” Danelle continues. “She said she'd misplaced the key to Gabriel's room and needed mine. So I went upstairs with her to unlock the—”

“Why'd you go with her?” Detective Minot asks. “Why didn't you just give her the key?” There's no change in his tone or demeanor, but I find it a compelling question.

“I tried,” Danelle tells him, “but Maddie said she was bein' so scatterbrained, she'd probably just go and lose mine, too. So I went with her.”

I glance at Detective Minot to see if that explanation sounds as flimsy to him as it does to me. There's no getting around the fact that, without Danelle present to see the door still locked that morning, Maddie would've been the first person blamed for Gabriel's disappearance. Nobody would've been talking kidnapping. The assumption would've been that Maddie forgot to lock the door and Gabriel ran out into the night and got himself killed. Having Danelle there as a corroborating witness was certainly convenient.

Detective Minot flexes his writing hand a few times, tired of note-taking. “Was that typical of Maddie? Being scatterbrained?”

Danelle hesitates. “Maddie'd had a bad few months. Used to be she ran a tight ship, but she was dealin' with some family business and sometimes things got away from her.”

Like locking the door?
I wonder. Maybe there was no murder here at all, just a terrible accident that Maddie tried to cover up to save her own skin. With the bayou situated directly outside Evangeline's front door, it's not hard to imagine something horrible happening to a rambunctious two-year-old. But that wouldn't explain the absence of a body, or the dream I had about Gabriel.

“You said she was upset when she came into the kitchen,” says Detective Minot, still pursuing the Maddie angle. “What did you mean by that?”

Danelle is cautious, and I can see that she and Maddie must have been friends. “Just . . . upset.”

“A little bothered, would you say, or extremely distraught?”

“I wouldn't know, I was thinkin' about waffles, wasn't I?” She leans forward in her chair and stabs the air with her pointed finger. “Look, if you gonna try to pin somethin' on Maddie, I got nothin' else to say 'cause you're a damn fool. Maddie loved that li'l boy more than her own son. She loved all those kids, even Andre and those yappity girls. She raised every one of 'em.”

“I've heard nothing but good things about her,” Detective Minot assures her. “I'm sure it was hard for everyone when she and Jack left Evangeline.” He doesn't bring up the circumstances of their leaving, but even I know the Lauchlins' departure—just two weeks after Gabriel went missing—caused quite a stir in the media.
DEVEAU BLAMES NANNY,
one paper speculated, reflecting the widespread belief that they'd been fired.

Danelle scowls, well aware of public perception. “Nobody made 'em go,” she says, “if that's what you're thinkin'. Maddie and Jack left 'cause they wanted to. She couldn't stand the place no more. Had nightmares. And with the baby gone, she had no job left anyhow.”

“Where did she and Jack go?” Detective Minot asks.

“They had some family things to attend to, I don't recall where.”

For the first time since our awkward introduction, I jump in. “You mean their son? Do you know what happened to him?” If Danelle's got information about Sean, I want to hear it.

“I think it was Maddie's sister.” Danelle regards me probingly, and I realize I have loudly broadcast our special interest in Sean.

Just as I'm resolving to keep my stupid mouth shut, Detective Minot stands and tucks his notebook under his arm. “Mind if I use your restroom, Ms. Martin?”

She grunts her assent. “First door on the right.”

From the look he gives me on his way out, Detective Minot doesn't need the bathroom at all. This is it. My chance to be alone with Danelle, woman to woman. To establish a rapport. But how? I'm afraid she'll skewer me for any subject I bring up.

“So . . . were you and Gabriel close?” I expect some smart-ass answer, but she only shrugs.

“I never was a fan a little ones. Always got on better with Andre. He was old enough to have some sense.”

Ah,
I think,
the ever-elusive Andre.
Now that I'm acquainted with his sisters, mother, and boyfriend—not to mention the time I've spent going through his personal items—it's starting to feel ridiculous that I haven't talked more to the sole surviving Deveau male. The fact that he's Danelle-approved makes me even more curious. “I take it Andre was a good kid?”

“Sure.” Danelle isn't going to make this easy.

“The twins said he never got on well with Neville.”

“Andre and his daddy were different, that's all.”

“And Hettie? Was she more accepting of Andre's . . . differences?”

Danelle meets my gaze with a steely look, annoyed by my pussyfooting. “He's a homosexual. How easy do
you
think he's had it?” She clucks her tongue in disapproval. “Come on, now, you writin' a book or a gossip column?”

I have to admire her loyalty. Danelle Martin is a decent human being, and it's her decency, her respect for privacy, that makes her a hard nut to crack.

I don't want to leap to unfair conclusions, but Andre
is
a male relative who surely had access to his little brother. “Did Andre show an interest in Gabriel? Did he spend much time alone with him?”

The question comes out more pointed than I intended.

Danelle knows exactly what I'm getting at, and she doesn't like it. Her hand twitches as if she's fighting the urge to slap me. “Andre may have liked men,” she says with cold fury, “but he did
not
like little boys, and he certainly wasn't after his own brother.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he had crushes on
older
men, not younger.”

I pry further. “Older men like who?”

Danelle doesn't look happy to be having this discussion, but my insinuations of incest and pedophilia are too much to ignore. “Fellas in their late twenties, mostly,” she says reluctantly. “Andre took a shine to one a the drivers when he was twelve. And when he got older, I'd say he had special feelings for Maddie's boy, Sean. That's all I know about it, and I'm done talkin', you understand?”

I half-smile at the mention of Sean.
Not you again. Those Deveau kids couldn't get enough of you.
It occurs to me that in 1982 Sean was about the same age that Jules is now. Perhaps Andre has always been attracted to men of that age. That gets me wondering: Could Sean Lauchlin have been more than just a crush? Could he and Andre have actually been involved? I study Danelle, seeking the answer in her face, but she's tapping her fingers, waiting for Detective Minot to return so she can hustle us out.

There's no evidence that Sean was gay. He fathered a child, and he was making plans to leave the country with a woman. On the other hand, maybe it
wasn't
a woman he was running away with. Maybe that's why Maddie and Jack disapproved, why they never told Noah much about his dad. I can only imagine the fireworks if Maddie discovered that Sean, her almost-thirty-year-old son, was having a relationship with the barely legal Andre. I remember what the librarian said, how Sean read poetry in English class and never seemed interested in the girls around town. I'd assumed he was just a sensitive type who didn't fit in. Now I see another interpretation.

However compelling this theory is, it does nothing to explain Gabriel's disappearance or Sean's abnormally large bank account. And how does Noah's mother fit into all this?

I throw it out there, just in case. “Did you ever see Sean Lauchlin with a woman named Violet?”

Danelle doesn't miss a beat. “Violet Johnson? Never saw 'em togetha, but she mighta known Sean. Got the impression she knew a lot a men.”

Aha. That could explain why Maddie Lauchlin was not a big fan of Noah's mother.

“Who was she?” I ask.

“Violet was a cleanin' girl at Evangeline. Pretty li'l thing, and she knew it.” Danelle rolls her eyes, unimpressed by pretty little things. “That who you askin' 'bout?”

“I think so. When did she work there?”

Danelle thinks it over. “She wasn't there long. Woulda been '75, '76.”

Noah was born in 1979, leaving several years unaccounted for, but at least I have some idea now how his parents met.

“What happened to her? Why'd she leave?”

Danelle answers with her characteristic warmth and affection. “Never knew, never cared.”

Detective Minot has no visible reaction when he returns to find us sitting in awkward silence, but I gather he is disappointed. I can't blame him. Part of me was really expecting to blow the lid off everything today, to succeed where hundreds of trained professionals failed. I'm forced to admit that things are not moving in that direction.

For another half hour or so, Detective Minot continues with his slow, plodding questions. Both Danelle and I are squirming in our seats by the time he wraps it up.

“Well, this is a good start,” he tells her. “I'll be in touch with you in the next few weeks and we can arrange a time for a written statement.”

She makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a snort. Detective Minot rises to his feet and holds out a hand. She folds her arms, leaving him stranded.

“Y'all still in the dark, same as you always was,” she declares. “Thirty years, and you back to where you started.”

Detective Minot doesn't dignify the remark with an answer, just thanks her and heads out.

I don't follow. I'm not done with Danelle. “So that's it?”

“I answered every damn question you folks asked, didn't I?”

I don't believe for a moment that she's given us the whole story. “I don't get you.”

“Nobody asked you to.”

“You
know
something.” I can't let it go. “You know something, and you're holding back.”

“I know a lotta things,” she retorts, “and I tell you one. We done here.”

“I admire your loyalty, I really do.” I shake my head. “But at this point, who is it you're protecting?”

Danelle stares stonily back at me but doesn't say a word.

“Thirty years ago, Ms. Martin, I could understand. But there's no one left, don't you know that?” Maybe she
doesn't
know. She hasn't worked for the family in a couple of decades. I decide to do a quick update. “Neville is dead, Maddie and Jack are dead, and Hettie's brain is so fried she thinks the gardener is her son.”