“Be careful, honey,” Blanche warned as she picked up her purse and prepared to leave. “Sometimes the worst thing that can happen in life is we get what we wish for.”
Sylvie refused to let Blanche’s admonition dampen her spirits. Nothing could ruin her good mood today.
Lucien LeDeux was in a lousy mood.
He was supposed to be on a two-week vacation. The crawfish were fat and sluggish this summer, and he’d much rather be down in the bayou checking his nets than cruising into the sweltering city at rush hour. But duty called in the form of entrapment… by his own conniving brother.
“You are in some kind of wild-ass-lousy mood,” his brother René griped from the passenger seat of the jeep where he was holding onto the crash bar with white knuckles. The right door had fallen off two months ago, and Luc hadn’t bothered to replace it. “I think it’s Sylvie Fontaine that has the steam risin’ from your ears.”
Sometimes René had a death wish.
“I think you’ve had the hots for her since we were kids,” René went on. “I think your testiness is just a cover-up for deeper feelings. I think you’re afraid of—”
“I think you better shut up, René. I only do one good thing a year, and your tab is runnin’ out fast.”
“Cool your jets, man. I was just pointin’ out that you and Sylvie are—”
“Knock off the love-connection talk, René, or I’m outta here.”
“Dieu, if you don’t wanna help, I can get another lawyer.”
“I should be so lucky.”
“Maybe F. Lee Bailey is available. Or Roy Black. How about that guy with the fringed leather jacket… Jerry whatshisname?”
“Hah! You and I both know there isn’t another attorney who’d take on your case.”
“Mais oui, but then I am fortunate to get ‘The Swamp Solicitor.’ ” René smirked at him.
Luc gritted his teeth and refused to rise to that particular bait, but he took great delight in pressing his foot to the accelerator and speeding down the highway, hitting every pothole the parish road crew had missed in the past few years. He got grim satisfaction from the surreptitious sign of the cross René made on his chest.
“I shouldn’t have put you in this spot, Luc.”
René’s sudden contrition surprised Luc. “You had no choice,” he admitted. “C’est ein affair à pus finir.” It was a much-used Cajun saying, but particularly applicable in this case. “It’s a thing that has no end.”
René nodded. “Perhaps we can finally put an end to it.”
The hopeful note in his brother’s voice tore at Luc’s heart. It didn’t matter if it was a seven-year-old René looking up to a ten-year-old Luc for answers, or a thirty-year-old René and a thirty-three-year-old Luc. Their father’s misdeeds were never-ending. The scars never got a chance to heal. Luc’s stereo suddenly kicked on, and René’s static-y voice belted out:
Bayou man is a woman’ delight.
Catch fish all the day
And make love all the night.
Don’ matter if he rough
Like a scaly red snapper.
Long as he give his baby enough
Good hot Cajun lovin’…
Even René’s raucous demo tape couldn’t raise Luc’s spirits now. His brother was an excellent small-time commercial fisherman, a fair singer and accordionist on the side, and a horrible lyricist. But he fancied himself the next Garth Brooks of the Bayou with his combination of country, zydeco, and Cajun music, which he played on off nights going from one dive to another across Louisiana.
Swerving his jeep off the highway, Luc ignored the sounds of a half-dozen horns blasting behind him. His turn signal hadn’t been working for the past year.
He took a quick look at the crowded parking lot of Terrebonne Pharmaceuticals and muttered, “That figures!” Without hesitation, he pulled his jeep into the “No Parking” slot reserved for the company president. The car continued to rumble even after he turned off the ignition, finally coming to a halt with a loud belch from its rear end.
“Your car needs a tune-up,” René advised, unwisely.
“My life needs a tune-up.”
“Yep.”
Luc glanced over at his brother to see what that terse remark implied.