Turtle Baby (11 page)

Eva Broussard was already awake when Bo arrived at the high-desert property about 5:00. Up and dressed, sipping coffee. Lug-soled boots and a thermos peeking from her backpack suggested that Bo had interrupted the prelude to one of the doctor's lengthy hikes into the mountains.

"No, just a last chance to be alone with the hills before the first group from New York arrives this afternoon," Eva explained. "There will be quite a bit of construction, all environmentally sensitive, of course. But noisy. I have to admit, I've loved the solitude. You know, Bo, when my research with the Seekers is finished, I'm thinking of moving further out. Someplace really isolated. But you haven't come here at dawn to discuss my love of the desert, nor to go hiking, judging by your shoes."

After watching Mildred chase something reptilian to safety under a rock, Bo stared at the toy armadillos on her feet and sighed. "Chac died last night on the stage at the club where she worked," she told Eva Broussard. "Probably a drug overdose. She had some old, healed tracks. She'd obviously stopped using. But then something set her off again. Es and Henry and LaMarche and I were there. It was awful."

"If she injected an amount similar to what she used when she was addicted, it could kill her," Eva agreed, leading Bo and Mildred into the adobe house and throwing a small log on the remains of last night's fire. "But you don't know that's what happened. You're only guessing. And you're quite upset."

"Well, no kidding!" Bo exploded. "I promise a baby I'll find his mother, and then what do I do? I scare her so much with threats from CPS and the courts that she accidentally overdoses and dies. I should have just taken Acito down there and handed him to her. We don't have any business imposing our values and rules on people like Chac and Acito. Do you have any idea what her life must have been like before now?" Bo was pacing in front of the fireplace, the armadillos making shuffle-flap sounds with every step.

"I have agreed to an unorthodox professional relationship with you, Bo," Eva said from where she was seated cross-legged on the tile floor. "As a psychiatrist I can prescribe medications and monitor your mental status. But it's your task to put the necessary boundaries around your own experience. You're overreacting to this death and dramatizing aspects of it that are as yet sheer speculation. Internalizing responsibility for this woman's death may seem noble to you, but in fact is—"

"Grandiose?" Bo concluded the sentence. "I knew you'd say that. It's why I drove up here."

"But I didn't say it." Eva Broussard smiled, revealing straight, healthy teeth. "You did."

By eight o'clock Bo was at the office dressed in a tailored suit and lacy white cotton blouse whose ruffle had taken three quarters of an hour to iron. With expensive black pumps and matching bag, the ensemble suggested a chic competence she was determined to feel.

"I didn't know you were scheduled for court today," Madge noted from her office as Bo entered.

"I'm not. I'm auditioning for the lead in Auntie Mame. Do you think these pearl earrings are too conservative?"

A simmering silence followed Bo to her office door. She switched on the desk lamp and settled in to begin the arduous sequence of phone calls necessary to find the man who was Acito's father. Or not find him. With Chac dead, Acito was already half orphaned. If, after every avenue had been explored, a father could not be found, she would inform the court and proceedings freeing the baby for adoption could begin. But first she had to document "due diligence." No stone could be left unturned in a parent search, especially when there was only one parent left. The first call was to Dar Reinert.

"Bradley," the detective roared genially, "Dr. LaMarche informed me about the death of our suspect in that baby poisoning. I called the Tijuana police. They put it down to a drug overdose. Must have been some scene over there."

"Yeah, a scene," Bo replied. "Listen, Dar, the reason I'm calling is I'm starting the parent search for the baby's father. Did you dig up anything on this Dewayne Singleton?"

"We're both in luck on this one," he answered. "I get to close the case on the baby, and you get—"

"Close the case? How can you close it?"

"No motive, no witnesses, no suspects. The kid's okay. He's in your agency's hands now."

Bo made a face at the telephone.

"But there is still a suspect, Dar. This kid, Chris Joe Gavin. The mother's been living with him. And he's into herbs. He could have poisoned Acito."

The delicate glen plaid of her suit was beginning to annoy Bo. Its interesting black lines created a grid that seemed to be closing in. If somebody had tried to poison a baby, how could the police just look the other way?

Dar Reinert sighed. "I checked with the Henderson, Kentucky, P.D.," he went on. "This Gavin's listed as a missing person. Ran away from a foster home last year when he was sixteen. You can get the skivvy on him through CPS in Henderson, if you want to, but he's got no juvenile record. We'd have to extradite him out of Mexico just to talk to him, if we could find him. The Mexican cops went to his digs last night, looking for drugs. He's cleared out, Bo. Probably gone on down to Mexico City or something. For all practical purposes, he doesn't exist. Now, about Singleton—"

"Wait a minute," Bo interjected. "Do you mean to tell me you're just forgetting about this case?"

"Look, Bo," Reinert continued as if explaining quantum physics to a kindergartener, "we don't know that a crime was actually committed. When my kids were little they were into everything. One of 'em even ate the dog's worm pills. Besides which, we don't know which country this alleged crime took place in. Sorting it out would take time and manpower we just don't have, and neither do the cops in Mexico. It's a loser. It can't go anywhere. It's dead."

Estrella came in and Bo nodded, then continued doodling pictures of police badges on a notepad. Limp badges, like Dali's clocks, draped over baby bottles.

"So tell me about Singleton," she sighed.

"You're gonna love this," Reinert said, regaining his characteristic buoyancy. "The guy's got a record in Louisiana. Most recently a felony theft conviction. And guess what he stole!"

"Pralines," Bo countered. "Somebody's crawfish pie?"

"Stop talking about crawfish!" Estrella stage-whispered from her desk.

"Locusts," Reinert chortled. "The guy stole three thousand genetically altered bugs called Pachytylus pardalina from a New Orleans university lab. He was working there as a janitor. But wait'll you hear—"

Bo flipped her notepad to a clean page. "Let me get this straight. Chac's husband has been convicted of a felony in Louisiana. Does that mean he's in jail? Why would he steal bugs? And how can stealing bugs amount to a felony charge? Bugs are cheap, especially in that climate."

"Not these babies," Reinert went on. "These were experimental bugs, meant for release in agricultural areas. They were supposed to breed with the regular bugs and produce offspring that won't eat rice plants or something. But the best part is what he did with them. Are you ready for this?"

"Probably not," Bo answered.

Reinert was clearly enjoying himself. "Got to be some kind of nut. Get this. He fried the little suckers, coated 'em in caramelized honey, and sold 'em to voodoo shops in the French Quarter as vitamins! Can you believe it?"

Bo stared at the photographs pinned to the bulletin board over her desk. Every face seemed to share with her an uneasy perception of what voodoo bug-vitamins might mean. "Uh, Dar, do you know if he had a name for these ... vitamins?"

"Funny you should ask." He was audibly rummaging through paper. "It was in this report they faxed ... here it is. 'Jean Baptiste.' Called 'em 'Jean Baptiste Vitamins.' Musta named 'em after his girlfriend, huh?"

Uh-oh.

"Not exactly, Dar," Bo concluded the conversation. "Did you get a current address?"

"Sure. Home address, R.R. 3, Franklin, Louisiana. Current address, Wade Correctional Center, Haynesville, Louisiana. Except he's not there."

"What do you mean he's not there?"

"Walked off a work crew eight days ago. They sent dogs after him, of course, but the dogs came back empty-handed. The guy flew the coop."

Bo couldn't help smiling at the image of empty-handed dogs.

"Thanks, Dar," she sighed, turning her own hands up in a gesture of futility. "I'm back at square one."

A brief phone call to Henderson, Kentucky's, Department of Child Welfare netted Bo the name of the social worker who'd supervised Chris Joe Gavin's last foster care placement.

"Mexico?" the gravely voice of a woman named Gracie Belker exclaimed after Bo informed her of Chris Joe's whereabouts. "What in hell's he doin' in Mexico?"

Gracie Belker was friendly and informative. Christopher Joseph Gavin, she told Bo, had been placed in foster care at the age of two on the occasion of his mother's first incarceration for accessory to auto theft. She had since graduated to more serious offenses and was never out of prison long enough to reclaim her son, although she refused to free the boy for adoption. Chris Joe, Belker said, had been in no fewer than twenty-three foster homes in fifteen years. The last, a particularly big-hearted family named Springer, had gone to enormous lengths to keep the boy with them when they had to move out of state. Chris Joe and their older son were like real brothers, and had formed a garage band called Ghost Pony. In Belker's view, the loss of the Springers' love and support when their legal appeal failed and they had to leave without him broke Chris Joe Gavin's heart. The night before he was to go to his twenty-fourth foster home, he ran away.

"He's a good kid," Gracie Belker informed Bo. "Did well in school in spite of being changed every whipstitch, never in any real trouble. Five or six of the foster families wanted to adopt him along the way, including the Springers, but Mom wouldn't let go. Guess he just couldn't take any more, huh?"

Bo thanked the Kentucky social worker and sighed. At seventeen, Chris Joe Gavin had been about to lose someone else he loved. Was the pain so great that he'd been driven to kill what he was about to lose? The thought was troubling.

Several carefully documented calls to Louisiana later, Bo knew nothing more definitive than she'd learned in Kentucky. The authorities at Wade Correctional Center had no idea where Dewayne Singleton might be, but would be delighted to mail copies of pertinent files just as soon as their copier got fixed. The sheriff responsible for Franklin, Louisiana, was visiting his sister down in Cocodrie, but two deputies, both named Fontenot and distantly related, were certain Dewayne Singleton hadn't come home to his family because his family ran him off in the first place. Besides, everybody in town knew he'd escaped from Wade. Any one of the townspeople would call the sheriff's office if he showed up. And no, his family didn't have a phone. The Franklin Public Schools had no record at all of a Dewayne Singleton, but then their available records only went back four years. And the secretary of every church in Franklin professed much too forcefully her certainty that nobody by that name had ever been a member.

By 11:15 Bo was dropping Gs randomly and using "y'all" as a generic nominative of address. When the phone rang almost as soon as she replaced it in its cradle, she answered "Gud mawnin' " without missing a beat.

"Bo?" It was Andrew LaMarche. "I'm in the reception area of your building. Mrs. Aldenhoven has refused permission for me to come to your office even though your line's been busy for hours. I need to talk to you, and Estrella. Are you free for lunch?"

His voice seemed unusually edgy, even under the circumstances.

"We'll be right there," Bo agreed. "But what's wrong?"

"I have some rather disturbing news," he said softly. "Just meet me in front of the building."

Rombo Perry paced the length of the new living room, turned, and skated back to the Dutch door. His socks, he noted, remained immaculate. The recently stripped, sanded, and refinished floor reflected dappled sunlight filtering through a superb deodar cedar that filled the front yard and obviated any need for grass. The dwarf periwinkle Martin had planted would soon cover any bare spots.

"What time do you have to be at the hospital?" Martin St. John inquired from a hall office where he lay on the floor surrounded by open cookbooks. His tone suggested casual, almost careless interest.

Rombo peered through black wire-framed glasses at the street for the twelfth time in fifteen minutes. "Twelve thirty. You know perfectly well it's twelve thirty. But I wanted to be here when they brought it. I can't believe we've bought an entertainment center, Martin. It's so seventies. What if it overwhelms the couch?"

"The couch will survive, Rom," Martin grinned, ambling into the room barefooted. "But you won't if you don't get out of here before that truck arrives." He flung long arms above his curly dark hair in a rough approximation of a ballet position, then bowed clumsily to the floor. "They're going to have shoes on." His hands caressed the surface of the floor as he cocked his head and smiled impishly upward. "Our floor's virginity will be sacrificed to hobnailed ruffians, uncouth deliverymen groaning beneath the weight of handcrafted cabinetry designed to disguise the fact that the Industrial Revolution has already happened." He stood and straightened the hem of a gray sweatshirt as if it were a military tunic. "You can't handle it, Rom. Your patients are waiting. Go on to the hospital."

"Social workers use the term 'clients,' not 'patients,' even psychiatric social workers, and we've been working on this floor for two solid weeks." Rombo sighed. "It's perfect. Do you really think these ballet classes you've been taking are helping your back?"

"Yep," Martin replied, "best thing for baker's back. That's what Madame Anouchka said. I can't wait to get the CD player in so I can listen to Les Sylphides while the rolls rise. It'll be good for Watson, too. We want him to have musical taste, right?"

Watson, the golden retriever puppy for whom Rombo and Martin had bartered a three-year supply of St. John Catering's popular whole wheat yeast rolls, was scheduled to leave his mother in less than two weeks.