Read Online Cajun Waltz by Robert H. Patton - Free Book Online Page A

in mind. Sympathy intruded. “Hell, everyone knows it was an accident. Show me a crawfish pie ain’t got a shell in it. Woman ate like a damn horse.”
    Abe’s hands tightened.
    â€œI’ll be straight,” Richie went on. “I didn’t love Esther that much. Not like I love my gal in Shreveport and it’s a magical thing, lemme tell you.”
    â€œCome again?”
    â€œGonna marry her. Our boy, gonna be his daddy official.”
    â€œYou have a son with another woman?”
    â€œAlmost seven now. Seth. Smart as a whip.”
    â€œPoor Esther.”
    â€œShe not part o’ this.”
    â€œClearly.”
    â€œDon’t be smart or we done here.”
    â€œDone for what, Richie?”
    â€œThe store. The paperwork. Who know that shit more?” Abe had drafted most every legal contract for the Block’s chain since Leopold’s death. Cutting loose such a client would mean starting over in his profession, a humiliation at middle age after he’d been sacked from the state attorney’s office almost twenty years ago, a death sentence if it happened again. “I need you to school Bonnie on the business,” Richie said. “The whole shootin’ match.”
    A fantasy teased Abe’s mind of continuing to work for Block’s in order, like a secret saboteur, to hurt Richie someday for his mistreatment of Esther. But he knew he’d lose fire once the money kept coming. “She’s in high school,” he protested halfheartedly.
    â€œNo more. Asked her to quit, she jumped on it. Hates that goddamn place. Girl likes makin’ money.”
    â€œYou don’t?”
    â€œI like havin’ it.”
    â€œAnd your son? Esther’s son.”
    â€œHe out the toy army come spring.” The term was Richie’s take on Esther’s insistence that R.J. enter the East Texas Military Academy as an eighth grader in 1942. Wartime conscription had been revving up and she’d wanted to shield him from the draft on an education deferral. A military education, so nobody could call him a shirker—first at high school and then, she’d hoped, in the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M, giving him eight years out of harm’s way should the fighting drag on in Europe and the Pacific. The precaution had proved unnecessary once the war ended last summer. “I reckon it’s college next,” Richie said. “Stay drunk at the fraternity on my dime.”
    â€œYou can afford it.”
    â€œYeah? That your money gone for piss at that prep school?”
    â€œIt’ll be his money eventually.” The lawyer smiled, knowing it would annoy. “Leopold’s will, remember? The grandchildren become owners at age twenty-five.”
    â€œWhy I got to get on it, make my plans.” Richie leaned forward. “For Angel and my lil boy.”
    â€œHer name is Angel?”
    â€œIt fit, trust me.”
    â€œYou’re serious about this.”
    â€œBest you be, too.”
    â€œMay I ask, have you told Bonnie and R.J.?”
    Richie nodded, though it didn’t mean yes. “That’s got to come, I know.”
    *   *   *
    H E PREPARED FOR introducing his elder children to Angel and Seth by buying a residence big enough for them all. He called it Georgia Hill after being informed it was of Georgian revival design and thinking it needed a plantation name. Located outside town not far from the lakefront, the place rather strained for glamor, its whitewashed pillars and portico overmatching the brick façade like too much icing on a cake. But it appealed to Richie for its view—the view of it, from the road. The main house sat among several outbuildings on a rise overlooking lawns and established plantings. Two southern live oaks guarded each side of the driveway entrance, trunks gray and hefty as an elephant’s hindquarters. Entering between them in a long-hooded limousine and seeing