Page 117 of The Cajun Doctor

They ate dinner . . . a sumptuous feast of shrimp étouffée that Tante Lulu had whipped up, along with fluffy rice, accompanied by fresh bread that Aaron had bought in the bakery of the Starr store where he’d shopped. He’d also picked up another fruit tart, much to Lily Beth’s delight, and Angus’s and Samantha’s, too, not having eaten since this morning. John also said it was wonderful, almost as good as Tante Lulu’s Peachy Praline Cobbler Cake, which had made the old lady beam.

Throughout the meal, Samantha and Angus regaled the others with a retelling of the day’s events. They were both still in a state of shock, or at the very least, on an adrenaline rush.

“I almost shit my pants when I walked into that office and saw Nick with a gun aimed at Samantha’s head,” Angus said with a laugh.

“Hush yer mouth, boy!” Tante Lulu said, flicking Angus with a dish towel. “That kind of language ain’t proper.”

“Ya shoulda said poop, instead of shit,” John advised with a grin, probably having been flicked many a time in his life by his beloved aunt. Everyone, even as far as New Orleans, had heard of Tee-John LeDeux, the baddest Cajun to ever cross a bayou. He must have given Tante Lulu every one of the gray hairs she hid . . . under her Farrah Fawcett wig, which was incidentally lopsided at the moment. In fact, John leaned up and adjusted it for her.

“Or mebbe ya shouldn’t say no bad words at all,” the old lady said with a harrumphing sound.

“Anyhow, I don’t even remember bein’ shot,” Angus went on. “It only hurt when I woke up.”

“Ah, yer mah hero,” Lily Beth drawled out, patting Angus on the shoulder. They were sitting side by side on one of the benches. It was a wonder the bench didn’t tip over like a seesaw with the disproportionate weight. Really, Samantha could swear the girl had gained five pounds just since yesterday.

“Weren’t ya scared?” Tante Lulu asked Samantha.

“Shaking in my high heels. Don’t forget to give them back to Charmaine, by the way. The funny thing is, when you’re in the middle of something dramatic like that, you don’t stop to think, ‘Boy, am I scared!’ You’re too caught up in the frenzy of your wildly beating heart, your light-headedness, and what’s happening around you. Almost like you’re hovering above the scene, and it’s happening to someone else.”

“I know what ya mean,” Tante Lulu said. “I felt lak that when I first heard that mah fiancée, Phillipe, had died in the war.” Everyone knew that long ago Tante Lulu had been engaged to Phillipe Prudhomme, a frogman, one of the original Navy SEALs, and that he’d died on Omaha Beach during World War II. “In fact, I felt lak that fer a long, long time. Fergit about that Walkin’ Dead show on the TV. I was lak a true, blue, walkin’, talkin’ zombie. Fer years! I drank too much, smoked lak a chimney, and slept with more sailors than a French Quarter pros-tee-toot.”

Whoa! TMI! I do not want to picture this old lady as a hooker.

“What made ya stop?” Lily Beth asked, in awe, hearing this story for the first time. Well, part of it was a first for Samantha, too.

“St. Jude, bless his heart. He come ta me right on Jackson Square before St. Louis Cathedral in Nawleans.” Tante Lulu sighed and swiped at her teary eyes. “But thass another story.”

John pulled his aunt down onto the bench beside him and kissed the top of her wig. “Now, doan be gettin’ the moody blues.”

“I won’t,” she said, “but sometimes it jist hits me, of a sudden, what I lost.” She turned to Samantha. “Yer situation is different. You’ll be feelin’ better by t’morrow.”

Samantha nodded. “Funny thing, though. Much as I had grown to detest Nick, and loathed the baby selling scheme of his, I never wished him dead. It saddens me.”

“Course it does.” Tante Lulu was back to her usual opinionated self. No longer weepy with memories. “It’s cause we allus hope that bad folks will see the light before they go ta their Maker, and be saved. Lak I was by St. Jude.”

Samantha wasn’t sure about that. Not about Tante Lulu and St. Jude. But about everyone hoping that everyone would “see the light.”

“It dint hafta end lak it did,” John said. “If Coltrane hadn’t shot at a cop and been aimin’ his gun at Samantha, he wouldn’t have been gunned down. ‘Suicide by cop’ probably hadn’t been his intention, but that’s how it worked out.”

“Did he die right away? Before he could see the light?” Tante Lulu asked, making the sign of the cross.

“I don’t know ’bout the light,” John said, with a wink at Samantha, “but Daniel pronounced him dead at the scene, almost immediately after he was shot.”

“Daniel was there?” Samantha tilted her head to the side. This was the first time she’d heard that. “In the parking garage?”

“Mais oui,” John answered. “Dint ya see him, chère?”

She shook her head, guessing that she’d been even more out of it than she’d recalled. But the idea that he’d been there, and left, gave her a foreboding of things not so right between them, more so than she’d thought.

John was telling Angus and Lily Beth what the situation would be from now on. “There will probably be a day or two before the paperwork is done for the Coltrane case. The accomplice, Misty Beauville, was arrested at a private airport outside the city, and she’ll be spillin’ the beans all night long, is mah guess. We doan think there’ll be other arrests, too difficult to investigate perps outside the country, and it looks lak Coltrane was using some Nigerian middle men ta sell his product . . . i.e., babies.”

Lily Beth groaned at that image. Her baby being shipped outside the country.

Once again, Angus hugged her in comfort.

And Samantha wondered if something might be developing between the two of them.

“Shouldn’t I go back home to see what damage might have been done at my house?”