Page 26 of The Cajun Doctor

“That’s like Suzi Benton telling me that I stink like frog spit before she kissed me. On the mouth. Yeeew!”

“Aaron! You were eight years old.”

“I’m just sayin’.” Aaron grinned at him, then went serious. “But . . . um, about Tante Lulu—”

“Yoo hoo!”

Both of their heads snapped up at the same time. Then they stood, walked to the end of the gallery, and peered around the side of the house. The old lady was approaching from the backyard. Do they call the back area of a plantation a yard? Daniel wondered with what had to be hysterical irrelevance.

“Holy hell, Aaron!” he said then, just noticing all the outbuildings surrounded by metal fences. “What in God’s name are they?”

“The former slave quarters made into kennels. The previous owner, who died thirty years ago, was a dog breeder. Showed Redbone Coonhounds all over the world. Blue ribbons out the wazoo. The property was fallin’ down even back then.”

Tante Lulu was huffing and puffing closer.

“What the hell is she doing here?” Daniel asked him.

“Uh.”

“Oh, no! Don’t tell me you invited her here today?”

“Uh.”

Daniel smacked him on the arm, again, then walked back, and stepped doggedly down the rickety steps. Aaron rushed to catch up, probably hoping, with futility, to do a bit of damage control before Tante Lulu barreled in.

The petite Cajun lady was outrageous as ever in a glittery red T-shirt with the logo, “There’s Still Plenty of Zippedy in the Old Doo-Dah,” tucked into child-size capri pants. Her hair was bright curly red today, matching her lip gloss. Typical Tante Lulu. “Hey, y’all. My niece Charmaine dropped me off a bit ago soz I could have a look around. Ain’t this nice?”

Without waiting for an answer, the old lady reached up to give Aaron a hug. When she turned to do the same to him, his glower stopped her short. But only for a moment. She yanked him down by the ears and gave a big smack on the cheek.

“Are ya sure ya ain’t gay, Daniel?” Tante Lulu smiled with a wicked gleam in her eyes.

Daniel growled, and Aaron stepped between the two of them.

Tante Lulu craned her little neck around Aaron and addressed Daniel. “Congratulations, boy. I guess Aaron tol’ ya ’bout all the plans fer Bayou Rose Plantation.”

Daniel turned slowly to look at Aaron. “All what plans?”

“The animal rescue operation,” Tante Lulu informed him gleefully. “Lordy, Lordy! My charity’s been concentratin’ on orphans and poor families startin’ back after Hurrycane Katrina, but no one’s lookin’ after all the animals left behind. So many of them got loose and were never rounded up. They been begettin’ and begettin’ ever since, lak the Bible. Lots of them need homes, and some of them need doctorin’. Good thing—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Daniel knew about Jude’s Angels, Tante Lulu’s charity that operated under the umbrella of the Hope Foundation. Hell, he served on its board. He ought to know. But this was the first he’d heard about animals. “What animal rescue operation?” Just then, the fenced-in buildings out back were making sense. “You can’t possibly think that I’m going to work with animals.”

Tante Lulu waved a hand airily, like she was the queen, and they were her minions. “Jist ’til ya get back ta reg’lar doctorin’, honey.”

“I’m a physician . . . not a veterinarian.”

“Same thing. But not ta worry. It’s jist a blip of an idea fer now. Mebbe sometime in the future. Mebbe you’ll have a better idea.”

Daniel didn’t trust the old lady’s blips. Not one bit. As for other ideas, he couldn’t say out loud what ideas were in his head at the moment. “I thought you were going to build a flight operation here,” Daniel accused Aaron.

“Can’t I do both? That’s the great thing about twins. We multitask.”

Daniel told him what he could do with his multitasking.

Ignoring them, Tante Lulu was on a tear. “—and the doctor’s office in the garconniére?”

“The garden-what?”

“Not garden. Gar-son . . . garconniére.” She waved her hand toward an odd-shaped building off to the side of the house. Sort of hexagonal in shape. It wasn’t very big. There couldn’t be more than one or two rooms on each of the three stories. “Bachelor quarters. These kinda buildings were fer the planter’s sons once they were growed up but not yet married.”