shoes for the same thing Max had ordered. “This is a great place,” he said, hanging his head back to look at a thick layer of mostly yellowing business cards tacked to the ceiling. “It’s got character, atmosphere. I’d like to come when the band plays. Did you see the size of the gator out front? Blue.” The restaurant surrounded a dance hall and the section where the Savages sat was built off one side of the building.
“Blue what?” Kelly said, after considering. “The shoes? Yeah, fucking idiot Elvis impersonator. Jeez.”
“He was talking about the alligator,” Max said. “It’s called Blue. I told you that when we got here.”
“Yeah,” Roche said to Kelly, his tone light and even. “And I’m humoring you, friend. Otherwise I’d tell you to go to hell and take your third-degree with you.”
Time to change the subject. “Wasn’t it great to see Michele Riley yesterday? I knew she’d come for an interview just to be polite, but I wasn’t sure she’d accept the job.”
Roche said, “I was,” and looked too pleased.
“Because she can’t resist your charms?” Max asked. “I don’t think you had much to do with it. She likes the idea of having her own physical therapy department even if it will be small. And she’s damned good, so all the luck is on our side. I’m relieved she wants to come here—there’s nothing much she doesn’t know about me.”
“Oh, yeah?” Roche crossed his arms.
“You know what I mean.”
Roche looked into the distance. “It’s a good sign she’s so positive. She’ll bring others with her—including the fiancé she ought to dump in favor of me. She seems to really like it here.” He and Max had known Michele professionally. At their invitation she had come to Toussaint the day before, expressed delight over the clinic and agreed to coordinate the physical therapy department. Her fiancé was a nurse.
“Just remember Michele’s taken,” Max said to Roche and smiled. “It’s beginning to feel as if we should have done something like this a long time ago,” he observed. “This will be a good place for patients to recuperate.”
“Fucking weather,” Kelly muttered as if he hadn’t heard a word either Roche or Max said. He gulped beer from a sweating glass. “You know you can’t hide forever, don’t you, Max.”
“If I didn’t, I do now,” Max said. “Where did that come from?” He could always rely on their older brother to state the obvious.
“Someone has to remind you what we’re facing. You get off in your own world and forget—”
“Keep it down,” Roche said through his teeth. “We’ve been here a long time now without any problems.”
“You and Roche have been here a fair amount of time,” Kelly said. “Making sure you two can do what you want to do keeps me pretty busy elsewhere.”
“Can it,” Max said. “You don’t have to spend so much time in New York and you wouldn’t if you didn’t like it there. We all like it there, remember? It’s home, or it was. You’re in a rotten mood and it isn’t helping a thing. So we’re gonna get more rain, big deal, it rains plenty here and work doesn’t stop.”
“Delays cost us,” Kelly said. He finished the sandwich rapidly and wiped his mouth on a paper napkin. “You know how hard it is to keep a work crew focused. If the weather gets bad they find inside jobs, and they come back when they damn well please.”
“Dammit,” Max said. He noticed that noise had dwindled at nearby tables and saw patrons lose interest in their own conversations while they listened to the brothers argue. He dropped his voice. “What’s up with you, Kelly? You get jumpier by the day. If you want out of this project, say so. I never imagined we’d have to resort to hiding away to do our work but it’s the best we’ve got—or I’ve got. You two don’t have to be here.”
Roche rolled his eyes and kept quiet.
“You can be an ungrateful son of a bitch,” Kelly said.
“So you say. You push me too far. We’re finally within shouting distance of opening the clinic’s doors and you’re looking for more problems.”
Roche half turned away and pulled an ankle onto the opposite knee. Roche the quiet peacemaker with a steely will said less than he thought, much less. Max was the one man who read his twin regardless of the man’s enigmatic demeanor. Neither of them went in for idle talk.
“Well, hell, it is starting to rain,” Kelly said, looking up at the first big drops on a skylight. He dropped his voice. “I get edgy is all. You’re right, I look for problems. I’ll try to knock it off.”
“Forget it,” Max said. “We’re going to be looking over our shoulders for a bit. We’ll learn to forget about it in time.” He did not say they’d be looking for unnatural deaths that might be blamed on Max the way two others, fifteen years apart, the second one three years ago, initially had been. He also didn’t mention that he hesitated to give the impression that he cared about any woman in more than an offhand way because knowing him well might be dangerous to a lady’s health. Kelly and Roche thought Annie Duhon was just a nodding acquaintance.
“Okay,” Roche said, easing a baseball cap out of his back pocket and tossing it on the table. “Is that it, Kelly? You’re edgy and you wanted us all here so you could talk about it.”
“For a shrink, you have a lousy bedside manner,” Kelly said, jutting his square jaw. “I already said I was uptight, but that isn’t why we’re here. I wanted to go somewhere we could talk without being overheard by the Devols, or those sorry-ass construction workers.”
“Really?” Roche looked at the nearest table where four men instantly got real interested in their food. “So talk. Quietly. And the contractors are doing a great job. Looks like they’ll finish almost on time and that doesn’t happen so often.”
Kelly put his elbows on the table and rested his face in his hands. “I’m not sure about this place anymore, that’s all.”
Roche and Max looked at one another quickly, and Roche shook his head slightly.
Sure, Max thought, as usual they were supposed to consider Kelly’s unpredictable moods and give him space. “What d’you mean?” he asked, unable to resist. “If you’re saying we’re making a mistake opening Green Veil, I wish you’d said something a year or more ago.”
“You were so set on it,” Kelly said, his face still in his hands. “Your buddy, Reb Girard, told you this was a good place to get lost and you believed her. I don’t know what I think about it now.”
“I still believe her,” Max said, getting heated.
Roche’s crabs arrived, sizzling on the plate. He thanked the waitress who gazed into his very blue eyes for a bit too long, then glanced at Kelly before she scuttled away.
“Reb’s dad was the town doc around here and she’s the second generation taking care of the folks. She ought to know if it’s a backwater. Half her bills, or more, get paid in chickens and eggs—a ham if she’s lucky.”
“My heart bleeds for Dr. Reb Girard,” Kelly said,
