Sandra Hill - [Jinx 03] by Wild Jinx Read Free Book Online

licked my face. And then Grampa said I did a nasty and made me go ta my room. And it’s so boooring. I wouldn’t hafta play with Wiener if I had a dog. A big dog.” Etienne had a playmate, Pete Doucet, who had a German Shepherd. Ever since Etienne had seen it, a puppy had been his constant request.
    “Listen, honey, you mustn’t do anything to anyone else’s property. Not their animals. Not their houses. Not their toys. Anything. It’s not right. Do you understand?”
    He nodded. “I want a dog.”
    So much for remorse. “I know you do, sweetie, but not yet. Gramps doesn’t get around as good as he used to. Let’s wait ’til you’re old enough to care for a dog yourself.”
    “I’m old enough now.”
    “Not quite.” She lay down on his bed and motioned for him to lie beside her, his face pressed against her chest. She kissed the top of his head and murmured, “Tell me about your day, honey.”
    “You and Me time” was a tradition with them. Even when she was working two jobs and attending classes, the first thing she did when she got home was lie down with her baby and chat about little nothings. On more than one occasion, she’d fallen asleep along with her baby. “It’s just you and me, kiddo,” she’d repeated often, especially when the loneliness became almost overwhelming.
    Now, her “baby” blathered on about worms and butterflies and dogs and swing sets and birthday parties. She told him about the bread pudding she’d had for lunch, though no mention of his father, and the peacock feathers she’d seen in a French Quarter shop, and how they needed to go to the mall soon to buy him some new athletic shoes, and, yes, he could get the light-up ones.
    Giving him one final hug, she said, “Now take off those dirty clothes so we can go downstairs and eat dinner. I bought some praline ice cream for dessert.”
    He brightened at a combination of his punishment being over and his favorite ice cream. While he changed his clothes, chattering the whole time, she watched him closely. Something became apparent . . . something she had tried her best to avoid seeing in the past but being so close to John today made it impossible to ignore.
    Except for his pale blue eyes, he looked just like John. Even worse, she suspected he’d inherited his father’s rascal gene.
He was the target . . . of teasing . . .
    John was sitting on Tante Lulu’s back porch with his three half-brothers waiting for the first meeting of the Pirate Project team to start. The out-of-town folks were down at the banks of Bayou Black admiring Useless, René’s pet alligator.
    For all of them, the bayou was a touchstone. They could leave for short periods, but the swamp mud in their blood drew them back every time.
    Tante Lulu’s cottage was built in the old Cajun style . . . an exterior of
bousillage,
or fuzzy mud mixed with Spanish moss and crushed clam shells . . . but in this case, the stucco had been covered with half-logs and white chinking. There was a stretch of lawn that led down to the water’s edge, centered by a spreading fig tree heavy with fruit. Rock-edged flower beds surrounded the house, and a wire-mesh fence enclosed neat rows of her vegetable garden. John and his brothers took turns helping to keep the place in shape, a real pain in the ass since everything grew at warp speed in the bayou, but this place had been a refuge to each of them at one time or another from their father’s alcoholic binges. Besides, how could anyone say no to Tante Lulu?
    Since he was on “suspension,” John had decided to join the Jinx team once again, but he had to do it surreptitiously, especially since the witness list had been given to the defense this morning. Once the project started, he would stay at René’s remote cabin. Luckily, the project site was located at a spot not too far from his brother’s property. In the meantime, he wore disguises whenever he was out in public and drove his sister-in-law’s puke green VW bug, a