Laurel ignored the warning and turned to kiss her aunt's cheek. "Sorry to miss supper your first night back, Aunt Caroline, but I should be back in time for coffee."
With that she skipped around Mama Pearl and through the French doors, leaving the older women standing on the veranda shaking their heads.
Mama Pearl tugged a handkerchief out of the valley of her bosom to blot the beads of perspiration dotting her forehead and triple chins. "Me, I don' know what gonna come a' dat girl."
Caroline stared after her niece, a grim look in her large dark eyes and a frown pulling at her mouth. She crossed her arms and hugged herself against an inner chill of foreboding. "She's going to get justice, Pearl. No matter what the cost."
Chapter Two
Things were hopping at Frenchie's. Friday night at Frenchie's Landing was a tradition among a certain class of people around Bayou Breaux. Not the planter class, the gentlemen farmers and their ladies in pumps and pearls who dined on white damask tablecloths with silver as old as the country. Frenchie's catered to a more earthy crowd. The worst of Partout Parish riffraff-poachers and smugglers and people looking for big trouble-gravitated over to Bayou Noir and a place called Mouton's. Frenchie's caught everyone in between. Farmhands, factory workers, blue collars, rednecks all homed in on Frenchie's on Friday night for boiled crawfish and cold beer, loud music and dancing, and the occasional brawl.
The building stood fifty feet back from the levee and sat up off the ground on stilts that protected it from flooding. It faced the bayou, inviting patrons in from fishing and hunting expeditions with a red neon sign that promised cold beer, fresh food, and live music. Whole sections of the building's siding were hung on hinges and propped up with wooden poles, revealing a long row of screens and creating a gallery of sorts along the sides.