Mean Woman Blues

questioning— something Skip was going to enjoy— and Turner, who didn’t have to hang around for the formalities, had left to get an address on Rose Maintree.
    When they were all free, Abasolo said, “You can do the talking at Rose’s.”
    “Thanks a lot,” Skip said.
    “Not at Rose’s house, though,” Shellmire said. “The woman’s a math teacher at Warren Easton High School.”
    That might bode well for Jacob
, Skip thought. It had to be better than being raised by Bettina, who might be a child who needed a father, a religious fanatic, or just a crazy person, depending on how you looked at it.
    Skip went in alone and broke the news to a dry-eyed, distant Rose Maintree, who, to her surprise, thanked her politely but didn’t ask a word about Jacob. Skip revised her opinion: The little boy, born with physical problems and now orphaned before age two, simply couldn’t catch a break.
    Shellmire eyed her when she got back. “How’d it go?”
    “Might as well have been talking to a robot. That’s some family; she didn’t even ask about Jacob.”
    The agent made a sound like “ooof.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
    The termites swarmed that night, driving the whole party— Skip, Steve, and the Scoggin-Ritter family— out of the courtyard and into the Big House.
    Sheila had made the entire dinner— a light summer supper, really— to practice her new skills and to celebrate the family’s delivery from what Uncle Jimmy had taken to calling “The Fear Years.” Skip had just told the story of her day.
    “It’s almost like Jacomine wasn’t human,” Sheila said.
    Skip nodded. “No sociopath has human feelings; that wasn’t what was so scary. Jacomine had no sense of his own limits. Karen told me he actually thought he could be president!”
    Steve stopped his fork in midair, like somebody’d ordered him to halt, “Come on!”
    “Swear to God. He was going to use the Mr. Right gig to become the most popular man in America— follow right in Ronald Reagan’s footsteps.”
    “Oh, my God. Batshit doesn’t begin to describe…”
    “Well, it never stopped him before; all in all, being nuts was his biggest asset. That and knowing how to tap into emotional veins. No question that
Mr. Right
show was becoming a phenomenon in Dallas.”
    “I’m just curious,” Layne said. “How far do you think he’d have gotten if Terri hadn’t been on his show?”
    “Actually, not much farther. The producer told the FBI she thought he’d knocked his wife around after the show, and Karen kept talking about losing a baby. I just wonder if he caused her to miscarry.”
    “Meaning he was starting to decompensate?”
    “Yeah. He was used to giving all the orders. In the real world— without his precious ‘following’— he couldn’t be his usual megalomaniac self.”
    Kenny looked puzzled.
    “What’s the matter, sport? Don’t you know that word—
megalomaniac
?’
    “Oh, please. You can’t live in this house and not know
megalomaniac
. Power crazy, right? I was thinking of Mary Jones. How’d she pull that scam off, just her and Bettina?”
    “Oh, Trenice. I forgot. That’s the best part. She completely caved, told the whole story. She’s just a neighbor of Bettina’s, not a Jacomine follower or anything like that. Bettina offered her money to do that little impersonation she did. Looks like that’s the whole gang, just Bettina and the babysitter. Plus a couple of guys Bettina hired to steal the stuff they put in Steve’s backyard.”
    “Either of them named Lobo, by any chance?”
    “That’s the bad news. Darnell and William.”
    Steve grumped, “Lobo’s probably the asshole that poisoned Napoleon.”
    “And shot at me.”
    “So what’s gonna happen?” Kenny asked.
    Skip shrugged.
    “Lobo’s Frank O’Rourke’s headache; O’Rourke’s the point man on Isaac’s case, and good luck to him. But Trenice’ll probably go down. And maybe somebody at the
Times-Picayune
’ll get a good yarn out of it all.”
    “Like Jane Storey.” Jimmy Dee said, naming a reporter friend of Skip’s. “Should we go call her?”
    Skip tried to look innocent. “Adam and I sort of talked to her this afternoon. Adam felt pretty bad about what happened to me. And I felt bad about Rooster Blanchard. Jane’s even doing a special little feature on him.”
    “Who the hell is Rooster Blanchard?”
    “Guy who saved my life when this whole thing started. Remember that? We gave him a real bad day back then, poor