He walked ahead of me, the jar of peanut brittle clasped in his hand, the sack with the receipt inside it blowing away in the draft through the sliding doors. The woman who checked purchases at the entrance held up her hand to stop him. I knew her and placed my palm on Mr. Raphael's shoulder and gestured at her in a reassuring way.

He entered the crosswalk and was almost hit by an SUV.

"Let me arrange to have someone drive you home," I said.

He stared at the label on the jar and either did not hear me or chose to ignore the content of my words. "The store didn't have the kind she liked," he said.

"Sir?"

"Honoria loved peanut brittle and pralines. I was going to bring her back some from New Orleans, but I forgot. It was such a small gift. But I forgot to buy it."

"Mr. Chalons, I know your family bears me enmity, but I want to offer my sympathies. I also want you to understand that I never had a romantic liaison with your daughter and that I always respected her. Both my mother and my second wife, Annie, died at the hands of violent men, and for that reason I think I can understand the nature of your loss. I thought your daughter was a good person. It was an honor to have been her friend."

He looked at the parking lot, the heat shimmering on the rows of vehicles, an American flag popping on an iron pole.

"That's very kind of you," he said. "But you're a police officer, and you were in our guesthouse for reasons of a romantic nature or to make use of my daughter in a legal investigation. Whichever it was, sir, it belies your statement now."

I should have walked away. But there are certain moments in our lives that even the saints would probably not abide, and I suspect being impugned as a liar is one of them. "I think your son is at the heart of a great iniquity," I said.

"My son?" he said, one eye narrowing with confusion. "Which son are you talking about? What are you saying to me? My son is -"

He pinched his temples and broke off in midsentence, as though both his words and thoughts had been stolen from him. A gust of hot wind blew a fast-food container tumbling past the cuffs of his trousers, splattering the fabric and the tops of his shoes.

Later, I went to Molly's cottage on the bayou. There was probably every reason not to go there, but I had tired of wearing the scarlet letter and seeing others try to sew it upon Molly's blouse as well. The truth was Molly had no official or theological status as a nun and in the eyes of the Church was a member of the laity. Let Val Chalons and those who served him do as they wished. I'd take my chances with the Man on High, I told myself.

My father. Big Aldous, spoke a form of English that was hardly a language. Once, when explaining to a neighbor the disappearance of the neighbor's troublesome hog, he said, "I ain't meaned to hurt your pig, no, but I guess I probably did when my tractor wheel accidentally run over its head and broke its neck, and I had to eat it, me."

But when he spoke French he could translate his ideas in ways that were quite elevated. On the question of God's nature, he used to say, "There are only two things you have to remember about Him: He has a sense of humor, and because He's a gentleman He always keeps His word."

And that's what I told Molly Boyle on the back porch of her cottage, on a late Saturday afternoon in New Iberia, Louisiana, in the summer of the year 2004.

"Why are you telling me this?" she said.

"Because I say screw Val Chalons and his television stations. I also say screw anyone who cares to condemn us."

"You came over here to tell me that?"

"No."

"Then what?"

The sun went behind a rain cloud, burning a purple hole through its center. The cypress and willow trees along the bayou swelled with wind. "I say why do things halfway?"

"Will you please take the mashed potatoes out of your mouth?" she said.

"How about we get married tonight?"

"Married? Tonight?"

"Unless you're doing something else."

She started to remove a strand of hair from her eye, then forgot what she was doing. She fixed her eyes on mine, her face perfectly still, her mouth slightly parted. "Get married where?" she asked.

"In Baton Rouge. I have a priest friend who's a little unorthodox. I told him we wanted to take our vows."

"Without asking me?"

"That's why I'm doing it now."

She was wearing jeans without a belt, a Ragin' Cajun T-shirt, and moccasins on her feet. She made a clicking sound with her mouth, and I had no idea what it might mean. Then she stepped on top of my shoes and put her arms around my neck and pressed her head against my chest. "Oh, Dave," she said. Then, as though language were inadequate or she were speaking to an obtuse person, she said it again, "Oh, Dave."

And that's the way we did it – in a small church located among pine trees, twelve miles east of the LSU campus, while lights danced in the clouds and the air turned to ozone and pine needles showered down on the church roof.

We slept late the next morning, then had breakfast in the backyard on the old redwood table from my house that had burned. I had forgotten how fine it was to eat breakfast on a lovely morning, under oak trees on a tidal stream, with a woman you loved. And I also had forgotten how good it was to be free of booze again and on the square with my AA program, the world, and my Higher Power.

At first Tripod had been unsure about Molly, until she gave him a bowl of smoked salmon. Then she couldn't get rid of him. While she tried to eat, he climbed in her lap, sticking his head up between her food and mouth, turning in circles, his tail hitting her in the face. I started to put him in his hutch.

"He'll settle down in a minute," Molly said.

"Tripod has a little problem with incontinence."

"That's different," she said.

But before I could gather him out of her lap, his head lifted up suddenly and his nose sniffed at the wind blowing from the front of the house. He scampered up a live oak and peered back down at us from a leafy bough. I heard the doorbell ring.

"Be right back!" I said to Molly.

Raphael Chalons was at my front door, dressed in slacks and a sports coat out of the 1940s, a Panama hat hooked on one finger, his shoulders and back as straight as a soldier's. "You were very thoughtful in paying for my purchase yesterday at the Wal-Mart store. But I forgot to reimburse you," he said. He held up a five-dollar bill that was folded stiffly between two fingers.

I opened the screen and took the money from his hand. I had hoped his mission was a single-purpose one. But he remained on the gallery, gazing at the trees in the yard and the squirrels that darted across the grass. "Can I invite you in?" I said.

"Thank you," he said, and stepped inside, his eyes examining the interior of my home. "I want to hire you to find the man who murdered my daughter, Mr. Robicheaux."

"I'm a sheriff's detective, Mr. Chalons, not a private investigator."

"A man is what he does. Titles are a distraction created to deceive obtuse people. I want the monster who killed my daughter either in jail or dead."

"My fingerprints were at the crime scene. In some people's eyes I should be a suspect."

"Those might be my son's perceptions, but they're not mine. Valentine is sometimes not a good judge of character. You may have a penchant for alcohol, Mr. Robicheaux, but you're not a murderer. That's an absurdity. I know it and so do you."

"I'm complimented by your offer, but it's not an appropriate one."

"I think a degenerate or psychotic person wandered in from the highway and did this terrible thing to my daughter. But I can't seem to convince anyone else of that. Some speculate it's the Baton Rouge serial killer."