Chapter Four
The Bones brought Faith back to Germaine for the first time in forty years. Faith Chastity Applegate left right after her daughter Rochelle died, but when she heard about the bones she had to come back. She told me that she had been willing to let things stayed buried and she still had a little lonesome hope that Rochelle’s father was somewhere in this world alive. She knew better the moment she read the article in the online edition of The Germaine Truth. It struck right to her core, she said.
I saw Faith for the first time at the Germaine Cafe. She was having coffee with Susie Applegate and Shaherazade Budreau. Faith and Susie are distant cousins of some sort, but who isn’t in this town? There are only five tables in the cafe and aside from them and Vernon Van Bibber with one of his cronies, there weren’t any other patrons in the place.
Faith impressed me right away. She sat very straight and I could tell she was taller than either Susie or Shaherazade. Her white hair was swept up in a bun on the top of her head. She held a cup of tea in her bone-thin left hand and her right hand rested in her lap. A cane carved out of some kind of black wood leaned against the table. She wore a black sweater over a white blouse, which was neatly tucked into her black pleated skirt. I had to force myself to look away from her as I passed. All these details about her appearance sank into my mind and I felt an urge to look again even as I ordered my americano. I could hear their conversation clearly and it was so fascinating that I decided to stay and drink my coffee there. I took my coffee to a nearby table and sat with my back to them so they wouldn’t think I was eavesdropping. Maybe they would think I was just staring out the window at the empty street. They were so caught up in their conversation they wouldn’t have noticed me anyway.
The tall white-haired woman was telling Susie and Shaherazade that she knew whose bones had been found and Shaherazade told her that her own mama believed they were the bones of her uncle. Then I realized that Faith and Shaherazade were talking about the same person–Charles Sevigney LaFontaine. A jazzman. A sax-man. No wonder I saw notes spilling out of that bag. No wonder Rockie was playing the saxophone like she was born with it in her mouth. Sooner or later the pieces that come to me like this always fall into place and an image takes shape. I couldn’t see him yet, but I knew I would. I stayed there listening in long enough to finish my coffee and hear Faith talk about the night her daughter was born. She made it sound like her own brother, Tim, might have had something to do with what happened to LaFontaine.
I left the cafe before the others and as I passed by the window on the way to my car, I caught a glimpse of Vernon Van Bibber’s face. It was red like his blood pressure was up through the roof and his lips were fixed in a grim line. Oh boy, I thought, someone is in trouble. I had been around Germaine long enough to know that when Vernon was angry someone always paid for it.
