I puzzled for a minute.

“Ranson told you who I was, didn’t she?” I demanded.

“No, I knew. We never discussed it. I didn’t know that Joanne knew anything about your past.”

“How did you find out?”

“I’ll tell you on the drive out. It’s a long story.”

“Aren’t they all?” I answered. “Okay, you can come along for the ride.” I gave her directions out of the city.

Traffic was heavy on the rain-slicked road. We didn’t talk about much except traffic and navigation until we got out of the city. I was trying to figure out whether I wanted Cordelia with me and whether or not there was anything I could do about it at this point. I decided there wasn’t, and besides that I was curious.

“You hungry?” she asked as we got to the outskirts of the city. “Maybe we should pick up some food on the way.”

I was hungry. All I’d had to eat so far today were the crawfish on the pier.

She pulled into the parking lot of a small grocery store.

“I’m starved,” Cordelia continued. “Anything you positively won’t eat?”

“Okra, except in gumbo,” I answered. “There’s no electricity out there. I’m also broke.”

“Don’t worry. I’m a rich heiress. Take advantage of it. I’ll be right back.” She got out and went into the store. I waited in the car. When and how did she know that I was Lemoyne Robedeaux’s daughter? She couldn’t have known until this morning that I had killed her father. Could she? I had blanked out so much of that night that I couldn’t remember what was possible for anyone to know. Of course, I had talked to the police, but never admitted that I had been in the truck. I always thought I had denied everything. But maybe that was only to myself.

Cordelia came back and put a sack of groceries in the back seat. “No okra,” she said as she got in. She started the car and pulled out.

“Time for a long story?” I inquired as we left the sparse traffic from the store and gas station behind.

She nodded, cast a glance at me, and began. “My father was a very charming scoundrel. I was thirteen when he died. Everyone liked him, at least at first. There had been tension between my parents for a long time.

“After he died, my mother seemed kind of…relieved. I was angry at her for feeling like that. We got into an argument and she told me that one day, she would explain it all. When I was nineteen, she told me, saying that I had a right to know, not to be handed the whitewashed Holloway version. She showed me the letters from his mistress. There were several, including the blackmail letters. I remember how shocked I was. I thought adultery happened somewhere else, not in our family.

“Then she told me how he died. That he had deserved it.”

“What could you know?” I asked, “About that night?”

“What should have been in the police reports. Grandpa Holloway had access to all the real ones. The woman in the back of the truck was identified as the mistress. The gas can was from my father’s car, had his fingerprints all over it. Skid marks indicated that he was in the wrong lane and caused the accident. He had matches and a cigarette still in his hand. An autopsy revealed his mistress, I can’t remember her name, had been beaten to death and that the others…”