The cook said it in French, and the old man said something back at him and they talked back and forth like that for a while. Then the cook said, "He doesn't know these Johnson people, but he says there's a Tecumseh Lane in Eunice."

"Eunice?"

"Twenty miles south of here." Ah.

I smiled at the old man. "Thank him for me."

The cook said, "He understands you okay, he just don't speak English so good."

I nodded at the old man. "Merci."

The old man tipped his hat. Dignified. "Il y a pas de quoi." You take your good fortune where you find it.

I went out to my car, looked up Eunice on the Triple-A map, and went there. Like Ville Platte, the landscape was flat and crosscut with bayous and ponds and industrial waterways, mostly sweet potato fields and marshlands striped with oil company pipelines and vent stations. The town itself was bigger than Ville Platte, but not by a lot, and seemed like a neat, self-contained little community with a lot of churches and schools and quaint older buildings.

Tecumseh Lane was a pleasant street in an older residential area with small frame houses and neatly trimmed azalea bushes. 1146 was in the center of the block, with a tiny front lawn and an ancient two-strip cement drive and a big wooden porch. Like every other house in the area, it was set atop high brick pillars and, even though the land was flat, you had to climb three or four steps to enter the house.

I left the car at the curb and went up to the house and rapped at the door. An older black woman in what looked like a white nurse's uniform answered. "May I help you?"

I gave her one of my nicer smiles. "Mrs. Johnson?"

"Oh, no."

"I'm looking for Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. I was told they lived here." The air behind her smelled of medicine and pine-scented air freshener.

She was shaking her head before I finished. "You'll need to speak with Mrs. Boudreaux. I work for her."

"Who's Mrs. Boudreaux?"

"She owns this house." A wet, flapping sound came from deeper in the house, and a raspy old man's voice yelled something about his pears. The black woman took a half-step out onto the porch, pulling the door so I wouldn't hear. "She doesn't live here, though. She only comes by in the morning and the evening."

I let myself look confused. A relatively easy task. "Did the Johnsons move?"

"Oh, Mr. Johnson's her daddy. She used to rent this place out, but now she lets him live here." She pulled the door tighter and lowered her voice, letting me in on the know. "He can't live by himself, and they didn't want to put him in a home. Lord knows he couldn't live with them." She raised her eyebrows.

"He's very ill."

I said, "Ah. So Mr. Johnson does live here."