Ice Fire: A Jock Boucher Thriller by David Lyons Page A

problem keeping herself busy.
    “You up for an evening out?” he asked.
    “Toujours, monsieur. Où voulez-vous aller?”
    “ Tu. With a lover it’s tu, not vous. ”
    She rose from the sofa and walked into his arms. “Where do ‘ tu’ want to go, mon amour ?”
    He locked the fingers of both hands behind her back and began to sway. “I want to dance some zydeco, eat some crawfish, and drinkcheap beer. I want to show you a Cajun good time. Tonight, we return to my roots.” He released her after a quick kiss, walked into the kitchen, and returned with two beers.
    “There’s a funky place near Lake Pontchartrain. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen, I guarantee.” He pronounced it gar-on-TEE. “This old icehouse fills up on Friday nights with some of the most unique people in all the United States, black Cajuns.”
    Malika had learned about Cajuns on her first date with Jock Boucher: descendants of French expelled from Acadia, which was now northeastern Canada, in the late eighteenth century. Many of them emigrated to Louisiana. She knew that black Cajuns were descendants of slaves from the twenty-two Cajun parishes around New Orleans, and many of them lived in small isolated communities deep in the bayous.
    “Will they be speaking French?”
    “Some of them speak French using idioms from the time of Voltaire.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “Nope. And the music. Zydeco, it’s as unique as the people.”
    They toasted with their beer cans. “I like seeing you this way,” Malika said.
    “What way?”
    “Exuberant. It suits you.”
    “You mean more than my judicial bearing?”
    “I would like for you to leave your judicial bearing outside the door of this house, or better still, leave it in your courtroom.”
    “You got it, babe.” He looked at his watch. “We need to get ready. It’s a bit of a drive. Dancing doesn’t start till later, but we’ve got to eat first.”
    “What do I wear to this, what did you call it, icehouse?”
    Jock smiled. “The dress code is pretty eclectic. Some folks are elderly and—these are poor people, you understand—they come wearing their best-night-out clothes. Some of the older men wear zoot suits they’ve had since the fifties, padded shoulders, double-pleated trousers, wide-brimmed hats, pointy-toed balmorals and brogues that must have cost them a fortune back in the day.” He shook his head with wonder. “Wow, those cats are cool. Tonight, ma chérie, we are going to laissez les bons temps rouler ! And you just watch your man strut his . . . exuberance.”
    She excused herself to dress and returned minutes later completely transformed. She wore a scarlet silk tunic with extensive gold embroidery resembling a Coptic cross from the neck to her waist, with more embroidery at the hems of the flared sleeves. The tunic covered her hips and was worn over capri pants of the same-colored silk, which fit like a second skin. On her feet were golden slippers.
    “It’s a kurti,” she said to her stunned admirer. “You like it?”
    “They’re going to love you on the bayou,” Jock said.
    As they drove from the city to Lake Pontchartrain, Malika listened to the story of Judge Boucher’s family, none of whom had ever traveled more than one hundred miles from their small community of Toulouse.
    “It had been named by some pioneer planter for the city in France, but none of the folks living there could read, and none had ever been anywhere. They were descendants of slaves. When someone from the capital showed up and asked them what the name of their little town was, they told him, and a sign was put up. The sign read TOO LOOSE , and nobody knew it till my grandfather got himself a sixth-grade education. I was sent to live with relatives in New Orleanswhen Mom died. Dad stayed there running his little store till he passed away. Nothing left of the village now.”
    “I bet your father was proud of you,” Malika said.
    “He was proud enough to burst, but he would tell