Alligator Moon

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“If we were, I didn’t know it.”

“Did she seem upset when she left? Distant? Aggravated?”

“No more than usual.”

“What do we do?”

Nothing as far as he was concerned, but he knew Cassie wouldn’t settle for that. “The postcards all say she’s having a wonderful time,” he said. “And she’ll be back in two weeks. I say we just wait until then to try to find out why she felt she had to lie to us.”

“But what if something’s wrong?”

“Why would you think something’s wrong?”

“She lied to us about who she went with. She didn’t leave an itinerary, and she hasn’t called.”

“That’s your mother for you. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out why she does things the way she does. But it sounds to me as if she wanted some time alone. I think it’s only fair we respect that.”

“I’d feel a lot better if I could talk to her.”

“She knows where we are if she wants to talk.”

“So you think we should do nothing?”

“Right. Just let it ride. If I hear from her, I’ll give you a call. If you hear from her, you call me. And in the meantime, don’t worry.”

“I’m not sure I can do that.”

“Try. So, tell me, what big story are you scooping now?”

He only half listened as Cassie told him about Dennis Robicheaux’s death. His mind was on Rhonda. He wasn’t worried, not in the sense Cassie was, but he did wonder what the hell was going on with his wife.

She could have found out about him and Babs, though he didn’t see how that would inspire a trip to Greece. An argument, maybe even a showdown, but not a trip to Europe—unless this was a prelude to divorce.

Talk about gumming up the works. He had no interest in splitting up his 401K at this stage in his life, and if Babs was named in the divorce proceedings, it could cause a lot of talk at Conner-Marsh, a company that wouldn’t want even the whisper of a scandal involving its CEO and one of its female supervisors.

An old Beach Boys song knocked around in Butch’s head after he’d hung up the phone. Help me, Rhonda. Help, help me, Rhonda.

He wasn’t sure just what form that help should take, but for starters, she could find happiness and fulfillment in Greece and just not bother to return. He’d miss her sometimes, but he could live with it.

CASSIE TRIED to adopt some of her father’s optimism but decided the only way she’d be able to get her mother off her mind was to jump into the job at hand. So as much as she dreaded dealing with the sexy, arrogant Cajun, John Robicheaux was her next logical interviewee.

She had an idea that anyone in town could tell her where he lived, including the fishy-smelling guy inside the store. She finished her drink, tossed the empty can into a rusted trash barrel and walked back inside.

Maybe the fallen attorney would be in a better mood today. And maybe Jupiter would collide with Mars or the bars on Bourbon Street would stop selling liquor on Mardi Gras Day.

CHAPTER FIVE

CASSIE SLOWED as she passed Suzette’s. The roadhouse was a low-slung, wooden structure with a tin roof. It looked as if it might have been a bright yellow at one time, but the paint was faded and peeling and the facings around the windows were literally rotting away.

There was a row of rental cabins along the bayou just as Susan had said, half-hidden by cypress trees and palmetto plants. They were rustic at best, but some looked to be bordering on total ruin. She imagined them crawling with spiders and stinging scorpions, with slimy black water moccasins slithering through the swampy grass just outside the doors. Definitely not a place for a city gal like her.

She wondered if John Robicheaux’s habitat would be much different. The guy in the bait shop had referred to it as a trapper’s shack and warned her to be careful with the same level of caution to his tone she would have expected if she’d said she was going skinny-dipping with a family of alligators.

From being one of the hottest defense attorneys in New Orleans, and probably the state, to living in a shack in the swamp was quite a backward jump. Penance, she suspected, for unleashing a fiendish sex pervert on an innocent little girl.

The sun slid behind a cloud as Cassie turned from the narrow asphalt road onto a dirt one bordered on either side by swampland. There was no shack. In fact there was no sign of human life anywhere, and she had a sudden impulse to turn around and get the hell out before what was left of the road dissolved into the watery morass.

Yet Dennis Robicheaux had chosen to end his life standing in just such a soggy swamp. At least, that was the sheriff’s version. But even if you were set on ending it all, why spend the last few seconds of life sinking in the mud instead of sitting behind the wheel of a nice, dry car?

Had he been doing penance, too—for a mistake that had killed Ginny Lynn? Lots of questions. No answers.

The old dirt road grew more difficult to maneuver. Cassie dodged potholes and bounced across deep ruts and places where the road had all but washed out. It crossed her mind that the guy in the bait shop might have seen her as a nosy reporter and sent her on a journey to nowhere.

She shouldn’t have had that soda. They always went right through her, and her bladder was already protesting the rough road and screaming for relief.

She was about to turn around when she saw John’s black pickup truck stopped in the middle of the road. She threw on her brakes, thinking something was wrong, then realized that her earlier fears were actually true. The road narrowed to a path just beyond the truck and disappeared into the bog.

She spotted the house a few yards off the road. It was built of split cypress logs and stood on short piers that put it just above the swampland that surrounded it. A couple of weathered rockers, some metal pails, a foam cooler and a jug of Kentwood Springs water sat on a porch that swayed to the left like a woman who’d carried babies on her hip for too many years.

Cassie studied the shell walkway that led to the porch as she crawled from behind the wheel of her car. Reaching back into the car, she grabbed her black notebook and started down the path, swatting a vicious mosquito the size of a small helicopter as she did. Like the mosquito, she was unannounced and uninvited. But probably not unexpected.

An attorney, even a nonpracticing one like John, knew that the word murder and the mention of Dr. Norman Guilliot’s name would lure a reporter just as surely as his smelly bait lured fish onto his hook.

She rapped on the door of the cabin and it creaked open as if she were being welcomed by some invisible phantom. The eeriness settled in, creeping up her spine like a wet chill on a frosty January morning. She wasn’t on the edge of civilization. She’d passed that about five miles back. It didn’t get more isolated than this.

Cassie rapped again, then eased the door open a few more inches. “John Robicheaux?” She called his name tentatively. “Anyone home?”

No answer. But the door was open and she really needed to go to the bathroom. Not that there weren’t plenty of places to go outside if she dared venture off the shell path. She didn’t dare.

She stepped into a rectangular room that apparently served as dining room, den and study. Her gaze settled on a massive claw-footed pine table that stretched along a row of side windows. There was a floor-to-ceiling homemade bookcase on the opposite wall, filled to overflowing with both hardcover and paperback selections. Two worn recliners and a mock leather sofa with a split in the armrest were clustered on the side of the room with the bookcase. A large wooden desk sat against the back wall.

The desk was empty except for a stack of newspaper clippings and a computer. The computer stood out, as if it had been plucked from the modern world and placed in the time warp that had trapped the rest of the surroundings.

The floorboards groaned as Cassie crossed the room to a closed door she really hoped was a bathroom. Luckily, she was right, and indoor plumbing had never looked so good. She took care of business, then washed her hands and dried them on an earth-colored towel—a towel that smelled of soap and spices and musk.

She turned half-expecting to see John behind her, but it was only the smell of him and the fact that she was surrounded by his personal things that made the sense of his presence so strong. His razor, his toothbrush, an open bottle of over-the-counter painkillers.

She left the bathroom and walked to the bookshelf. She scanned the titles and found everything from the classics to Dennis Lehane’s newest thriller. Not one law book, though, or anything to suggest John had ever been a practicing defense attorney.

She picked up a homemade cypress frame from the top of the bookshelf and studied the photograph. Two boys, one a teenager, the other a preschooler, stood between an elderly man and woman. The man had on black wading boots, a shirt that was open at the neck and a pair of baggy jeans. Gray-haired, too thin, but smiling big enough to show a row of tobacco-stained teeth. The woman was plump, with salt-and-pepper hair pulled into a chignon on top of her head.

There was no doubt that the oldest boy was John. Hair as black as night, a cocky smile and the same eyes that had seemed to see right through her yesterday. And already sexy, though he couldn’t have been more than seventeen or so when the picture was taken. And the younger boy must be Dennis. Adorable, with the same thick dark hair and cocky smile. There were quite a few years between them, yet she got the impression from John that they’d been close.

The Robicheaux brothers. From the swamps to law school and anesthetist training and on their way to the good life. Now Dennis was dead. And John was…

Actually she wasn’t sure what John was except angry, grieved and incredibly virile. And in spite of the fact that the door had been unlocked and had opened at her knock, she still felt uneasy at being here when he wasn’t around.

Reporters who are scared to take chances end up with predictable, boring copy. That was pretty much the basic rule of journalism, the no guts, no glory edict of reporting. She’d always had more balls than most of the male reporters she’d worked with, but still the sheer isolation of this place was getting to her.

She’d about convinced herself to clear out when she heard footsteps on the porch. She turned as John pushed through the door, then propped a hand on the facing and glared at her. “Why don’t you come in, Cassie Pierson? Make yourself at home?”

His stance and voice were intimidating, but she kept her back straight and her own voice just as level. “The door was open.”

“Cajun hospitality.” Only he didn’t sound the least bit hospitable.

She smelled the whiskey on his breath from across the room and knew she didn’t want to get into an argument with him. “Your truck was here,” she said. “I assumed you were around somewhere.”

“I’m around. What do you want?”

“To talk.”

“I’m listening.”

He wasn’t going to make this easy. “Do you remember our conversation yesterday?”

“I’m half-drunk, not addled.”

“Do you still think Dennis was murdered?”

“I still know that he was. I also told you yesterday that Norman Guilliot would manipulate you and use you the same way he uses everyone else in town. That didn’t keep you from going back out there today.”

“What did you do? Pay someone to follow me around? Stalk me yourself?”

“Beau Pierre’s a small town. News gets around.”

“Then I guess there are no secrets in Beau Pierre?”

“Oh, there are plenty of secrets—just not for long. They’re like splinters buried under the skin. They fester awhile, but eventually work their way out. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to do some more drinking before this day gets any further along. If that offends you or bothers you in any way, feel free to find your way out of here the same way you found your way in.”

“You say Guilliot wants to manipulate me, and that could be true, but what about you, John? Why do you need me?”

“Me? Need you? You’ve got things way wrong, sweetheart.”

“Not the way it looks to me. You followed me out to Magnolia Plantation yesterday and informed me that your brother had been murdered.”

“And that means I need you?”

“You knew I wouldn’t just walk away from the implication of murder.”

“Of course not. No reporter walks away from a chance for a juicy story.”

“But you didn’t go to just any reporter. You came to me and claimed Dennis was murdered. You got my interest, so now give me facts. Level with me, and I’ll give you the press you’re obviously looking for.”

LEVEL WITH HER. He’d love to, only his mind was so damn twisted today he had trouble putting his thoughts in any kind of sequence that made sense. Caskets and flowers. Tombstones and burial plots. He’d been through this before not so long ago, but then it had been for his grandparents.

The actions were basically the same, but they felt so different. Dennis should have lived years longer, should have had the chance to grow old right here in Beau Pierre.

He poured himself a drink then one for Cassie. Whiskey. Straight up, so it would burn clear down to his belly. He drank his down, then poured two fingers more. Carrying both drinks, he crossed the room and handed one to Cassie.

“To leveling,” he said, clinking his glass with hers. “And to justice.”

“To justice,” she agreed. “And truth.”

“Truth—or a story? Which is it you’re after, Cassie? You have to make up your mind, you know.”

“I’d like both.”

He looked up from the whiskey and into Cassie’s eyes, the color of spring leaves, ardent, not yet jaded by the heat and merciless beatings of life. He’d been like that once, though he could barely remember it now.

Cassie sipped at the whiskey, making a face as it slid down her throat and probably hit her stomach like hot wax from a dripping candle.

“Why do you claim Dennis was murdered when the evidence points to suicide?” She tossed her head as if issuing a challenge, and wispy tendrils of curly auburn hair danced around her cheeks.

John wondered if she had any idea how sexy she looked when she did that.

“Why murder, John?” Cassie repeated.