Black Opal (9 page)

“Turgeau?” The sheriff crossed the room. “You seen this before?”

“I have,” Dean said. Ricky gasped and leaned forward in his chair. Madeleine mumbled something under her breath. My heart pounded so loud, I couldn’t hear what she said.

“Well?” The sheriff put his hand on Dean’s shoulder and squeezed.

“Trey Sorenson once owned a coin very like that.” Dean’s voice shook. “I thought he was investigated and cleared twenty years ago—”

“The case is no longer inactive. We can’t tell you the details, and we’ll ask you to keep any details you know to yourself.” The sheriff’s dark eyes crinkled around the edges, and he gave Dean’s shoulder another squeeze. “Does Mr. Sorenson still live in his room in the barn?”

“Yep.” Ricky stood. “I’m going out there with you.”

“No.” The old lawman’s voice held enough force to make me jump. “You’ll sit back down and let us do our jobs. Please don’t make me invoke the rights of my office, Richard Junior.”

Ricky sat back down, his face scarlet and a vein pounding in his thick neck. He exhaled a shaky breath. Dean approached him, leaned down and whispered in his ear. Ricky nodded, and Dean went to the bar, mixed him a drink, and took it to him. The law officers left without another word.

9

“Will they arrest him?” Madeleine’s eyes widened, and her gaze moved between her older brothers. “I can’t believe this. Trey’s been part of our family since I was a baby.”

“He’s not part of our family,” Ricky roared, slopping amber-colored liquid from his glass.

“Ricky, calm down.” Dean’s quiet words took the bluster out of his brother. He drained his drink and crossed the room to make another. His shoulders hitched a few times. When he returned to his seat, his eyes were red and shiny.

“Maddy, you know Shayne dated Trey during the last year of her life.” Dean sat down next to his sister. “We can’t know why his belongings were with her body.”

“So he’s a killer?” Madeleine clutched Dean’s hand.

“Who knows?” Ricky drained his second drink in one gulp and rested his eyes on me. I saw resentment lurking there. The wound of Shayne’s disappearance had healed and scarred over, and now it seemed my meddling opened it again.

“What was the coin?” Wanting Ricky’s scowl off me prompted the question as much as inquisitiveness. His temper set off alarm bells in my head. I knew men like Ricky, men who ran hot and cold, one minute laughing, the next ready to fight.

Dean spoke up. “Trey owns a coin collection he inherited from his father. There were several coins like that. Trey claimed they were credit tokens from whorehouses.”

“So they were valuable?” I didn’t believe for a hot minute Trey would bury part of a coin collection.
Maybe he didn’t do the burying.
In which case, someone framed him. Someone who hated him. Who hated Trey?
Uhhh, Ricky?
I pushed down the thought. Ricky no more murdered his sister than Santa Claus did.

“Trey thought the whole collection was valuable, but I have no idea.” Dean shrugged. “He talked about selling it and using the money to start his own horse training business. But his father left the coins to him, and they at least had sentimental value.”

“I remember those stupid coins now.” Ricky snapped his fingers. “So that was one of them?”

The doorbell sounded again, cutting off any answer he might have gotten. Ricky jumped up and raced out of the room to answer it. He returned with the two officers.

“Trey’s not back there, folks,” said the sheriff. “Any ideas where he might be?”

Dean shook his head. “He’s a heavy drinker, so probably out drinking, but I’m not sure where he hangs out.”

“We’ll check the area bars. Anywhere else?”

Nobody spoke.

“If he does show up, call us. Don’t try to detain him yourselves.” The sheriff’s eyes rested on Ricky, who flushed. With a nod, the lawmen left.

“Mom and Dad should have fired him years ago.” Ricky waited for one of us to agree. When nobody said anything, he stood and exited the room without another word. Madeleine, wide-eyed at the drama, excused herself, leaving Dean and me alone in the room. He fiddled around at the bar, finally pouring himself a bourbon and sitting next to me on the uncomfortable sofa.

I thought back to my conversation with Julienne. She called Trey a punk and was ready to say something else when her cell phone rang. Had her word choice simply formed out of her frustration? Or was there something else? I asked Dean.

“Really?” He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t have a clue why she’d call him a punk. Ask her.”

That went nowhere.
I kicked off Madeleine’s uncomfortable shoes and flexed my numb toes, trying to work feeling back into them. The display with the
Disappearing Culture
books caught my eye, and I decided to try again.

“Earlier, when Colton told me about the
Disappearing Culture
project, Shayne’s ghost knocked the book out of my hand. She did it when he mentioned interviews.”

Dean raised his eyebrows and set his whiskey aside.

“Do you remember her having problems with any of the people she met during the project?”

“Not at all,” he said. “She loved working on it, talked about it all the time.”

“Did Colton go with her on the interviews?”

“Maybe some, but not all.” Dean pulled off his tie and stuffed it in his pants pocket. “Shayne knew people in the community, and Colton was an outsider. Sometimes they’d talk more openly if Shayne went alone.”

“What did Colton do on the project?” I remembered his name in the place of honor on each volume of
Cajuns: The Disappearing Culture
.

“Everything. Colton and the kids working on the project took over an unused classroom. I remember going to pick Shayne up on a Saturday.” He smiled, but I noticed tears brimming. “They had papers and pictures piled everywhere. Colton showed me how he was deciding which pictures went with what interview. It looked like a huge amount of work.”

“How did Colton get involved with your family? You said he was new to the community back then.” I curled up against him on the sofa. Despite the spring day’s warmth, night brought a damp chill to the old house. Dean rested his arm across my shoulders.

“Ricky and Colton met in college. They were in the same fraternity.” Dean traced one finger down my neck and leaned in to nuzzle it. I elbowed him away.

“The only thing that makes any sense is Trey killing your sister over a lover’s quarrel. And, from what your mother said, the timeline didn’t work.”

“Maybe something got overlooked back then,” he said. “What did Mom want anyway?”

“Your grandmother’s necklace. I was wearing it.”

Dean pulled back from me.

Ouch.

“She asked me to use my ability to solve your sister’s murder.”

Dean, who had asked me the very same favor, only nodded. My heart twisted. I hated the fact I made him so uncomfortable. In big picture terms, I wondered if it meant I was wasting my time in this relationship. Would he ever come to terms with me being different? After all, it wouldn’t change any time soon.

The room’s pristine relics somehow linked the past and present. Shadowy flickers hovered in my peripheral vision, and it felt like the warm mahogany walls closed in on us. The feeling of someone watching crunched my nerves into sharp edges. A cold ghostly hand closed around my arm, and I yanked away and leapt to my bare feet.

“I think I’ll go to bed.” My whole body trembled, and it took all my effort to keep my voice even. Dean glanced at me and winced.

“I’m sorry. This is hard on you, too.” He smiled, surprising me. “And I bet you’re starved.”

“Huh?”

“You barely touched your supper. Not that I blame you.” He motioned me to follow him out of the parlor and led me upstairs. “Us kids always kept a stash of junk food. Let’s see what Maddy has.”

I sent Dean along to Madeleine’s room and stopped off at mine to shed her dress and change into my spare jeans and t-shirt. On my way out, I took a look at myself in the mirror. Lisette had been right. I didn’t belong here in this place, with this man.

###

Dean had Madeleine pegged. She kept a mind-blowing assortment of junky bakery treats in a plastic storage bin in her closet. Dean shoved them down one after the other, not even looking to see what he grabbed. Madeleine wolfed down an entire package of powdered donuts in a few seconds. I picked at a honeybun, fascinated as always by the way other people lived.

Madeleine sucked down half a bottled water and reached for a Moon Pie.
 

“You’re going to have to put in double time in the club’s weight room to work off all these calories.” Dean unwrapped his own Moon Pie.

“I don’t work out there anymore.” Madeleine made a face. “Not since I heard the rumor about the peephole in the women’s locker room.”

“What rumor?” Dean ate half his Moon Pie in one bite.

“Back before my time, some tennis coach got caught using it.” Her eyes moved between Dean and me. “The club fired him and repaired the hole. But they kept it hushed up so people would keep their memberships.”

Dean choked on his food. Had I been eating, I’d have choked, too. The serial killer Dean suspected of killing Shayne could have seen her scar through that peephole. Dean, now red-faced, guzzled water out of his sister’s bottle and gasped for air. I decided to question Madeleine myself.

“If they repaired it, why do you feel uncomfortable?” Dean and I exchanged a glance, and he nodded in approval.

“Oh, it’s stupid.” She shrugged.

“Tell us anyway,” Dean said.

“A boy at school whose father works maintenance at the club said it wasn’t repaired right, and he still catches boys peeping.”

“Stay away from that place,” Dean said. The eye contact we shared was worth a thousand conversations. All the years he spent believing Marcus Lewis killed his sister had been wasted time. If he’d known about the peephole, he could have looked at other suspects sooner. He ducked his head and glared at the floor.
 

“I hate to go off-topic, but what was Lisette going on about at dinner? And why did Mom act so funny?” Madeleine directed the question at me.

Dean raised his head to see how I’d respond. I raised my eyebrows, and he gave me a quick nod. I briefly explained I could see ghosts and how they sometimes wanted me to do things for them.

“Oh.” She covered her mouth and blotches of red appeared high on her cheekbones. “I’m sorry I called my great-grandmother a witch in front of you.”

“Why do you tell people that?” Dean scowled and then spoke to me. “She was just a weird old lady who knew about stuff before it happened. Not a witch. She died when I was a little boy.”

A weird expression moved across Dean’s face. I bet there was more to the story, but in front of his sister was not the time or place to try to draw it out. Until now, I thought Dean’s aversion to my ability had to do with the psychic who shot him after he connected her to a string of murders. That shadow across his face added a new dimension to the story. Perhaps it went deeper than that.

“So tell me what ghosts want you to do. Solve murders?” Madeleine leaned forward, grinning. “That is so cool. I knew the second you got here you’d be cool.”

Dean snorted, and I kicked him.

“So Shayne wants her murder solved?” Madeleine’s words rushed out, no space in between for my answers. “Does she talk to you? Or can you read her mind?”

“Yes. No, and no.” I tossed aside the honeybun and went to one of the impossibly tall windows. I opened it, lit a cigarette, and inhaled deeply, shivering as the damp air penetrated my clothes. Madeleine joined me and helped herself to a cigarette. I winced but said nothing.
Hey, those things aren’t free
.

“Does Mom know you smoke?” Dean opened a Coke from Madeleine’s mini fridge. He would never fall asleep after the amount of sugar he’d consumed.

“Mind your own business.” Madeleine scowled at him and turned back to me. “Who do you think did it?”

“Trey seems a likely suspect, but if he has an alibi—”

“Don’t tell my baby sister all that. It’ll give her nightmares.” Dean joined us at the window and made a show of fanning our smoke into the still night.

“I’m not a kid.” Madeleine blew smoke in his face. “I mean, Trey wouldn’t hurt us, would he?”

Dean grunted. “If he’s responsible, he’s probably long gone.”

“Unless he didn’t do it,” I said. “In that case, he just went off to get drunk and feel sorry for himself.”

“So he’s a wild card.” Madeleine dropped her cigarette butt into her empty water bottle. I did the same and closed the window. The three of us congregated at Madeleine’s bed. I remained standing, ready to excuse myself and leave brother and sister to their visit. They didn’t mind including me, but I felt like I just didn’t belong.

Madeleine’s next words stopped me. “I bet Lisette did it.”

“The murder?” Dean sat down on the bed. “She did not. She and Shayne were best friends.”

“I wonder how deeply she was investigated,” Madeleine said. I snickered.

Dean frowned at us. “Lisette’s not capable of that. I lived with her for fifteen years. She had her moments, but she’s not capable of murder.”

“Come on, Dean-o,” Madeleine said.

“Don’t call me that.” Dean threw a stuffed pink monkey at her. She caught it and kept talking as though nothing happened.

“She was out for Peri’s blood tonight.” Madeline tossed the monkey on her bed. “You can’t tell me you didn’t see that.”

“Have to be blind not to,” Dean said. “Lisette never left the high school mean girls mentality behind. It doesn’t make her a murderer.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Lisette outing me at supper disturbed me, but the way she acted when we were alone disturbed me more. That attack was more than “mean girls.” My own disastrous first marriage left me with a lot of questions about the person I married. But it was a lot shorter than Dean’s marriage. Was he unable to admit he married a monster? Dean slid off the bed and made a big show of yawning.

“I’m done,” he said around another yawn. “Want me to walk you to your room?”

“Y’all better not let Mom catch y’all in there. This might be the twenty-first century, but she won’t like it.” Madeleine held the door open for us and closed it behind us.