Mimosa Grove (17 page)

She made herself stand, even though her legs threatened to give way.

“She’s already passed.”

Aaron fell to his knees. Laurel touched the top of his head, then staggered from the grief. Justin caught her before she fell.

“Laurel…let me—”

She shook her head. “Justin, would you please tell Marie to call Harper Fonteneau? Have him meet us at the Lewis place. We’re going to be needing his services.”

“I already called him,” Aaron said. “He’ll probably get there about the same time we do. That is, if you’ll come with me?”

“I’ll come.”

Aaron swiped his big hands across his face, trying to regain his composure by removing the traces of his emotion.

“I thank you,” he muttered, then pulled a small bit of fabric from his back pocket. “It’s the handkerchief that Mattie had in her pocket last night. It was on the kitchen table. I thought you might—”

Laurel stepped back, unwilling to touch it just yet.

“Just hold it until we get to the property,” she said.

“You don’t need it to…uh, well, ‘see’ where she is?”

“I already saw it,” Laurel said.

The veins in Aaron’s neck were bulging. His face was flushing with anger and with rage.

“But maybe you can ‘see’ who did it. I swear to God, when he’s found, I’m going to kill him with my bare hands,” he said.

“Just wait,” Laurel said, then looked to Justin. “Will you take me there?”

“Absolutely,” he said softly, and put an arm around her shoulders. “There’s no way you’re getting out of here alone. Wait here. I’ll tell Marie where we’re going.”

Laurel nodded. It was of some comfort to Laurel to know that Justin would be with her, but not enough to protect her from being swamped with regret.

Aaron Clement couldn’t look her in the face.

“I’m so, so, sorry,” she said.

“Not half as sorry as I am,” he said shortly. “Tell Justin I’m heading over there now. He knows where she lives.”

Laurel nodded.

Aaron was at the door when he suddenly stopped, then turned.

“You sure about this?”

“He buried her behind a place that smells like wet feathers.”

Aaron staggered as if he’d been sucker-punched, then stumbled blindly out the door to his car as Justin came back.

“Where’s he going?” he asked.

Laurel’s voice was still shaking. “To his sister’s house. After that…probably mad.”

Spanish moss hung from the live oaks circling the single-story, tin-roofed house where Martin and Mattie Lewis lived. Two old tin buckets had been recycled into planters for the front porch and were overflowing with pink and purple petunias. An unused birdcage had been utilized for the same purpose and was hanging from the north end of the porch with a pot of bougainvillea inside. The trailing vines spilled randomly through the wires of the cage to sway lightly in the breeze. A hummingbird wind chime was on the south end of the porch. It marked the intermittent swells of incoming and outgoing air with clear, bell-like chimes. It was a gentle, welcoming sight for the arrival of guests.

As Justin and Laurel turned the corner in the driveway and got their first view of the place, Justin frowned, then groaned.

“Oh, no,” he said. “Looks like Mattie’s husband is just coming home. See, he hasn’t even carried his suitcases into the house? How do you tell a man that his wife has been murdered?”

Laurel didn’t answer. She was too busy watching the distant confrontation of brother and husband.

Moments later, they arrived. Justin parked next to Aaron’s car and helped Laurel out of his truck. As they started toward the porch where Aaron and Martin were standing, Harper Fonteneau arrived and parked his patrol car behind Martin’s white van.

Justin glanced at Laurel.

“Are you all right?”

Blinking slowly, she looked at him, then away without answering. The air felt too thick to breathe, and her limbs felt heavy—as if she were trying to walk under water.

Justin frowned.

“Laurel…honey?”

Laurel moved toward Aaron and Martin, unable to take her gaze away from both men.

Martin Lewis was a tall man—a head and a half taller than Aaron, and was dark where Aaron was fair. His skin was a warm, golden brown, toasted so by the sun. His hair was black and shiny, and at least two inches past a clean haircut, brushing the top of his collar as he stood. His shoulders were broad, his body long and lean. It was easy to see why Mattie Lewis had been attracted. Even his speech was mesmerizing—a thick Cajun cadence that drew the listener’s attention to his wide, expressive mouth, as well as to what he was saying.

When he saw Justin, his eyes glittered with recognition, but he frowned when he realized Justin was not alone. And when Harper Fonteneau arrived, he became extremely agitated.

“What’s happenin’ here?” he asked, and then he looked toward his house, frowning. “Where my Mattie Faye? Why she not here?”

Aaron was struggling with words that wouldn’t come. It was Harper who broke the news and the tension.

“I got a call that your wife was missing,” he said. “What do you know about it?”

The shock on Martin Lewis’s face was immediate. He looked at Aaron, then bolted toward the house, yelling Mattie’s name.

Laurel flinched, but she didn’t move.

Justin started toward the house with Aaron and Harper, but when Laurel didn’t follow, he stopped.

“Laurel?”

“Wait,” she said, and dug her fingers in his forearm as she struggled to stay focused.

He feared from the way she was behaving that the day that had gone so wrong was about to get worse.

“I’m here,” he said quietly, then stood beside her without speaking.

They could hear shouts of dismay from inside the house, then Harper quickly ushering everyone out.

“This might turn out to be a crime scene,” he argued, when Martin tried to push his way back in. “If it is, you can’t go disturbing the evidence.”

“She can’t be gone,” Martin said, looking wildly toward the pastures. “Maybe she fell out there. That’s it! She’s lying out there somewhere waiting for me to find her.” He turned abruptly and started running toward the fence surrounding the yard, shouting Mattie’s name.

“Go get him,” Harper said.

Aaron and Justin took off after him and soon brought him back.

“This can’t be happening,” Martin said, then dropped weakly to the steps and covered his face with his hands.

Laurel’s gaze was wide and fixed; then suddenly she focused on the men at the steps and moaned.

All four of them turned. Martin was the one who frowned.

“Who dat woman? Who she is?”

Harper Fonteneau was the one who dropped the bomb.

“That’s Miz Marcella’s granddaughter. Her name is Laurel Scanlon.”

Martin’s face turned from pale to a dark flush of crimson.

“De hell you say!” he said, and jumped to his feet. His expression changed from one of despair to that of the hunted. “Woman…stay away! Don’t hold with no voodoo, me.”

Laurel’s legs were getting weaker as the evil that had come to this place continued to grow, but she had to finish what had been started.

“The watch. He’s wearing the watch,” she said.

Harper frowned. “What you talkin’ about, girl? We all got on watches.”

Laurel didn’t answer. Instead, she moved forward, intent on touching Martin Lewis. He saw her coming and jumped up, but Justin knew what she meant to do and grabbed him.

“No! No! Don’t bring dat evil to me!”

“I’m thinking you’re the evil,” Justin said.

Harper frowned. “What’s going on?” he said.

“Tell him, Laurel. Tell him what you saw.”

“A man with a Mickey Mouse watch killed Mattie. There was a spot of white paint on the toe of his boot—like the one on
his
boot.” Then she pointed toward a small building between the house and the barn. “I smelled wet feathers…then it started to rain.”

Aaron’s eyes widened in disbelief at the paint spot and the watch.

“Martin? Tell me this isn’t true.”

Martin Lewis twisted out of Justin’s grasp.

“I did nothin’ to my Mattie. Whatever happened to her, I was not here.”

Laurel grabbed him by the arm, then fell backward as if she’d been struck. Justin spun, catching her before she hit the ground.

Laurel was turned toward Martin, but seemed to be looking through him, rather than at him.

“You were here last night. You saw her get out of a car. You waited in the dark until she came into the kitchen. You accused her of having an affair. You wanted to know where she’d been and who she’d been with. She tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen. You hit her. She fell against the cookstove. She didn’t get up.”

Martin started to shake like a man in a fit. His eyes rolled back in his head; then he started to scream.

“I live with no woman who sleeps with another man.”

Aaron roared in pain and then hit his brother-in-law with his fist. Martin’s head snapped back. He fell backward into the dirt. Tears were pouring down Aaron’s face as he stood over Martin’s inert body.

“You fool!” Aaron yelled. “You crazy, jealous fool. Tommy Moutan’s baby girl got lost while you were gone. They had a party last night for everyone who helped in the search. Mattie wasn’t going to go, but I told her it would be all right. She went with me. It was me who brought her home last night. She wasn’t cheating on you. She was with me!”

Martin rolled over on his hands and knees, then hung his head.

“I didn’t mean for her to die,” he said, then started to cry.

Harper Fonteneau stared at Laurel, then at Martin, and shook his head in disbelief. He took the handcuffs from his belt.

“Stand up, damn it,” he said, and began cuffing the man. “God Almighty, Martin. What have you done? What the hell have you done?”

“Not on purpose,” Martin muttered. “Just an accident…wouldn’t kill my Mattie Faye.”

Aaron grabbed him by the throat. “What did you do with my sister? Where did you put her body?”

Martin wouldn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. Laurel already knew. She pointed toward the barn.

“He buried her behind the chicken house. Dig below where he left the shovel.”

“Don’t touch anything!” Harper ordered when Aaron started toward the buildings. “This is out of your hands. I’m calling the coroner and the crime scene investigators. It’s their business now.”

Aaron’s shoulders slumped in weary defeat. He turned toward Laurel, tried to talk, and wound up weeping openly instead.

Laurel shuddered.

“Justin?”

He was there beside her, right where he’d promised to be. She leaned against him, taking comfort in his presence and his strength.

“Yes, baby?”

“Take me home.”

Before he could answer, her legs gave way. He lifted her off her feet and into his arms, then carried her to his truck.

Harper was on his radio calling for help as Justin drove away.

And while they were dealing with the aftermath of the tragedy, Trigger DeLane was on the move, following McNamara’s orders before his world came tumbling down.

A
lthough Cherrie Peloquin had turned her boss, Peter McNamara, in, she was living to regret it. Besides the fact that McNamara Galleries was closed and she was now unemployed, she was afraid for her life. The more she learned about her previous boss’s real identity, the more convinced she became that he would not only find out that she’d been the one who’d told on him, but that he would have her killed for the betrayal.

Because she feared to leave her apartment, she was also not searching for a new job, which meant her savings were dwindling. Despite the promises from the offices of the attorney general that her identity was unknown and she was perfectly safe, she lived in constant fear. She couldn’t remember when she’d had a good night’s sleep and cried often.

Her parents lived in Oregon, and going back was sounding good to her, because the thing she wanted most now was safety. The ordinary life that had been so boring to her before now called to her on an hourly basis. Her high school sweetheart, Andy Preminger, still wanted to marry her. At least he had the last time she’d gone back for a visit. Being an apple farmer’s wife was a lot more enticing to her now than it had been when she’d come home from college, dying to see the world. She’d seen it, all right—just enough that she might actually die because of it.

She paced the rooms of her apartment, contemplating every manner of getting out of her promises that she could imagine, but it all came down to running away, and she’d given her word that, when the time came, she would testify against her boss.

As she moved from room to room, peering through curtains and listening for unfamiliar sounds in the hall outside her door, she became more and more certain that her days were numbered. And with that came the realization that she wasn’t patriotic enough to die for her country—not for any reason. She didn’t quite know how she was going to do it, but she was going to get out of D.C.

Confident, now that she’d made up her mind, she ran to her bedroom, yanked a suitcase from the closet shelf and started to pack. At that point, everything began to fall into place. With her suitcase packed and a cab on the way to her apartment, she had only one more stop to make at an ATM before heading to the airport. The only thing that bothered her was the fact that if her apartment was being watched, as she suspected, then they would follow.

But she wasn’t beaten. Not yet. She ran into the bathroom, got a pair of scissors from a drawer and began hacking at her hair, chopping it off in chunks and hanks until there was nothing left of her pretty blond tresses but straggly tufts. Still, she wasn’t completely satisfied. Digging through some old cosmetics, she found a can of colored hair spray left over from Halloween last year and picked it up. It might scare the heck out of her parents when they saw her, but, if it kept her alive, it would be worth it. Aiming the can toward what was left of her hair, she began to spray and emptied the contents onto her head.

A few minutes later, she was out the door and on her way down to the waiting cab, satisfied that not even her own mother would recognize her.

The cabbie didn’t even blink when a short, skinny woman with pink hair, green shorts and a ragged blue denim shirt came running out of the apartment with a suitcase banging against her shins. Compared to some of the people he’d picked up, she looked almost normal.

“Take me to an ATM first, then to the airport,” she said.

He tossed her suitcase in the trunk of his cab and then slid behind the wheel. Within seconds, the only witness to the government’s case against Peter McNamara had disappeared.

The attorney general was furious, as was Robert Scanlon’s superior, but there was nothing to be done. Scanlon had refused to deal with Peter McNamara and removed himself from the case, which threw the whole process into a standstill. Even with another prosecutor being assigned, there were the obvious delays that would have to be dealt with. Then, the fact that McNamara had fired his lawyer and was, for the moment, without legal representation, brought everyone back to square one.

The new lawyer assigned to the case took Scanlon’s files, his notes and the tape of Cherrie Peloquin’s deposition, and went to work. Deciding it would be prudent to inform Miss Peloquin that a different prosecutor was now in charge, he made a phone call to her apartment.

The phone rang.

And rang.

And rang.

Without an answer or even an answering machine.

Still, he was not unduly concerned, but to be on the safe side, he sent an assistant to her address, only to be informed by a disgruntled manager, who had just received the information via a telegram, that Miss Peloquin had forfeited her deposit, donated her remaining belongings to whomever wanted them and was no longer in residence, with no forwarding address.

McNamara had spent his life taking pride in his superior intellect and skill at deception. He’d amassed a small fortune playing off those very talents and had no intention of spending the rest of his life behind bars. There were deals to be made and offers he had yet to make. There was little he didn’t know about the old Soviet Republic, and while much of that information might no longer be pertinent, he knew plenty that was. The United States was still unsettled about servicemen missing in action from both the Second World War and Vietnam. He knew for a fact that the Mother Country had secreted both without ever coming clean. That alone would be enough to get him out from under the circumstantial evidence they had against him. And while selling out the Russians would mean he could never go back, there was always the Tropics. He’d always planned to buy a home in Bermuda. There was no time like the present. When his next meeting with Scanlon came up, he would offer something even Scanlon could not refuse.

Billy Mack Thompson had been a teenage farm boy with a passion for fishing and hunting when he’d been drafted and sent to the jungles of Vietnam. The man who’d come back had been nothing like the fresh-faced boy from Wichita, Kansas. To cope with the constant hell of jungles and war and dead babies, he’d gotten hooked on opium. From there, it was just a stone’s throw to heroin, cocaine, and anything else that would stop the nightmares and numb the pain.

And during all the horror of war, something odd had happened. He’d become accustomed to bombs and blood and being afraid to sleep, which made going home a transition he couldn’t handle. After all the years and the deaths and learning to become a killer, the war had ended. Just like that. As if he’d been to summer camp and it was now time to go home and resume life as he had once known it.

So they sent him back. But something had happened back in the States, too. The general public had become critics of the war that had stolen his soul, and they’d taken out their anger and sense of injustice on the returning vets.

The first time he was spat on, he spat back, then beat the hell out of the spitter and wound up in jail. There wasn’t anything that going home could cure, although, to his credit, he tried. But his life went to hell along with his dreams, and when his parents finally died, he took his inheritance, invested in a trunkful of street-ready weed and didn’t look back. Not until he was caught and sent to prison.

The fact that he was now incarcerated was no big deal to a man like Billy Mack. But being under the same roof with a traitor was. He had gone into a life of crime, but he’d been a soldier first, and being incarcerated beneath the same roof as McNamara was intolerable. There was a guard he knew with an old and, as yet, undiscovered weakness for blow, and now, having thought about it ever since he’d learned of McNamara’s arrival, Billy Mack was about to make the deal of his life.

Peter grimaced as the toilet flushed. The lack of privacy in prison was disgusting. No wonder recidivism was such a huge problem within the American penal system. Only animals could exist under these conditions, and everyone knew animals were creatures of habit, thus the constant release and return of repeat offenders. The way he looked at it, the only ones who escaped the vicious cycle of crime were the ones who died in the process or were rich enough to buy their way out.

He washed his hands with care as his frown deepened. His nails were atrocious. He needed a manicure in the worst way. He needed a haircut, as well, but he wasn’t letting some prison barber get hold of him. He would let it go until he could get back to his regular salon.

Without the use of a towel, he dried his hands on his pant legs and then strode to the bars that separated him from the general population. His belly told him it was almost time for the evening meal, although he did not look forward to the menu. To a man with a sophisticated palate such as the one Peter had developed, the food served in here was nothing short of appalling. At previous meals, he had dissected the food with the tines of his fork, half expecting to find bits and pieces of cockroaches or weevils. The inmate population had jeered at him and hassled him to the point of inciting a brawl. After continuous complaints from his now-fired lawyer, Peter had been taken out of the general population and put in isolation. He welcomed the quiet. It gave him the time he required to make plans.

So when he heard the solid clank of the metal door at the end of the passageway opening, then closing, he took notice. And when the sound of approaching footsteps started his way, he moved to the front of his cell, expecting the evening meal. But it wasn’t the trustee who normally brought the food that he saw, although he recognized the man who was approaching.

The man was huge, even by prison standards, and had obviously spent many hours lifting free weights, one of the privileges offered by the prison. His face was lined and scarred, his long gray hair hung halfway down his back, and the once-black bandanna he wore around his head was gray from age and countless washings. His leg and arm muscles bulged against the constraints of prison garb, while his shoes made an odd squeaking sound as he walked. It took Peter a few moments to realize it was because of an uneven gait.

He leaned closer to the bars, expecting to see a guard, even two, close behind, but he saw no one. At that point his gaze moved back to the man’s face. It was then that Peter McNamara née Dimitri Chorkin knew fear. It occurred to him that he might never get that needed manicure or live to spend another dime of the millions he had accumulated.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded as Billy Mack stopped at his cell.

But Billy Mack had only one thing to say. He slid his hand inside his shirt, pulled out a handmade knife, and thrust it at Peter’s face.

“Die, you egg-sucking Communist,” Thompson said.

Before Peter could scream for help, he did as Billy Mack had suggested. He fell backward with a bone-breaking thud, minus his right eye. A small puddle of blood began to pool beneath his head, staining his graying brown hair and giving it the appearance of turning black.

Thompson slid the shiv back into his shirt and then stood at the cell, watching until McNamara’s body had quit twitching. At that point he walked out of the hallway the same way he’d come in. The foray into enemy territory was over, and this time, the enemy had been defeated. It was a satisfaction he had not known since leaving Vietnam. The door to Isolation banged against the wall, then swung shut.

Silence reigned.

It was unfortunate that Robert Scanlon was already en route to the airport when the prosecutor’s department learned of Cherrie Peloquin’s disappearance. It was even more unfortunate that he was in the air to parts unknown when McNamara’s body was discovered by a guard doing rounds. But the greatest misfortune belonged to Trigger DeLane, who’d taken it upon himself to follow Scanlon in hopes of finding the man’s daughter. Had he known that the witness had skipped and McNamara was dead, he would have been in the clear. His worries would have been over and he could have gone into detox as his father had been urging him to do, forgetting that Peter McNamara had ever existed. But he was so focused on following McNamara’s orders to keep his name in the clear that he had lost his sense of reason and all touch with the events of the world.

Scanlon had his boarding pass, a sandwich, a cup of airport coffee and the
New York Times.
Now all he needed was a place to sit until his plane to Louisiana was ready to leave, but there were two other flights that had yet to board and seating was at a premium. He finally found a spot between a woman with two small children and an old woman who kept sliding her false teeth in and out of her mouth as she crocheted.

The thought of eating amid the chaos turned his stomach, and there was no room to open his paper, let alone master the concentration to read it, so, he opted just to finish his coffee and pray for an early departure. A short while later, he was downing the last swallow when the old woman beside him got up and left. Before he could enjoy the extra elbow room, another person slipped into the seat beside him.

“Well, for goodness’ sake. Mr. Scanlon, isn’t it?”

Surprised to hear someone speaking his name, he looked up, then frowned.

“Yes, but I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage. I don’t believe we’ve—”

Trigger turned on the charm as he offered his hand.

“Yes, actually we have, but it was a couple of years ago at Dad’s New Year’s Eve party. I’m Trigger DeLane. General Franklin DeLane is my father.”

Robert felt stupid. It wasn’t like him to forget people of note, even if they’d only met once.

“Yes, of course. Forgive me,” Robert said, and shook the man’s hand. “How is your father? Haven’t seen him in a while.”

“He’s fine, just fine,” Trigger said. “I’ll tell him you asked after him when I get home.”

Robert nodded. “Where are you off to?”

“Houma, Louisiana,” Trigger said.

The coincidence was lost on Robert as the two small children on his left took the opportunity to start a fight at his feet. By the time their mother had ended the argument and apologized to Robert, their flight had started to board.