The Evidence Room: A Mystery (5 page)

Aurora wondered how many people had sat on the stained olive-green couch and contemplated life’s eternal mysteries. In the emergency room, there was no time to think about these things. Death was part of the job; it had to be endured. You had to continue, because what choice did you have otherwise? It worked well until it happened to someone you cared about. Papa’s death was different; it made her want to bury her face in the smoke-stained cushions and sob.

One foot in front of the other, she told herself.

“Aurora?”

Luna Riley appeared in the doorway and swept Aurora into a rosewater-scented embrace. Her silver hair was sprayed into stiff wings that framed her owlish face, and she wore a coral-colored suit adorned with gold buttons the size of quarters. Aurora had met Luna for the first time at Papa’s funeral and been surprised to learn that they were old friends “from a hundred years ago.” There was a warm competence about Luna that Aurora liked. Maybe this would be easier than she thought.

“Thanks for seeing me,” Aurora said. Luna led them into her office and shut the door. The office furniture was sparse, but pictures crowded each other for space on every surface. In the largest photo, on the wall, a group of older women barefoot in bridal gowns, Luna among them, posed on a beach, held champagne flutes in the direction of the camera.

Luna followed Aurora’s gaze. “Wedding dress party,” she explained. “We get together every summer down South and wear ’em. Crazy old Southern belles.” She touched the photo briefly. “Most of these gals are divorced now, but Grant and I are still going strong. Forty-three years and counting. Anyway”—she gestured for Aurora to sit on the yellow plaid couch—“you’re not here to listen to an old lady’s stories. Again, I was so very, very sorry to hear about your grandfather’s passing. Hunter Broussard was one of the kindest, smartest men I’ve ever known.”

“Thank you,” Aurora said, a catch in her voice. “He was a wonderful man. More like a father to me.” The only father she’d ever known. “You said you were longtime friends?”

“Oh, yes.” Luna smiled. “You wouldn’t know it now, but I’m a bayou girl, born and raised in Hambone, just north of where your folks are from. I used to wait tables at one of the fried fish joints on the causeway, and your granddaddy was a regular customer. Always respectful, always left a big tip. He teased me that I’d forget about all the bayou folks back home once I became a lawyer in the big city.” She held up a charm that dangled at the end of a gold chain wrapped around her desk lamp, and in the light, Aurora saw an image of an outstretched palm with stars protruding from the fingertips. “I never forgot where I came from. Still got my voodoo charms.”

“So you knew my family, then?” Aurora searched Luna’s face.

Luna nodded. “Oh, yes,” she said.

Of course she did.

Luna leaned towards Aurora. “I’ve seen a lot, Aurora. I know that what your daddy did casts a long shadow.”

“Yes.”

Wade Atchison, her father, had murdered her mother in cold blood when Aurora was a toddler. When Aurora was growing up with her grandparents, she had looked for him in the dark corners of her room, under the bed, in the back of the closet.
Wade’s dead in a ditch somewhere, by the grace of God
, she’d heard her grandmother say one morning when she was supposed to be out of earshot.

But there was always the possibility that he wasn’t.

“Your grandfather, he loved you so much,” Luna said. “And he was so proud of you. ‘My granddaughter,’ he used to tell me, ‘she saves lives every single day.’”

Aurora managed a smile, but the pinprick sensation was beginning behind her eyes, the swell of grief rising in her chest. Luna slid a velvet-covered tissue box in her direction, and Aurora plucked a tissue free.

“I understand he was ill for quite some time,” Luna continued, hoisting an accordion file in front of her. “Had he spoken to you at all—about the estate?”

“The estate? You mean the house?” Estate seemed like a fancy word for the tiny two-bedroom in Connecticut where Aurora had grown up.

“No, the estate refers to all of his property—assets, real property, all of that.” She began pulling papers from the file, her voice shifting into a businesslike tone. Luna dealt with death every day, just like her. It was in every file that cluttered her desk. Did she see it as a series of calculations, an ordered list of possessions?

“We really didn’t talk about that.”

“That’s okay! That’s fine.” Luna beamed at her. “It’s my job to deal with these things, and I can answer any questions you might have. But I have to let you know, there are some things here that I’m not licensed to handle, with regards to the real property, the house. I do have some great contacts down there, though, and—”

“Down where?”

“In Florida. Cooper’s Bayou.”

Aurora’s breath caught in her throat. Papa had left Cooper’s Bayou behind after her mother’s death. It was another world, a place where terrible things had happened that were never discussed, all vestiges of that prior life scrubbed free from their lives in Connecticut. In her face, Aurora saw that Luna Riley knew the whole sad story, and that there was much, much more than Aurora had imagined.

“There’s a house in Cooper’s Bayou?”

Luna swiveled a color printout to face her. The house was a plantation in miniature, blue with delicate white trim the color of birthday cake icing. Beveled glass doors opened onto a patio half obscured by the aging knee of an oak tree. The front yard glowed with clusters of flowers shaped like pink pinwheels.

Cajun hibiscus. Aurora almost said it out loud. It had been her mother’s favorite flower, one of the few facts she knew about Raylene. She loved Cajun hibiscus, her favorite food was fried okra, and she was afraid of thunder and lightning. Each detail of her mother that Aurora had caught she had treasured like a jewel, repeated like a mantra. They breathed life into the photographic images she had; they were something to cling to after the sound of her mother’s voice had faded from her memory.

Papa had known, too. He’d kept his daughter’s favorite flower blooming in the front yard; had cared for this place for twenty years from thousands of miles away, without ever mentioning it to her once. Aurora’s eyes flicked over the photographs on Luna Riley’s desk, photographs of a real family, their arms entwined on beaches and in front of a Christmas tree and at an outdoor wedding. They were making memories for themselves, creating legacies, leaving something real behind, not just a file full of papers and a secret house on a bayou.

“When did he get this house?”

“Your mother grew up there,” Luna said gently. “Your grandfather built it with his own hands. It’s been in your family for quite some time.”

Aurora stared without replying, hypnotized by the photograph. “Does anyone live there now?”

“No, but your grandfather hired a local gentleman to help with the day-to-day upkeep. He wired him money every month for maintenance, repairs, that kind of thing. His contact information is somewhere in here, along with the deed. Here we go.” Luna held up a page. “Jefferson Gibbs. I have a phone number there in the file.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Riley, I just—I didn’t know any of this. It’s just a lot to take in.” Aurora felt warmth rising to her face. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“Well, of course it is.” Luna reached across the desk and patted Aurora’s hand. “I wish there was more I could do to help, but I’m not licensed in Florida. I’ve done some research to point you in the right direction.”

“What do I need to do next?”

Luna indicated the pile on her desk. “Florida law requires that you file the will in local circuit court after learning of the death. Then they’ll decide whether or not it has to go through probate.”

“I have to go to court?”

“Maybe, maybe not. A good attorney should be able to figure out your options. Then if you want to sell the house, you’ll need to get the title cleared, get the property inspected, that sort of thing. It may take some time.” She handed Aurora a business card. “Royce Beaumont is a dear old friend of mine. He knew your family, and he handles these matters. You can trust him.”

She was going to have to go back. Cooper’s Bayou. Aurora wanted to slide time back a few weeks, before Papa’s death had brought the past hurtling into the present. The thought of returning to the place of her birth—alone—brought a chill with it. She would have to ask for bereavement leave from work. How long would it take to sort through all of this?

“Did Papa know about all of this? That I would have to take care of it?”

Luna folded her arms. “I told him that you would have to go to Florida to handle the property. He was aware of it.”

So he knew. “He never wanted me to go there when he was alive. Cooper’s Bayou—he never talked about it.” Papa had hidden the past for twenty years to protect her from the ghosts that waited there. There had to be a good reason.

Luna nodded. “Maybe,” she said, “he was ready for you to find out why.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

“I need to see you in my office first thing, Hudson. We need to talk. Now.”

The voice mail Captain Rush had left on Josh’s cell was not the harbinger of a good day. Josh took a long swallow of his coffee.

He walked the two blocks from Java Jive to the Cooper’s Bayou Police Department headquarters, an unassuming gray building squashed between two halves of the Curtain Call Pawn Shop. A flag outside the shop proclaimed
JESUS SAVES
on one side and
WE BUY GUNS!
on the other. The police department consisted of five police officers—Rush, the chief; one sergeant, Donovan; Josh and Boone; and one part-timer named Bay who was also a third of the fire department.

Rush was waiting for Josh at the door, his pudgy arms crossed, already sweating profusely at this morning hour.

“Hudson. I need to see you in my office. Now.” Captain Rush worried the edge of his mustache, a recent addition that gave him an unfortunate passing resemblance to a wayward pirate. During the course of his lengthy divorce, he had tried out several new looks, much to the delight of his coworkers.

“Can I finish my coffee first?” Josh raised the paper cup in a toast to Rush, who frowned.

Pea’s face floated in his memory.
I know where Liana is
. Pea should be somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean by now. Would she have gone to the police, burned him before she left?

“Now, Josh.” Rush opened the door to his office, revealing Sergeant Donovan in the middle of a swing at an imaginary baseball. Donovan was a local, the son of a shrimper. He was a Bible-thumper and a bit of a blowhard, but he knew it and took Josh’s ribbing with a good sense of humor.

“Hey,” Donovan said. He brandished the autographed baseball bat, one of his prized possessions. “Big game against Hambone’s coming up. You’re looking at the MVP.” Both Donovan and Josh had captained their high school baseball teams, and the creation of a police department softball team had led to a friendly rivalry.

“I’ve seen better swings on a porch.” Josh mirrored his smile and slid into a chair. Rush was a stickler for administrative details; Josh never turned in reports on time. There was still a possibility that this had nothing to do with Pernaria Vincent.

“Listen, Josh. I’ve got to talk to you about something.”

“I don’t know if I can fix your swing in two days, D. I need more time.”

Donovan chuckled, but there was something shuttered in his expression. Rush nodded at him. “Leave us be a minute, Donovan. I need a word with Josh.”

Donovan closed the door, and Rush removed a folder from the top of the file cabinet, extracting a large glossy booking shot. For a moment, Josh imagined that it was his sister, that she was being held somewhere, that this morning was the end of his search.

But when Rush slid the photo towards Josh, it was Pea who scowled at him from the photo, red-eyed and wild. Rush averted his eyes and spoke.

“Do you recognize this person?”

Josh exhaled.

“Well? Do you recognize her?”

Josh refused to meet Rush’s gaze, hypnotized instead by Pea’s booking photograph. Pea had been true to her word; she’d led Turner right into their hands. Josh had kept his end of the bargain—so how had Pea gotten herself caught?

“Where is she?” Josh forced his voice to sound casual. Pea should have been in Paris a week ago. A dozen times over the last couple of days, he’d pictured her at an outdoor caf
é
, those incredible legs crossed underneath a delicate wrought-iron table. What had happened to her?

“So you admit that you know Pernaria Vincent.” There was a tremble in Rush’s voice.

“Yeah. She helped us out on a drug case.”

Rush averted his eyes and spoke in a voice Josh had never heard before, a voice tinged with disappointment. “Why don’t you tell me about that, Josh.”

“Sure,” Josh said. “We’re working two separate groups. The first one was part of the same group who sold to Haylee Graves.” The Graves case was the one that had secured Josh an invite to the squad. Haylee was a local Hambone student, a golden girl who’d been found dead of a heroin overdose. Josh had been the one to collar the scumbag who’d sold to her. It had earned him some attention, a medal of recognition and other bullshit that didn’t change the fact that Haylee was dead and there were a hundred lowlife dealers waiting to take her killer’s place.

Rush nodded. “And the second one?” He shuffled some papers. “According to Fizz, it’s some Hambone ring, oxy and other pills, using Ms. Vincent’s beauty parlor as a front?”

Josh swallowed. “Yes.”

“Fizz told me that you went undercover to make a buy at this shop, right? And what happened?”

Josh forced himself to look Rush square in the face, to make the lie sound as earnest as possible. “When I went there, I spoke with Ms. Vincent. She gave me the information I needed. The next night, I came back, and we shut down the operation, made several arrests, including the head of the group, Turner Randall. My understanding at that time was that Ms. Vincent had already left the country.”

Rush frowned. “Ms. Vincent told the investigators that she had a deal with you, but Fizz tells me he never authorized it. He says your orders were to take the pack of ’em into custody, including Ms. Vincent. Instead, it seems you warned her, because she was pulled over on the interstate with Turner’s money, headed for the airport.” Rush tilted back in his chair. “Ms. Vincent was speeding, and the officer who pulled her over had a bad feeling and decided to run her license. It was a lucky break, really. Or unlucky, I guess, for you.”