Plunder: A Faye Longchamp Mystery #7 (Faye Longchamp Series) (16 page)

Writing down somebody’s name, crossing it out, sprinkling cayenne pepper on it, then tossing the crumpled paper onto a skull-adorned altar…it seemed to Faye that these things meant something. And they probably did not mean that the man in question was the voodoo practitioner’s best friend.

Rubbing her eye with the back of her hand in case she hadn’t gotten all the cayenne off her fingertips, Faye found her blurry vision focusing on the refrigerator. Another scrap of paper was fastened to its door with a magnet shaped like the state of Louisiana. Faye quickly snapped a photo of it.

The same spidery handwriting was scrawled on it, although the letters and numbers weren’t crossed through. It was a simple note written from Miranda to herself:

Sechrist, Friday, 2:00

It
was
Friday. Or was it?

Faye’s internal calendar was so scrambled by her seven-day work weeks that she had to think for a moment to be sure. Yes. It was Friday.

Had Miranda met with someone named Sechrist that very day? Or were they planning to meet in a week? Or maybe they’d met the week before, and Miranda was careless with taking down her notes to herself. Or perhaps the note didn’t refer to an individual. Maybe Miranda had a business meeting or a doctor’s appointment or…something else unexpected.

Faye looked at her watch. It was barely six thirty. Miranda might still be at the Sechrist meeting, but four and a half hours was a very long time. Too bad the note didn’t say where the meeting was supposed to happen. Faye suspected that Miranda would have preferred to meet at her own home, given the choice. But maybe he hadn’t given her a choice. Maybe Miranda had gone to a perfectly innocent meeting and she was on her way back, only to find that her home had been invaded in her absence. Might this mean that she’d been lured away to clear a path for the burglar?

This was the best possible scenario that she could muster, because it meant that Miranda would be walking in the door any minute, so it was the one she would present to Amande.

There was nothing left to discover in the houseboat. Faye decided to stop stalling and go talk to Amande, but her questions never got asked. She stepped onto the open deck, just in time to hear sirens and to see marked cars approach, just as they had three short days before when Amande discovered her uncle’s dead body in the water. The sirens made Michael clap his hands over his ears and scream, but Amande stood absolutely still and silent.

Was it possible that the 911 response had come so quickly? Faye didn’t think it had been a minute since she hung up the phone. Something felt very wrong.

Not knowing what else to do, Faye moved close to the girl. Joe, with the squalling baby in his arms, hovered close on her other side. There was nothing to do now but wait to see what the sirens would bring.

Chapter Fourteen

Faye was glad that Amande didn’t have to hear anything the sheriff said beyond the fact that her grandmother was dead. She’d pulled the weeping girl aside and let Joe handle the rest, but not before she’d had the presence of mind to tell the sheriff that she and Joe were “visiting relatives.” Something inside her couldn’t bear the thought of Tebo or Didi being the go-between for Amande with the law.

By the time a woman with salt-and-pepper hair and a sober business suit approached, Amande had dissolved into the tears that she’d probably needed to cry all week. First, she’d lost her mother, which had cost her the fantasy reunion anyone in her position would have harbored. Now Amande knew, beyond all doubt, that Justine wasn’t going to miraculously appear and explain herself, then take her daughter out for a girls-only lunch and shoe-shopping trip. She would never have her dream mother.

And now she had lost the woman who had not been a dream grandmother. She had been a real grandmother to Amande, in every way but blood.

Perhaps Miranda’s devotion to this homeless child of her ungrateful stepdaughter was in Faye’s mind when she ramped up the lie she’d told the detective. When a business-suited woman introduced herself as Sally Smythe, telling them she was a representative of the Department of Children and Family Services, a vision of Amande being handed over to foster care had congealed in Faye’s mind.

Perhaps the foster parents would be perfectly nice people, but would they live where a boat-dwelling girl could see the water? Would they be able to handle a child who was brilliant and quirky and strong without crushing those things out of her?

And what if they weren’t perfectly nice people? Faye had heard stories about beatings and neglect and molestation…no. These things were not going to happen, not if she could help it.

Faye’s only motivation for the lie was to stall the inevitable. She thought that, by keeping Amande out of the insatiable maw of the foster care system, even momentarily, she might be able to steer the girl into a living situation that she could…well…live with.

The woman had looked at Joe as he smoothed the hair back from the crying girl’s face, then asked Faye, “Do I understand that the two of you were relatives of the victim?”

Faye gave her a quick yes, then asked the question that was at the front of her brain and, coincidentally, would have been an important question for a real relative, as well. “Does anybody know where her Aunt Didi and Uncle Tebo are?”

Ms. Smythe pursed her lips and said, “I’m told that they were easy to find. There aren’t that many bars around here. When Mrs. Landreneau’s daughter was found, she was winning a drinking contest against three large men. Vodka shots are her weapon of choice. Or so I’m told.”

“Tebo?”

“He’s in custody for public drunkenness.”

“Do they really arrest people for that in Louisiana?” Faye asked. “It’s the home of the drive-thru daiquiri bar.”

“If they’re drunk enough, and if they piss the arresting officer off badly enough, then yes. They do. Tebo succeeded on both those counts. He’s a charming man.”

Ms. Smythe studied Joe and Amande again. Joe had lifted Michael by the armpits and was making him fly around Amande’s head in an obvious attempt to get her to laugh. It wasn’t working much.

Ms. Smythe looked Faye in the eyes and said, “Please tell me that Tebo and his drunken sister are not the only relatives who might be able to take this girl. She doesn’t look like she’s had any instruction from them in the fine art of being a barfly. I’d rather not place her with someone who will expose her to that. Foster care might be preferable.”

Trying to minimize the number of times she uttered an out-and-out lie, Faye said, “Well, they’re certainly her closest relatives.”

She wondered if the fact that she, Joe, and Michael were some of the few people in the county with skintones approaching Amande’s would give just enough credence to her lies. Other than Amande, Faye’s family, and Steve Daigle, Manny the marina manager was the only person of color in sight. This was a very white part of the world. Faye’s family
looked
like Amande’s relatives; therefore, they
were
Amande’s relatives. How far could she push her luck with this bureaucrat?

Sally jerked her head in Amande’s direction and started walking. Faye followed her.

Sticking out her hand, she shook Amande’s and said, “Sally Smythe. We met after your Uncle Hebert passed. Remember? It’s my job to make sure you’re okay, and I’m going to do that.”

Amande looked terrified. No, she looked like a lonely little girl. She’d lost her grandmother and her mother, and she was smart enough to have already figured out that Miranda’s death changed everything when it came to the houseboat. She, Didi, and Steve would be splitting ownership of it, and her share would be by far the smallest. There was every likelihood that she’d be forced to leave her home. What did any of that matter, anyway, while she was too young to handle her own affairs?

All those things paled, now that the foster care system beckoned.

Faye was capable of pulling facts out of the air and making a decision so fast that she almost felt careless later, as if she should have agonized more over the problem and its solution. She didn’t consciously weigh the risks that Amande’s family presented against the burden an extra child would put on her own family. She just heard herself asking the social worker a question she hadn’t planned to ask: “Will a distant cousin do for a temporary guardian, until you can decide on the best placement for Amande?”

“How distant?”

“I’m her…”

Not being a practiced liar, Faye hesitated a moment too long. She saw a change in Amande, as composure settled on her and she, too, decided what to do without taking the time to sweat over the details. In that instant Faye knew that Amande, though impossibly young, was unmistakably the kind of person any woman would want on her side in a crisis. The girl knew how to do what needed to be done.

“Fifth cousin,” Amande stated coolly. “We’re fifth cousins.”

Joe, wanting to help, popped in with, “Once removed.”

Faye was pretty sure that Joe didn’t even know what “once removed” meant, in terms of cousins. She regained control of the conversation with a feeble, “But we’re very close. Amande’s our…very favorite cousin. We’re staying in the area for a few weeks. Why don’t you let us take charge of Amande while we’re here? Can we do that without her formally entering foster care? Later, the family can meet with you and decide what’s best for her.”

Faye was frankly amazed that this feeble seat-of-the-pants ploy got her as far as it did, but Ms. Smythe could only do so much. When she heard Faye say, “We’re staying in the area for a few weeks,” she’d started shaking her head.

After Faye had stopped telling bald-faced lies long enough to take a breath, Sally had explained the way things were. “I can release her to family, or even close friends, if they have an acceptable place to stay, and if they pass the background check, and if they agree to come get fingerprinted tomorrow. For starters. It’s the government we’re talking about, and we’re talking about the safety of a child. But you tell me you’re not from around here. Where
are
you from?”

Faye said, “Florida,” in the same tone of voice she might have said, “The third circle of Hell,” because she had a feeling that either answer would have carried as much weight with the state of Louisiana.

Sally shook her head some more. “There are ways to put her in your custody, but we would have to work with our sister agency in Florida. We’d have to find out for certain that you had room in your home for her and that you were suitable parents, even temporarily.”

“But tonight…” Amande quavered.

“No. I can’t send you with these people tonight. They seem very nice, but no.”

A taxi pulled up and Didi flung herself out. “My mother! What’s happened to my mother?”

A uniformed officer stepped forward. “I’m sorry, Miss. We found her in the water, stabbed. She’s dead.”

“Like my half-brother.” Didi’s hands flew to her face in a gesture that looked sincere to Faye, who figured that even the most self-centered person in the world could possibly harbor feelings for her own mother.

“Yes, Miss.” The officer gave her a look that said he was susceptible to the tears of manipulative women, if they were pretty. “I’m very sorry.”

Didi backed away from him, blindly stumbling into the bench of Amande’s favorite picnic table. She dropped onto the bench. In one fluid motion, she lifted both feet off the ground, swung them over the bench and under the picnic table, then dropped her face onto her folded arms. Her narrow shoulders shook, and Faye actually felt sorry for Didi when she realized that there was no one to put a comforting hand on those shoulders. It certainly wasn’t her place to do it. Maybe when Tebo was released from jail, he might be able to muster up a morsel of sympathy for his half-sister.

Faye saw Sally studying Didi. The social worker paused, but she must have decided to leave the young woman alone with her grief. Instead of going to Didi, she took Amande by the elbow. Faye watched as Sally led Amande away from the crowd and spoke with her for a half hour or so. By this time, Didi had raised her head and wiped her eyes, so Sally sat down beside her, spending almost as much time with Didi as she had with Amande.

Faye and Joe had nearly decided to leave when Sally walked their way again, saying, “Well, Didi doesn’t seem all
that
drunk. Not anymore. Of course, I’ve just stalled for an hour. I was trying to give Didi’s liver a chance to catch up with her.”