The Gates of Evangeline (29 page)

“You think Andre's trouble? So far he seems like the best one.”

“'Cause you're a lady,” Roi says. “He don' give a hoot about ladies.”

“Oh yeah? Was he into
you
?”

He bristles at the idea of being another man's crush object. “I don' care what family he from, he'da laid a finger on me or looked at me wrong, I woulda beat the crap outta that kid and he knew it.” He whips out a dishrag and begins scrubbing the bar top. “Hettie was the one to watch.”

Funny what comes out when a guy feels his manhood has been insulted. “Hettie? No kidding?”

He scrubs a little harder. “Oh yeah. Like a bitch in heat. If I'da smiled at her, she'da jumped my bones.”

I remember what Danelle told me about the night Neville hit his wife. Hettie said if he wanted to continue on with his whores, then fine, but the least he could do was find her a nice pool boy. Roi would've made a hunky pool boy, all right, if that's really what she was after. But somehow I doubt it. Hettie was depressed, isolated, profoundly lonely. Some hothead who spoke only in monosyllables would not have filled that void. Roi's ego strikes me as far too inflated to provide an accurate version of events, but I encourage him to continue anyway. “Wow, so Hettie was a slut?”

“Woulda been . . . if I gave her half a chance. She was a liar, too. Squirrelin' money away from her husband.”

Now
this
is getting interesting. “No way! How do you know?”

Roi licks his lips. “She convinced Neville there to give 'er a monthly allowance, see?”

I nod, trying not to puke at the paternalism of a wife begging for a monthly allowance.

“Well, I heard 'er tellin' him the stuff she needed it for. Shoppin' trips, a horse, a party she was gonna throw. But it was crap. She never did the stuff she was talkin' 'bout.”

“Whoa. Was it a lot of money?”

“She got more in a month than I made in a year back then,” Roi confirms, his lip curling at the injustice of it. “'Bout twelve thousand dollars.”

Now I know how Sean Lauchlin ended up with his abnormally large bank account—though I don't know
why
. I'm about to drop Sean's name, to see what reaction that gets from Roi, when one of the men speaks up from the back of the room. “You got company, Roi.”

In the doorway of the bar, a very agitated Detective Minot stands staring daggers at me. I'm a little annoyed he couldn't have waited five more minutes instead of interrupting right as I was getting answers, but he's in no mood for complaints.

“Get. In. The car,” he says through clenched teeth.
“Now.”

Rat Face lets out a long, low whistle. “Yuh lady been out lookin' for a good time, huh? She didn' tell us she married.”

Once again, all eyes are on me, but this time the gazes are hostile, not hungry, as if waiting to see that I get what's coming to me. I've pushed my luck as far as it will go tonight. I toss a ten-dollar bill on the bar top and scramble to join Detective Minot at the door.

Before we make it outside, Rat Face intercepts him, gives Detective Minot a consoling punch on the shoulder. “Cheatin' bitches,” he says, jerking his thumb at me. “We all got one.”

•   •   •

O
NLY WHEN WE
'
RE WALKING BACK
to my car does it truly sink in. The danger I just put myself in. My lack of a solid exit strategy. The rear lot I'm parked in is poorly lit and secluded from view—exactly the kind of place a woman should never be wandering alone at night—and a shady-looking guy with a ponytail hangs around a nearby Dumpster. I don't know who or what he's waiting for, and I'm pretty sure I'm happier not knowing. There's no denying that without Detective Minot to escort me out, I could've found myself in a tight spot.

I owe him one.

“Before I drive myself home,” he says tersely, “I'd like a word with you.”

He's still fuming as he climbs into the passenger side of my Prius, so I swallow my pride and allow him a good five minutes of vitriol. I nod at his accusations of unparalleled stupidity, concur that I demonstrated a reckless approach to personal safety, and am appropriately ashamed when he points out the selfishness of my actions, which required him to leave his distraught wife late at night on some ill-advised extraction mission. By the time he gets to
Don't you ever pull this kind of dumb-ass stunt again,
though, a small grin has found its way to my face.

“What the hell are you so smug about?” he demands.

“Nothing,” I say. “Continue, please. My personal flaws are obviously much more interesting to you than learning who funded Sean Lauchlin's bank account.”

Detective Minot doesn't exactly look pleased, but he ends his rain of insults. “Whatever you found out, it still doesn't excuse your behavior tonight,” he says huffily. “But go on. Let's hear it.”

I tell him what Roi said about Hettie squirreling money away. “Twelve thousand dollars. The exact amount deposited in Sean's account each month.” I adjust the climate settings in the car and wait for his excitement, his praise for a job well done.

I receive only a thoughtful grunt. “Go hit the drive-through across the street,” he instructs me. “You're buying me french fries.”

At another time or place, the request might seem odd, but french fries make a certain kind of sense right now. And milk shakes. Louisiana brain food.

Obediently, I drive over to the Carl's Jr. and pull up behind a car full of teenagers. A greasy stoner type in the backseat hangs his head out the window like a dog as his friends shout various food items into the speaker.

“So Sean was blackmailing Hettie,” Detective Minot muses as the teenagers continue with their lengthy order. “But why?”

“Maybe he threatened to tell people Andre was gay.”

He shakes his head. “Not with that love letter you found. I mean, Sean was gay, too. It sounded like they had a relationship. How could he blackmail Hettie over that? He had a lot to lose himself, getting busy with a kid who was barely legal.”

“True.” I watch the stoner boy sway from side to side, eyes half closed, while the rest of his car argues about the number of Cokes they need. “What if it wasn't blackmail? What if she was paying him for something?”

Detective Minot looks doubtful. “Information? Or drugs, maybe. Sean
did
talk about running off to Mexico.”

“Did you look into Violet Johnson yet?” I ask. “The woman Sean had a son with? Roi said he knew her. Maybe Sean and Roi and Violet were all part of—I don't know—a drug ring. Maybe they sold to Hettie.”

He shakes his head again. “No one's ever mentioned Hettie behaving unusually. There's no way she could cover up a drug addiction that was costing her that kind of money. And she certainly had no financial incentive to deal.”

The car of teenagers pulls up to the drive-through window, allowing us to place our order through the crackling speaker. With my window down, I can smell traces of marijuana emanating from the kids' vehicle. Detective Minot either fails to notice or chooses to ignore it. I think about Roi's wad of cash, the large bills, certain that he's involved in something a lot heavier than the sale and distribution of marijuana. Detective Minot is right. It's hard to picture Hettie ever associating with those guys.

I search for something else that might be worth twelve grand a month to her but come up empty. Hettie wasn't a gambler, and pool-boy remark notwithstanding, if she was going to pay that kind of money for sex, there had to be better options than her son's boyfriend.

“What if Hettie knew about Andre and Sean's relationship?” I flounder along, trying to talk myself into a reasonable hypothesis. “Hettie could've given Sean the money to—I don't know. Help him and Andre.”

“She gave Sean money for three years,” Detective Minot reminds me. “Andre was only fifteen when Sean opened that account.”

I'm more than a little icked out by the thought of a fifteen-year-old and twenty-seven-year-old embarking on a forbidden romance, regardless of their genders. “So maybe she paid Sean to stay away. Maybe she wanted to avoid a scandal.”

I try to picture it from Hettie's perspective. Her son was in love with Sean. Had she gone to police and accused Sean of being a sexual predator, she would've jeopardized her relationship with Andre forever. He would've been questioned extensively by police, and who knows how cooperative he'd have been? Even if the press couldn't legally mention Andre by name, word would get around. The fact that he'd been a willing participant would eventually emerge. Hettie probably thought she could wait it out. Send Andre back to school, wave Sean back to his army job. Paying Sean off might make sense if she felt that she was protecting not just her child but the whole family from unwanted scrutiny and embarrassment.

But twelve thousand a month is, as Roi pointed out, a lot of money. If she later learned that Sean was violating the terms of their agreement, she would be understandably angry. The question is
how
angry.

Detective Minot has drawn similar conclusions. “She must've caught them. Three years trying to keep them apart, and there they are.”

“And then Sean ends up dead and buried.” I exhale. “On her land.”

The drive-through cashier is waving me on, I realize, so I pull forward and collect our food, too preoccupied to feel guilt about what I'm about to ingest.

Whether Hettie killed Sean herself or finally turned to Neville for some help, I don't know. But I need to talk to Noah about this. As soon as the authorities positively identify his father's body, I have to tell him everything that I know.

I park the car and take a noisy sip of milk shake. Detective Minot makes quick work of his fries, his anger with me dissipating with each bite. “I can believe Hettie paid to keep Sean and Andre apart,” he says with a frown. “I could even believe that she killed him. But there's still one thing I don't understand.”

“I know.” I finish his thought for him. “How the hell does this relate to Gabriel?”

•   •   •

V
ALENTINE
'
S
D
AY
falls a week before Fat Tuesday. I don't intend to make a big deal of it, but Noah has a surprise for me: he's scored coveted hotel reservations for the coming weekend in downtown New Orleans. The idea of experiencing party-happy New Orleans on its wildest days of the year wouldn't always have appealed to me, but I now find myself surprisingly cool with the idea of reckless, joyful sin before Lent. I'm ready for Mardi Gras.

“It's three nights,” Noah says. “We'll leave Saturday mornin'. Think you can plan somethin' for us?”

Can I? What a ridiculous question.
Noah, meet Charlotte's incredibly compulsive research and organizational skills.
I spend my week alternating between writing sessions and Mardi Gras planning. I trace parade routes and traffic detours, print out maps, research parking, and piece together an itinerary. By Friday afternoon, I'm bubbling over, eager to dazzle Noah with my scheduling masterpiece.

As evening falls and Noah still hasn't come by, my impatience turns to concern. It's seven p.m. Where
is
he? The estate is all but empty. No one works late the weekend before Fat Tuesday; even I know that. I call him, but his phone is turned off. On a scouting run, I see his truck parked up by the house. He must have gone to visit Hettie.

I duck in through the empty kitchen, thinking I might pop in to see how she's doing and maybe even bring up Sean Lauchlin. It's a good time to snoop. Apart from a nurse and security guard, the help has gone and won't be back until Wednesday—a reprieve courtesy of Sydney and Brigitte, who decided they could afford to be generous while out of town anyway. Except for the blazing lights of the foyer, the lower level of the house is dark. Noah must be upstairs.

“Charlotte!”

At the sound of my name, I nearly wet myself. I spin around and, through the open door to the study, can barely make out the figure of Andre in one of the armchairs. I assumed he'd returned to New Orleans with his sisters, but apparently not. He leans forward, drink in hand, and smiles, oblivious to the fact that he looks rather deranged lounging around in the dark. And he's wearing that ridiculous bathrobe again.

I put a hand over my racing heart and catch my breath. “Hi. I didn't see you there.”

He flips on a little light on the table beside him. “Better? Come, sit.”

Actually, the last thing I want to do right now is listen to Andre's tales of upper-crust angst. Had I realized he was still here, I might've thought twice before embarking on my Noah search. There's no way around it now, though. He's seen me. I step into his office but don't sit down. Maybe he'll take the hint.

“You haven't been around the house lately,” Andre observes. “What have you been up to?”

“Just working on the book.”

“Naturally.” He takes a vigorous gulp of whatever he's drinking. “I heard you helped deliver Paulette's baby the other day.”

“That was all Leeann.” Just thinking about the birth and that perfect, tiny boy gives me a lump in my throat. Paulette has been staying with her sister since her son was born, so I haven't had the chance to see him again, but I think about him often. “It was pretty intense,” I tell Andre. “I'm just glad she and the baby are all right.”

Andre scarcely hears me. He looks flushed, a little sweaty. I wonder how much he's had to drink. “Let me fix you something. You told me you like Shirley Temples, so I got some grenadine.”

“Some other time. Thanks, though.” I glance over in the direction of the staircase, but still no sign of Noah.

“Is something wrong?” His brow furrows.

“I'm just—looking for Noah. I think he may have gone up to visit your mother.”