by Robin Caroll
One of the paramedics held an oxygen mask to her face, while the other jumped from the back of the wagon and held the door. “You riding with us?”
Gary took another look at the woman and nodded. The doors slammed shut.
She shoved the mask aside. “Where are we going? I can’t leave. My house.” She grabbed an overhead rail and pulled herself to standing.
The EMT gently pushed her back down on the stretcher as the vehicle shifted into Drive. “We’re taking you to the hospital for them to check you out.”
She didn’t appear pacified. Actually, irritation covered her delicate features.
“There’s nothing you can do.” Gary all but whispered the words, but they stopped her movements immediately.
Big tears fell from her eyes, making tracks down her cheeks through the soot.
“I’m sorry.” And he truly was. He gripped his pen tighter. He hated this part of the job—having to ask questions and probe when people were hurting or grieving. But he’d never prove himself worthy of the chief deputy position if he didn’t do what he must. He cleared his throat and took charge. “I need to know your name, ma’am.”
“Monique. Monique Harris.”
He wrote down her name, jotted his impressions of the scene, then met her stare. “Some of the questions I need to ask will be repeated by the fire chief, but it’s just to make sure we cover everything, okay?”
She nodded as the paramedic shoved the oxygen mask back into her hands.
“Ms. Harris, did you leave a fire in the fireplace burning, something on the stove, anything like that?”
“No.” She gulped in oxygen.
“Are you sure?”
She removed the mask from her face and glared at him. “I’m positive.”
He made notes. “Have you recently had any electrical work done on the house?”
“No.”
The vehicle hit a bump, jarring them. She swayed. He reached out and steadied her. Something zapped inside him. He jerked his hand back onto his lap. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“I was asleep. I guess the smoke woke me up.” She worried her burned hands in her lap, not even realizing she cringed as she did. “I tried to get out the front door, but the fire was there. I went out the back door, the kitchen door. I-I…”
He touched her arm. “I understand. You got outside.”
Tears streamed down her face. She was so small, so fragile. He had the strangest urge to pull her into his arms and pat her back, tell her everything would be okay. She looked so alone.
“Is there anyone I can call for you?”
She shook her head.
“A friend? Family member, maybe?”
“I have no one.”
Poor thing, and now she’d lost her home, as well. Gary pushed down his empathy. Business. He had to do his job. Stay professional. He focused his attention on his notes and pressed on. “Do you have any idea what could have started the fire?”
Lifting her head, she set her chin. “Yes. Someone set this.”
“You think this was deliberate? As in arson?” She was confused, obviously. Befuddled and distraught.
“I don’t think, sir. I know.” Her hands trembled as she ran her fingers through the tangle of hair.
“Ms. Harris, I’m sure you’re very upset, but t—”
“Yes, I’m upset, but I’m not delusional. This was done deliberately.”
He let out a soft sigh. Might as well humor her. “Okay, why would you think such a thing?”
“Because just this week I got a phone call telling me to leave.”
TWO
She wasn’t a pincushion! Monique scowled as the nurse finished taking blood.
The woman in blue scrubs stuck a Band-Aid over the site and patted Monique’s shoulder. “The doctor will be with you in just a minute.” She swished the curtain around the bed and disappeared.
The sounds of the emergency room were hushed, muffled. Phones rang and voices murmured.
Monique shifted, the bottoms of her feet throbbing. Wads of gauze coated her feet and hands. They’d treated her minor burns with ointment, but her hands were a different story. The mild burns from the floor were made worse from crawling over dirt and gravel. A good cause of possible infection, the triage nurse had admonished her. Like Monique had had another option? She tugged the warmed blanket up under her chin to fight off the chill. The nurse had warned her that feeling cold was to be expected.
She blinked back tears she refused to shed. She’d already cried enough. No, she wouldn’t crumble—not now, not with all that she’d already survived. Yet her heart ached in a familiar way. How many times would she have to suffer because of the actions of another? Would she ever be able to live a normal life, without so much pain?
The curtain ripped away to reveal the man in uniform. Tall and brawny with blond hair and soft blue eyes. “Hello, Ms. Harris. Remember me, Deputy Gary Anderson, acting sheriff of Vermilion Parish?”
She nodded and pushed into a sitting position, propping pillows behind her back. What now?
“The nurse said I could visit with you a few minutes until the doctor comes back. Is that okay with you?” His voice made her think he missed his calling—he should’ve been a radio deejay or a television anchor.
“Fine.” He sure wasn’t hard on the eyes, that much was certain. Monique chided herself and pulled the blanket higher as he shut the curtain and moved to stand alongside the bed. She shouldn’t think such things about this man, or any man for that matter.
“Ms. Harris, I have a few more questions for you.”
“Mrs.”
“Excuse me?” He tilted his head, pen poised over his notebook.
“It’s missus, not miss.”
“Oh. My mistake. I apologize.” He paused, tapping his pen against his chin. “Your husband’s name?”
“Kent.”
“I’m assuming he’s out of town? Do you have a number so I can call and notify him? You’d probably like him to be here.”
Tears stung her already worn-out eyes. “I’d love for him to be here, but he’s dead.” If only she could have him back for just one day, to feel his arms around her once again.
He paused. “I’m terribly sorry.”
She sniffed and wiped her nose against the sleeve of her flannel pajamas. No, Kent’s pajamas. The ones she wore on nights she missed him so much she ached with loneliness. Monique fought back new tears threatening to form. “Thank you.”
When he didn’t respond immediately, she lifted her gaze. His eyes were filled with such compassion, such pity. Just the things she’d fled Monroe to avoid. Her church family all treating her with kid gloves. The contacts at local businesses being overly polite and solicitous. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate their concern and caring, but everyone assumed she didn’t want to talk about Kent and the life they’d shared. It was as if his murder had reached in and exposed an evil everyone chose to believe didn’t exist in their tight-knit community.
Except for the police and the District Attorney’s Office personnel. Those people wanted every detail she could ever recall. For the case. To catch and put away the man who’d murdered Kent in cold blood. She straightened against the flat pillows.
But she still didn’t believe they’d accomplished their goal.
“How long ago?” The deputy’s words were kind, his question not meant to be prying.
This lawman was different. She could detect his sympathy, but also something else. Something she couldn’t identify, like a kinship of sorts. Which didn’t exactly make a lick of sense, seeing as how she’d never met the man before in her life. “It’ll be a year next month.” The pain had only begun to diminish recently because of her excitement over beginning her new life. And now this had happened.
“I truly am sorry for your loss, Mrs. Harris.”
“It’s fine to call me Monique.”
“Okay. Now, you told me that you received a phone call this week…?”
“Yes. I’d just returned home from the grocery store when the phone rang.” She shivered, the room suddenly colder. “That surprised me because it’d only been turned on the day before.”
“Can you remember what day that was exactly?”
“Um.” She rewound her memory. Monday, she’d finished unpacking the rest of the dishes. Tuesday, she’d run into town to get her new cell phone and have her local phone service established because she figured everything would be closed on Thursday, New Year’s Day. “Wednesday. New Year’s Eve.”
“Okay.” He wrote in his notebook. “Go ahead.”
“I answered. At first, no one said anything. I remember thinking it would be just my luck that the first phone call I received in my new house would be a wrong number.” She fought to put a smile on her face but didn’t quite make it. “So I repeated my hello again. I could hear someone breathing. Then all of a sudden, a man’s voice told me go home. That’s it—just two words. ‘Go home.’ Then he hung up.”
“Did you recognize the voice?”
“No. I’m new here, haven’t had a chance to meet anyone. Not even my neighbors.” She gripped the edges of the blanket, twisting it into her fists and ignoring the pain. So much for fitting in, what she wanted more than anything else.
“Just the words go home? That was all he said?”
“Yep.” She nodded for emphasis.
He rested the pen against the notebook and stared at her. “May I ask why you moved to Lagniappe?”
Wasn’t that a loaded question?
She licked her cracked lips, then absentmindedly ran fingertips through her bangs. “Well, I recently discovered I have relatives living here.”
“Recently discovered?” He arched a single brow.
“Yes.” She knew how strange that sounded. Letting out a sigh, she decided to just spill the whole story. “I never knew who my father was. My mother refused to tell me, even when she was dying.”
He scribbled in his notebook again.
“My husband was a private investigator, Deputy Anderson. When my mother passed away two years ago, I asked him to try to find out who my father was.”
“And he did?”
“It took him some time, but yes, finally, he was successful.” Monique closed her eyes as memories swarmed through her. “Right before Kent died, he obtained verified proof of who my father was.” He’d been so excited to give her the news, had made a big deal out of delivering the information to her over a romantic dinner. He knew how much finding her family had meant to her, even as he knew she’d be upset to learn her father was a murderer. But at least she would know.
“And?”
She blinked open her eyes. “And I found out my father is incarcerated in the Oakdale, Louisiana, penitentiary for murder.” She shivered, but not against the chilliness of the room this time. The irony staggered her—her biological father behind bars for killing a man, and her husband a murder victim. For the umpteenth time, her mind rallied. If she weren’t so angry with God right now, she’d ask Him again why He’d allowed so much pain in her life. Then again, in the midst of the fire, she’d called out to Him. She’d have to analyze that later.
“What did you do?”
Monique focused on the lawman. “I went to visit him. To meet him. See him face-to-face.”
Deputy Anderson waited.
“He denied I was his, even though I showed him the proof. I offered to undergo another DNA test for his own confirmation, but he refused.” She trembled against the memory of how the denial had cut her to the quick. Right on the heels of losing Kent, her father’s obvious displeasure at discovering he had a daughter had left her running out of the prison a simpering mess.
“Is the proof positive?”
“I think a DNA saliva test is pretty solid proof. They’re ninety-eight percent accurate.”
“How’d you get a sample of his saliva to run the test?”
She shifted. What did it matter? Kent was dead and couldn’t get in trouble. “My husband arranged for one of the prison guards to get a sample of the man’s saliva.”
Deputy Anderson ducked his head and wrote. “I see.”
No, he didn’t. In her experience with police, they were all about black and white, no gray areas in anything. But what had been the harm in getting a saliva sample?
“What did you do after he denied being your father?”
Ouch. That stung. Monique released the blanket and sat straighter. “I used my husband’s contacts to find out if he had any other children or relatives. Since my mother and Kent had died, I have no other family. I was curious.” And desperately needing someone, something, to belong to.
“I can understand. Did you find a long-lost sibling?”
“No. As far as I can tell, my father had no other children. He never married, and he’s seventy-four now.” She smiled, despite her racing heart. “But I did find that he has a great-niece and a great-nephew.”
“And they live here in Lagniappe?”
“Yes. And their mother, although they’re related to my father on their paternal side.”
“So, what are their names? Lagniappe’s pretty small. I should know them.”
Just what she was afraid of. She hadn’t figured out yet how she’d approach them. What if they didn’t want to get to know her? The second-guessing of her relocation hit her once again.
“Monique?”
She swallowed. “Luc and Felicia Trahan.”
Luc and Felicia? Gary couldn’t believe it. That would mean Monique’s father was…“Justin Trahan is your biological father?”
“Does that surprise you?”
Well, not entirely. Justin, despite his advanced age, always did have a thing for the young ladies. But to have a daughter as young as her? “How old are you?”
“Twenty-six.”
Just four years younger than he was.
Monique actually laughed. “I know, it was a shocker to me to see someone so much older than my mother. I’d expected someone in his fifties or so.”
“Was your mother older when she had you?”
“Now, that’s polite.” She chuckled. “Not really. Mom was twenty-two when I was born. You do the math.”
Gross. But he’d heard all the rumors about Justin. Still, it didn’t make sense that Justin would deny being her father. Gary would think the man might like to have someone, anyone, visit him in jail. Felicia and Luc sure didn’t. Not only had Justin killed their grandfather, Beau, his own brother, but he’d also confessed to killing their father years ago.
“Do you know them?”
Who in Lagniappe didn’t? Luc and his wife, CoCo, were very popular. Luc played sax in a jazz band that performed regularly down at the club, while CoCo was Sheriff Theriot’s sister-in-law. Felicia had married a local minister, Spencer Bertrand, and was the town darling. Everyone loved her.
“I do. They’re wonderful people.”
She sucked her bottom lip.
“What?”
“Do you think they’ll want to meet me?” she asked.
“I don’t know why not. Both of them are real good people. Neither are the least bit judgmental.”
Monique’s brows continued to scrunch.
“What’s bothering you?”
She let out a long breath. “Well, I just had a thought.”
“Which is?”
“What if they found out who I am and why I’m here? What if they don’t want me around?”
Now he got where she was going. “You think one of them could’ve made that call to you?”
“It’s possible, isn’t it, Deputy?”
He laughed. Not just a chuckle but a full laugh. “If you knew them, you’d know how ridiculous that is. And if you think the caller also set your house on fire, well, I can tell you right now, that’s not Luc or Felicia.” Seeing her disbelieving expression, he fought to suppress his laughter. “Besides, Luc and his wife went out of town three days ago.” CoCo’s sister Tara was the sheriff’s wife. Their other
sister, Alyssa, had given birth to their first nephew, and CoCo, Luc, Bubba and Tara had all raced to New Orleans as soon as they’d gotten the call that Alyssa was in labor.
The doctor chose that moment to pull back the curtain. “I need to finish with my patient, Deputy.”
“Sure.” Gary nodded at Monique. “I’ll just be in the waiting room.” He strode down the hall to the area filled with uncomfortable chairs and the stench of burnt coffee.
Luc Trahan making anonymous, threatening phone calls? Felicia Trahan Bertrand? Just the notion of either of them doing anything like that made Gary laugh to himself. Ludicrous.
Needing fresh air, he stepped through the automatic double doors into the crisp night. He radioed an update to the dispatcher, then wondered how he’d get out of here. He’d ridden in the ambulance with Monique, leaving his cruiser at her place. Not that there would be much of a place now. He’d be surprised if anything remained after the fire.
Gary grabbed his cell phone from his belt clip, flipped it open and pressed the speed-dial number for his mother. He hated to wake her at this hour, but Deputy Marsh was off for the New Year’s holiday, leaving only Deputy Mike Fontenot to cover the office. She answered without a trace of grogginess—probably up late working on those crossword puzzles she was addicted to. After asking her to come to the hospital to pick him up, it occurred to him that Monique had nowhere to go, and no way to get there. Knowing her sad recent past made him want to protect her even more. Especially in light of that phone call.
But about that menacing call…could she just be paranoid, making it up? He could certainly understand that, given how difficult this last year must’ve been for her. If she wasn’t, then who called and threatened her? He shook his head. She sure seemed positive that someone had set her house on fire.
He had to admit, her story sounded plausible. From what he saw, the fire looked like it had been helped along. Accidental fires didn’t burn that fast. If that was the case, it certainly brought on more questions.
