Along the Cane River: Books 1-5 in the Inspirational Cane River Romance Series

by Mary Jane Hathaway

  Henry tried to speak calmly. “You know how I feel about all your psychology books and personality quizzes. I don’t have the time or energy to sit around and analyze his every action. I know what he did and how it made me feel. That should be enough.”

  “I get that. I do. So, let’s forget about him and talk about you. And not what I think I think is happening in your head. Let’s talk about the way you really are. You wanted more truth in your life, Sherlock, so I’ll give it to you,” Patsy said. “You hold people up to this terrible thing that happened to you, and if you sense even the slightest disloyalty, you’re gone. It’s over.”

  She wanted to hang up the phone but realized how ironic that would be. “You think I’m imagining everything?”

  “I think you’re really smart and are freakishly good at reading people. I also think you’re an expert at keeping yourself from getting hurt. But I don’t think you’re infallible. You still make mistakes. I’m nothing close to how good you are, but what I saw told me there was something about him that was different, something good.”

  Henry closed her eyes. She thought of how she’d been so sure Kimberly had known Lisette wasn’t acting like a mother to her.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll…” She didn’t know what she could do, except go and talk to him. He’d been leaving messages for days. No matter what he said, she was going to have to explain her silence. “I’ll give it another chance.”

  “Wow,” Patsy said, and Henry could hear the smile in her voice. “I don’t think you’ve ever given anybody a second chance before. Times are a-changing.”

  “Don’t get too excited. And I know you’re going to ask, so yes, I’ll call you after I see him,” Henry said.

  “You know me so well,” Patsy said, laughing, and hung up.

  She stood there for a moment. You’ve never given anybody a second chance before. Henry felt her heart drop. She’d always considered herself a fair sort of person. But fair wasn’t playing judge and jury with everyone she met. People made mistakes, including herself.

  She looked out at the river and the pedestrians strolling along the walkway. She’d been preparing to let Gideon apologize but maybe she was the one who was wrong.

  The phone buzzed in her hand and she jumped. Birdie Pascal’s number appeared in the screen. Henry sighed and reached out to send it to voice mail when she thought of Patsy’s words, and answered intead.

  “Morning, mamere,” she said.

  “Lorelei,” Birdie said. “You’ll never guess what happened.”

  “No, ma’am. I probably won’t.” She was already regretting her decision to answer.

  “That murderer you were working with, the big muscled guy. He’s back in jail.”

  Henry shook her head. “Not Gideon Becket. That’s not who you mean.”

  “Yep. He killed a man. They found the body in his house last night. I guess it’s true what they say. Some people never change.”

  “No. I don’t believe it.” She couldn’t hear over the pounding of her heart.

  “Mais, it’s true. Willy Joe Brumbacher told me that he heard he was involved in dealin’ cocaine before he went to prison the first time. Or his family did. Somethin’ like that. I know cocaine was involved in the story.”

  Henry flashed back to the walk in the rain on Mount Driskill. Gideon had shared a dark and painful truth about his parents that day. Henry couldn’t imagine how he would feel if the entire town knew.

  “I’m just glad you didn’t get hurt. Who knows what he would have done to you if he’d gotten a chance,” Birdie said.

  “I was never afraid of him. He never would have hurt me.”

  “You can’t be sure of that, sha. But you won’t have to worry about working with him now, either, because he’s not the director anymore. They fired him this morning.”

  Henry didn’t hear the rest of the details. Birdie went on for a few minutes and then finally hung up. Henry took a few steps, but didn’t know where she was going. Nothing made sense. She hadn’t heard whose body it was. She didn’t even know where Gideon lived. Her stomach lurched. Maybe there was more to his love of privacy than she thought. Maybe that wasn’t the first body he’d dropped there.

  No, she knew one thing. Gideon wasn’t a murderer. Not anymore.

  She dialed Blue’s number and paced the floor until he picked up.

  “Hi, Henry.” She could tell by the somber tone that he’d already heard the news.

  “I need your help,” she said.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “A thirst for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.”

  ― Camus

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  Gideon glanced up at Franklin Reisler and shook his head. The police investigator had been polite but hadn’t made any attempt to hide the fact that Gideon was their number one suspect. He’d asked about having a lawyer present but Gideon had only shrugged. A lawyer wouldn’t change the fact that Barney Sandoz was dead.

  “So, Mr. Becket, let’s talk about scenarios. You don’t have to say anything. I’m just going to throw out the ways this could have happened. Maybe it was an accident, maybe you didn’t mean for it to go that far.”

  “This was no accident,” Gideon said. He knew what kind of force it took to strangle a man barehanded. He knew the fury and ruthlessness it required. The person who had murdered Barney clearly knew about Gideon’s past. He had strangled a man once. Everyone knew it. Gideon’s living room was the perfect place to drop a troublemaker like Barney. And if Gideon’s suspicions were correct, they were taking out two birds with one stone.

  “Is that a confession?” He sat up, putting pen to paper.

  “No.”

  “Listen, we know you two were feuding over that house and then it conveniently burned down. You were in the basement without permission at the time. Witnesses have stated that you threatened Barney Sandoz just last week. Right on the river walk, you lay hands on the man.”

  Gideon was almost angrier about the fire than about the dead man in his house. “I never wanted the house. Arthur Finnemore gave me the collection of Cane River letters and photos in the basement. I’m a historian and I never would have destroyed the collection just to keep it away from Barney.”

  “Letters and photos? He was buying the house just to get his hands on a bunch of old papers?” Reisler clearly didn’t believe him.

  “It’s valuable. Irreplaceable.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Was valuable. I could only save about half of it.”

  “Let’s talk about the day you two had an altercation on the river walk.”

  “He was faking. I didn’t touch him.”

  Reisler’s brows went up. “Faking. And maybe he faked his way all the way to being strangled in your living room?”

  “I don’t know how he got there. I didn’t strangle anyone.”

  Flipping open a folder, Reisler read from a sheet. “Says here that you choked Reggie Landre in front of his son.”

  Gideon grimaced. Reggie had either come forward to volunteer that information or there had been witnesses. “I apologized for that. It was a misunderstanding.”

  Reisler looked positively incredulous. “A misunderstanding.”

  “Yes.” He should have taken Reggie’s threats seriously, but instead, here he was. He could point the finger toward Nightmare Jones and hope he was right. But even if he were, the most cursory look by the police wouldn’t prove anything. These men had ways of covering their tracks.

  “Was that over the collection, too? Or were there other issues? Reggie had ties to drug dealers in LaFayette. Barney Sandoz had been seen with the same people.” He glanced down at his folder. “Looks like you’ve gotten tangled up in the drug trade before.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked. His heartbeat thudded in his ears and when he passed a hand over his face, he felt it slick with cold sweat.

  “It says here your parents thought they could steal a few thousand from a mid-level deale
r and get away with it. But skimming was always a good way to get yourself killed.”

  Gideon closed his eyes. A few thousand. He remembered his daddy promising to get it back, just to give him a few days. His mama alternated between screaming at his daddy for being stupid and pleading for mercy. He shivered, remembering the cold water. As he clung to the tree roots, the only sound was the lapping of the river water against his legs. “I had nothing to do with that,” he managed and his words sounded like they were coming from far away.

  “Maybe not, but it’s easier to follow a path our parents already walked,” Reisler said but there was a different tone in his voice, as if he knew he were touching on a sore point. “We’ve also heard Barney Sandoz was hanging around Oakland Plantation. Maybe there was a little jealous rivalry going on for the attentions of Henry Byrne?”

  The sound of her name hit Gideon with a physical pain so strong he hunched in on himself. “There was no rivalry.”

  “But it seems you’ve also had a falling out with Miss Byrne. Did she find out something about you she didn’t like? Maybe she heard some rumors about drug dealing. Or did she catch you in a lie?”

  Gideon looked up at Reisler and there must have been something in his expression because the detective shifted imperceptibly, moving his hand to his firearm.

  “I don’t want to talk about that,” he said. The thought of Henry was like a white hot pain, and wrapped around that pain was confusion, and now on top of that, fury crackled and sparked.

  Reisler wrote a quick note in his folder full of papers, keeping an eye on Gideon the whole time. “We might come back to her later.”

  “Am I under arrest?” He was so tired. He’d called Tom right after he’d called the police. Gideon had explained, and then told him he was sorry. He didn’t remember what Tom had said.

  “See, the crime points to you. This kind of circumstantial evidence can get you a life sentence. Or, another one, if we’re being accurate. Maybe this time they won’t let you out early for good behavior.”

  Gideon said nothing, simply waited.

  “But we also recovered other prints from the scene.”

  “From the scene? Or from the body?” Gideon knew the police would never offer that kind of information without a reason.

  “From your accomplice. If you testify against him, or give up the details of the dealers you were working with, we could cut you a deal.”

  “I didn’t do anything. I don’t know how Sandoz ended up in my house.”

  “This offer won’t stay on the table forever.” Reisler watched him closely. When it seemed clear Gideon wasn’t going to offer any information, he said, “Between your family’s history of drug dealing, the arson situation, and Barney Sandoz, you’re our number one suspect.”

  “Officially?” Gideon knew that if they named him as an official suspect, it was only a matter of time before he was charged.

  “Go home,” Reisler said, not answering him. “But don’t leave town.”

  Gideon stood up and walked out of the room without another word. His life had fallen apart in the space of just a few days and there was nothing he could do to put it back together again. He had no options left. Pointing fingers would make the people he cared about targets. Fighting the charges might expose the shameful details of how his parents died. As he left the station, walking past the stares and the whispered comments from the officers, he tried to think on the bright side. He’d survived prison once. He would manage to carve out a life for himself behind bars again.

  Stepping into the sunlight, he knew there was one big difference this time. As a fifteen year old kid, he hadn’t known how much he would be missing. This time, Gideon understood with a blinding and painful clarity everything― and everyone― he was leaving behind.

  His cell phone rang and he pulled it from his pocket, glancing at the number on the screen. “No,” he whispered. But he had no choice but to answer.

  “Hello, Jeffrey.” He hoped he sounded confident. The head of the Natchitoches Historical Society also served on the board of directors for the archives, the same board that took a chance and hired an ex con straight out of prison three years ago.

  “Gideon, we think it’s best if you don’t come back until all this is sorted out,” Jeffrey Powell said. He didn’t sound like his jovial self. Even over the phone, Gideon could feel the change in their friendship. It was strictly business now.

  “I can assure you that it won’t affect my work at the archives. My job has my complete focus and it always has.” Gideon could hear the panic in his own voice.

  “You have to understand that when we hired you, it was on the understanding that there would never be any other legal trouble. This is a very serious situation. We have to think of the public.”

  “I know. I agree,” Gideon said. His heart was pounding so hard he could barely talk. He leaned against the side of the station and tried to keep focused on the conversation. Being interrogated by the police didn’t bother him. The whispers and pointed glances in the station didn’t bother him. The threat of losing the one place he had left, the one place that had given him a sense of worth and dignity, brought him to his knees.

  “We met early this morning and decided it’s the right thing to do for the archives. It’s already decided.”

  “Jeffrey, please…”

  “Let us know if the police clear you from the list of suspects. Until then, we’ll have Bernice explain to anyone who inquires that you’re on a leave of absence,” he said, a note of regret in his voice. “Again, I’m sorry, Gideon,” he said, and the line disconnected.

  Gideon made his way back to his car, got inside, dropped his phone onto the passenger seat and stared out the windshield. He felt himself becoming unmoored, like a boat drifting away from the pier. All his worst fears were coming true and it felt worse than he ever could have imagined.

  He put the car in gear and headed home, or the place he once considered home but was now the place Barney Sandoz took his last breath. One day he’d been secure in the life he’d built in Natchitoches, the next he was fifty yards from shore, aimless and lost. He wasn’t sure who he was without his work.

  He was almost out of Natchitoches when he noticed the gas gauge hovering near empty. He pulled into a run-down little station on a side street and got out. He could see a young man at the counter and as he came closer, something in his expression made Gideon’s hackles rise. Casually glancing around, he saw a car pull into the lot. Pushing the door, the little brass bell tinkled a welcome but the kid stood frozen behind the counter, his irises ringed with white. Gideon took one cautious step, then another, all his senses focused on the man who exited the car behind him.

  “Well, well. Lookey what the cat dragged in.” Now that he was closer, it took Gideon less than a second to understand what he was facing. The prison tattoos that covered both arms and part of his neck were horribly familiar.

  Gideon moved slightly to the side so he could reach the door knob or the handle of a dirty mop that rested in a bucket, depending on whether he needed an exit or a weapon. The man came closer, stroking his long beard, thick fingers showing tattoos on every knuckle. Gideon didn’t break eye contact even as the kid behind the counter hurried away.

  “Have we met?” Gideon asked. It was a rhetorical question. The purpose of the gang tattoos were so that a person would be welcomed or feared without having to be introduced. A name could hold power, but Gideon didn’t need to know it.

  “We got friends in common,” he said.

  Gideon shifted his weight toward the mop, trying not to think of how the police would react if he beat someone within minutes of being interviewed about a murder.

  “My buddy Duane and me, we shared bunk space for prit’ near ten years,” he said.

  A jolt of recognition went from the top of Gideon’s head to his toes. He barely breathed.

  “Ya really gets to know a man in prison. His hopes, his dreams. How he gonna spend his first few weeks of freedom.”
The man couldn’t hold back a smirk. “Somebody snitched on my buddy Duane and he been waitin’ more’n twenty five years to even the score.” He stepped closer. “Well, Duane is ready. Just as soon as he gets out, he gonna find that snitch. He coulda got away with it. The only witness,” he leaned close and whispered the rest, “was some little kid who didn’t remember anythin’ much.”

  Gideon felt cold sweat trickle down his back. For the second time in an hour, he found himself back in that dark place. He remembered the sound of his daddy’s shouts and his mother pleading and Katie Rose’s crying and the river. The river, how it roared in his ears, rushing above his head and under his feet, endlessly swirling in the darkness, tugging at his pajamas, tumbling him under branches and into the banyan roots along the bank.

  “Duane, he takes his plan real serious ‘cause his friend Mark didn’t get the chance to get that snitch. Somebody took him out before he could track him down, see? And maybe this guy is comin’ for him, too. Maybe he better do them both, so he covers all his bases.”

  Gideon knew there was no point in explaining that he’d been wrong to kill Mark Daniels and that he had no plans to kill Duane Banner. Without breaking eye contact, he took a step backward, then another. The man didn’t move, but his smile widened. Gideon felt the knob of the door under his hand and flicked his gaze to the anti-theft mirror over the counter. The path to his car was clear as far as he could tell. He turned the knob, stepped to the side, and backed out. The man didn’t follow, but let out a low chuckle as the door swung closed.

  Gideon scanned the empty lot, his heart pounding. His palms were slick with sweat. He inhaled and smelled the prison cafeteria. He could almost see the green bean casserole, overbaked tater tots, the plastic forks and knives. Gideon pulled his keys from his pocket and flicked open his Swiss Army knife, still scanning the area, adrenaline pumping through his system.