by Jana DeLeon
Or was he telling the truth?
THE MAN CLOSED HIS cell phone and stared across the town square at Ginny. He wondered if she knew why the man she’d been seeing had come to Johnson’s Bayou. If what he’d told the nurse was the truth, then it was no coincidence that he’d hooked up with Ginny almost immediately after arriving in town. But had he told her why? Or was he just hoping she’d give him information?
Clearly, the lying “vacationer” had decided Ginny wasn’t the woman he sought, or he wouldn’t have tracked down the nurse. The nurse hadn’t told him anything important, but the whole situation didn’t sit well with the man. He’d kept the LeBlanc School secrets for a lot of years, managing to hide everything from the police and others who came behind them.
If the detective succeeded in blowing the lid off the past, the fallout was bound to come home to roost. Two more years and he was set to retire. Was set to leave Johnson’s Bayou and never have to think about the past.
Now he had to do something about the vacationer, or that would never happen.
Chapter Nine
Ginny placed the few items left on her table in the storage container and closed the top. Madelaine was supposed to meet her at her booth at closing time, but aside from a brief wave when she went by earlier chasing after a couple of her best friend’s grandchildren, Ginny hadn’t seen her mother since they closed the café that morning.
She glanced west at the sinking sun and checked her cell phone for the hundredth time that afternoon. No messages. She wondered if Paul had found the nurse and if he’d gotten information. With any luck, no message meant he was still chasing down leads and that he’d find something useful.
She grabbed her storage container and started across the town square. In the meantime, she needed to activate plan B—find Madelaine and invite her to dinner. Then attempt to act normal while the entire time, she’d be wondering what Paul was doing and what he’d discovered. She’d made it to the edge of the square when she heard Madelaine calling her.
She turned as Madelaine hurried across the square, huffing as she propelled her slightly overweight frame at a speed it normally didn’t obtain. “Thought I was going to miss you,” Madelaine wheezed as she leaned over to catch her breath.
“You’re just in time.”
“Got caught watching those grandkids of Carol’s while she tried some newfangled skin care line one of the New Orleans sellers was hawking. Lord, those kids can move. I’ve run more this afternoon than I have in the last ten years.”
“Running is at a premium in the café unless people start wanting to wear their coffee,” Ginny teased.
Madelaine straightened up and laughed. “You’d probably be better than me. You’re still in shape and always had good balance. How were sales today?”
“I only have three pieces left, total. I’m glad I made more than I thought I’d need.”
“That’s great! So…are you meeting your sexy new man for dinner?”
Ginny felt a blush creep up her neck. “He’s not my man. And no, he had some business in New Orleans today and didn’t know when he’d return.”
Madelaine shook her head. “Conducting business on vacation. Not a good sign. The last thing you want is a workaholic, no matter how good-looking and charming he may be.”
“I’m sure it was important for him to interrupt his vacation time. But anyway, that means I’m officially free tonight, so I thought I’d see if you wanted to have dinner at Maude’s—my treat.”
“Look at you, Miss Moneybags.” Madelaine smiled. “Sell a little jewelry and suddenly you’re Donald Trump. Well, as much as I’d love to get home and remove this bra and shoes, I’d like someone to cook for me and clean it up even more.”
“Then dinner it is,” Ginny said, relieved that she wasn’t going to have to do any odd maneuvering to convince Madelaine to have dinner with her. She already felt out of sorts, and it was going to be hard to keep that from her intuitive mother. Cajoling her into dinner if she’d said no would have immediately sent up alarms.
“I want to drop this off at the café, then we can go eat.”
“Might be a bit of a wait,” Madelaine warned. “All the visitors got to leave the festival before you, and since it’s the only place in town to eat at night, I imagine they’re going to be doing a booming business.”
“We could always keep summer hours at the café and give people another alternative,” Ginny suggested, already knowing what her mother would say.
“No way! I count the days every year till the festival, when we change to breakfast and lunch only. I like my evenings off.”
Ginny smiled. “Well, I’m in no hurry. Besides, it will probably be worth the wait. I heard they put peach cobbler on the menu for tonight.”
“Peach cobbler! You were holding back on me.” Madelaine tugged on her arm as she began to walk faster. “Let’s get a move on. I don’t want them running out.”
MADELAINE LEANED BACK in the restaurant chair and sighed. “I haven’t eaten that much in years, but I just couldn’t help it. Maude really outdid herself. Homemade chicken and dumplings and peach cobbler. She must have been up cooking all night.”
Ginny forced herself to put her fork down before she exploded. “I know. I don’t think I’ll eat again for a week.” She pushed back her chair and rose. “Ask Amy for the bill when she comes by again. I’ll be back in a sec.”
She tried to appear nonchalant as she made her way across the restaurant to the ladies’ room, but every time someone stopped her to chat, she wanted to scream. Just minutes before, she could swear she’d heard her phone signal that she’d received a text message. It had been almost two hours since she’d texted Paul to let him know she was having dinner with Madelaine, and she’d yet to hear a word out of him.
Reaching into her jeans pocket, she pulled out her cell phone and checked the display. “On my way” the message read. She struggled to contain her disappointment that he hadn’t said anything about his investigation, then pressed in his number. Might as well call and ask.
The call went straight to voice mail. Darn. She checked the time on Paul’s message and saw it had arrived a little over an hour ago. He was probably on one of the lonely stretches of highway where cell phone signal faded in and out, and likely still two hours or more from Johnson’s Bayou.
It looked as if she was going to have to hang pictures with Madelaine for a while in order to keep her promise of not being alone. If she’d known for sure Paul wasn’t going to return in time for her to avoid the manual-labor portion of the night, she wouldn’t have eaten as much. All that sugar had her wishing for her bed, not a project with her mother.
She accessed text messaging and sent a message to Paul.
Going to mom’s. Call when you arrive.
As soon as Paul drove into an area with coverage, he’d receive the message. There was nothing else to do now but wait, and wonder and worry, and help her mom hang pictures. Sighing, she left the restroom and pulled out her wallet as she walked back to the table.
“Do you still need me to help hang those pictures you bought?” Ginny asked as she laid some bills on the table.
Madelaine brightened and rose from her chair. “Yes. In fact, I picked up two more pictures at the festival. I think I have enough to finish the dining room.”
“Great. The one room in the house you never use will be the best decorated,” Ginny teased.
An hour later, Ginny wished she had volunteered for something other than picture hanging, like scrubbing the bathroom or mowing the lawn in the dark. Madelaine refused to eyeball the pictures as she usually did, and instead insisted that they measure the wall and do calculations to get everything perfectly balanced.
When the house phone rang, Ginny dropped the tape measure on the table, relieved to have a break. A couple of minutes later, Madelaine hurried back into the dining room, carrying her purse and wearing a worried expression. “Carol slipped and fell in the shower. The paramedics want to take her to th
e hospital in New Orleans to have her head looked at, but Carol’s keeping those grandkids and can’t reach her daughter. I’m going to run over there and watch them until their parents pick them up.”
Ginny felt a momentary twinge of panic when she realized Madelaine was leaving her alone, but it would have been completely out of character to ask to tag along. Ginny wasn’t overly comfortable around Carol’s grandkids, who relished in practical jokes. It wouldn’t surprise her in the least to find they were behind Carol’s fall.
“I’m sorry to take off on you,” Madelaine said as she pulled her car keys from her purse. “I’ll probably be gone an hour. We can work on this another night.”
“No. That’s okay. I can finish it up myself. We’ve already marked the wall, so it’s just a matter of hanging the brackets and the pictures.” She gave her mom a hug. “Give Carol my best.”
“If you’re gone when I return, I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” Madelaine said as she rushed out the door.
Ginny hurried to lock the door and peeked out the window into the darkness. For a moment, she thought she saw light flickering in the swamp, but she blinked and it was gone. It hadn’t been a beam of light, as from a flashlight, but rather had danced like fire. But fire couldn’t have disappeared so quickly.
Great. Now, she was imagining things. She thought about leaving her mother’s house, but she had no idea where she would go. Maude’s was closed for the night, and the hotel gave customers passkeys to the front door rather than covering the cost of staffing at night. There wasn’t a single convenience store anywhere in town, and the last place that was safe was her apartment.
She took a deep breath and blew it out. There was no reason to assume she was in any danger. She’d watched carefully all day and at dinner and hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. Hadn’t had a single feeling that something was off. But her mother’s house was close to the swamp and a good ten acres from the nearest neighbor and all that was spooking her.
She walked back into the dining room and picked up the drill and the first picture bracket. By the time she finished hanging all the pictures, Paul would be there or her mother would be back. An hour at the most. And if she kept busy, it would fly by. Besides, Madelaine would be thrilled when she returned home and saw all the pictures hanging in perfect balance on her dining room wall.
Positioning the first screw on the mark, she placed the drill against it and began to screw it into the drywall. She finished the first screw, then started on the second, but when it was halfway in, she released the trigger on the drill and froze. There it was—the almost imperceptible sound of a foot stepping on dead leaves.
She placed the drill on the table and crept over to the window to peek outside. The front porch light reached only twenty feet or so into the yard, leaving the surrounding area black. She strained to make out movement, to hear the same noise again, but she couldn’t see a thing.
But she knew he was there.
Somewhere out in the darkness, someone was watching. She could feel his eyes on the house, on her—almost as if he could see straight through the walls. Her hands trembled as she pulled her cell phone from her pocket and checked the display. Nothing. She pressed redial for Paul’s number and cursed when it went straight to voice mail again.
Think. You have to think.
She could call the sheriff, but what would she say—that she had a feeling someone was watching her? Given her past, anything she said that was remotely out of the ordinary would be subject to scrutiny. And even if the sheriff came, Ginny knew he wouldn’t find anything to support her suspicions.
Calling her mother wasn’t an option, because that would put her in the line of fire. She hurried down the hall into the kitchen and removed a butcher knife from the block on the counter. Edging the curtains on the kitchen window to the side, she estimated the distance between the back door and her car. Probably twenty feet, give or take. If she could make it to her car, she could drive to the sheriff’s office and sit with the dispatcher.
To hell with them if they thought she was crazy. At least she’d be alive.
She retrieved her purse and car keys from the kitchen counter and eased up to the back door. And that’s when she heard the crack of a single branch out back. She sucked in a breath so hard her chest ached. Her pulse quickened as she edged the curtain on the kitchen window to the side and tried to see outside. The back porch light illuminated a small area of the backyard, but someone could easily be hiding behind her car or the storage shed.
The only sound was the clock that ticked on the kitchen wall, seeming to mark every heartbeat. Squinting, she scanned back and forth from the house to the swamp behind it. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. But she knew he was there.
The floor creaked behind her and as she spun around, something hard slammed into the side of her head, knocking her back into the kitchen cabinet and down onto the floor. Her vision blurred for a moment as she scrambled up from the floor and saw a masked figure in front of her. During her fall, she’d dropped the knife, and it was on the floor between her and the intruder.
She lunged for the knife as the intruder sprang. Wrapping her hand around the hilt, she drove it into the intruder’s leg. He cried out as she skirted around him and ran out the back door. She pulled her car keys from her pocket and fumbled with them, dropping them onto the ground.
The kitchen door slammed behind her and she fought back complete panic as she scrambled to retrieve the keys and press the remote to open the door. She jumped into the car and tried to slam the door, but he grabbed it. She saw the flash of the butcher knife in his hand, the shiny metal marred with blood.
She pulled the door with one hand and shoved the intruder with the other, but he was too strong. Struggling to hold the door partially closed with one hand, she started the car with her other, put it in drive and floored the accelerator. The intruder clung to the door for a moment, trying to jump into the car, but the bumpy lawn was too much and he finally let go.
Ginny wheeled the car around in the backyard and headed for the road, scanning her mirrors for the intruder. Did he have a vehicle somewhere close? Was he going to come after her? She steered her car onto the road, spraying gravel as the car slid sideways. Clenching the steering wheel, she focused on the road and fought to maintain control of the car without lessening her speed.
A flash of light caught her eye and she glanced in the rearview mirror. Her heart fell when she saw the single headlight of an ATV about a hundred yards behind her and quickly closing the gap. Her cell phone rang and she gripped the steering wheel tighter with her left hand and pulled the cell phone out of her jeans pocket with her right.
Paul!
She pressed the answer button and shouted, “He’s after me, trying to kill me.”
“Where are you?”
“Landry Road—my mother’s house. He’s on an ATV—”
The bend in the road was in front of her before she could even register that she’d come that far. She dropped the phone as she slammed on the brakes and grabbed the steering wheel with both hands, yanking it to the left to make the turn. The car lost traction on the loose gravel and began to slide. She released the brake and prayed that the car would regain some grip on the road, but a second later, it slid off the road and into the ditch, slamming against the embankment.
The last thing she saw before she lost consciousness was the single headlight of the ATV closing in behind her.
Chapter Ten
“Damn it!” Paul heard the crash through the cell phone before the call dropped completely.
The tires on Paul’s truck squealed as he made a hard turn from the paved road onto the gravel top of Landry Road. Thank goodness he’d researched everything on Ginny and knew exactly where her mother lived. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have known where to go. Every second counted, and he was already afraid he was going to be too late.
He should never have left her alone. He could have waited until tomorrow to talk to the nurse
. His impatience might have cost Ginny her life. Switching his headlights to bright, he drove as fast as he could maneuver on the pitch-black, winding road. The gravel made speed challenging, and the last thing he wanted to do was have a wreck.
He was almost on top of Ginny’s car before he saw it in the ditch. He slammed on his brakes and the truck slid a good fifty feet before finally coming to a halt. He jumped out of the truck and ran for the car just as a gunshot sounded. The bullet whizzed past his ear and he dove in the ditch, pulling out his pistol as he rolled.
He scrambled up and peered over the edge of the ditch, able to make out the outline of the ATV just beyond the reach of his truck’s headlights. Lowering his pistol over the embankment, he took aim at the ATV and squeezed off a couple of rounds. He heard the pinging of a bullet hitting metal and a couple of seconds later, the ATV engine roared to life. Gravel crunched as the ATV took off, and Paul wondered which direction the rider was going.
He held his position for a couple of seconds, but as the sound of the engine began to fade, he knew the killer was fleeing. Shoving his pistol in his waistband, he ran to the car, yanked the car door open and pushed the air bag to the side. Ginny was slumped over the steering wheel, and his heart pounded in his chest as he placed his finger on her neck. Relief coursed through him when he felt her pulse, clear and strong.
He gave Ginny a cursory inspection to make sure there were no compound fractures, then scooped her up and carried her to his truck, gently placing her on the front seat. He knew he shouldn’t move her, but calling for an ambulance gave the ATV driver time to return or worse, sneak up on them through the swamp as they waited.
He’d take his chances.
There was an emergency medical center just outside of Johnson’s Bayou that served several nearby towns. It wasn’t as good as a hospital in New Orleans, but she’d be safe, and if needed they could transport her to the city by helicopter. He pulled the phone from his pocket and called the center so that they’d be ready for his arrival.
