The Unmistakable Scent of Gardenias (Haunted Hearts Series Book 6)

by Denise Moncrief

  After a long moment, Perot ceased his search and nailed her with an accusatory stare. “There isn’t anything here.”

  “You’re right. Let’s get out of here. I’m not feeling so good about going through Bobby’s things anymore.”

  Perot left the trailer first. She closed the door behind her.

  He nudged her shoulder and pointed toward the woods. “You see what I see?”

  She did indeed.

  They followed a path into the woods until they came upon Bobby up in a tree. He had been hung from the neck until dead.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Three Weeks Later

  The wind blew in off the river and caught the edges of the pictures in front of Charlotte. She’d chosen the restaurant with its outdoor seating because cops rarely frequented it. She had to tell someone what she had discovered, and she could no longer trust anyone in St. Denis Parish. It probably wouldn’t be good to be overhead by any New Orleans officers either. She’d asked Nick Moreau to meet her for lunch, and he had jumped on the chance to discuss the Wakefield case. He was the only person she trusted enough to bring into the weirdness she’d discovered.

  Once they had ordered their meals, she shifted the pictures in front of Nick. “These are pictures I took on my cell phone. They’re handwritten notes I found in a notebook in Bobby McIntosh’s trailer.”

  He studied each picture for a long time before commenting on what he’d read. “Looks like Bobby had his own agenda concerning the Wakefield estate.”

  Bobby had an agenda that had been simmering for years until it had boiled over and made a mess.

  “He wanted that property, and he was determined to do whatever he could to get it. It looks like he was trying to force his fiancée Tiffany Duchesne into challenging the Wakefield claim. If he hadn’t talked to Kristie Godchaux when she came to town asking questions, he might have never put it all together and Tiffany might still be alive. The pressure he put on her… Now, I wonder if she jumped off the bridge on her own or if she got a shove from Bobby.”

  Nick picked up a photo and stared at it closely. “He was a friend of yours, wasn’t he?” His tone carried sympathy rather than suspicion. He kept his eyes on the picture.

  It was obvious Nick couldn’t look at her when he asked his question. She guessed she understood his reluctance to witness her feelings about Bobby’s death. It had taken an enormous effort to push them down so that no one caught her mourning. She did that when she was alone with her regrets.

  “I thought I knew him…” She swallowed hard to push down her grief. “I guess I didn’t. Not really.”

  The sting of betrayal and the sting of loss had battled for supremacy over her emotions every day and every night since she’d found Bobby hanging in the tree near his mobile home. She needed to focus on multiple investigations, so she had to move away from her personal connection to Bobby and away from the fact that he was dead.

  “I can’t understand what he was trying to do when he contacted Les Wakefield, the one in South Carolina. My God, there are so many of them, it’s hard to keep up.” Her voice sounded more raspy than usual. The events of the last few days had left her exhausted and irritable. Crying herself to sleep every night hadn’t helped.

  Nick finally met and held her gaze. “Yeah, you need a cheat sheet to keep all the men named Wakefield separate.”

  Good. He was staying out of her emotions, keeping his comments on point, and discussing the details of the case. She could handle the conversation as long as it didn’t get personal.

  She sorted through the mental notes she had made. “Considering all the past history of men hanging themselves from the balcony of Wakefield Manor…did Bobby have a little help getting the noose around his neck? I know he didn’t die there, but the fact that he was hanged is too much of a coincidence. You know I don’t believe in coincidence.”

  Had Brandon Wakefield strung Bobby up when he was possessed by the spirit of old man Wakefield? Or did Bobby kill himself? That was an on-going investigation that might or might not ever find an answer to the questions of how or why Bobby McIntosh died.

  “Do you think…” Nick shook his head and made a noise of disbelief. “The supernatural element makes things messier, doesn’t it?”

  Ah, so he had interpreted her question correctly. Charlotte had told Nick the details of Sophia’s uncut version of what happened.

  “After Sophia Cannon gave me her statement… Well of course I had to clean it up and leave out all the paranormal stuff before she signed an official statement. I made Brandon look crazy instead of…what’s the word I’m looking for?”

  “Possessed?”

  She shuddered. “I hate the word possessed. That kind of stuff? I’d like to keep it far away from me, but I might not have a choice. Brandon Wakefield certainly acted like someone or something was controlling him. He spoke to Sophia as if he was Les Wakefield from 1937. How could I explain that in an official report?”

  She’d shared everything about the case with Nick, hoping he could add what he’d learned from his investigation of Brandon Wakefield and together they could tackle the conundrum of the strange behavior of every son of a bitch that had ever been named Wakefield.

  “After I took Sophia’s complete statement, I started putting a lot of the pieces together. Made me sick to my stomach. People I had trusted did things behind my back. They kept things from me I needed to know.” Maybe if they hadn’t, Bobby would still be alive. So much death. It seemed to swirl around Wakefield Manor like a whirlpool pulling everyone under who crossed its threshold.

  Nick pushed the photos away from him. “So Bobby was the great-grandson of Phillip Adams?”

  She nodded. “He was a foreman on the Wakefield farm back in the 1930s. From what Sophia told me, he helped Celia leave Les. Old man Wakefield must have hated Phillip.”

  Nick remained quiet for a while and Charlotte gave him time to absorb all the information she’d dumped on him.

  “Doesn’t sound like anyone knows for sure where the first Wakefield came from.”

  “Records from back then are hard to find, but yeah, it seems Simon Wakefield appeared out of nowhere and stirred things up. A lot of people called him a carpetbagger, but you know, the people that came down here from the north after the Civil War all came from somewhere. There’s usually something that gives a researcher a clue where they had lived before they ended up here.”

  Nick leaned back in his chair. “There were a lot of hard feelings between the Duchesnes and the Soileaus and between the Soileaus and the Wakefields. Maybe some of that has spilled over into modern times.”

  “Perhaps ill will never really dies.”

  Nick laughed. “That’s kind of deep, Char.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She paused. Maybe Nick thought he’d heard it all, but she had just gotten to the weird stuff. “Then there’s this other thing…” She’d strung it out as long as she could, reluctant to mention this thing she’d learned to anyone, but she had to tell someone, so she slipped the DNA report from the folder that she kept with her all the time. “Take a look at that.”

  His eyebrows drew together. “What am I looking at?”

  “That’s two different samples, Nick.”

  He still didn’t seem to comprehend what she was trying to tell him. She pointed to the profile for sample number one. “That’s from the bones of Leslie Wakefield we exhumed from the Wakefield family cemetery. He’s the one that died in 1937. A forensic pathologist confirmed the bones in the coffin were that old.”

  “Okay.”

  Then she pointed to the profile for sample number two. “That’s from a hair root taken from Leslie Wakefield IV of Columbia, South Carolina, the one who’s still alive.”

  His head popped up and his eyes caught hers. “That’s not possible.”

  “The lab tech ran the test three times thinking he’d confused the samples or made a mistake. He swears he’s made no mistake. It came back that way all three times.”

&n
bsp; Nick bounced back in his seat, his chair legs scraping the concrete of the patio table. “You can’t tell anyone about this.”

  Oh yeah, she was well aware of the implications. “I know.”

  “This is a dangerous thing. If this gets out, it will ruin the credibility of DNA testing.” He shook his head hard. “This has to be a fluke or a bad test or a… I don’t know. It’s wrong. I don’t know why or how, but…” He wiggled his finger at the test results like it was a vile thing he didn’t want to touch. “That’s a test we rely on without question. Do you know how many cases would get blown if a sleazy lawyer ever got hold of that?”

  “The lab tech threatened to kill me if I ever showed that report to anyone.” She leaned forward. “He falsified the official report so there would be a match but not quite that good of a match.”

  “Charlotte, it’s an exact match. The only people who have an exact match are twins. Those samples had to come from the same person. There is no other explanation. The lab tech screwed up.”

  She shook her head. “We took three separate samples from each subject so we could rerun them if there were any discrepancies. The lab tech said he went to a lot of trouble to keep the samples separate. There’s no mistake.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s a big whopping discrepancy.” Nick paused and his eyebrows pulled together. “When did you get the sample from the living Les?”

  “Once he arrived here in Louisiana.”

  “Exactly when? Before or after he went out to the manor house?”

  She sucked in a ragged breath. The implications of his question were astounding. The samples had been taken from the living Les after he’d been out to the house. After the weird interaction between Brandon and Les right before Brandon fell from the balcony and died.

  “After.”

  A long moment of silence fell between them.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  Nick’s question settled around her. His quietly intense tone sent a chill through her. She’d only seen fear reflected in Nick’s eyes once before, and that was when he’d found her when she had been beaten up and left for dead. If this scared Nick, who was only involved with the case in a very peripheral sort of way, then the situation must be more dangerous than she had at first believed.

  Why had it fallen on her to do something? For the first time since she packed up and went home to Wakefield, she wished she hadn’t left New Orleans.

  “I know this is dangerous…” She licked her lips. “But I’m going to let Wakefield take control of the property. I’m going to watch him and wait to see what he does with it.”

  “I want to know how two men can have the exact same DNA profile and not be twins.” He wasn’t letting it go.

  “Nick, there’s something strangely, weirdly paranormal going on at the Wakefield Plantation. It’s like the place is cursed. It’s like all the men named Wakefield are psycho. Like they’re all possessed. It’s unnatural and it’s unexplainable and it can’t go into any official report. Considering the history of the house and the family… Well, it shouldn’t surprise me that something would be off about the Wakefield DNA. But it does.”

  She suddenly understood why Sheriff Perot had failed to file an official report all those years ago when the weirdness first started.

  ****

  Sophia dragged on Dylan’s arm. “Can we leave before they see us?”

  Dylan laughed. “Too late. Moreau is waving us over.” They hadn’t been back in New Orleans for twenty-four hours, and Nick Moreau was already summonsing them for an audience.

  Sophia closed her eyes and held onto Dylan’s arm. “Okay. Let’s get this over with.”

  Moreau greeted them while Charlotte Soileau shoved papers back into a file folder. Nick addressed Sophia. “I hope you’ve gotten over getting clobbered on the head.”

  “We actually rolled down a flight of stairs.”

  Sophia corrected Dylan. “Brandon slammed my head against the wall too.”

  “I don’t think that’s something to be proud of, Sophia.”

  She made a face at Dylan. “I didn’t say I was proud of it.”

  Dylan smiled and pointed toward an empty chair.

  Moreau nodded. “Sit down and quit arguing.”

  Dylan glanced at Sophia. Her eyes told him her thoughts. She didn’t think Moreau’s teasing tone made up for the fact that he had taken an authoritative attitude with them already.

  Soileau slid her chair over to make room for Sophia. “Excuse Nick’s rude behavior. Please, sit down. There are some things we’d like to discuss with you.”

  Moreau hit Dylan with a hard stare. “So you decided to come back.”

  Maybe he thought Dylan had taken the easy way out and ran away.

  “We couldn’t stay gone forever. We both have jobs to get back to. So have there been any new developments? Anything we need to know?” He was ready to get on with the purpose of their meeting.

  Moreau cleared his throat, and Soileau averted her eyes. Dylan surmised the two of them had been talking about the Wakefield fraud case. It was all right with him if they kept quiet about the details of their investigation.

  Soileau finally spoke after a long uncomfortable silence. “We’re going to turn over the property to Les Wakefield, the one from South Carolina. It appears he is the legitimate heir.”

  “He’ll need to find himself another contractor. My contract is probably void. That’s okay by me.”

  Sophia added her own declaration of intent. “Me too. I’ve had enough of Wakefields to last a lifetime.”

  Soileau and Sophia locked eyes. Without a word, she slipped a piece of paper out of the folder and handed it to Sophia.

  She blinked and handed it back to the sheriff. A dark cloud seemed to overshadow the group. Dylan searched Sophia’s eyes and found the answer to his unspoken question. If the sheriff was aware that the new Les was taking control of the property, she’d probably received a report from the state crime lab. If Soileau had received that report, then she had also received the results of Sophia’s DNA test. From the look on Sophia’s face, the report’s conclusion didn’t please her.

  Dylan noticed her lower lip tremble before Sophia bit it. He had to move the conversation toward his agenda so that he could get his questions answered and take Sophia home. A meltdown in front of the cops would embarrass her.

  “I’ve been curious about something, Moreau. When you interviewed Brandon Wakefield that night in the bar in the Quarter, what did you ask him?”

  Moreau pursed his lips and glanced at Soileau. “Well, I guess there’s no harm in telling you now that he’s dead. I asked him if he knew Audrey St. Clair.”

  Shock waves rippled through Dylan’s body.

  Sophia shifted in her chair, obviously agitated. “Why would you ask him that?”

  “I thought it odd that one woman would have two different stalkers in one lifetime. I considered the possibility that the two were the same man.”

  “And?” Sophia pushed for an explanation.

  Moreau shook his head. “I don’t think so. Just a weird coincidence.”

  “Yeah, well, my life is full of weird coincidences.”

  Dylan reached over and grabbed her hand. “I always knew you were special.”

  Sophia wiggled a little more. The conversation probably bothered her more than she was letting on.

  He kept the conversation moving. “I know you have suspicions about the new Les.”

  Soileau drew in a deep breath. “I’m giving him some room, but I’m watching him closely. There’s something off about the whole Wakefield clan. I’d just as soon they left my jurisdiction.”

  Moreau lifted his hands. “Don’t want them in mine either.”

  Soileau checked the time on her cell phone. “I should head back to Wakefield. I have a meeting tonight. The parish commission wants answers, and I have to give them explanations that will satisfy them and keep them from asking the wrong questions.”

  After the sheri
ff walked away, Dylan turned to Moreau with a grateful smile. “Thanks for setting us up in a new place.”

  “No problem. Audrey shouldn’t be able to find you there.”

  Dylan glanced across St. Charles just before a streetcar blocked his view of the opposite sidewalk. He had begun the habit of being hyper-observant of everyone and everything around him. “It’s been good not having to worry about any of this.”

  Moreau stared first at Sophia and then at Dylan. He seemed to have a lot he wanted to say, but he also appeared to be holding a lot back. “When you get settled in, we’ll talk about how to put our plan in motion.”

  Part of their relocation agreement had been Dylan’s commitment to help Moreau lure Audrey out of hiding. In exchange for his help, Sophia and Dylan lived in a house in Kenner rented to a partnership so that neither of their names appeared on the lease. Not only were they hidden away from Audrey, but Les Wakefield shouldn’t be able to find them either, just in case he had the inclination to become a stalker.

  Moreau’s phone buzzed, and he scanned the display. “I have to go. You two take care of yourselves. I’ll be in touch. Okay?”

  Dylan nodded his agreement. He took Sophia’s hand as Moreau walked away. “So what do you say, Soph? Are you ready to begin our new life?”

  “Are we going to get into a lot of trouble?”

  He smiled. “Yeah, probably.”

  Sophia slipped her hand into his. “Then okay, let’s get started. I’ll be okay, just as long as I can get into trouble with you.”

  He wasn’t sure what the future might hold. There were still unanswered questions for which they might never have all the answers. But one thing was certain. When they would inevitably face another crisis, they would face it together.

  The End

  AFTERWORD

  If you’re reading this afterword, then you probably read this book to the end and you realize that I have left two very big mysteries unresolved. Please be assured, if you continue reading the series, you will read about the mysterious Les Wakefield and the villainous Audrey St. Clair again before the series is over. I never allow my villains to go unpunished.