Alligator Moon

by Joanna Wayne

  The opportunities were out there. He never went more than six months without hearing from someone wanting him to take a case or join their law firm. The last offer had come from New Orleans’s newly elected D.A., an old law school buddy.

  Every offer was tempting, but then the haunting memories would return. Memories so strong they would almost drive him mad.

  John knew who he really was, and if he couldn’t stand that man, how could he expect someone like Cassie to? That was why he couldn’t move beyond the here and now. And that was why, when this was over, he’d let Cassie go.

  “You are living every man’s dream life! I’d change places with you in a minute,” one of the fishermen said to John as he let out his line after hooking a big yellow-fin tuna.

  “Yeah,” John said. “I’ve got it all.”

  IT WAS TEN PAST FIVE when Butch stood in his doorway watching the two policemen walk back to their unmarked car, thankful he’d had them meet him at home rather than the office. This was the moment he’d hoped would never come. He’d almost lied to them, but it wouldn’t have mattered. They’d done their homework before they’d asked him to answer a few questions for them.

  He hadn’t wanted to go to the police, but Cassie wouldn’t have it any other way. Now there was nothing to do but face the truth—at work—and with his daughter. He only hoped Cassie wouldn’t hate him as much as he hated himself right now.

  He hated the lies and deceptions. Hated that he’d held on to a marriage when there was nothing left but tattered remnants of a love that had grown cold years before.

  The only thing he didn’t hate in all of this was Babs. How could he? She was the one really right thing in his life. He’d likely lose her for good now, the way he was losing everything else.

  THE MUSCLES in John’s neck and shoulders relaxed a little as he turned down the dirt road to the old trapper’s shack. The fishing trip had gone well and the fishermen from Dallas were excited about the day’s catch and eager for the next day’s trip.

  John was just ready to catch a quick shower—or maybe not so quick if he had company—and hopefully to have a night without a new round of bad news.

  He parked his car behind Cassie’s. She was standing on the porch waiting for him, wearing a pair of black running shorts and a white pullover shirt that showed off her breasts to perfection. Her hair was down for a change, hanging past her shoulders, shiny and wet as if she’d just stepped from the shower. She looked absolutely terrific, but she did not look happy.

  So much for his hopes for a night without bad news.

  “MY DAD IS HAVING AN AFFAIR.”

  The words were more an eruption than a sentence, exploding in the hot, humid air before John had reached the porch.

  “How do you know that?”

  “He just called and told me. He’s been seeing a much younger co-worker for over a year. Apparently Mom found out about it six weeks before her so-called Greece trip.”

  “What prompted that confession?”

  “A visit from a couple of Houston cops. Come inside, and I’ll fill you in on the details.”

  John followed her in, then poured them both a glass of wine while she spun a story that didn’t surprise him nearly as much as it had her. In fact, it explained a lot about why Butch had been so hesitant to go to the cops in the first place. Cops had a way of digging out those nettlesome details like giving at the office.

  Evidently the NOPD had called for a little assistance from the Houston police department, which also didn’t surprise John. The husband is always the first suspect in a wife’s disappearance. It was a rule of thumb that turned out right way too many times not to give it a shot.

  “I’m so angry,” Cassie said. “Angry and hurt, about the lies as much as anything else. If either one of them had leveled with me, I might have had a better handle on this.”

  “I’m sure they were trying to spare you from being hurt by the situation.”

  “I’m a grown woman. I could have handled the truth. Now I don’t know what to think. Is Mom off building a new life? Or is she in trouble or…” Cassie threw up her hands in exasperation. “I might be able to convince myself things were all right if there weren’t so many questions surrounding her visit to Beau Pierre.”

  John wished he could genuinely offer some encouraging words, but he’d become increasingly concerned about the mystery surrounding Rhonda Havelin’s visit to Magnolia Plantation. Butch’s affair was going to make for a major scandal and give the cops a new angle to work, but John wasn’t convinced it was related to the disappearance, other than that it may have spurred Cassie’s mother into wanting plastic surgery.

  He’d just have to offer consolation the Robicheaux way. “Get your boots on, Cassie. Let’s go fishing.”

  ANGELA DUBUISSON walked through the cemetery in the long shadows of a deepening twilight carrying one perfect white rose clutched between two fingers. It would be her last visit to Dennis’s grave site. It would be her last visit anywhere.

  The secret was eating at her like a merciless cancer that wouldn’t quit until it destroyed her. She’d thought she could go through with this, had thought she could do anything for Norman Guilliot, but she’d been wrong.

  Some acts were so evil that they couldn’t be forgiven in this life and maybe not even in the one beyond the grave. She prayed theirs would be. Prayed that for all their sakes, but especially for hers and for Norman Guilliot’s.

  She’d loved him for twenty years. She loved him still.

  Angela stopped in front of the Robicheaux mausoleum and dropped the flower in the grass in front of the door. “We were friends, Dennis. I understood why you took your own life. But I won’t be bringing any more roses from Maman’s garden. I’ll be on the other side with you.”

  Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the silver knife. She’d never have had the nerve to pull a trigger, but she could slice her wrists, one a time, then lie down in the grass and wait to die.

  She wondered if Norman would shed a tear when he heard.

  THERE WAS ONLY a sliver of a moon, but still enough light to see the group of nutria a few feet in front of them foraging for food along the banks of the bayou. She and John had been out almost an hour and while she’d talked little, she’d done a lot of thinking, mainly about relationships and what happened to them over the years.

  With Drake and her, the marriage had never had a chance, but her parents had stayed together for thirty years. They must have loved each other in their own way, though looking back she didn’t remember ever thinking of them as being particularly close. Their interests were different. They seldom touched or cuddled, but then neither of them was a touchy-feely sort of person.

  “Were your grandparents in love, John? I don’t mean in the beginning. I mean at the end.”

  “Mais, yeah. Very much in love.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It showed, not so much in big ways, but in little ways.”

  “Like what?”

  “She cooked to please him. Kept her hair long even when it was gray and so thin you could see her scalp through it because Puh-Paw liked it long. And when I’d go off fishing or trapping with Puh-Paw, he’d tell stories about when they met and how she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. You could tell the way his eyes shone when he talked about it that he still saw her that way.

  “And on Saturday nights when Puh-paw grew tired of playing the fiddle, he’d have me play and he would waltz Muh-maw around the room as if they were young and courting again.”

  “You may not have been wealthy growing up,” Cassie said, “but you had a lot.”

  “I know. Thanks to my grandparents, we always belonged somewhere. They made Dennis and me feel we were special. Of course, we also had them on us to excel.

  “You go out dere, make your Muh-Maw some proud, huh? You don’ got to make yourself rich, just do your best,” John said, mimicking his grandfather in an exaggerated Cajun accent.

  “And have
you, John?”

  Even in the deep purple of dusk she could see his muscles grow taut.

  “What’s the matter, Cassie? Are you embarrassed that your lover is only a fishing guide?”

  “I just asked a question.”

  “Well, don’t. Don’t ask questions that you don’t really want answered.”

  “But I do want it answered.”

  “I’m what I am. If that doesn’t suit you, go back to town and find yourself another Drake Pierson.”

  “I’m not looking for anyone else. I wasn’t looking when I found you.”

  He didn’t comment, just continued to pole them through the thick, half-clogged waterway beneath a canopy of Spanish moss and moonlight. He was ready to drop the subject, but she wasn’t ready to let it go. She’d had enough lies from everyone else in her life. She needed the truth from John, needed to understand what he was running from.

  “Why did you give up your law practice?”

  “Don’t play games with me, Cassie. You’re too good a reporter not to have done all your homework.”

  “I know about the Gregory Benson case, but you were a defense attorney. Your job was to defend him, and you did it.”

  “Doing my job let a child molester back on the streets. Doing my job put a ten-year-old girl through hell before she was brutally murdered.”

  “But you didn’t create that hell. Gregory Benson did. You didn’t know he was guilty or that he’d do the horrible things he did to Toni Crenshaw.”

  “Let it go, Cassie.”

  “If we let it go, what happens to us, John? What kind of relationship can we build if there are always things we can’t talk about or parts of your life that are off-limits?”

  “There’s nothing to build on with me. Can’t you see that? We’re good as long as we’re good and then you’ll move on.”

  “That’s a cop-out, John. Your grandfather would be the first to tell you so.”

  He exhaled sharply, then lifted the long pole from the water and slid it to the floor beneath the seats. “You want the truth, Cassie? You want to know the real John Robicheaux? Then let me tell you and see how much interest you have in a relationship then.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CASSIE STARED at John, shocked at the change that came over him. It was as if everything warm and human inside him had fossilized and left only an impenetrable layer of stone.

  He propped his elbows on his knees and leaned toward her. “I didn’t make a mistake, Cassie. I knew what Gregory Benson was the day he walked into my office. I always knew, with all my clients, the same way I read what jurors were thinking. The same way I know Dennis was troubled that last night but not about to kill himself.

  “I have a natural talent for reading people, but I honed the skill to perfection when I became a defense attorney. Body language is a lot of it, but the real clue to what a person’s thinking almost always lies in the eyes. Anger, hurt, fear, guilt. They’re all there unless you’re dealing with a total psychopath.”

  “If anyone’s a true psychopath, I’d think Gregory Benson would qualify.”

  “No, he was a very sick and perverted man who should have never been left free to walk the streets, but he wasn’t a psychopath. His anguish and inner demons were sticking right out there, as easy to read as Dr. Seuss. I still fought just as hard to win that case as I did every other case I handled. It wasn’t about right or wrong or innocent or guilty with me. It was about winning and being the best damn defense attorney in the state.

  “That changed the night I went to the morgue and saw Toni Crenshaw’s little body after she had been tortured and sexually molested for days and then dumped into the river. That image was seared into my brain and I live with it day after day, night after night. So don’t preach to me about getting over my mistake and going on with my life, Cassie. I live in hell, and that’s not nearly punishment enough for my sins.”

  Cassie shivered in spite of the summer heat. She’d known John harbored guilt but she hadn’t realized the depth of it or the extent to which it tormented him. She tried to think of something to say, but words seemed so trite when John had just bared his soul.

  Besides, what was there to say? That she was willing to share his hell for the rest of her life? That they could build a relationship on top of the sickening images that haunted him day and night?

  The sounds of the bayou seemed deafening as John poled them along the shallow waterway back toward his dock. Her father was having an affair. Her mother had vanished. The man who held her heart lived in a private hell with no doors leading out.

  In thirty-two years of living, she’d never felt so hopeless and alone.

  ANNABETH STAGGERED to the phone, still reeling from the drugs and the abortion. The baby was gone. It had been growing inside her this morning and now it was gone.

  Norman had handed her the small white pill and a glass of water and ordered her to take it before leading her to the car early this morning and shoving her into the passenger seat. She didn’t remember much after that. But now it was over. She’d given up everything for Norman. Everything.

  It didn’t matter that the baby wasn’t his. She was his, and she would have never even been with another man if Norman hadn’t demoralized her so with his tawdry affairs. But it was Norman she loved. She’d sold her soul to the devil for him and the kind of life he’d promised her. What were a few stolen hours in another man’s bed compared to that?

  She cradled her barren stomach in her hands as tears rolled down her cheeks. She was tired, so very, very tired, but she had to be strong. Everyone thought Norman was the strong one, but it had always been her. Norman played the role of brilliant surgeon to perfection, charmed every woman he met, impressed every man. He was Dr. Norman Guilliot, the famed plastic surgeon to the rich and famous. He was the legend.

  And that’s the way it would stay.

  She picked up the phone. One more death and they were home scot-free.

  JOHN HAD DROPPED Cassie at the dock without a word. She’d walked to the cabin by herself, her emotions raw and confused, not sure if she ached more for John or for herself.

  She understood his guilt now, but she didn’t want to lose him to it. She wanted him to fight for himself the same way he’d fought to win cases before he’d left it all behind. She wanted him to fight for her and for a chance at a relationship for the two of them.

  She wanted him to fight because she didn’t want to lose him. Oh, God, she so didn’t want to lose him.

  Her phone rang. She’d like to ignore it, but didn’t dare. It could be someone calling with news of her mother.

  “Hello.”

  “Cassie?”

  “Yes. Who’s calling?”

  “It’s Annabeth Guilliot, Norman’s wife, but don’t say my name out loud. I don’t want John to know I’ve called you.”

  “He won’t. He’s not here.”

  “Good.”

  “Is something wrong? You sound upset.” Or drunk. Her words were slightly slurred, but then it might just be that she’d been crying again.

  “I have some information about your mother.”

  Cassie held her breath, afraid to hope for good news, more afraid to consider bad. “Was she a patient of your husband’s?”

  “I’d rather not talk about this over the phone. Can you meet me at Magnolia?”

  “When?”

  “As soon as possible. I’m sitting in Norman’s office now, but I need you to come alone. There are things John shouldn’t have to hear.”

  “Things about Dennis?”

  “Yes. Dennis. That’s it.”

  “I can be there in twenty minutes.”

  “Don’t bother to buzz the intercom when you arrive. I’ll be watching for your car through the security camera and I’ll have the gate open for you. Drive to the back and park next to my car. It’s a light blue BMW convertible. You can let yourself in the back door, then take the service elevator to the third floor.”

  “Is Dr. Guilliot ther
e with you?”

  “No. He’s staying in New Orleans tonight for a meeting with his attorney. I’m quite alone.”

  Cassie grabbed her handbag and dashed for the door. She had no idea what she’d learn from Annabeth, but whatever it was, good or bad, she wanted to know. Only…

  She couldn’t just walk away without leaving John a note, and she wouldn’t lie to him. Not about Dennis. Not about Annabeth. Not about anything. She’d had all the lies she could bear.

  THE GATE at Magnolia opened as Cassie drove up. She parked the car, then took the back door and the service elevator just as she and John had two nights ago. Even her heart hammered in the same erratic pattern.

  Annabeth was standing at the elevator door when it opened. Her face was a pasty white and her eyes were rimmed in black circles as if she hadn’t slept in days.

  “What’s happened, Annabeth? What’s wrong?”

  “Everything.”

  Cassie’s apprehension level shot skyward. “What do you know about my mother?”

  Annabeth took Cassie’s hand and squeezed it. “I don’t know how to tell you this.”

  “Just say it, Annabeth. Please. Just say it.”

  Annabeth stared at the floor for what seemed like an eternity, then took a deep breath and met Cassie’s gaze. “Your mother is dead.”

  Dead. The word hung in the air. Cassie waited for the finality to hit her, expected to scream, or cry, or crumble. Instead she felt her muscles tense for a fight. She wanted to beat her fists into the wall or shove someone out the damn third floor window. If Dr. Guilliot was behind this…

  “How do you know?” she asked, though the question felt empty. The word had been said now. Dead wasn’t a word you could pull back.