“I’ll…watch out.” I thought about Carl’s assault on my car and couldn’t really argue. Instead, I smiled back at him and hoisted my purse strap back on my shoulder to give me a reason to move out of Everest’s grasp. “Thank you, for the heads-up.”
He leaned forward. “My pleasure, Riley. I’m a huge admirer of your family, and of yours. I wish I could help.”
The woman at the door cleared her throat pointedly, and he turned to leave. “Well, let me know if there is anything I can do, OK?”
I waved my notepad at him. “You can help me find out what that symbol is.”
Everest hesitated.
I didn’t like the look in his eye.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Are you sure this is…” He winced. “Are you sure this is real? I heard in the news that Randy had some issues. They said it was why he did what he did.”
I tried to keep the scowl from my face. Did everyone just blindly accept that Randy went nuts overnight? “I’m sure it’s real.”
I knew my brother despite what they said about him.
“Sorry.” Discomfort flitted across his chiseled features and he patted his pocket with the sketch. “I’ll check around.” He left me standing on the gray carpet, my notebook still in the air, as he strode to the woman at the door. He leaned in, whispered, and she looked over his shoulder at me, a scowl wrinkling her young brow.
I turned to leave and felt her come up behind me.
She handed me a piece of paper. “Uh, Everest said to give you this.”
A handwritten note with his name and a phone number on it.
“Why?”
“I don’t think you understand…” She looked behind her. “It’s his private line.”
“Oh.” I dropped it in my purse. “Thanks.”
She pursed her lips again. “Very few people get to have that.”
“Thank you, very much?”
She played with her necklace, a wood pendant on a chain, an insect of some kind, looking like she meant to say more. Instead, she sighed and turned, striding back to the door in a huff.
I thought about what Everest said concerning Jake, and a queasy feeling swirled in my gut. Remembering the night Jake drove me to the Lightning Bug in his squad car and his willingness to overlook that kid Dennis’s cry for help, I wondered how far Jake would go to keep other people’s secrets. He seemed to be good at keeping things from me, especially things about himself.
I might not get everything about Randy’s stay here if Jake didn’t want me to. I might get left in the dark about some things to protect other people. I knew he and I weren’t on the same page about Randy’s involvement.
Pulling out my phone, I punched in Reyna’s number. She answered on the first ring.
“Hey Reyna, I have a question.”
“I got your email last night and Salem took a look at it.”
“Actually, it’s about something else.” I bit the nail of my thumb. “Would it be possible to investigate my brother?”
“You mean, like recent activity, financial stuff?” She covered the phone and I heard a muffled conversation with someone, followed by the giggle of a small child. “Sorry about that.”
“Is that Autumn?” I remembered her grey eyes. Such a striking child.
“Yeah, Jimmy dropped by to take me to lunch.” Reyna shuffled some papers. “Listen, don’t get mad, but I kind of already did a little digging.” Of course she did, she knew what I was doing here. Reyna was a true friend.
“You’re awesome.”
“Well, that has been scientifically proven,” she teased. “But I thought about things that might help you there. I called in a favor and pulled Randy’s credit cards, phone records, and bank statements. I have to warn you though, there’s not much here to work with, Riley.”
I rubbed my eyes. A headache fluttered. “Is there anything useful, I mean, in your professional opinion? A place to start?”
“There’s things,” she said. “I’ve uploaded everything to my server. Take down this code.”
I pulled a pen out and wrote the number on the back of my hand.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a password to your file. Log on and you’ll have access to everything I have so far. Mind you, I’m still waiting on some special favors I called in, but there’s enough to start with.”
I let the breath out of my lungs in a tired whoosh. “Thanks, Reyna. I owe you.”
“There’s one more thing.” She hesitated. “Jimmy really wants to see the jazz band playing down there, so we were thinking of driving down instead of you coming way out here.”
“Oh…sure.” I’d forgotten about the harvest festival. Famous in this area for its great music, I hadn’t thought about it until now. “That’s fine. You aren’t afraid of the storm?”
“Weather service says it’s still out at sea and days away.”
I nodded, trying to keep the fatigue from my voice when I answered. “Well, I’ll see you soon, then.”
“Are you sure you’re OK?” Reyna sounded concerned.
I guess it didn’t quite work.
“Sure,” I said with no great conviction. “Why not?”
15
Unwilling to ask Citrine for any sort of favors, I opted not to wash my muddy clothes at the Lightning Bug. Instead, I hauled everything to the coin-operated laundry in the center of La Foudre. The trip took all of ten minutes. I bought a terribly unhealthy lunch at the mini-mart next door. I settled into an orange plastic seat straight out of the sixties to wait out the machines.
I needed to get out of that house. If I still had to be here in La Foudre after the harvest festival ended, I was moving to the first hotel room that opened up, even if it meant driving to a nearby parish to find one.
I sat in the back of the Mr. Sudsy Laundromat reveling in the smell of breezy-fresh detergent and snack machine junk food. The scents, sounds, and sticky warm air took me back to my college days at University of Washington. I lived in the dorms and hung out, with no greater worry than my next exam. I smiled a little. I still wore the same ratty Star Wars shirt to bed. Not much had changed, and yet everything had changed.
Tipping the extra-large slushie towards me, I sipped the cherry goodness and opened my laptop. Waiting for my programs to start up, I thought about this morning’s visit with Everest and felt more unsettled than before.
He moved in my social circle, often invited to charity balls and events affiliated with some of the causes my parents promoted. I knew him, to nod at him, but not much more than that. His Eco-Warriors were more flashy, more rock-star, as my mother called it, to really be a large part of the more established charities and activist organizations. Something about him put me off. Maybe he was too slick. Maybe he just wasn’t Jake.
Stop it. Jake made it clear where you stand.
The bell over the door jangled and a young man, tubby and vaguely familiar, walked in with a black garbage bag hoisted over his shoulder.
He caught sight of me, nodded slightly, “Red,” he said, and ambled towards the row of washing machines at the other end of the room.
I smiled reflexively, but he didn’t see it. Too busy feeding coins into the mini-detergent box machine to notice.
I took in his uniform and spikey hair and remembered where I saw him before. At Verona’s. He was eating breakfast outside on the lawn when I went in the first time with Jake. Dirty brown hair, freckles across his ample nose, and close-set ice-blue eyes. He looked young.
My program pinged and pulled my attention back to the laptop. I typed in Reyna’s web address, navigated her web page, and punched in the number code she’d given me over the phone.
A text bubble popped up, a message from Reyna.
Hey there, Riley,
This is what I have as of this morning. I’ll upload more as it trickles in. Let me know if you have any questions.
RC
I opened the first document, Randy’s transcripts from Tulane, an
d skimmed them, taking notes on a pad of paper next to my laptop. Next document looked like a compilation of information floating around on the internet. News articles with Randy in them from awards he’d won at school, scholarships, and things like that. I came across a snippet from the Tulane newsletter naming the Drake Foundation as a large contributor to the school’s new sciences wing. I jotted down the name of the department head. I’d never heard of this donation, not that I knew everything my parents’ foundation did, but I should have known of something this big.
The Drake Foundation is funded by fundraisers, grants, and generous donations from stars and wealthy activists. My mother’s speaking fees and my father’s law firm monies are separate. It’s always been that way, so seeing a donation by the foundation on behalf of my brother struck me as unusual.
The bell dinged again.
A black woman with two small kids pushed through the door. She wore her short hair in a neat bob, her two girls identical in every way except clothing color. Twins.
I smiled.
Doing a double take, she squinted, her brow furrowing. “Who’s that?”
Was she asking me my name?
“I’m sorry, what?” I stared, bewildered.
The young man in the waders looked over, his face going tense. “How’re you doing there, Sierra?”
“How do you think I’m doing, Kale?” She didn’t look at him; she kept her eyes locked on me, anger palpable. “Why don’t you ask the girls how they’re doing without their daddy?”
I knew then I was a surrogate for Randy. My presence here meant fire and hate and sorrow.
Kale stepped between us. “Hold on now,” he put his hand on her shoulder. “She’s here to help Jake figure out what happe—”
She batted his hand away. “That’s not what I heard,” she cut across him, her voice cracking with anger. “I heard Jake was investigating her, that she had some part, after all.”
I stood where I was, dumbfounded. “What?”
“You heard me,” she seethed.
I could feel the pain roll off of her.
“Was on the news.”
Really?
“The news said I was a suspect?”
“What, you’re denying it?”
“Yes, I’m denying it. It’s not true. I tried to stop my brother. I didn’t help him!”
Kale reached into his waders and pulled out a cell phone. He pressed a button and held it to his ear, watching us with wary eyes.
I didn’t catch what he mumbled into the cell phone because Sierra threw her box of dryer sheets at me and I had to duck.
“Have you lost your mind?” I yelled, flabbergasted.
I saw the anguish on her face and knew to some extent, she had lost an essential part of her life.
My throat constricted with the knowledge that she and her babies would never be the same. I bent over, picked up the box of dryer sheets and put it on the counter.
“I’ve lost more than you can ever know, thanks to you and your corrupt family,” she screamed. “You were here when it happened, you have secret notes that you hid from the FBI, and Channel Five said they had a source. One close to the investigation.” She spat the last part at me and a bitter grimace distorted her pretty face. “And we all know how close you and Sheriff Ayers have been getting. Maybe that’s why you’re not rotting in a cell, right now.”
Her girls stared at their mama with wide-eyed worry and their lips trembled.
Kale closed his phone and glanced out the window.
“Arrête, Sierra,” Kale said to her. “Leave her be.”
“She’s out here to cover things up for her family,” Sierra growled. Reaching into her laundry bag, she grabbed a handful of clothes and threw them across the row of washing machines at me. “How could you do that? How can you live with yourself?”
I side-stepped the rain of dirty laundry, hands balled into fists. I felt sick as a wave of frustration slammed into me. I was tired of being lumped with the rest of my family. I was tired of taking the blows for what someone else did.
“I’m not in jail because it isn’t true.”
Sierra didn’t answer; she whipped her head around, eyes searching frantically for something. She grabbed a pile of hangers on the washer next to her.
“Sierra,” Kale yelled, but it was too late.
She hurled the stack at me, the metal hangers pinging and bouncing off the dryers as I ducked.
I lost my temper. I grabbed the first thing I saw and hurled it at her. Red slushie burst everywhere as the cup smacked her square in the chest. She gasped with the cold or the shock.
Her girls jumped back with dual squeals and burst into tears.
I felt like a complete jerk for a split second, before she lunged for me.
“Come here!” She scaled those washers like she did it every day, her arms wind milling, reaching for me.
Jake yanked open the glass door in a full run and he grabbed her by the waistband before she made it over.
“Whoa.” He grimaced with the effort as he pulled her. “Mrs. Benson…Sierra!”
She froze, her eyes going watery, and then she went limp, letting Jake help her off the washer. She whimpered, and then cried in his arms.
Her daughters ran to hug her legs. Their small mouths turned down as they joined in.
Over her shoulder, Jake shot a look of complete exasperation at me.
I stood there panting, a hanger dangling from my knotted hair.
“Did you throw your slushie at her?”
“S-She threw stuff first.” I sounded like a bratty kindergartener.
“Go wait for me in the squad car, Riley,” Jake said with a calm that didn’t match the look on his face.
I pointed to the hanger swinging by my ear. “I didn’t start th—”
“The car.”
I shot a look at Kale, who put tremendous effort into keeping his eyes on the detergent box in his hands.
Frustrated and shaking, I ripped the hangar from my hair, grabbed my laptop and purse, and strode out of the Mr. Sudsy.
I sat in the car simmering for a few minutes before opening up my laptop and forcing myself to read through the documents from Reyna. Work made me strong. The focus pushed problems aside. At the very least, I could get something done while I waited for Jake.
I scanned Randy’s DMV records, some stuff about his engineering fellowship and a blurb in the department newsletter about him being a part of some sort of safety commission. This didn’t sound familiar. I made a mental note to check it out later.
Reyna also managed to find a copy of his recent bank statement, which surprised me, considering the FBI investigation. I read through it, but nothing jumped out. Mostly gas and grocery store names.
A half-hour later, Jake strolled out of the laundromat with Sierra. He held her daughters, one in each arm, and walked them to their car. I watched him help them buckle, and then Sierra got in and drove away.
Kale ran out with a garbage bag, handed it to Jake, and then turned to give me a smile and the thumbs-up sign before running back inside.
Jake opened the trunk, tossed the bag in, and then slipped in the driver’s seat. He looked at me with tired eyes. “Are you OK?”
Expecting a tirade, I nodded dumbly, not sure what to say. “I’m fine. You have good timing.”
“I was just down the road.”
“Oh.”
“Kale bagged your clothes. The dryer dinged when I was in there.”
“OK.” I raked fingers through my hair and tried to smooth it out. “Thanks.”
Jake turned, his face sad. “Kale told me what happened. I know it wasn’t your fault.” He didn’t seem convinced.
I looked out my side window. I didn’t want him to see the tears. I didn’t want to look weak after so small an incident. Hadn’t my father faced down Japanese harpoons? What’s a box of dryer sheets compared to that?
“Are you going to talk to me, Riley?”
I shook my head, not facin
g him.
His radio squelched. Toughie’s voice came through small and far away. “Coroner’s report came in on Dauby,” he said. “And I got a line on Faulk.”
“I’ll be in.”
“You want me to send Rick over to the medical pl—”
“I said, I’ll be in,” Jake interrupted him.
I turned at the tone of his voice.
“I’ve got Riley in the squad and I’ll talk to you later.”
A slight hesitation, then Toughie came back, “See you when you get here.”
“What was that about?”
“It’s nothing.”
I didn’t believe him.
He’d made a point to let Toughie know I was in the car, that I was listening.
Who was Faulk?
I decided to ask him after the slushie incident had some time to fade.
“Are you going to tell me what the coroner said?” I asked.
Jake leaned back against the headrest, his face to me. “Once I know, yeah.”
He tried for nonchalant, but I read the guilt in his eyes.
“What aren’t you telling me, Jake?”
His gaze slid away. “Nothing.”
A lot of “nothing” going on.
I bit my lip and debated whether or not to share what I hired Reyna to do. Running a palm across the cover of the laptop, I decided to tell him everything. Maybe something Reyna uncovered would make sense to him. Maybe I was too close to the whole investigation.
“Jake I have to tell you about someth—”
“I’m sorry about the fax.” He interrupted me. His expression was apologetic; it caught me off-guard. “I shouldn’t have said what I said. I should’ve believed in you.”
My lip trembled as relief washed over me. My hand went over my racing heart, and I worried that it mattered so much to hear him say that.
“Thanks,” was all I could muster without my voice cracking. I couldn’t meet his eyes.
He ran the back of his index finger down my forearm to my wrist. “Can you forgive me?”
His touch sent my stomach fluttering, but his question stunned me. No one asked for that anymore, did they?
Bayou Blue Page 15
