Faye actually snorted out loud when Reuss said, “Amande Marie Landreneau, I want you to forget any notion of emancipating yourself by getting married.”
“Married?” Faye squawked.
“I do give you credit for doing your homework,” Reuss went on, “but if you were mine, I’d ground you from the Internet for the foreseeable future to keep you from coming up with more lame-brained schemes like this one. Besides, your guardian—meaning Didi, probably—would have to sign for you to get married.”
Amande rolled her eyes and said, “It is so frickin’ inconvenient to be a minor. I’ll get Didi to sign, one way or another. Maybe I’ll convince her that I’m marrying somebody rich. Or maybe I’ll just get her drunk. She’s easily influenced and she’s predictable. I can do it.”
Reuss twisted the arm of his reading glasses until it fell off, then he studied it for a few seconds. “Yes. You probably can. And I’m reasonably sure that you’ll lose your Social Security benefits just as soon as you do, so factor that into your little scheme. Who were you planning on marrying, anyway?”
“Never mind that. I see the way men look at me. If you can’t find a better way to get me out of Didi’s clutches, I’ll find somebody to marry. If you don’t want me to do that, then you find me another answer to my problems.”
Reuss spoke slowly, maybe hoping that his brain would catch up with his mouth. “Give me some time before you run out and ruin your young life, okay? If we can’t get you emancipated, we’ll need to work with the legal situation as it is. You’re going to need another tutor besides Didi, someone who has your best interests at heart or, at the least, someone who is easier to handle.”
“What’s to keep you from being my guardian? Tutor. Whatever.”
“Nothing, really. It’s not out of the question.”
Amande continued, inexorably laying out her plan. “You could help me cash in the oil stock and buy out Steve and Didi—”
“If the stock’s worth enough to do that. I don’t imagine that the current situation is doing anything good for oil companies and their stockholders.”
“Presume it is, for the moment. You could help me buy them out and get my Social Security checks flowing. I think Manny would let me work in the marina grill. That should give me enough to live on, if I own the boat outright. Eventually, I’ll finish high school and I’ll need to rent the boat out and move away, but I’ll deal with that when the time comes. I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t want to live here with you, even if you’re my guardian. I’d feel stupid trying to jam myself into somebody else’s family. I’m too old for that. I would live on the boat, and you’d help me handle my money, and you’d come check on me now and then. That’s all you’d need to do.”
“I’ll have to think about it, Amande. I’m not convinced it’s your best option.”
Amande rose. Faye was still too flummoxed to join her, so she stood alone, while Michael played on the floor as if nothing had happened. “Well, you’d better think fast. This nice lady and her husband have helped me a lot, but they’re gonna finish their work and go home to Florida. If you can’t show me a better plan by then, I’m going to start looking for a husband. Don’t think I won’t do it.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Faye didn’t say much on the drive home. Part of her wanted to shake Amande and holler, “Get married??? Are you insane???” Part of her was seriously considering handcuffs and shackles for the girl. And yet another part of her remembered what it had been like to be alone at twenty. Amande was in a far worse position than Faye ever had been.
She hated to be suspicious of the entire world, but sometimes the world seemed to deserve it, and she was more than a little disturbed by the last turn Amande’s interview with Reuss had taken. It had seemed that the idea for the lawyer to take over as her guardian had come from Amande. But had it? Or had she been cleverly guided in that direction by a man who was remarkably good at looking dumber than he was?
For a big-city attorney, raiding Amande’s little inheritance would have been hardly worth the risk of an ethics complaint. Here in bayou country, where the only real money came off the gulf in fishing boats or drove up Plaquemines Highway in the pockets of offshore oil workers, the economy had tightened overnight when the oil spill affected all those jobs. When people don’t have money, they can’t hire lawyers. Reuss was as affected by the crisis as anybody. Was he maneuvering Amande into giving him access to her money?
Michael had gone to sleep as soon as the car started to roll, so Faye wouldn’t have had much to say to Amande, regardless. New parents rarely risked doing things that might wake a sleeping child, like talking. Still, it felt like she was giving the girl the silent treatment, and she felt bad about it. She wasn’t Amande’s mother. It wasn’t her place to dole out disapproval. Still, she kept her silence, because she couldn’t think of anything constructive to say.
Her cell beeped and she dug it out of her pocket, forgetting that she was setting a bad example by doing that while she drove. It was Benoit.
“I had to come out to the marina to talk to Manny, and I thought I should touch base with my favorite cut-rate consultant. But you’re not here.”
“I’m just turning off Plaquemines Highway now. Look up and you’ll see my car. Why did you want to talk to Manny?”
“He called me because he’d remembered some stuff. I noticed from the very start that Manny sees everything that goes on around here, so I came right out as soon as he called.”
“What did you learn?”
“I learned how long Dane Sechrist has been hanging out in Manny’s bar. It’s been months, although it’s only been the past couple weeks that he turned into a regular. And I learned that Manny’s seen Dane having private conversations with Steve.”
Faye parked the car. “I see you standing over there. Let me hang up the phone and come talk to you in person.”
Amande followed Faye to where Benoit stood. Without waiting for the adults to speak, she blurted out, “Why were you talking to Manny? He’s not in trouble, is he?”
Benoit shook his head. “No, Sugar, I was just talking to him about the goings-on here at the marina. You know—people getting killed. Stuff like that. Manny’s here all the time, and I thought he might have seen something helpful.”
Amande was not to be dissuaded from defending her friend. “Manny wouldn’t hurt my grandmother. He was good to her. He never raised the rent. If he didn’t see her for a few days, he’d ask me how she was or come check for himself. When either of us came in for groceries, he’d look around and find out-of-date food, just so he could give it to us instead of throwing it away. Manny taught me everything I know about computers, and he let me do my schoolwork on his old one until I saved up enough money to buy it from him. You leave him alone.”
Amande’s tone made Faye wonder whether Manny would be the lucky guy if Amande decided she needed to propose to somebody.
“Amande, would you go…um…”
Faye wanted Amande out of this conversation with Benoit, and she was too poor a liar to come up with a diversion quickly. Michael’s diaper was freshly changed, and it wasn’t time for his lunch or nap. Maybe she could send the girl to the marina for ice cream…
“If you want to get rid of me, just say so.” Amande’s tone was matter-of-fact. No hurt feelings. No attitude. Just an offer to disappear. Maybe she was tired of listening to people try to figure out who killed her grandmother. “I have some homework to do, actually. I’ve been neglecting it lately.”
Benoit smiled down at her, and the smile did nice things for his dour face. “I think you’ve had some pretty good excuses. Miss Faye and I are gonna walk you over there. Just to make sure there’s no bad guys lurking. You lock yourself in, okay? You’re doing that all the time now, aren’t you? And keep a phone handy. We can practically see your bedroom window from here
, but there’s no sense in being stupid.”
After Benoit and Faye were satisfied that the houseboat was empty, except for a napping Didi, and after they were sure that Amande was safely locked in, Faye asked, “Where were we? Oh, yeah. How come Manny’s just now telling you this stuff?”
“Good question. If he’s being straight with me, it’s taken him a while to piece together that I’d want to know this. When I questioned him after Hebert’s death, Steve hadn’t showed up on Miranda’s doorstep yet and you hadn’t seen Dane’s name on Miranda’s refrigerator yet, so we didn’t even have either of them in our sights. Since Miranda died, word has gotten around that I was looking for someone with the name Sechrist, but Manny didn’t know Dane by name at the time. However, the sight of that man hitting on his little friend Amande put Manny over the edge. He spent some time yesterday finding out who he was, then he grilled the poor kid about just how well she knew Dane. He even went back through his orders to see when his Abita sales picked up.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to fire me and hire Manny to be your unpaid consultant?”
“Manny’s too smart to work for free.”
Faye waited for his deadpan expression to crack. It didn’t.
He went on. “When Manny pieced together that this person flirting with his young friend was definitely the same Sechrist I was trying to find, he called me. He’s sure that he saw Dane and Steve together at least a few days before Miranda died. Before even Hebert died. Manny says he distinctly remembered Amande sitting at the bar, like she always has, talking to him while he dealt with his credit card receipts. Dane and Steve and their beers were just a few feet away. That was the day he realized that a pretty sixteen-year-old shouldn’t be in a room where somebody like Steve was drinking. Other than the one time you saw her, she hasn’t been back in the bar since Hebert died, not even just to hang out, because Manny hasn’t allowed it. He made an exception that night she came in with Didi, and he lived to regret it.”
Manny’s story hung together. If things had truly happened the way he described, then Faye liked him. Respected him, even.
“What does it mean that Steve and Dane knew each other before Steve even showed up on Miranda’s doorstep?” she mused. “How likely is it that they could have randomly met?”
“I know that life is random, but I don’t like it. I’m always going to look for a reason things happen.”
Faye nodded her agreement and waited for Benoit to continue.
“So Manny says that Dane and Steve have some kind of history, even if it’s only a week or two. Even better, Manny is the only person I’ve talked to who knew Hebert, outside his family. Lots of people knew who he was, but they were mostly bartenders and drunks. In a bar, you stand beside a stranger and drink, or you stand in front of a bartender and drink, but you don’t really know those people. Manny actually knew Hebert as a person. He said that the man was a drunken jerk who had a soft spot for his little stepsister Justine, which meant that Manny had a soft spot for him. When Justine ran away from her baby and her stepmother, Hebert stopped coming around. I think Manny missed him a little.”
“Maybe because Manny’s got a soft spot for a teenaged girl, too. Does his interest in Amande seem unhealthy to you? Miranda would’ve gone head-to-head with any thirty-year-old man that she thought was after her granddaughter, don’t you think?”
“Actually, I think she would have just hexed him, but I don’t think she did. Manny seems to be the nice guy Amande thinks he is.”
“If you say so. So forget Manny for now. I’m more interested in the fact that Dane has known Steve for a while. Did I tell you that I believed Dane was diving for treasure somewhere near Amande’s island…the one she owns with Steve? And would you be interested to hear that he’s been over here picking my brain about local archaeology? Or in the fact that somebody’s been hanging out in the shack on that island, drinking beer and scuba diving?”
One of Benoit’s orange eyebrows rose a millimeter. “Yes, on all counts. So do you think Dane has been squatting on Amande’s island around-the-clock while he looks for the treasure? Because evidence says otherwise. He gave me an address for a rented fishing shack. I drove past it. It’s rustic. Damn rustic. Latrine. Hot, plastic-tasting drinking water that comes from rain barrels. I could maybe see Hebert living in a place like that, but Dane grew up in a nice house. If he’s been staying there for months, and it looks like he has, then he really wants to be here. Your suspicion that he’s treasure hunting sounds about right.”
Faye looked away for a second, checking that Michael was still within arm’s reach. “That reminds me of something I’ve been wanting to ask you. Where is Steve staying? Because it didn’t look to me like anybody was living in that leaky and bug-ridden island shack. I saw beer cans and diving gear, but I didn’t see any clothes.”
“Steve had a cheap motel room, but he gave it up two days ago when he took up with Didi. Not only is his car overnighting in the marina parking lot, but his boat is now being moored at the dock that services Amande’s houseboat. Surely you’ve noticed.”
Faye gave a quick nod. “I’ve seen it here, but I didn’t know if it was moored in that spot all the time. So he’s given up his hotel room and moved in with Didi full-time after what? Two dates?”
“If you can call them dates.”
“Charming. I’ve been doing my best to keep Amande away from that man, but there’s only so much I can do when he’s living in her house.”
“You know that there’s absolutely nothing you can do about that. Unless you’re willing to call child services and try to get her put in foster care.”
“I just might get to that point. But never mind Steve. I’m starting to think Amande’s island is the center of all things.”
“It’s Steve’s island, too. Don’t forget that he owns three-quarters of it. What makes you say that?”
“Dane obviously thinks there’s treasure nearby, and there may be some unknown Busch-drinker out there poking around underwater, too. I’m thinking it’s Steve. Now Manny has neatly tied the two guys together by telling us that they’ve known each other awhile.”
Benoit was shaking his head. “I don’t know, Faye. There’s no link between the island and the two murders. It passed directly to Amande and Steve from Justine. Neither of the victims, Hebert nor Miranda, ever had any claim on it. The houseboat and stock did pass through Miranda, giving a motive to the people in line to inherit. That would be Didi and Steve, and maybe Stan. Also, technically, Amande.”
“I sure wish we could link Hebert to the island. At least we know Miranda was out there at least once, because Amande remembers it,” Faye said.
“Hebert didn’t have a boat, and he didn’t have the money to rent one. He didn’t even have a car.”
The word “boat” caught Faye’s ear. “Who does have access to a boat?”
“You are really hung up on that island, aren’t you?”
“Not just the island. Didn’t you say that Miranda’s body had gone right into the water, and that you hadn’t found the place where she was killed? And hasn’t it been bothering you that nobody saw Miranda and her killer leave the marina area? How hard would it be to bang an old lady in the head in her own kitchen, and load her unconscious body in a boat? It’s moored on the far side of the houseboat, you know, out of sight of the whole world. The killer could take off from there across the water to a place where it was more convenient to murder her. And neater, too.”
“Everybody knows Dane has a boat. Tebo’s no more got the money to buy a boat than Hebert did, so not him. Manny? Of course he has access to a whole bunch of ‘em. He manages a marina. Stan may have a boat—most people around here do—but I have no idea if he brought it with him when he came here to watch his wife cheat on him. Steve has one, of course. We’ve already been talking about it.”
Faye scanned the
parking lot. Steve’s shabby green Ford was there, so she was guessing he’d taken his boat out. But where? To the island? Or somewhere else?
“Where do those people go in the daytime?” she mused. “Didi, Tebo, and Steve, I mean. We know they spend a lot of time in bars, but where else? I’m thinking Steve spends time drinking Busch and scuba diving without proper certification. Didi seems to have business around town. I’ve heard Amande mention her going to the grocery store or to government assistance offices. Tebo, though. Where does he go?”
“I’ll ask around and see if I can find out. In the meantime, I hope you’ll humor me and focus on the archaeological stuff I hired you to do. It’s gotta be less dangerous than talking to lowlifes.”
“So you’re going to find out where those lowlifes go when they’re not setting bad examples for a teenaged girl?”
“Yep, and you’re gonna see if you can figure out how those missing Spanish coins fit into all this. You’re also gonna try not to get crossways with a killer while you’re doing it.”
***
Faye sat idle in front of her computer, completely aware that she should be working. The cabin door protested as someone large pushed it open, and a long, tall shadow fell across the floor. There was no reason for Joe to leave his work and come home for lunch, so he had come for a reason and Faye knew what it was. They’d both been pretending this conversation wasn’t coming.
“We need to talk,” he said, taking her by the hand and sitting next to her at the dining table.
How many times had she heard the words, “We need to talk,” from Joe’s lips?
Not once. Joe was a doer, not a talker.
“I’ve been listening to the news,” he began. “We’ve got to get home. The oil’s been heading east for days.”
“But it’ll take a while for it to get there, yet. We can—”
“It’s gonna take a day for us to get home. I’ve gotta get the booms from Sheriff Mike. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take to get ‘em set up. Those booms might keep the worst of the oil away, but if they don’t get set up in time, it could cover our beach and smother the plants in the salt marshes. I don’t know what’s gonna happen to the wading birds and the crabs and the fish, but we have to do what we can. We need to go now.”
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