Cypress Nights

by Stella Cameron

  “That’s so nice of you to care.” She smiled, then turned somber. “I keep thinking about Jim Zachary. I see him in that pew. Then I try to shut it out. Do you really think he died because of the new school?”

  “It looked that way,” Roche said.

  “There’s talk about the school being a diversion by someone who just wanted to kill Jim,” Bleu said.

  He could see how badly she wanted to believe the grapevine. “Possibly,” he said.

  They looked steadily at each other.

  A window frame made the snapping sound that could come with settling in fairly new construction.

  Watching Bleu, he frowned. She searched the kitchen and living room, turned all the way around in her chair, and when she faced him again, he saw the heavy pulse in her throat. She had been holding her breath and let it out in a rush, attempting a neutral expression at the same time.

  Her effort didn’t work.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “You’re leaping out of your skin.”

  “I’m fine,” she announced, her mouth in a straight line.

  In other words don’t press me.

  “You don’t think Jim’s murder was a diversion, do you?”

  “I think we’re on the outside of this one,” Roche said. And he detested not being able to get his hands on all the puzzle pieces Spike might already have.

  “That part irks me, too,” Bleu said. She turned her glass in circles on the tabletop. “You and I could be useful. We’re both puzzle and problem solvers. Did you actually get a peek at the note?”

  “The one with the box?” He shook his head, no. “But they admitted it threatened future school children. I’d like to know what was written, word-for-word.”

  “The original school burned,” Bleu said. “A long time ago. Cyrus came years and years after it happened. No one talks about it.”

  “People put things behind them, even big things. Sometimes they bury the things they fear the most.”

  “I guess,” Bleu said. “But the remains of the walls are there and they’re scorched. Anyway, who knows why people do what they do?”

  She fiddled with the edge of the table and watched her own fingers.

  “Madge saw the note when the box was delivered,” Roche said. He looked away.

  “Yes…no!” Her laugh surprised him. “No, sir, I will not try to make my cousin squeal to me.”

  He raised both hands and tried to appear innocent. “Absolutely not,” he said. “You’re a woman of honor. Of course you wouldn’t do that. Would you?”

  Bleu leaned across the table and poked his arm. “Shame on you.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Even if the whole story is that someone doesn’t want the school—” he covered her hand on the table “—turning our backs on the project isn’t the answer. It’s never the answer to let a bully win. He only bullies some more the next time he wants something.”

  “Madge said she and Cyrus were going to visit Kate Harper tomorrow. I might go, too.”

  Roche thought about that. “Why?”

  “Why am I going? Because I want to see if there’s anything about Mrs. Harper that wiggles my sniffer. I understand they’ve taken casts of those footprints outside the rectory. They belong to a woman for sure.”

  Wiggles my sniffer? “Does your sniffer tend to wiggle if—”

  “Yes, it does,” Bleu said, and she wasn’t smiling anymore. “Absolutely. And I don’t take that lightly.”

  “You think you have some sort of second sight, or sense, or whatever?”

  “I’m not discussing that anymore,” Bleu said. She pushed her hair back, gathered it up and held it at her crown.

  He didn’t like this townhouse. And he didn’t like it that she was living such a spare life—not that a simple existence was a terrible thing. But he was convinced that Bleu barely managed on what she had.

  “Wazoo’s a bad influence on you,” he said.

  She shook her finger at him. “Watch it, or I’ll tell Annie. You know she think’s Wazoo’s special. I’m going to see her at Pappy’s, at the fund-raiser.”

  “Don’t you worry, ma’am, I won’t be saying a word there. In fact, Wazoo’s done more than one good turn for my family. So even if I weren’t scared of my sister-in-law, that twin of mine is someone I don’t want to argue with.”

  “Max is your twin?” She frowned. “Of course he is. You’re so alike. Why didn’t I think of that before?”

  “Probably because he looks so much older than I do,” Roche said.

  They both laughed, then fell silent.

  “Did you ever even get close to marrying?” Bleu said. “I’m sorry. That’s not something a lady’s supposed to ask.”

  “You just did,” he said. “So I guess some ladies do. Nope, not even close. Was your divorce really difficult?”

  She laced her fingers together and made circles with her thumbs. “If I tell you, two people in Toussaint will know.”

  “Who’s the other one?”

  “My cousin, Madge. She knew Michael.”

  “Your husband?” And a man Roche wanted to meet.

  “Mm. He’s dead.”

  Roche reached across the table and raised her chin. He kept his finger there until she looked at him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re grieving, aren’t you?” He could forgive himself for the mistake, but he regretted making it just the same.

  Bleu stood up. “I’m not grieving, because I’m not a nice person. I’ve moved on, and that isn’t right—not right to feel glad Michael’s gone, I mean. I’m glad. When I heard he was dead, I felt excited. I was happy. There must be something wrong with me.” She blinked rapidly.

  Roche sat back in his chair and studied her with his head to one side. “You’re saying what you think you ought to say. The socially acceptable things. It’s a shame you can’t miss your husband, but it’s not wrong that you don’t. How long ago did he die?” Bleu’s behavior started to make some sense.

  “Several years,” she said. “I’ve forgotten how long.”

  “Were you with him when he died?”

  “He was in a holding cell, waiting to be arraigned for dealing drugs.”

  Roche frowned and kept quiet. He couldn’t picture Bleu with a drug dealer, or imagine why a man like that would choose someone like her.

  On the other hand, maybe he could. He could visualize how vulnerable she must have been a few years earlier. She’d learned to be tougher, but she was still vulnerable.

  Bleu took another swallow of her lemonade. “Someone shot him. They never found out who. Even if someone wanted to talk, they’d be scared in that setup.”

  “But—”

  “I don’t like talking about it. They thought he had murdered someone, too. But he went to church all the time. He was president of the parish counsel. Everyone thought he was perfect and I was lucky.” She focused on him, her expression horrified. “I didn’t know anything about the drugs.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he told her and stood up. “You’ve just been through a lot of trauma with this local murder and you’re on edge. It’s good to let everything out sometimes.”

  She shook her head. “No, it isn’t. I’m not supposed to.”

  “Do you want to know what I found out about that land so far?” He needed to steer her away from what upset her so much.

  Bleu rubbed her face, then gave him a thin smile. “Of course. But I shouldn’t have started right in talking about that instead of Jim. I don’t know what came over me.”

  “You don’t want to think about Jim,” he said. “It’s okay, you’re human. I was told someone actually lived in the woods on that land. Probably for a long time. Cashman was the man’s name. I haven’t gotten as far as I’d like with it, but there’s supposed to be a shack where he lived. He got sick at about a hundred and ten years old and went off somewhere. The end.”

  “It can’t be the end. What about his heirs?”

  Roche pulled up his shoulders. “A search will be done to
find the next of kin.”

  She pouted a bit, which was the last thing he expected her to do. “That means some greedy heirs will pop up and want zillions of dollars for it.” She paused. “There’s only one thing for it—I’ll have to sell my Honda.”

  To smile or not to smile?

  Not to smile.

  “Bleu,” he said quietly. “How many students do you expect to have at the school?”

  “Around a hundred to start. They’ll come from quite a wide area.”

  “That’s what I thought. And it may take some years for the numbers to get really significant.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “So I wouldn’t worry about having enough space right away. Just do what I’m told you do so well—win hearts and minds and raise money.”

  “Good idea.” She finished her lemonade and tilted her face up to his. “I do like my little bit of drama sometimes.”

  The only way he was keeping himself from touching her was by not allowing himself to look at her too much. He didn’t know how long he could trust himself not to make a move.

  “I’m nervous about the party and looking forward to it at the same time,” Bleu said. “I really did think about putting it off, but Cyrus wants us to keep everything on schedule. I’m grateful to Pappy for offering the restaurant for the evening. It’ll be easier to hold the potluck there. He said we should dance, too, and loosen people up. He said that, not me. He told Annie to tell me. I’ve never met him. ‘Loosen them up so they give more,’ that’s what he said.” She raised her eyebrows high. “Pappy’s having the Swamp Doggies there to play, too.”

  “I didn’t know Pappy was a Catholic,” Roche said.

  “Cyrus doesn’t think he is, but…oh, well. I’ve sent him loads of thanks, but I won’t let him give us the food. I made a lot of calls asking people to bring dishes.”

  Roche finished his own hard lemonade. “Would you like another one of these?” he said.

  “Oh, no, thank you. I think there’s more alcohol in these than you think. But you have one.”

  He did. “Do you mean you told Pappy you didn’t want his food because you’d rather have people trail out there with dishes of stuff?”

  “No! I said I couldn’t take so much advantage of his kindness.”

  Roche decided he’d ask Max’s wife, Annie, what she thought about that. She ruled Pappy’s. He doubted if having people run in and out of the kitchen asking to put things in the oven would go over too well. As the manager of the place, she ran a tight, successful ship. About now, she’d be thinking about lawsuits if someone slipped on something they dropped on the floor.

  “It’s after one in the morning!” Bleu stared at her watch. “You’re going to be so tired.”

  He didn’t bother with the glass this time. “So are you. But we weren’t doing so well at sleeping.”

  “No.” She looked around the room. “This place is pretty dreary. I try not to look at it too closely. I get depressed if I think about it.”

  He liked nice places, but didn’t worry about them one way or the other. “It’s functional,” he said, wondering how she would react if he asked her to let him arrange a better place. “It’s easy to keep clean.” Any offers like that would have her thinking he had designs on her.

  Designs was a weak work for what he wanted with Bleu.

  What Bleu wouldn’t tell Roche was that the almost-empty room embarrassed her. She’d never seen where he lived, but it would be comfortable, she was sure of that.

  “There’s three floors here?” Roche said.

  She looked at him sharply. “The attic isn’t finished. I think the builder ran out of money.”

  “So this is your living room, as well as your dining room and kitchen?”

  “Yes.” His questions made her fidgety. “A great room, I guess.”

  He looked toward her booth. “You need a couch. And maybe a chair. A couple of tables and lamps. That’s all it would need.”

  In other words, he agreed that she lived in a dump. “I’ll get them one of these days. If I stay here.” And if she either came into money from a relative she didn’t know she had, or managed to find some used furniture she could bear.

  “But you have a bedroom above this?”

  Her heart turned over really quickly. “Yes.” After getting rid of the dead bird, she had scrubbed the tub with bleach until her knuckles hurt.

  “Of course you do.”

  While he put her through the interrogation, he drank his lemonade from the bottle. He was such a…renegade in appearance. He had another T-shirt on, white again, and jeans. She wondered if he wore jeans when he worked. That wouldn’t seem very professional.

  “Are you tired?” he said. “You must be.”

  “Dog tired,” she told him. “But I don’t want to go up there. I’ll drop off down here after you leave.” And once again, she had said too much.

  Roche frowned at her. “You shouldn’t have to be afraid where you live. That’s not right.”

  Bleu sighed. “I know, but I haven’t figured out what to do about it. I thought about locking everything up and going upstairs as soon as I get home each day. I can’t do that. It would be like marooning myself on an island, only the water would be the stairs.”

  She looked toward the stairs—a few feet from the front door. Partway up they were hidden by one of the walls of this room. When you looked up there, it was all shadows.

  When she’d been a child, going upstairs at night had scared her, then she’d gotten over the feeling. But while they’d been married, Michael had made sure the shadows and the waiting scary things came back.

  Michael became one of her scary things—the scariest one of all. And in her mind he was still around, his memory undercutting her confidence, reminding her she wasn’t what men wanted, once they had her.

  “A cat came in through a window today, then got shut in my bathroom,” she blurted out. “Scared me, I can tell you. I thought someone was in there going mad and ready to jump out and grab me.”

  “A cat?” He screwed up his eyes. “What cat?”

  She told him about the tabby and what had happened earlier—minus the dead chicken.

  Roche went immediately to the kitchen. “Which window?” he said.

  “Right,” she said. “Behind the sink.”

  He peered at the catch. “You must have left it open.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly, and felt caught. “But he could have gotten in through the front door. I had to stop and screw the lightbulb back in. The door was blocked open for a few minutes. He could have sneaked past.” But not, she knew, in the wake of a terrified chicken.

  “You can’t afford to make mistakes like that now,” he told her, and she had to look away from his angry eyes. “Promise me you’ll go over every latch in this place, every time you come in or go out. Better yet—only open windows upstairs.”

  “Okay.” She wouldn’t want to cross him when he was furious, and he was furious at this moment.

  “Let me get you a room at Rosebank,” Roche said. His flattened lips were white.

  Looking into his face was dangerous. Even glancing at his tall, well-made body made her stir. She hadn’t forgotten what had happened when they’d been together here before. Only the way he’d brushed off her responses in the past kept her from apologizing again.

  “Bleu,” he said. “I can’t leave you here like this.”

  “It’s too late for me to get a room at Rosebank. I’d wake people up.”

  He moved rapidly, enclosed the back of her neck in one of his hands. “Okay, I’m taking charge.” When he turned her away from him, short of putting up a ridiculous fight, she had no choice but to let him push her along in front of him, toward the stairs.

  At the bottom, he stopped and ran his warm hand down to her waist. He gave her a gentle shove. “Up you go and you’d better be asleep fast.”

  Of course, he didn’t know the kind of fear she felt up there.

  “I’ll be down
here,” he said. “I’m tired enough to sleep on the carpet.”

  “Oh, no you don’t. Good night, Roche. You’re a kind man, but go home.”

  “Get up there,” he said, pointing upstairs and giving her an unconvincing frown. “Now.”

  “No. Thank you for caring, but no. I feel totally ridiculous now and that’ll help make me brave. Good night. And thank you for coming—you’ve helped me a lot.” Determination not to look like a fool probably made most people tougher. Bleu wasn’t tough and didn’t feel tough. Embarrassment made her want to disappear.

  With his arms crossed and his weight on one leg, he stared at her—militantly. Finally he sniffed and said, “Fine. I’ll go.”

  She nodded, and he opened the front door.

  A rush of wind surprised her. The weather was changing.

  He just stood there.

  Bleu cleared her throat, which didn’t do a thing to stop her heart from jumping around. “Drive carefully,” she said.

  Roche didn’t move or answer.

  “Y’know, Spike hasn’t had long to work on the case,” she said. “But we’ll probably hear something tomorrow. Call me if you find out first.”

  He closed the door softly. “I’m not leaving unless you can manage to throw me out. You could ask Spike to do it for you, but that might not look so good for either of us.”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “And it’s getting later. Time has a way of doing that. Why don’t you go back to camping in your Coke booth? I’ll stretch out on the floor. I’ve had plenty of practice.”

  Bleu didn’t believe him. And she didn’t know what to say next.

  “Or I’ll take the booth and you lie on the floor,” he said with a faintly evil smile.

  “Some people would say you’re torturing me,” she said.

  “That’s a nice thing to tell me.” He grimaced, turned the corners of his mouth way down. “I’ll just make myself comfortable while you decide which four-star bed you want.”

  In one fluid motion, he dropped to the floor and lay flat on his back with his arms crossed under his head.