Blind-sided

by Monette Michaels

  Again, Scott wondered just how she knew that. No one in the DEA briefing had mentioned any details. Maybe he would ask Rosalie about it today. He suspected there was more to his cohort than met the eye.

  “Scott, good afternoon.” Rosalie waved one last time to the hanger guards. “Did you have a good lunch?”

  “Yes, and you?” Scott nodded to some mechanics. Like the guards, they hung around the hanger doors and grinned at the sight of Rosalie and him “accidentally” meeting for the eighth time in eight days. The rumor mill would have a hey-day.

  Rosalie’s next words mirrored his thoughts. “You think they take bets on how many times we make love?”

  Scott glared at the leering faces of the men congregated in front of the hanger. To a man, they ignored him as they stripped Rosalie naked with their eyes. His nostrils flared. He could almost smell the testosterone coming from the men lusting after the woman at his side. Almost hear their thoughts that he should share her, one of the few white women in the area, with them.

  Like hell.

  “Probably. I’ve been thinking — maybe you should move into my room.” At her gasp of shock, Scott rushed to add, “Of course, I’d sleep in the hammock. You could have the bed. I have a girl friend.”

  “Sorry. You’re right. It would make sense, especially if we had to get away quickly, but…”

  “But what?”

  “I haven’t even thought of being so close to another man since my lover died.” Rosalie blinked away a tear, then sniffed.

  Rosalie followed his eyes to where the men stood. She shivered. She knew.

  “Yes, let’s feed the rumor mill some more. I’ll move into your room tomorrow during siesta,” said Rosalie. “It will make our job easier. Maybe then we can eliminate these daily walks. Neither of us can afford to sweat off anymore water weight.”

  They moved away from the hanger at a brisker pace than the weather called for.

  Scott broached the topic of the dead Dr. Calabria. He could add two and two, but wanted to see if Rosalie would admit the answer was four.

  “Julio. Dr. Calabria.”

  Rosalie stiffened at the sound of the dead doctor’s name.

  “He was your lover.”

  It wasn’t a question, but Rosalie answered anyway. “Si. We lived together in Miami. We were to be married after he finished his residency.”

  “So the reason you know what evidence he’d found on the murders of the organ donors was because…?”

  “Because he sent me e-mails written in a code we’d arranged for our love notes.”

  Rosalie slowed her pace, then stopped, forcing Scott to stop. She looked up at him.

  “Both Customs and DEA have the transcripts of his e-mails, but without Julio’s first-hand testimony and the doctors’ notes, files, and yes, even specific written requests he’d copied for certain organs right down to the blood-type, they had no case. And then there was the drug operations he’d stumbled across. We suspect that is what really got him killed. One World was afraid they would lose all that lovely drug money.” Rosalie spat in disgust. “I could kill them all.”

  “And we’re going to try to reconstruct all that evidence?”

  Rosalie nodded. “We have to. What else can we do?”

  “Well, do you have any idea how we are going to do that? I mean, the mutilated natives are easy to document. We can take pictures. I’m already making duplicate copies of my notes on the cases we’ve treated.”

  “Where are you hiding the papers?”

  Rosalie urged him to start walking once more. One of the patrolling guards had stopped to stare at them. They couldn’t take the chance that someone might overhear and understand their conversation.

  “I’m not.” Scott grinned. “I’m transcribing them onto my laptop at night and saving to a diskette only. The disks are easier to hide.”

  Rosalie matched his long-legged pace for about fifty yards before she spoke. “That will do for confirmation, but it isn’t evidence. We need to have copies of the original charts with the doctors’ signatures. Julio told me the surgeons had documented the harvesting procedures. Those records are somewhere in camp. Plus, we need copies of the organ orders.”

  “I agree. But we only need a representative sample of those kinds of original written documents. My transcriptions will just add to the enormity of the crimes and be corroborating. Besides I’m an expert and the medical records are exempt from hearsay. I can testify using the transcripts as a refresher to my memory. It’ll be legal and conclusive.”

  Rosalie cast him a curious glance. “Are you a lawyer, also?”

  “No. Another person killed by one of Lopez’s partners advised me what needed to be found. He told me how I could get around the hearsay rules.”

  “He was a friend, this lawyer?”

  “Yes — he was a friend. Charles… Charles died in place of the woman I love. So I, too, have a taste for revenge.” Scott took Rosalie’s hand and squeezed it. “We’ll get them. Don’t worry.”

  Rosalie returned the gentle squeeze and dropped his hand. “Why don’t I move into your room tonight after dinner? I can help transcribe the notes. And we can plan on what else we need to look for.”

  “Good idea. Your typing is probably better than mine anyway.”

  “That sounds sexist, doctor.”

  Rosalie smiled and winked at him.

  Scott’s answering shout of laughter startled a macaw into flight from his perch high in the forest canopy. The brilliant beauty of the bird streaked skyward like a moving rainbow. Scott recalled the memory of another rainbow and a bird welcoming Jeannie to safety in a swamp in Louisiana.

  He took the macaw’s flight as an auspicious note for his mission in Brazil.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  October 8th, Manchac, Louisiana

  “Why doesn’t he call?”

  Jeanette paced Mama Chloe’s small kitchen as she kept one eye on the phone and the other on her daughter playing in the tree house that Tony and Mama Chloe’s male friend, Frenchy, had built.

  “Sit down, child, before you wear a hole in my floor.” Mamma Chloe picked up the bread dough she was kneading, then vigorously slapped it down on the marble top counter. “Scott will call when he is able. Remember, he told us there were too many ears in the camp. He doesn’t want to chance using the satellite phone Tony got him too often.”

  “I know.” Jeanette stopped her nervous pacing, then picked up a dish towel and started drying the dishes sitting in the drainer. “But he needs to know that the killer from the VooDoo Exhibit was found dead.”

  The New Orleans detectives had wanted her to identify the morgue photos of a man called Eric Matthews. Tony had refused to take her into New Orleans and forced the NOPD to choose what he termed “safe territory” for a meeting. Jeanette would never forget the ordeal of traveling to the Slidell police station to meet the New Orleans detectives. The trip back to Manchac had been a blur. She could still recall the photos depicting the dead man. He hadn’t died easy.

  She wanted, no needed to talk to Scott about it. Once she had, the images would fade. She’d gotten so used to taking her worries and problems to Scott over the years since Paul’s death. Now that Scott was gone and unreachable, she felt lost.

  Mama Chloe asked, “You like that boy of mine, cher?“

  Was Scott’s mother a mind-reader?

  The older woman concentrated on the dough she was attacking with solid punches and not on Jeanette. But she had a feeling that Scott’s mother was waiting intently for her answer.

  “Uh…”

  Answer the woman, Bootsie! You know what the woman wants to hear. Do you love her boy?

  “…I like Scott very much.”

  Coward. Don’t lie to the woman. Why can’t you admit what you really feel?

  Because then I would lose Paul.

  You already lost Paul, girl, in case you hadn’t noticed.

  Shut up.

  Turning to Scott’s mother, she tried to
explain her hesitancy.

  “When I started to see Paul, it was always the three of us — Paul, Scott and me. When Paul asked me to marry him, I asked him if Scott came with the package? Paul laughed and told me that Scott was ‘our’ friend and that if anything ever happened, Scott would be there to help me. And he has.”

  She sniffed. Mama Chloe handed her a tissue.

  “When all this started, I never even thought twice about accepting Scott’s help. It was a given that he would. But believe me, I never wanted him to risk his life for me. I couldn’t live with myself if he died. That’s going way beyond what Paul expected of him.”

  “No, child.” Mama Chloe placed the bread in the oven, then walked over to stand in front of Jeanette. “That is exactly what Paul would have expected Scott to do. It’s what he would have done if the situation had been reversed.”

  Jeanette shook her head and started to speak, but was stopped by Mama’s finger against her lips.

  “Hush, now. Listen. There’s something you should know. Something Paul told me a long time ago.”

  The older woman led her to the wooden porch swing on the veranda off the kitchen.

  “I didn’t approach you at the funeral, ‘cause I didn’t trust myself not to say something right then and there. It wasn’t the right time with you being a new widow and grievin’ and all. I figured my boy would help you through your grief, then proceed with his wooing a lot faster than he did. But he didn’t. And now he’s gone off and left the whole situation in the air.”

  With a heavy sigh, Mama set the swing in motion. “It probably isn’t my place to tell you this, but I’m a nosey old woman and I’m gonna do it anyway.”

  “No, please…” Jeanette didn’t know what to say, wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what caused the normally cheerful woman to look and sound so serious.

  “You know, I was like a momma to Paul after his own sweet mother died. His daddy had to work, so Paul practically lived at our house. It didn’t surprise me none that he called me after you accepted his proposal.”

  Mama reached out and took one of Jeanette’s limp hands in hers. “Cher, he was over the moon with happiness. You’d picked him over Scott, the man he loved like a brother. He’d always thought if Scott had popped the question first, you would’ve chosen my boy over him — ‘cause Paul realized what you don’t: you loved them both equally. I think you still do, and I’m sure that has caused you even more grief. What you have to decide is have you grieved your first love enough to go on to your second?”

  Jeanette tried to speak but couldn’t around the tears clogging her throat. And even if she could speak, she wasn’t sure what she would say.

  Mama shook her head. “Now, now, cher, I’m sorry to make you cry. My boy would skin me alive if he knew what I’d just told you.”

  The older woman hugged her. “You don’t have to tell this old busy-body a dang thing. But promise me, you’ll think on what I just told you. Because if you could find it in your heart to love my son as a woman loves a man — or if you could possibly grow to love my son in that way — please tell him. I swear he loves you as much as he loved Paul. Maybe more.”

  Mama gave Jeanette one more hug, then pushed herself up off the settee. “And, if you can’t return that love, well, he ain’t gonna stop loving you, ain’t gonna regret helping. So, don’t you worry about that. Now, I need to go check on that bread. Why don’t you get Little Bits in here and we’ll have us some café au lait.”

  Jeanette didn’t move. She couldn’t. She was caught in a swampy maze. Every time she thought she’d found a way out of her emotional quandary over Scott, she bumped into another dead end.

  She knew Scott loved her, because he’d said so. All those years, and she never had a clue and wasn’t sure yet exactly how she felt about it. Before all this mess started, she would have sworn that the feelings she had for Scott were ones of deep friendship. Except a man who goes off to risk his life for a woman wants more than just being buddies. Yet, he’d gone — even without the words he needed from her so desperately.

  And, she’d let him go.

  Mama Chloe had just told her that Paul knew Scott loved her. Even more, her husband realized she loved them both. How could he not tell her? And how could he love her knowing what he knew? Even so, he had continued to include Scott in their lives. Had made Scott promise to look out for her and their child.

  Had she always been this clueless?

  Bootsie, stop beating yourself up, girl. Let the past go. Think about the future. That is what’s important.

  The future. Yeah, she would have to think about it. But not now.

  ———

  New Orleans

  “Have you found her yet?”

  Rutherford glared at Bennie “The Finger” St. James, an old boyhood friend from Desire. After Bennie had gotten rid of Matthews, he’d assigned him the task of handling Jeanette. So far, Bennie had been a big disappointment.

  “It’s not my fault, Bry. I’ve checked her apartment which has been sublet. I checked her kid’s school, and the nuns slammed the door in my face. I even went over to the Medical Center and nosed around, listening to gossip. Nothing. It’s like she vanished off the face of the earth.”

  “She can’t just disappear without a trace. How about that dead boyfriend of hers, the lawyer?”

  “Carter? I went through his place. It was clean as a whistle. He’s got a twin brother who came and cleaned it all out. I even picked up one of the secretaries at his law firm and took her drinking. She knew nothing. Said the brother had cleaned out the desk.”

  “Where’s the brother? Maybe Jeanette is with him?”

  “Nah. He’s in Atlanta at the CDC. I had a buddy of mine break into the guy’s apartment. No woman and kid living there. The guy barely lives there. One of those types who’s married to his job. I’m at a dead end.”

  Bennie picked his teeth with an ever-present ivory toothpick, the motion calling attention to the lack of a right index finger. Rutherford had been present the night, many years ago, when Bennie lost the finger defending their turf in the old neighborhood.

  So when it had become obvious that Eric Matthews had outlived his usefulness, Rutherford looked up his old boyhood friend and offered him the job of garbage duty.

  “I don’t want to hear that. I want the bitch found.”

  Rutherford gulped his Scotch. He really needed to stop drinking so much, but until Jeanette and the information she possessed were found and eliminated — permanently — he didn’t think he could. She was just the kind of witness a zealous attorney needed to pin things on him. A jury would love her wide-eyed honesty and absolute sense of morality. What had possessed him to hire her? Had a chance at dirtying up that look of innocence been worth what was happening now?

  In hind-sight, it hadn’t. But he couldn’t waste time regretting one small lapse due to raging hormones. He needed to deal with the mess and go on.

  Bennie said, “No action on the legal front, I take it?”

  Rutherford shook off the mental hair coat. Something was going on here. Bennie’s darting eyes, tapping foot, and incessant sucking and picking of his teeth indicated stress.

  “No. My sources are telling me all’s clear. You heard something different?”

  “Well… uh, I’m not sure.”

  Bennie still refused to look him in the eye.

  Rutherford slammed his drink on the desk, spilling some on the gleaming mahogany surface. “Cough it up, Bennie. How can I deal with it, if I don’t have a clue what you’ve heard.”

  Heads would be rolling if Bennie had something his local police and federal sources should have told him. What in the hell was he paying those idiots for if they weren’t keeping their ears to the ground?

  “I heard from one of my snitches that a lady is gonna be suing you for making her blind, and that the bitch you’ve got me looking for is going to be one of her primary witnesses.”

  Bennie’s nervous actions stilled. His watchful attit
ude reminded Rutherford of a dog waiting to be kicked again.

  Rutherford didn’t explode — that would be what Bennie expected him to do, what he used to do back in the old days when he’d had the reputation of being a loose cannon, unable to control his violent temper. He’d come a long way since then, or at least he liked to think so.

  After he was sure he wouldn’t yell, Rutherford took a calming sip of his drink and wiped up the spillage on his desk with his finger. “Where did you hear this exactly?”

  “Like I told you, one of my snitches. He works part-time as a bus boy in one of the bars off Royal favored by the legal types. He heard your name — knew you from the old days — so managed to clean up in the area where the two lawyers were talking. One of them was saying something about some client who was blind and that he’d found this Jeanette LaFleur who could pin some serious shit on you.”

  “Did your snitch catch the lawyer’s name?”

  “He got it offa the credit card slip after they left.”

  Bennie reached into his pant’s pocket and pulled out a small notebook. Opening it, he flipped through some pages until he found the one he wanted. “Guy’s name is Evan Devereaux.”

  Rutherford smiled. “This could be the break we need.”

  “Huh? You think getting sued is a break? You okay, Bry? Maybe you shouldn’t be hitting the booze so hard.” Bennie’s forehead creased with concern.

  “If there is no primary witness, then I’m sure I can get the case settled.”

  “But we don’t know where the broad is.”

  “But you can find this Devereaux. And when you do, I want you to become his shadow. I want to know where he lives, who he sees, who he calls. You are going to know him and his life better than his own mama. He’ll lead us to little Jeanette, sooner or later.”

  Bennie’s forehead relaxed. “Gotcha. I’ll need some more guys to help cover him this closely.”

  “Get whomever you need. Just give them enough info for the job at hand.” Rutherford caught Bennie’s eye. “And Bennie — they don’t need to know who you’re working for. Got it?”