Body of Evidence

by Stella Cameron

  “What?” He looked at her over his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry. I know you don’t like talkin’ about it. The wound, it wasn’t cleaned and sutured quickly enough.”

  “No, it wasn’t. Maybe I’ll tell you about it one day.” He doubted it. Talking hadn’t helped him get over the flashes of memory in the night, the sweating, the fight to get his breath. “You never really said why you decided to spend last night at your parents’ place.”

  She didn’t blame him for asking. “I like to do it sometimes. Teddy loves it when I come. She gets lonely without me. I make sure she always has what she needs.”

  “You could take her home and have her with you all the time.”

  “Orville doesn’t get along with animals.”

  He just bet he didn’t. Finn couldn’t imagine Orville endearing himself to many animals or people. “Does your husband spend most nights away from home?” Now he was way out of line.

  “He’s busy.” It would be a relief if she could put her foot down and really move. She was tempted to do it anyway, just to keep Finn’s mind off her personal situation. “Orville goes to a lot of meetings, and, like he says, there just aren’t enough hours in the day.”

  Finn laughed but didn’t comment. If he had Emma in his bed, that was where he would be every night. But that scenario wasn’t likely.

  “You’re drivin’ too fast,” he said, suddenly seeing how they whipped past the trees.

  Emma held her tongue, but she didn’t slow down. She sensed time running out if they were going to beat the police to Denise’s house.

  Before entering the town, she took a right turn—on the other side of the trailer park—and set off in the direction of the bayou.

  “This is goin’ to be a mistake,” Finn muttered. “I feel trouble in my bones. I tell you, Emma, I’ve got a really bad feel-in’. Billy’s goin’ to shred us and throw away the bones.”

  “Ooh-ooh, I know how terrified you are of Billy. Quit tryin’ to scare me off, because I’m fearless.”

  “Right.”

  She reached a narrow road above the bayou and made her way along yet another winding way. Trees and bushes brushed the sides of the SUV, and draping moss swished across the windshield like the brushes inside a car wash.

  “Are you sure this is the way?” Finn said. “It’s completely overgrown.”

  “People don’t come this way usually. They take the road at the top, but this way we’ve got a better chance of runnin’ for it if Billy’s boys are already there.”

  “You think of everything.” Running away with Billy’s boys on his tail had always been one of Finn’s ambitions.

  Emma ducked her head to search for the back of Denise’s house. She moved more slowly, peering through breaks in the thick tangle of undergrowth, until she caught a flash of pale siding and steered off the gravel and onto the wildly overgrown verge. Pulled under the umbrella of an oak, Emma switched off and pointed uphill. “There it is. We’ll go up there carefully. The moment we see a cop, we run.”

  “Brilliant,” Finn said, joining her at the edge of the property. “If we’re really lucky, we get away. If we’re not, we get shot.”

  “You are so negative.”

  He chuckled. “Let’s go.” And uphill they went, batting a path through grasses and vines that rose higher than their heads.

  “Ouch.” A thorn speared the palm of Emma’s right hand.

  Finn whipped around. “Keep it down, for God’s sake.”

  She frowned at him and concentrated on removing the thorn. “You’re hardened,” she muttered.

  “That’s me. Looks like an interestin’ house.”

  Emma looked up at the pale green house on its cinder block stilts, and her eyes filled with tears. “Denise loved it. It was everythin’ she always wanted. Private, intimate, the kind of place you wanted to curl up in. She even had a pirogue she took on the bayou. She never locked the doors. She felt completely safe here.”

  She caught Finn’s eye, and he stared at her. He didn’t have to tell her he was thinking it might have been better if Denise had locked her doors.

  “Doesn’t look as if anyone’s here,” she told him. “It’s okay to go in, because Denise said I could—anytime I wanted to.”

  “I don’t think she died where we found her.”

  Emma had thought plenty about that. “Neither do I. She could have been killed here.” Her abrupt shudder surprised her. “This isn’t the time for weak knees, so give me a shake if I start foldin’ up on you.”

  “I’ll remember you told me to. Why don’t you go first?”

  Crouching, Emma carried on. No lights showed in the windows. She reached the steps to the gallery that surrounded the house and climbed them quietly. Denise had preferred the shades open, and Emma could see inside. It looked just as it had the last time she’d been there. Denise should be curled up in her favorite basket chair with her nose in a book.

  “Come on.” Emma opened a screen door and tried the door handle. It turned, and she walked inside with Finn at her heel. She whispered, “Denise worked in the room upstairs. She researched and wrote up there.”

  “If there’s somethin’ that might help us, it’s not likely to be folded up in plain sight and marked ‘clue.’ Whatever we think we’re doin’, let’s do it and split.”

  Emma didn’t have to be told twice. She took the stairs that rose directly from the open downstairs, where the kitchen, living room and dining nook were in one area. The stairs were open, and quilts had been hung over a balcony at the top.

  They didn’t talk anymore.

  At the door to Denise’s studio, Emma stood still and recoiled a little.

  Finn reached past her and pushed open the door.

  Everything that had ever been on a shelf, in a drawer or cupboard, or on Denise’s big table in the middle of the room had been scattered all over the area. Papers pulled from their folders fanned across the floor. Denise had also slept up here, and her bedding had been ripped off, the mattress hacked open and its innards pulled out in lumps—leaving the springs naked.

  A vase lay smashed on the wooden floor, shards of glass mixed with wilting white daisies and baby’s breath.

  “Hoo Mama,” Finn murmured. “The police didn’t do this. It’s not the way they operate.”

  “How’s that?” Furious, Emma tried to push clumps of paper together and slide them back into folders. “How do the police operate?”

  “Stop it.” Finn took hold of her wrist and shook it till she dropped a wad of papers. “When are you gonna learn not to disturb evidence?”

  “I’ve never been part of anythin’ like this before.” She looked angry and as if she might cry, too. “This is my friend’s home. She loved it here. Everythin’ you see, she chose. Now look what they’ve done to it.”

  “You’re upset.”

  “You bet your boots I’m upset. What a stupid thing to say. Upset. We’ve got to get whoever did that to Denise.”

  “He’ll be caught,” Finn said, but his confidence didn’t match his bravado.

  “You don’t know that. I want to look around. She could have left some message, some sign.”

  “We aren’t goin’ to make progress here. We wouldn’t have time before we got interrupted.”

  “That’s right.” Billy Meche, with another, much taller officer behind him, slapped open the door. His normally ruddy complexion shone a little purple, and his eyes looked like he’d never had a gentle thought. Both officers held guns. “You’re already interrupted.”

  “She could have tried to contact us,” Emma said, knowing very well that Billy didn’t want any help from her, not at this moment. “Denise. That’s why we came, because I wondered if there could be…a…clue….”

  The second officer, Matt Boudreaux, who was considered Billy’s second-in-command, stood behind his boss and gave Emma a faint, reassuring smile. Matt was the man most red-blooded women in town fantasized about.

  “A clue?” Billy said sof
tly. “You came looking for clues. And whose job would that be, hmm? Yours?”

  His thunderous tone jolted Emma.

  “It’s a good idea to let the police look for those, Mrs. Lachance,” Matt said in his deep voice. “Y’see, when folks decide to just look around on their own, they can end up destroyin’ the most important evidence there was in the first place. I’m sure you understand.”

  Emma scowled at him. He was talking to her as if she were a kindergartner.

  “Emma isn’t a child,” Finn said, very clearly. “We’re all guilty of bad judgement sometimes.”

  “You, young Duhon, are a numbskull,” Billy roared. “Is that your excuse, too? Bad judgement? Your father will be turnin’ over in his grave with shame.”

  Matt continued to study Emma. His black eyes with their long, thick lashes smiled at her, and she felt uncomfortable. His shoulders strained at his starched shirt, and his dark pants fit his lean hips like another skin. And he was too darn good-looking, just like too many Cajun men were.

  “Did you have a question for Mrs. Lachance, Boudreaux?”

  Emma whipped her face around to stare at Finn, who was looking at Matt with no attempt to hide his dislike.

  Matt gave Finn the warmest of boy-to-boy, we’re-in-this-together glances. With a curl of horror in her stomach, Emma saw the way Finn flexed his hands. “I’m sure this will be sorted out soon enough,” she said with a bright smile of her own. In different circumstances, Finn’s proprietary attitude might be nice, but right now…

  “How long have you two been here?” Billy said. He holstered his weapon. “You’re in trouble, you know that? We’re takin’ you in.”

  “You’re not takin’ us in,” Emma said. “We’re comin’ in. There’s things we’ve got to tell you.”

  Billy adjusted his belt and wouldn’t meet her eyes. He produced a tiny Swiss Army Knife, hooked the plastic toothpick from one end and stuck it between his teeth. “Still takin’ you in,” he said. “Gotta have standards around here.”

  “What are you chargin’ us with?” Finn didn’t sound worried.

  “Never can find the damn mints when I need ’em,” Billy said. He screwed up his eyes. “Tamperin’ with evidence. Maybe you’ll even be persons of interest in the murder of Denise Steen.”

  Emma didn’t stop to think. She went directly to Finn. “If they do that, I’m goin’ to have a bigger problem than bein’ in jail.”

  He didn’t smile, but he said, “Hush. Don’t you worry. Everyone’s on edge, is all.”

  Footsteps clattered on the wooden stairs from the lower floor.

  Both Billy and Matt gestured for silence and moved softly aside.

  “It’s okay,” a familiar voice called. “It’s me, Rusty Barnes.”

  Billy closed his eyes and shook his head. He patted his pockets until he fingered something in the bottom seam of his shirt pocket and scraped out a mint with a fingernail. The mint went in his mouth, and he looked like a man saved from unspeakable things, only he immediately scrunched and swallowed the thing, then shot a furious glance in all directions.

  Rusty, around six foot, lean, with dark red hair, couldn’t have slept the night before. His green eyes seemed to melt into the circles underneath. He looked hellish. He was a man who wore life like a comfortable bathrobe, and Emma couldn’t believe the change in him. When he caught her looking at him, he swallowed convulsively and made a pathetic attempt at a smile. Denise would have married him in time, when she was ready—Emma thought it could be important to find a time to tell him that.

  He held the doorjamb and swayed slightly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Billy Meche. They just got here before you. Just after me. I was first. I heard them coming in the back, same as I did, and I hid in the coat closet.” He surveyed the room. “Who did this?”

  “You, possibly,” Billy said, savagely chewing the toothpick.

  “Please,” Rusty said. “If I’d searched the room, you wouldn’t know it.”

  Matt chuckled. “Years of practice, right, Rusty?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Rusty sounded miffed. “But in my line of work, it happens now and then.” He crouched and began gathering the fallen daisies.

  “Best leave them,” Matt said, and there was nothing sarcastic about him. “We’ll have a squad in to go over this.”

  “Denise loved flowers,” Rusty said quietly, carefully setting down the daisies.

  9

  Sandy Viator dropped two galvanized buckets filled with dried flowers to the cobbles and stared at Emma with her mouth open.

  One of the buckets overturned, and Emma stooped to right it and rearrange the bulrushes inside. “Do you have to be such a drama queen?” she asked Sandy. “In case you’re interested, I’m as tired as I look.”

  “Long night of hard sex?” Sandy said, making owlish eyes. “It’s noon. You’ve got to change your evil ways before they kill you, girl.”

  “Very funny. Did the espresso machine get here?”

  “Are you kiddin’ me you care?” Sandy smoothed a calico apron over her wouldn’t-dare-to-wrinkle lime-green sheath, turned on a four-inch matching green heel and walked into Poke Around with her customary slow, hip-swinging sashay.

  Emma glared at a cloudless sky and followed. Her sweats might as well have been made of damp sponge. She saw the machine from the doorway. Red, built like a classic Cadillac, complete with silver bumpers, it sat beneath a forest of hanging sun catchers, hummingbird feeders and windchimes on an antique chest they had bought just for the purpose. Housed in what had once been the conservatory at sprawling Oakdale Mansion, copper and glass enclosed the shop. Sandy and Emma had cleared an area of merchandise and set up five small ice-cream tables surrounded by matching chairs.

  “Sandy?” Emma skidded to a stop. “Is the man comin’ back? Oh, please say you didn’t just sign for that thing and let him go on. We’ll never figure it out on our own. He’s supposed to give us a thorough lesson.”

  “Sit.” Sandy winked and took her by the arm. “C’mon, sit, sit, sit.” And she plunked Emma into a chair where she could smell the little bunch of lavender at the center of the table. “Watch,” Sandy ordered. “Say nothin’.”

  She grabbed a big cup and manipulated knobs and skinny chrome faucets. Using a hot, wet cloth, she wiped down each part she used with a flourish. Coffee was measured and pressed and clamped and dripped, and milk steamed pale clouds toward the glass ceiling.

  Sandy turned to Emma and said, “Plain, chocolate, almond, macadamia nut? Take your pick.”

  Without a clue, Emma said, “Almond,” and a red cup, bubbling like a miniature witches’ cauldron, with a chocolate bar balanced across the rim and an almond biscotti in the saucer, landed softly on the table in front of her. Sandy slid into a chair beside her to watch.

  Emma barely rescued the chocolate before it bent in the heat and collapsed into the latte. She plopped the melting bar on top of her almond biscotti, spread the chocolate over the sweet biscuit with the back of her spoon, and dunked the whole thing rapidly into her coffee. She closed her mouth around the soft on the outside, crisp on the inside, morsel and shut her eyes.

  “You like it?” Sandy asked anxiously. “We’re gonna have to sell a lot of those suckers to make our money back.”

  Emma opened her eyes again. “No sweat.”

  “Really?”

  “Haven’t you tried one?”

  “I wanted you to be first.”

  “Pull the bib of that apron up. Folks’ll be askin if they can buy polka-dot bras like yours.”

  Sandy glanced down, wiggled and rearranged herself to cover the bra—but left plenty of voluptuous bosom on display. She winked. “Men forget to hold on to their wallets when there’s somethin’ to take their mind off ’em.”

  Emma and Sandy had been friends ever since the Viators showed up in Pointe Judah eight years earlier. The two women formed a pact. They’d married serious, seriously ambitious men with a tendency to forget the li
ttle woman. While they hatched their plots, sold their properties—often, it seemed, without actually physically owning them—Sandy and Emma kept each other from going nuts. At least during the day.

  The coffee helped, but energy seeped out of Emma too fast. True to his word, Billy Meche had put Finn, Rusty and her through their paces, grilling them like they were total strangers—in those horrible interview rooms again, three of them this time. They would, Billy said, once and for all learn that messing with the law was no joking matter. A little more respect, that was all he asked for.

  When he was good and ready he’d sent them packing, all but Finn, who he decided was a better bet to return with him to the Balou house than Emma herself. Suited her fine. She was in no hurry to go back up there right now.

  “Look at me, Emma,” Sandy said. “Just like I thought. You’re a total mess. Somethin’s happened. Tell me what, and don’t try to get out of it, because I won’t shut up until you do.”

  This was where the balancing act came in. Emma would trust Sandy with anything—except whatever she didn’t want Orville to know. Not that Sandy would be likely to run to him with tales, but she might mention the wrong thing to Carl, which was the same as telling Orville.

  Sandy got up, went to the door to lock it and turned over the sign to read Closed. Emma crossed her arms on the table and rested her head on top. She was about to be questioned—again.

  She breathed in the luscious scents of candles, soaps, sachets, eye compresses and lotions, and let her muscles get heavy. Opening one eye a crack, she saw a stuffed pink pig in a glittering tulle tutu, grabbed it and snuggled up.

  “Not good enough,” Sandy said. Her voice laughed even when she was very serious. “Into the back room with you.”

  Emma’s head popped up. “I’ve got all those china dolls in the Lexus. I’d better get ’em in. I stopped by and looked at the curly ponchos Mrs. Wallis is making. Fabulous, Sandy, absolutely fabulous. They’re like cobwebs, and that lady is so honest she kept telling me how inexpensive they are to make.”