Apparent Wind (The Forgotten Coast Florida Suspense Series Book 7)

by Dawn Lee McKenna

  “What is it?” Maggie asked, though she didn’t actually care.

  “Hot tea.” He raised the cup another inch, and she reached out and took it with both hands. The warmth was welcome, and she was glad for something to do with her hands other than twisting the ties of his robe.

  Boudreaux took a sip of his tea and waited. Maggie finally raised the cup and took a swallow. The tea was hot and bitter, but it felt good going down. She nestled the cup in her lap and looked out at the water, pretending she didn’t know that Boudreaux was staring at her.

  Finally the silence, and unanswered questions, became too frustrating.

  “Why did you suddenly decide that you wanted to know me?” she asked. When she looked over at him, he was still staring. It took him a moment to answer.

  “I don’t think I did,” he said. “I feel like it was decided for me.” Maggie raised an eyebrow at him, and he sighed. “When Gregory told me what he’d done, I realized that all of the justification I’d done, the rationalization that you were better off outside my life, was all just a bunch of self-serving pretext. It didn’t keep you from being hurt by the Boudreaux family, did it?”

  Maggie felt the anger swirling in her stomach again. “Are you trying to say you sacrificed your fatherhood to protect me, Mr. Boudreaux?” she asked.

  “No, of course not,” he answered quietly. “I didn’t have room in my life for you or your mother, not that she actually wanted a place in it.”

  Maggie looked away, not wanting to watch the words about her mother actually come out of his mouth.

  “I’ve tried to give you my financial support, Maggie, tried to do what I could to help, but I didn’t want to be your father.”

  Maggie could feel the anger climbing up her throat, but she was tired of being so angry. Exhausted from it. “And yet here we are,” she said quietly.

  “Yes.”

  She heard the gentle rustling of his expensive trousers, saw in her peripheral vision that he was leaning toward her. She turned to look at him as he rested his elbows on his knees.

  “After that day that we first sat together at Boss Oyster, I would have wanted to know you, even if you weren’t my daughter,” he said. His blue eyes were locked on hers, brilliant in their intensity, and even though the closeness bothered her, she couldn’t look away, either. “I need you to understand that, Maggie.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it matters,” he said simply.

  “To you?”

  “I think it matters to both of us,” he said.

  He was right, and the fact that he knew it made her blink a few times to hide her discomfort.

  “We’ve both lived in this town all of my life,” she said. “You were there many times, when I was with Daddy, bringing in a load. But you never thought about me until your nephew told you he raped me.”

  “That’s not wholly true,” he said. He took a swallow of his tea before he went on. “It would be nice to say that I have a drawer full of newspaper clippings and school pictures at home. I don’t. But I did watch you sometimes, and sometimes I wished that things had been different. I would see you at softball and baseball games and think how beautiful you were becoming, how strong and independent you seemed.” He paused for a moment, his eyes seeming to search hers. “I would wonder sometimes if you were anything like me.”

  Maggie looked away then. If he saw any similarities, she wasn’t ready to hear about it.

  “I have a great deal of respect for Gray,” he said after a moment. “He did something I never would have done, probably couldn’t have done. But I’ve always been envious of him as well.”

  Maggie looked at him. “Because of my mother?” she asked, and tasted the bitterness in her tone.

  “No,” he said quietly, and held her with those eyes. “I wish I could tell you that I was in love with your mother, but I wasn’t. I didn’t even know her, and she didn’t fit into my plans. Neither did her child. Not then.”

  Maggie looked away for a moment. What he was saying hurt, and she could show him her anger, but she’d rather be shot than show him her pain. “Do you know what it’s like to wake up one day and not even know your nationality?” she snapped. “Half of everything I’ve ever thought about my family, my heritage, is false, and now there’s just a blank space where it used to be.”

  Boudreaux was quiet for a moment. He took a sip of his tea before answering. Maggie’s had grown cool in her hands.

  “My father’s people were true Acadians,” he said finally. “They immigrated to Nova Scotia from France, and were relocated to Louisiana during the Great Expulsion in the 1700s. My mother was a first generation American. Her parents moved to Louisiana in the forties, from A Illa de Arousa, an island off the northwestern coast of Spain.”

  Maggie looked at him. “Spanish?” She had a hard time adjusting her ideas about her own genetic makeup.

  “Yes.” Boudreaux drained his cup and set it down carefully on the step beside him before he looked at her. “You have her laugh, you know.” Maggie blinked at him a few times. “Your daughter has her chin. I was barely more than a toddler when she died, but I remember her very clearly. She was an exceptionally beautiful woman.”

  His voice had grown very quiet, and Maggie saw his eyes darken as he spoke.

  “How did she die?”

  Boudreaux swallowed. “You don’t need to know about that,” he said.

  “I’m a little tired of the stuff people think I don’t need to know, Mr. Boudreaux,” she said evenly.

  He reached up and smoothed his eyebrow with his little finger. “My father killed her,” he said, his voice quiet and his tone somehow matter-of-fact. “The official word was that she fell out of my father’s pirogue while they were night fishing on Bayou Petit Caillou, but he killed her.”

  “How do you know?” Maggie asked.

  “Everyone knew,” he answered. “But it was Southern Louisiana in the 1950s, and she was a spic married to a coonass. No one cared.”

  His voice was calm, but Maggie recognized the anger beneath his even tone. “I’m surprised you didn’t kill him,” she said softly.

  “I probably would have eventually, but he had the heart attack,” he said mildly. “I admit to feeling somewhat inconvenienced by that.”

  Suddenly their conversation felt very much like so many others, and Maggie felt in danger of becoming comfortable with it. She looked away from him, looked back out at the beach and listened to the wind rustling through the sea oats.

  After a moment, she heard him shift beside her. “Why are you afraid of the water?”

  She sighed. “I’m not afraid of water. Just the Gulf, and the ocean. The damn sharks.”

  “Why?”

  She looked over at him. He was so close, just a foot away, and even in the faint light of the deck his eyes shone blue and sharp and clear.

  “What difference does it make?” she asked him wearily.

  “You’re terrified of something you clearly love,” he said. “I want to know why.”

  She took a good mouthful of her tea before she answered. She didn’t want to share anything with him, yet she always had. The pull was just as strong as it had always been. “I explained it to you once,” she said finally. “I’m afraid of a lot of things. Ever since…the rape. I saw a psychologist a few times, years ago. She said that it’s because I found out that really scary things don’t just happen to other people. Apparently, it’s not uncommon for people with PTSD to develop fears they never had before.”

  Boudreaux studied her for a moment. “So, you have PTSD,” he said.

  “Yes,” Maggie answered with a shrug.

  “From the rape,” he said.

  Maggie looked back at him. “Don’t try to claim that as another cross for you to bear,” she said eveny.

  “I don’t like to think of you being scared of anything,” he said.

  “Then don’t,” she said, but not unkindly.

  They sat in silence for a moment, Maggie wa
tching the surf and Boudreaux watching her.

  “Well, you certainly scared me,” he said finally. “The other night. Had you considered just asking me straight out?”

  Maggie just managed to not roll her eyes, but only barely. “Yes. But you’d had plenty of time to tell me yourself.”

  “That’s true. I almost did, more than once,” he said.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Boudreaux looked at her a moment, scratched gently at his eyebrow, then stood up, pulling a pewter cigarette case from his shirt pocket. “I saved my evening cigarette for later,” he said. “Do you mind?”

  She shook her head.

  Several hundred feet away, beneath the back deck of an empty house, a lighter rasped and a red glow flared and then dimmed as a cigarette was lit. The smoker tucked the cigarettes and lighter back into his jacket pocket, then exhaled and leaned against the deck support, squinting through the smoke at Maggie and Boudreaux on the back stairs.

  They were too far away to be heard clearly, but he didn’t care much about their conversation.

  Boudreaux dipped his head toward his cupped palm, and lit his cigarette. He exhaled slowly, away from Maggie, then leaned back against the handrail.

  “Gray wanted to be the one to tell you,” he said. “I thought I owed him that much.” He took another drag of his cigarette before speaking again. “There was some selfishness there, too,” he said.

  Maggie looked over at him, and he took a moment to go on.

  “I was a little afraid that you might never speak to me again,” he said finally. You have every right to be angry with me.”

  Maggie looked back out at the water. “I know that,” she said, her tone harsher than she meant it to be. She looked back at him, craned her neck to look up into those blue eyes as he studied her calmly. Then she sighed. “I am angry with you. I tried to be angrier.”

  “I don’t understand what that means,” he said.

  Maggie felt the frustration bubbling up again somewhere around her lungs. She looked out at the dark. “If it had been anyone else…if it hadn’t been you, you’re the one I would have gone to talk to about it.”

  He didn’t respond, and after a moment she looked back at him. His brows were drawn together, his incredible eyes kind.

  “Why do you suppose that is?” he asked gently.

  She stood up quickly. “You know damn well why,” she answered.

  “Yes, I do,” he said. “Because that connection has been there from the beginning, regardless of why.”

  “I don’t know how to relate to you anymore,” she said.

  “Maggie, I don’t need to be your father,” his voice quiet. “The way we were was good enough. Let’s just be what we’ve always been.”

  Maggie swallowed hard, torn between putting her head on his chest and slapping him down the stairs.

  “My clothes should be dry,” she said. “I need to go.”

  “Maggie—” he started, but she was already inside.

  A few minutes later, she stepped back out onto the deck in her own clothes. Boudreaux turned around and leaned against the rail as she stopped at the top of the deck stairs. He waited for her to speak, and she waited to come up with something she felt comfortable saying.

  “Thank you for meeting me out here, Mr. Boudreaux,” was what she managed finally.

  He seemed about to say something, then scratched gently at his eyebrow for a moment. “It’s always good to see you, Maggie,” he said instead.

  Maggie was standing less than two feet away from Boudreaux. She could see the tiny lines that radiated from the corners of each of his beautiful eyes, just catch the scent of his cologne. She could almost see herself laying her cheek against his chest for a moment, and she could tell from his expression that he could almost see that, too.

  Instead, she started down the stairs. She had hit the sand by the time he spoke.

  “Maggie.”

  She stopped and turned around, looked up at him.

  “Your new sheriff, Curtis Bledsoe,” he said. “You need to be very careful around him”

  That wasn’t any of the things she had expected him to say. “Why?”

  “If Governor Spaulding appointed him, he had his reasons. None of them could be good.”

  “I thought you were friends with all the Governors of Florida,” Maggie said.

  “Not this one,” Boudreaux answered.

  “Anything I should know?” Maggie asked.

  “Yes,” Boudreaux answered smoothly. “And I just told you.”

  Maggie chewed the corner of her lip a moment her mind forming questions that he probably wouldn’t answer. “Okay,” she said finally, then started through the sand. “Goodnight, Mr. Boudreaux.”

  “Goodnight, Maggie,” he answered.

  Beneath the empty house down the beach, the watcher saw Maggie start away from Boudreaux’s house. He ground his cigarette out in the sand, then walked out the far side of the porch and headed back to the vehicle waiting across the road.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Maggie and Dwight pulled into the Sheriff’s Office parking lot within seconds of each other. Maggie got out of her Cherokee with a fresh latte, two extra shots, from Apalachicola Coffee. Dwight walked up to her with a cup of gas station coffee in his hand. Ordinarily, she would have given him some crap about that, but she was too tired to make the effort.

  “Hey, Maggie,” Dwight said as he fell into step with her.

  “Hey, Dwight. Did you get anything on the grand opening thing?”

  “Yeah, sorta,” he answered. “He was definitely there. The thing started at lunchtime, regular opening hours for the place. It’s some kinda fancy tapas bar or something.”

  “Okay.”

  “The party lasted til like five or so, til it was time for them to get ready for dinner,” Dwight continued. “But I can’t find anybody that remembers seeing him for sure after about three.”

  Maggie stopped walking, and he stopped short beside her, watched her as she took a drink of her coffee.

  “So, he could have been here by eight or so,” she said.

  “Looks like.”

  “Call around, see if any of the hotels had him registered that night,” she said as she started walking again. “Maybe he’s that stupid.”

  “Already done it. He ain’t,” Dwight said as he caught up with her. “Either that or he wasn’t here.”

  “Did you find anything out about the rental car?”

  “Not yet,” he answered. “I only got a partial on the plate, but we’re running what we got. I haven’t seen the car around, have you?”

  “No.” Maggie gnawed the corner of her lip for a moment. “What about her car? Is it still here?”

  “Yeah, I told her brother we’d call him when we were done with it,” Dwight answered.

  “Do me a favor and go over it, look in the nooks and crannies, see if the phone or the credit card turn up.”

  “Buggin’ you,” he said as he opened the door to the Sheriff’s Office.

  “Yeah,” she answered.

  “They might be back in Tampa, though,” Dwight said.

  Maggie nodded. “Good point.”

  “I’ll look anyway,” he said, as he headed in one direction and she went the other. Her destination was the office she still considered Wyatt’s, to see the man she still considered not Wyatt by a long shot.

  When she arrived in Bledsoe’s open doorway, he was on the phone. He glanced up at her and held up a hand. She waited for a moment until he finished the call and waved her in. She noticed for the first time that he’d traded Wyatt’s worn in old desk chair, and she couldn’t help wondering if it was so his feet could touch the floor.

  “What can I do for you, Lieutenant?” he asked, without sounding like he wanted an answer.

  “The Corzo case,” she replied. “The boyfriend, Toby Mann, insists he didn’t know she was even here, but I’m not sure I buy that. He put her on one of his credit cards. I’d like to see about getting a war
rant to pull the records, see if she made any charges on it that would have let him know where she was. The card’s missing.”

  “No,” he said simply.

  “No, why?”

  “Do you have any probable cause to get a warrant on him?”

  “The guy’s her boyfriend. A drug dealer,” she answered. “She was with another man.”

  “Another man who was on the scene,” he replied. “As opposed to a boyfriend that witnesses put in Tampa that afternoon.”

  “That afternoon,” she said, trying hard to keep her face impassive and her tone even.

  “He also came up here voluntarily to speak with us,” Bledsoe said, tidying his already-tidy desk as though he were preparing for some other, more important business once he got rid of Maggie. “As of now, you don’t have anything that’s going to compel a judge to issue a warrant for this guy’s credit card records.”

  “I think Judge Greer might,” Maggie responded, then couldn’t help herself. “He seemed to think Axel shouldn’t have been charged based on what we have so far.”

  Bledsoe folded his arms across his chest and regarded her with a tight smile that she imagined was supposed to be intimidating. It wasn’t. “Is that right?” he asked. “But you have even less on this guy Mann. In fact, you have nothing, outside of him being a known felon. And I’m not about to start building a reputation as a department that asks the court for warrants willy-nilly.”

  Apparently, willy-nilly arrests were okay with him. Maggie swallowed the words. He seemed to mistake her silence for having put her in her place, because his smile became more genuine.

  “I realize that you’re supposed to be the darling of the SO, full-grade Lieutenant and all that, but you’re not working for Wyatt Hamilton anymore.”

  In her mind, Maggie withdrew her weapon and shot his new little chair full of holes. “I was promoted to Lieutenant a year before Wyatt came here,” she said instead, her voice calm and quiet. “Sir.”

  He waved off her answer, but looked annoyed at the correction. “Nevertheless, I’m sure Wyatt kept a pretty long leash on you due to your, uh, relationship. You and I have a different relationship.