Great. Just what Bobbie Faye needed—V’rai to start being cryptic. She hated cryptic. Cryptic sawed on her last frayed nerve, jangling its keys and blowing smoke in her eyes. Bobbie Faye started to retort, but V’rai stopped her as she felt her way over to an end table overflowing with photo albums and scrapbooks.
“Mais non, hush, bebe, you’ll see later. As for now, I want you to have a little something.”
Old Man Landry snapped out something in Cajun that Bobbie Faye couldn’t quite follow, and V’rai tsked him, and said, “Hush, Etienne. Just some family photos.”
“I don’t want family photos,” Bobbie Faye said as V’rai rummaged through a stack. How she knew which photos she plucked from the group, Bobbie Faye couldn’t tell—there didn’t seem to be any bend or tear or mark on the photo surface that she noticed right away—then again, Bobbie Faye pointedly didn’t do more than glance at them as V’rai thrust them in her hands.
“Nonsense, bebe, you will. One day, you’ll want to get to know this part of the family, an’ you’ll be glad you have these. You’re a big part of what’s missing here”—V’rai touched her own heart—“an’ one day, you’ll see.”
Bobbie Faye took the photos and shoved them in her back jeans pocket. “So you’re not going to help me find Marie?” Sadness crept over V’rai as she glanced at her brother’s set, stubborn face.
“You’ve got your path, bebe,” V’rai said, “and we’ve got ours. I can’t set you on a path. You got to go your way, or die for sure.”
“You don’t need us,” Old Man Landry said, and he sauntered out of the room.
“Just be careful, bebe.” V’rai turned to follow her brother, and then reluctantly, as if on second thought, she said, “You’re teeterin’ on the edge of the precipice there, and you watch your back.”
“I ain’t sayin’ I did, an’ I ain’t saying I didn’t,” the scrawny old woman told Benoit. She rocked on the front porch of the manager’s unit in Bobbie Faye’s trailer park, a basket of peas in her lap, her fingers ripping through the hulls as she shelled them. She tossed the empty hull over her shoulder into a larger bucket. “She mighta been here, she mighta been gone. Had the TV on, couldn’t hear a thing.”
Yeah, right. Benoit would be willing to bet next week’s paycheck the woman heard every damned thing that went on in that trailer park. He glanced down at his notes. So far, Walter Coullion, who lived in the trailer just in front of Bobbie Faye, swore he was in a cutthroat game of dominoes with his drinking buddies, for which they did not place monetary bets as that would be strictly against the law. They did not see anything, except maybe a couple of women who may or may not have taken off their clothes. Benoit still had a contact high from Walter’s breath, so there probably was no use in bringing him in for questioning and hoping he sobered up enough to remember anything.
Bethany Meyers lived in the trailer across from Walter, and Bethany had probably been one of the not-dressed women at the domino “tournament,” and she was having a hard time remembering how to button her shirt when Benoit had questioned her.
His one hope was that little Aubrey Ardoin, not related to the Ardoins of the chili cheese dog stands, had defied the restraining order Bobbie Faye had gotten on the kid to keep him from taking photos of her and selling them (for a fortune) on the Internet. Aubrey was driving around in a used Porsche when his parents could only afford the double-wide trailer sitting toward the front of the trailer park, and he certainly hadn’t earned the money from after-school part-time work. Benoit was fairly sure that if Aubrey was to meet up with real work, he’d faint dead away. The problem was that as greedy as the kid was, he was that much more scared of Bobbie Faye since she’d pinned him to a wall—upside down—with well-placed knives the last time she found a cable running into her trailer, which had a tiny little camera on the end . . . which was placed in her shower. If he had a photo of Bobbie Faye, he probably would die before admitting it.
“She’s in trouble, Mrs. Abilene,” he said to the trailer park manager. “Big trouble. Knowing where she was could really help her.”
The old woman popped another pea hull open and raked the peas out, a little bit of the juice staining the tips of her fingers ever greener with each victim. She dipped her bony hand into the basket, scooping up the peas, letting them run through her fingers and studying them the way fortune-tellers study runes. Benoit stifled an irrational urge to bow to the peas. She cocked a wary eye Benoit’s direction.
“Well, if knowing she was here would be a help, then I reckon you oughta be talkin’ to dem people.”
“People? What people?” Mrs. Abilene’s lips thinned in a tight line, but Benoit pressed on. “Honestly, I’m a friend of hers. I really am trying to help.”
Mrs. Abilene weighed the peas once more. “Well, since I done seen you pass by here, lookin’ out for her with that boyfriend of hers, I figure you all right. But if she tells me different, you’re in a world of trouble.”
“Yes, ma’am,” seemed like the wisest answer. And he wasn’t about to correct her impression that Cam was still Bobbie Faye’s boyfriend.
“I don’t know who dey were, dem folks. Dey come quiet-like, middle of the night. Went into her trailer like they owned the place. It wasn’t like dey was sneakin’ in or nothin’—dey turned on the trailer lights. I started to call y’all since it was so late and some people, dey just give our girl a hard time, but then she came out with ’em, and I done reckon she was intendin’ to go with ’em.”
“How many?”
“Two—a man and a woman.”
“You get a good enough look at them?”
“Nah, once I saw she was with ’em, I came on in to watch the rest of my show. Didn’t see ’em close enough to tell you more’n dat.”
“About what time was that?”
“Oh, ’bout 11:30. I know because my show was right about halfway over.”
The coroner had originally placed the murder between 12:00 and 1:00 and now that Benoit had gone frame-by-frame through the DVD the night before with Cam, they knew the time-stamp for the murder was 12:23. Benoit questioned Mrs. Abilene a few more minutes, but if she knew anything else, she wasn’t volunteering it. He thanked her and walked away; he thought about setting up a roadblock and questioning every neighbor as they came home that evening, but he needed to find Bobbie Faye and question her directly. For whatever reason, she’d told Cam she was alone—all night. Now the manager said Bobbie Faye not only hadn’t been alone, she’d left her trailer with two people and Mrs. Oubillard had definitely placed her at the scene. The one immutable fact about Bobbie Faye—which had gotten her ass jammed into a world of hard places over the years—was that she didn’t lie. So how could she be home alone, but not?
So far, all he’d managed to do was prove that she was at the murder scene and could have done it, that there were no witnesses who’d place her at home during the murder, not to mention he also had the video of a woman who could easily have been Bobbie Faye pulling the trigger.
Some friend he’d turned out to be.
Nineteen
“You remember what I told you, boy,” V’rai said to Trevor as he followed Bobbie Faye to her aunt’s front door while her aunt felt her way back toward the kitchen. When they were alone, Bobbie Faye turned to him, expecting an explanation, but his expression had shuttered to neutral.
“What did she tell you?”
“You know,” he dissembled, “I think the blue works for you.”
“You’ve got a serious death wish, there, Trevor. And you’re avoiding the question.”
“Yes, I am.” He tucked a random stray hair behind her ear and ran his finger across the line of blue running diagonally across her face. “You need to ask me later.”
“Well, sure, but only because I am the master of patience.” Hell, she had the freaking patience of Job and she could wait. She could so totally wait and not be the least bit curious, and not wonder what lurid secrets her aunt had “foreseen” and then told him
about her. Okay, it didn’t matter. She didn’t need to know. Didn’t need to ask. She was completely immune to curiosity. “Was it good or bad?”
“Neither, Obi-Wan. And you can ask me later.”
“Fine. Be all Zen. Have you ever noticed all those monks are bald?”
“Nice try, Sundance.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She stepped back from him and peeked out the sidelight window. “I want to talk to a couple of Marie’s friends—these women are Cajun and very private. Francesca might have been onto something that they would talk to me, but they’re never going to talk in front of this many people. It feels like I’m being followed by a tsunami of morons.”
“I’ll handle that—I’ll have my men slow them down and we’ll lose them. Where to?”
She thought over all of the names she’d seen yesterday on that day planner page of Marie’s—some which she’d cross-referenced when she had all of the papers she’d taken from Marie’s spread out on Nina’s dining room table.
“D’s safe,” she said, and it took Trevor a second to realize what she was referring to.
“The note on the day planner,” he said, and she nodded.
“Maybe she meant the diamonds were safe. And she said ‘check’ next to that—maybe she’d just checked on them, knew they were okay. Two of her friends were listed on the last day’s entry—she could have reached either one of them from here within a few minutes, and I know she was here recently from the condition of the rice hulls. It makes sense to check their homes first, see if there’s a safe.”
“You have a clue which one?”
“Well, she’s good friends with them both—they always came to the Sunday dinners we had here when I was a kid. But Miz Pooks’s house is closer—maybe we should try there first.”
“Pooks?”
“Family nickname. Miz Patricia Burroughs.”
“Sounds good,” he nodded, and he began texting someone instructions.
“So you’re just letting me lead this thing? The entire FBI at your disposal, and I’m the best you can come up with?”
“Pretty much, yes.”
“Man, we are well and truly screwed.”
He stepped in front of her so he would be first out of the door, and as he rested his hand on the doorknob, he paused. “As far as your cousins are concerned, until we get rid of them, I’m still forcing you to work for Emile.”
“Right. Badass. Check.”
“Which means I’ll have to get rough with you in front of everyone.”
“Don’t worry,” she said absently, “I’ve had worse.” She glanced at him when he didn’t answer, and he seemed pissed. Badass squared was kinda scary.
“When this is over,” he said, “we’re getting on a mat.”
“Sparring?” He nodded. “Do you have really good health insurance? Because in the Big Book of Stupid Things to Do, sparring with me is entry number two.”
“Sundance, the day you hurt me is the day I deserve it.”
“Geez, you’re cocky, you know that?”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“I wouldn’t count on that.”
He looped his free arm around her and pulled her tight to kiss her temple, then whispered, “Oh, I definitely would. What’s entry number one?”
She started to retort dating me, but something outside the window caught her eye and she realized it was movement . . . out on the front lawn.
“Sonofabitch. It’s the press.”
The oppressive heat hit them first as Trevor opened the door. The everpresent dust from the silos mixed with the heavy, humid air, and it was like slogging through mud as they pushed outside toward the bright red car. Damn, the press was going to be able to follow that car. Bobbie Faye barely had time to register her cousins and the men on the motorcycles who’d helped Trevor on the bridge yesterday as they all moved toward them expectantly, when something buzzed by overhead and clanked into a nearby old metal tub filled with droopy roses. Two more pops and the two driver’s side tires of the GTO deflated. Trevor pushed Bobbie Faye behind a bay window protrusion—which, unfortunately, blocked them from returning to the front door. Everyone in the front yard—the cousins, the two “motorcycle” agents who’d been with Trevor, and the press—all dropped to the ground and scrambled for cover.
Cam reviewed the jeweler murder file. There had to be something in there, some lead he could follow, that would point to the actual murderer and why that person would want to frame Bobbie Faye. He knew that Salvadore ran an upscale place, which was ironic in that Lake Charles wasn’t exactly what anyone would consider an upscale town. Hardworking, blue collar, industrial. The store, however, was a part of a larger chain of stores in the southeast—and Salvadore’s expansion was picture perfect: never a hint of scandal, never failed an IRS audit, never had any customers who didn’t appear to be the blandest, most law-abiding citizens of the state.
He had to be crooked as sin.
Cam flipped through the thick file to the printed database of all of Sal’s customers and contacts from the last ten years. The list had been compiled from Sal’s sales records, mailing list, personal itemized phone bills, and files. Hundreds of names. Needle in a fucking haystack.
Was it a coincidence a jeweler was murdered and then four days later, several people showed up to pressure Bobbie Faye into finding missing diamonds? Yeah, right. And he held the deed on Tiger Stadium and would sell it for a buck. Was there someone she’d pissed off (well, that would cover at least half of the city, that wasn’t helpful) . . . someone she’d done some real damage to, who might want serious revenge? Serious . . . damage . . . made him think of Marie’s destroyed house and the rumor that Bobbie Faye had been seen riding away from it. On instinct, he flipped through to the D’s and saw “Despre, Marie” as one of Sal’s clients. Great. The jeweler was dead and Bobbie Faye was after diamonds and then she destroyed one of the jeweler’s biggest client’s home. Throw in the hair at the scene, the video, the shirt, the bracelet and Jesus Christ she’d be in prison for the rest of her life. And that was without the casings in evidence (which were still shoved in his pocket). His gut turned to acid and he cradled his head. She never, ever made things easy. Why in the hell couldn’t the woman just make things easy?
“Cam,” Jason shouted from the door, and he looked up, surprised Jason was in the room. He hadn’t heard him enter. “I said there was shooting at Old Man Landry’s mill.”
“Someone’s finally taking shots at the old crank—why am I not surprised?”
“Bobbie Faye’s been sighted there.”
“Sonofabitch.” He jumped up from the desk, nearly knocking the file back over. “Get—”
“Already got it—chopper’s ready to go.”
Cam barreled out of the room, slamming into Winna in her pretty pink sundress. He caught her before she hit the floor.
“Winna? I’m sorry, I’m in a hurry. Everything okay?”
“Oh! Um, no, no worries. We were just going to have lunch.”
Shit. He felt like an ass. He hadn’t even remembered setting the lunch date. “I’ll call you later,” he said, and she smiled and waved at him just before he ran outside.
“Anyone hurt?” he asked Jason, who jogged alongside him, and Cam was thankful yet again that the governor felt so anti-Bobbie Faye, he’d personally pushed through a brand-new sleek Bell 207 for the State Police Troop D.
“Dunno. One of the neighboring farms called it in—said there’s press camped out in front of Landry’s Mill and that they heard shots and everyone flattened to the ground.”
Trevor had his SIG out; he pulled Bobbie Faye behind him, stepping between her and the sniper while she fumbled in her purse for Maimee’s almost-forgotten Glock. As she pushed her cell phone out of the way, it rang and she noticed the caller ID.
“Wow. An insurance company,” she muttered, and ignored the continued ringing as another hailstorm of bullets thudded into the roofline above them.
“H
ow many does that make?” Trevor asked as he assessed the sniper’s position.
She knew he was using distraction to keep her from panicking, but damn. She glared at him. This was another annoying example of him knowing something because her phones had been tapped. She certainly hadn’t told him about the grant application. Or the insurance rejections. He was still scanning for the sniper, but he managed to also be aware she was glaring at him. He looked amused.
“Fine,” she conceded. “It’s a tough sell. But there’ve only been twenty-five rejections.”
“Because ‘only’ fits into that sentence so well. I’m surprised they call at all.”
“I don’t mind when they shriek when they find out who I am; I just hate it when they start crying and babbling about a suicide hotline number.” More shots knocked off rust from a nearby mailbox, and Trevor nodded toward the silos.
Still conversational, as if they weren’t pinned down by a freakin’ psycho sniper, he asked, “How many companies do you have left?”
“Two. Somebody in this state is bound to be crazier than me.”
“I think we may need to work on that pitch a little.”
Wild shots pinged off trees in the yard and clanged against a dusty aluminum flagpole near the front door, where the faded American flag hung limp in the windless morning. Bobbie Faye eyed the cousins: Donny looked torn between hiding every shred of his ass behind rusted lawn furniture and wanting to look heroic for the press cameras out beyond the driveway—he stepped out and immediately dove for cover again when a shot pinged against the birdhouse near his head. Mitch had hidden himself really well behind a big three-hundred-gallon metal tank V’rai had installed many hurricanes ago.
“Mitch,” Bobbie Faye yelled, “could you get away from the propane?”
“You want me to shoot somebody?”
“No,” she said, as matter-of-fact as she could. “I thought it would be better for you to not blow up today.”
“Okay.”
Kit scurried over to him and then led Mitch back to her hidey spot behind a big oak tree. Only Francesca remained in her original location, sitting up, frantically checking her nails and then looking over at where Bobbie Faye was half-hidden behind Trevor.
Girls Just Wanna Have Guns Page 18