Alligator Moon

by Joanna Wayne

  Cassie looked up as the first hint of a breeze stirred her hair. The sky was rolling with thick, dark clouds.

  “Why wait until Sunday?” she said, when John joined her.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Why wait until Sunday to look for answers at Magnolia Plantation? What’s wrong with tonight?”

  “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “No. I want to go with you, but I want to go now.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE NIGHT was not only pitch black but threatening rain as John slid the pirogue from the bed of his truck into the still, dark water of the bayou that flowed behind Magnolia Plantation. Cassie stood near the truck, thinking how her life had changed since the day she’d called and asked her father for the itinerary.

  Then, the Flanders v. Guilliot case had been just a job. Dennis Robicheaux had been a name she’d typed in an article as part of the infamous surgery team. Beau Pierre had been a dot on the map. Her mother had been vacationing in Greece. And Cassie had never even heard of the man with whom she was about to commit her first criminal act.

  “Are you ready?” John asked.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be.” She took his hand, stepped over a cluster of cypress knees and into the boat. Careful not to lose her balance, she moved to the other end and sat gingerly on the plank of wood that served as a seat.

  John got in after her and pushed them from the bank with the end of the long oar. The waterway was deeper than the one behind his house and more or less clear of vegetation, allowing him to paddle rather than pole the small boat through the water.

  Cassie barely noticed the noises that had seemed so loud and unfamiliar on her first ride in John’s pirogue. But some noises still gave her the creeps, like the throaty, bellowing roar of an alligator or anything that sounded like a hiss.

  “What makes that grunting noise? Listen, you can hear it now and I heard it the day I was running through the swamp.”

  “That’s a mother gator talking to her babies. You want to stay away from a mother gator. Like most other creatures, they’re fiercely protective of their young.”

  “We’re not far away from them now.”

  “No, but we don’t pose any threat as long as we’re not in the water with them. Like I’ve told you, it’s rare for an adult to get attacked by a gator. Gators are smart enough to make certain they have the advantage before they strike.”

  “What do they normally eat?”

  “Fish, crabs, turtles, snakes, nutria, pretty much anything they can handle.”

  Which occasionally included humans. She swallowed hard, finding it even more difficult to talk about this now that she’d actually had her mouth swabbed for the DNA testing. “The state trooper said the partially decomposed hand they found looked as if the person it belonged to had been eaten by alligators.”

  “Probably had been, but the person was likely already dead when the gators found and fed on the body.”

  “Beau Pierre has more than its share of people showing up dead,” she said, her mind going back to Susan Dalton. Murder or suicide? If the question applied to Dennis, it surely applied to Susan Dalton, as well.

  “How did Beau Pierre get its name?” she asked, not caring, but needing the sound of John’s voice to quell her fears.

  “It was named after Jean Pierre Joubert. He was the town founder, him and his passel of kids and relatives. At least that’s what Puh-paw said, and he knew pretty much everything about the history of this area.”

  “Were you always close to your grandparents?” Cassie asked when John had been silent too long.

  “Yeah, even before we moved in with them, the old shack seemed more like home than anywhere else I lived.”

  “You always refer to it as a shack, but it’s not falling in or anything. I mean it’s dry and you have all the necessities, even a television and your computer.”

  “C’est a shack, because trappers had shacks on the edge of the swamp and Puh-paw was a trapper. Muh-maw made him fix it up a bit when he got the shrimp boat and started bringing in more cash, but it was never fancy. Wouldn’t seem right if it were, though Dennis had always craved a little more luxury.”

  “How much older are you than Dennis?”

  “Dennis was thirty. I’m an old man of forty-two. I was his big brother, watched his back for him, kept him out of trouble—when I wasn’t getting him into it.”

  The big brother type. It figured. John had those caretaking ways about him, and that’s what he was doing with her. Taking care of her, a trait he no doubt had inherited from his grandparents.

  “Your grandparents must have been very proud of you when you earned your law degree.”

  John didn’t respond to the comment. Mention law degree or anything about his life as an attorney and he shut down just as literally as if someone had reached inside him and pushed a button. She wondered if he’d done that with Dennis and with his grandparents when they’d tried to talk to him about why he’d given up and run home after one mistake.

  If so, they must have felt shut off from that part of his life the way she did. He let her get just so close, and no closer. But if they were ever to have a relationship beyond what they shared now, he’d have to trust her enough to let the barriers fall. She wasn’t at all sure that he could.

  “The plantation’s just ahead,” John said. “We’ll tie up and stay hidden until we see the guard make his rounds to the back of the house. Once he’s gone back to the front, we’ll sneak inside.”

  “The place surely has an alarm system.”

  “It has one. I just happen to know the code—unless it’s been changed in the last few days.”

  “No way. How would you?”

  “I’ve been working on this since the day Dennis was killed. I finally found the right man to buy beers for, one of the cleaning crew who works nights.”

  “You asked him and he told you?”

  “No. I tampered with his truck so it wouldn’t start. Like the good guy I am, I offered to drive him to work, then asked to go in with him so I could use the bathroom.”

  “And you memorized the code when he went in.”

  “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

  “You never mentioned that.”

  “You didn’t want any part of the break-in.”

  “What do we do once we’re inside?” Cassie asked, growing more nervous by the second.

  “Hold our breaths and take the service elevator to Guilliot’s private office on the third floor.”

  “How do you know about that office? I don’t remember mentioning it to you.”

  “Annabeth told me.”

  “You told her you were breaking into the clinic?”

  “Mais, non. I just listened while she vented about Guilliot’s getting so irate at her indiscretions with Dennis when she’s certain he’s bonking Susan Dalton and maybe Angela, as well.”

  “How does she know he’s been with Susan?”

  “She’s caught the two of them in Guilliot’s office with the doors closed and locked on several occasions when she’s come up the back way unannounced.”

  “Do you think her affair with Dennis was to get back at her husband?”

  “Who knows. I’m fairly sure it wasn’t based on love.”

  “Did Dennis tell you he was having an affair with his boss’s wife?”

  “No, and I didn’t see that one coming.”

  Cassie clutched the seat as John rowed to the bank. He stepped out into the muck and pulled the small boat onto the shore next to another pirogue, one that apparently belonged to the center. Ready or not, she was in for her taste of crime. “I hope you’re good at picking locks,” she whispered as John helped her up the bank.

  “I thought you might take care of that.”

  “Think again.”

  “Then we’ll see if my crash course in locksmithing pays off.”

  CASSIE WAS AT LEAST sixty pounds lighter than John, but he was far stealthie
r, opening the door with the help of a thin metal tool and moving without sound across the carpeted floor. The service elevator was at the back of the house just as John had said. There was no bell, and the doors slid open almost silently, much quieter than the pounding of Cassie’s heart. No wonder it had been easy for Annabeth to make surprise visits even during the day.

  Cassie barely dared breathe until they reached the third floor. If John was nervous at all, it was indiscernible. Once they’d exited the elevator, Cassie led the way to Dr. Guilliot’s office using the beam of one small flashlight to illuminate the hallway.

  “This is it,” she whispered, grimacing at the creak of the door as it opened. “Where do we start?”

  “Log on to the computer and check for financial records. See if any payments were received from Rhonda Havelin in the days and weeks preceding May ninth and anytime since. I’ll search the file cabinet for anything that looks helpful.”

  Cassie logged on easily. Either no password was needed to access the files, or Dr. Guilliot had set his system up to bypass that step. Financial information was given in several formats. Cassie chose the file that reported daily receipts of payments by check, credit card and cash along with the name of the payee.

  She skimmed the material quickly, sure her mother’s name would stand out if it was there. If she didn’t find anything by skimming, she’d go back and examine each item more closely. There was no Rhonda Havelin or Rhonda Clarkson listed.

  Cassie went back for a closer look at dates around May 9. She was deep in concentration but still aware when John pulled several folders from the file cabinet and set them on the back corner of Dr. Guilliot’s desk.

  “Surgery notes,” he whispered, “apparently copied from the patients’ charts and filed by month.”

  “I’d have thought those would be kept in the business office.”

  “The originals probably are. The copies more likely serve as a quick reference when he gets a phone call from a patient. That way he can always sound as if he remembers them and their surgery.”

  “The all-knowing, caring surgeon,” she said. “Part of his charisma. Do the records go through May?”

  “They’re current through this past Thursday.”

  Their voices were low murmurs, but they seemed blaring to Cassie, though she knew there was no one on the third floor to hear them.

  “Are you having any luck?” John asked.

  “I found an interesting entry, but it’s not in Mom’s name.”

  John stepped closer and looked over her shoulder as she highlighted a cash payment of $42,000 on Sunday, May 9.

  “The date correlates with Mom’s arrival,” she whispered, “and the amount is fairly consistent with the fifty-thousand dollars she withdrew from her bank account.”

  “Paid in cash, too,” John said.

  “I’d think that more significant if there weren’t so many other cash payments.”

  “Cash leaves no money trail.”

  “No money trail or any other kind of trail if you happen to use a fake name when you come here,” Cassie said.

  No money trail. No name. No way to track a person down. Cassie’s hand slipped from the keypad. “A person could die on the operating table, John, just the way Ginny Lynn did, and if no one knew she was here and all she’d given was a fake name, her family and friends would never know what happened to her.”

  John placed his hands on her shoulders. “I know what you’re thinking, but no one’s died here since Ginny Flanders. If they had, the media would have gotten hold of that by now and made a big issue of it.”

  “I suppose,” she admitted, but the fear didn’t fully recede. John moved to the desk to examine the surgery notes. Cassie closed the file on payments and pulled up one labeled Admitting and Discharge. This time she went immediately to May 9.

  One person had been admitted that day for face, brow and eyelid surgery scheduled for May 10. Mary Jones, age 59, married. Her weight was listed as 160 pounds, the height as five-six. No health problems. Full medical checkup within the year. Allergies: None. Previous surgeries: a hysterectomy, gall bladder surgery and a breast biopsy.

  Mary Jones could have been Rhonda Havelin. The age, the weight, the marital status, even the medical history matched—except for the allergies. Cassie couldn’t recall exactly which anesthetic her mother had been allergic to, but her mother would have known and as close as she’d come to death having a simple biopsy performed, she’d never have failed to make everyone aware before she was administered any type of drug.

  “Take a look at this,” John said, setting one of the files he’d been perusing next to the computer and shining a beam of light on the center of the page.

  It was a copy of the surgery notes from the day Ginny Flanders died. Cassie read the notes. There were three pages of them, most written by Dennis, explaining what had gone wrong and the steps he’d taken. It was bone-chilling, but there was nothing there to indicate malpractice.

  “Everything seems to back up Guilliot’s claim that the death wasn’t their fault,” Cassie said.

  “Exactly, but take a careful look at Dennis’s handwriting.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s shaky. Guilliot’s notes for that day are shaky, as well. Now look at these entries.” John thumbed through the surgery notes, stopping at several and in every case, Dennis’s writing was incredibly neat and the letters perfectly formed.

  John picked up a second file, this time pulling out the page for May 10. Again the handwriting of both Dr. Guilliot and Dennis was so shaky that some of the words were difficult to decipher. Only this time, the notes indicated that the surgery performed on Mary Jones was successful with no complications.

  “Now look at this,” John said, flipping to the next page. “Ordinarily Fred Powell makes notations on the surgery notes, as well, but he didn’t on those two days.”

  “That’s because he wasn’t at work the day Ginny Flanders died.’

  John went back to the previous day’s notes. “And it looks as if he wasn’t at work on May tenth, either.”

  “Oh, John, maybe Norman Guilliot is as incompetent as Reverend Flanders claims. Maybe that’s why he always has a fellowship assistant.” The thought of it gave her the creeps.

  “Kill the monitor,” John whispered. “Someone’s in the hall.”

  Cassie switched it off as the footsteps in the hallway grew closer. John grabbed the files and pulled her behind the desk. They crouched and waited, expecting the door to open. It didn’t. The footsteps faded.

  “Stay quiet,” John whispered. “It’s likely the guard is making routine rounds. He’ll leave soon.”

  A few minutes later, she heard the footsteps again, only this time they stopped outside the office door. The door creaked open and the beam from a flashlight swept across the room.

  Cassie could hear her own breathing and she was certain the guard could hear it as well, but a second later she heard the door slam shut. They stayed crouched in the darkness until they heard the clang of the front elevator.

  “Dodged that bullet,” John whispered, standing and tugging her to her feet and into the circle of his arms. “Guess dodging bullets is old hat for you, though.”

  She pressed John’s hand to her chest. “Does that heartbeat sound as if this is routine for me?”

  “No, and I got a little adrenaline rush there myself. You never know when you’ll get a nervous, trigger-happy guard, especially when he’s probably never run into an intruder in his career.”

  “Thanks for sharing that with me.” Her nerves were not nearly as nonchalant as her comment. “I think we should get out of here, John. I’ve seen enough to know my mother’s name is not on any of the surgical records and there’s no indication at all of Ginny Flanders’s death being different than the way Dr. Guilliot’s reported it.”

  John nodded. “We’ll give the guard a few more minutes to clear the area, then we’ll sneak back to the pirogue and hopefully make it back
to the truck before the rain sets in.”

  Back into the swamps on a dark, moonless night, and a trip along a bayou that might hold the only real clue to whatever horror stalked the town of Beau Pierre. Someone had been left as food for the hundreds of alligators that slithered through the murky waters and built nests in the muddy mire.

  And Cassie was faced with the burgeoning fear that the unidentified female could be her mother. She put her arms around John and held on tight.

  “Hang in there, baby,” he whispered, as his fingers stroked her back.

  “I’ll be okay.”

  “I know you will, Cassie Pierson. You’re too strong not to see this through, but everyone needs someone to hold on to sometimes.”

  “Even you, John?”

  He was silent for a long time, and when he finally answered, it was as if he were frightened to whisper the words.

  “Even me, Cassie. Even me.”

  JOHN HAD HATED to leave Cassie alone on Monday, and yet he was grateful to be back out in the Gulf where locating fish for a group of boisterous Texans claimed his energy.

  Cassie continued to claim far too many of his thoughts, the way she had since he’d encountered her on that first Sunday outside the gate at Magnolia Plantation. He’d followed her there just as she’d accused him of doing, partly to intimidate her, mostly to manipulate her. Strange that those skills he’d honed to such perfection while he was a defense attorney were still razor sharp.

  But Cassie had turned the tables on him. She was too honest, too straightforward, and he’d been far too attracted to her. Timing, he guessed, and chemistry or whatever mental or emotional stimulant it was that made two people connect in the second it took for their eyes to meet.

  He’d encouraged her to fly to Houston yesterday, take some time off, far away from the mess in Beau Pierre. But Cassie had other ideas. She’d had him drive her to New Orleans to pick up her car, then had followed him back to Beau Pierre. She planned to stay until she found out what had happened to her mother after she’d arrived at Magnolia Plantation.

  So they’d made love again last night. It was as good as it got, but making love didn’t touch the surface of what she was doing to him. She had him second-guessing his life, wondering if he could go back to the world he’d run from. Had him thinking of the future—and that scared him.