He slapped the steaks onto the grill. The sizzle and the aromas of beef, Balsamic vinegar, and garlic made Maggie’s stomach clench. She was starving. She drained half her wine as a consolation.
After the fewest possible minutes of actual cookery, Wyatt placed the steaks on two plates and set them on the table, where two places had been laid.
“Oh, I forgot the bread,” Wyatt said, and hurried into the kitchen. Maggie sat down at her place and breathed in the steak, until he returned with a loaf of toasted Cuban bread and some butter.
He set them down in the middle of the table, then sat. They looked at each other a moment.
“I should have bought candles,” he said.
“This is fine.”
“Next time,” he said.
“Next time’s at my house,” Maggie said, and Wyatt smiled.
“No vegetables,” he said.
After they finished eating, Wyatt and Maggie spent the next several hours laughing, talking, and trying out various positions indicating togetherness. Maggie grew accustomed to the feel of Wyatt’s chest as he sat behind her on the end of his dock, and how much larger his hand was than hers. Wyatt began to find the scent of gardenias on her neck familiar, and had finally been able to relax around her boobs, which were normally safely encased in a Sheriff’s Department polo.
They talked about work, then remembered they were on a date, and talked about his moving from Virginia to Cocoa Beach, after his wife’s death from cancer. They talked about severed legs and then backtracked to her going out with her daddy on his oyster skiff as a child. They discussed missing rental cars and first-time sex, agitated paper editors and puberty. They talked about his disappointment in being left childless, and her struggles to raise her kids on her own.
By the time they stretched out their cramped muscles and he took her hand to walk her to the door, they had transitioned full circle from familiarity to newness and back again, only the familiarity itself was a new one.
They both stopped at the breakfast bar, drained the last of their wine, and set the glasses down. When Maggie looked up, Wyatt was smiling at her.
“What?” she asked, smiling back.
“Look how far you’ve come since the last time you were here.”
“That was like two weeks ago.”
“Yes, and at that time you’d only kissed the guy you’d loved since infancy—”
“Fifth grade.”
“—whenever, and the gay guy from State Farm.”
“I told you, that was truth or dare. And I don’t think he knew he was gay then.”
“Be that as it may, now here we are.”
“Where’s that?” she asked.
“Somewhere else,” he said, and he’d stopped smiling.
He held out his hand and she took it, then he started walking her toward the door again.
“Wyatt, aren’t you just a little bit worried about it?” Maggie asked. “I mean, our jobs…and then, we’ve had this great working relationship and friendship. Aren’t you worried about losing at least one of those things?”
They stopped at the door and Maggie leaned up against the wall.
“No, I’m not,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because I have you to do that for me.” He put his hand on the wall beside her head. “And you’re doing a great job.”
The next morning, after fewer than four hours sleep, Maggie stopped at Café Con Leche on Water Street and got a double café to go, then drove around the corner to the florist on Commerce.
When she walked in, she found a very thin blond man in his fifties behind the register. Maggie couldn’t remember his name, but she recognized both him and his partner, a larger, slightly younger man with black hair and startling gray eyes, who was wiping down a butcher block counter behind the register.
“Good morning!” the blond man sang out in a soft, smoky voice and Maggie remembered that his name was William.
“Good morning,” Maggie said, smiling politely. She walked up to the front counter. “I’m Lt. Redmond from the Sheriff’s Office.”
“Yes, I see,” William said, raising his eyebrows at her blue polo shirt. “How can I help you?”
Maggie pulled the receipt out of her pocket and handed it to him as the dark-haired man came to peer over his shoulder.
“Can you look up this purchase? Or do you remember the man that made it?” she asked.
William read the receipt with a hmm, then looked over his shoulder at his partner. “Do you remember this one, Robert?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Robert said. “Let me look up the transaction number.”
He stepped over to a desktop computer on the back counter and started typing.
“Can you believe it’s this wicked hot at eight o’ clock in the morning?” William asked Maggie. “I stepped out on our balcony before sunrise and almost withered away.”
“It is unusually hot,” Maggie agreed.
“If we could just get a good rain, right?” William asked. “I mean, what the hell? It’s hurricane season, for Pete’s sake.”
“Oh!” Robert said, looking over his shoulder. “It’s Sonny Crocket.”
“Oh, him!” William said and shook his head at Maggie. “You just don’t know. Straight off the set of Miami Vice. I thought maybe a Delorean had crashed out front.”
Robert came back to the counter with a printed copy of the transaction. “Except his name was Wilmette. Remember, from Atlanta?”
“Right, Atlanta. Dumber than dirt, as well.”
“Bless his heart,” Robert said.
“Why?” Maggie asked.
“I don’t think he knows he’s gay,” William said conspiratorially.
“Well, clearly, otherwise he’d dress like he had some sense,” Robert said.
“Is he in trouble?” William asked.
“Well, no. We’re looking for him,” Maggie said. She craned her neck to look at the printout. “Does it say what he purchased?”
“Oh, I remember it,” William said. “He got a wreath.”
“A wreath?” Maggie asked.
“Yeah, he was down for a funeral,” Robert said.
“Whose?”
“Bennett Boudreaux’s nephew, the one that shot himself,” William said.
Maggie stopped breathing for a moment.
“Are you sure?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah, we sent it to the cemetery,” Robert said.
“So why are you looking for him?” William asked, his voice hushed, although no one else was in the store.
“We just need to ask him about something,” Maggie said. “Do you recall him saying anything about how long he was here for?”
William looked at Robert before shaking his head.
“Do you remember what he was driving?”
“Actually, he walked,” William said. “I know, because I went out for a smoke while Robert was ringing him up. He was just staying over at the Bayview. I noticed he was on foot.”
“The foot!” Robert gasped. “Is he the foot?”
“No, no, we’re just trying to find him,” Maggie said.
“We don’t like the foot,” William said.
Robert shook his head. “The foot is bad for business.”
Maggie nodded and smiled, although she felt a little sick to her stomach. The mention of Gregory Boudreaux had been doing that to her lately.
“Okay, well, if you remember anything else about him, give me a call, would you?” Maggie handed William her card.
“Sure. Of course,” William said. As Maggie headed for the door, she heard him add, “I told you no good would come of that foot.”
Maggie walked back out into the heat, grabbed her coffee out of the console of her Jeep, and stood there drinking it while she let the car air out.
They’d found Gregory Boudreaux’s body on the beach on St. George Island, with a .38 gunshot wound to the mouth. Maggie was, unfortunately for her, the only investigator available at the m
oment. Unfortunate, because she had never told a soul that Gregory had raped her in the woods one day, when she was fifteen and he was home from college.
Larry had deemed the death a suicide and that should have been that. But Maggie’s nightmares had started up again and the case had brought her and Bennett Boudreaux together in some strange sort of dance around the truth. He’d let her understand that he knew about the rape, though he hadn’t actually come right out and said it. She’d also gotten the feeling that he suspected her of finally killing Gregory for it. What she didn’t know was what he intended to do with that suspicion.
She also didn’t know who had mailed her an apology from Gregory a few days after his funeral. An apology that had his fingerprints all over it. Had this guy Wilmette mailed it? Was he the other, unseen person who had been with Gregory when Gregory had come upon Maggie fishing all alone?
She’d been thinking that Wilmette was just the hapless owner of an unwelcome foot. Now he was all tied up with Gregory Boudreaux and things were getting messy.
After going back to the Bayview to look through Wilmette’s things again, driving around to look fruitlessly for a blue Kia Sedona, and making the rounds at the marina, where no one reported seeing anything helpful, Maggie drove across the bridge to the office in Eastpoint.
She ducked her head into Wyatt’s office on the way to her own, but while his desk looked to be in use, Wyatt wasn’t at it. She waved or said hello to a few deputies on her way down the hall to her office, set her afternoon coffee on her desk, and sat down at her computer.
While her computer booted, Maggie had a sudden flash of memory that made the hairs stand up on her arms. Gregory Boudreaux, straddling her on the ground, atop a sheet of molding leaves, and looking off to the left somewhere in the woods.
Hey, you want some?
Maggie jumped a little when her computer beeped at her for her password, then she typed it in and pulled up arrest records. There were none for Brandon Wilmette, but there were several speeding tickets and DUIs, and she stared at the sullen Georgia State driver’s license picture. Longish blond bangs tossed to one side. Dull hazel eyes. An Abercrombie T-shirt underneath a brown leather jacket. She didn’t know him.
“Hey, I have interesting news to convey,” said Wyatt cheerfully, as he walked into her office with an enormous Mountain Dew.
“Yeah, me too,” Maggie said, less cheerfully.
“Me first. My buddy in Tallahassee called a few minutes ago. We got a hit on CODIS, thanks to a paternity suit from 2012. Our foot belongs to Brandon Wilmette. The baby, apparently, did not.”
Maggie looked at him, as a heavy weight settled in her chest.
“Ta da,” Wyatt said weakly. “You’re not as excited by all this timesaving news as I wanted you to be.”
“Yeah, well.” Maggie flicked her pen a few times. “It would seem that Brandon Wilmette wasn’t some tourist. He was here for Gregory Boudreaux’s funeral.”
“How’d you find that out?”
“I stopped by the flower shop.”
“Huh.” Wyatt folded himself into the metal chair in front of her desk and took a drink of his Mountain Dew. “Huh,” he said again.
He looked at Maggie, but she didn’t want to look him in the eye at the moment, so she stared at her pen.
“So what’s your plan?” he asked.
“Well,” she said, finally looking up. “I guess I’m going to go talk to Bennett Boudreaux.”
Wyatt smiled. “Ah, yes, Uncle Bennett. Your new buddy and Cajun jitterbug partner.”
“He’s not my buddy,” Maggie said half-heartedly. “But he can probably tell us something about Wilmette.”
Wyatt regarded her for a moment and Maggie stared back at him until she became uncomfortable with it.
“What?” she asked.
“You and Boudreaux. It’s problematic.”
Maggie knew that, but she asked anyway. “In what way?”
“Well, first you’re seen sucking down oysters with him at Boss Oyster—”
“That was work.”
“I know that. Then you’re dancing with him at the Cajun festival—”
“That was relief from work.”
“I know that, too.”
“He danced with a lot of respectable women.”
“Nevertheless, all this has raised a few eyebrows,” Wyatt said mildly. “Some people think Boudreaux has his heart set on having you in his pocket, since Bellows is now playing shuffleboard down in the Keys.”
Gordon Bellows had been Maggie’s predecessor, and was generally known to have been on Boudreaux’s payroll, though nothing was ever proven.
“He’s not trying to get me in his pocket.”
“How do you know?”
“I asked him.”
“Well. That’s a nice, frank relationship you guys have going so far.”
“It’s really not a relationship, Wyatt.” Maggie didn’t care to mention that she’d also gone to Boudreaux to try to get help for Grace Carpenter, or that Boudreaux had actually tried to give it.
“Well, let’s be clear,” Wyatt said. He leaned over to peek out into the hallway before he spoke again, more softly. “I’m not worried about competition from a sixty-something year old man, but I am worried that he’s after something.”
“He seems to like me for some reason,” Maggie said.
“Oh, that I don’t doubt,” Wyatt said. “But I don’t think Boudreaux does anything simply because he likes, or even dislikes, someone. No disrespect to your charms, but he wants something.”
Maggie looked back down at her desk. Wyatt was right, of course, but she wasn’t able to tell Wyatt any of the reasons that he might be correct. She hadn’t told him about her connection to Gregory, although she should have done so the minute they found hm on the beach. But she’d never told anyone, not even her parents. Not even David. Now it seemed too late to do that.
So, she couldn’t tell Wyatt that she thought Boudreaux suspected her of killing Gregory, or that maybe he intended to repay her for it, or to use it against her as leverage in some way. She’d just have to leave Wyatt in the dark, and she was feeling increasingly bad, and increasingly worried, about that.
It also bothered her that she was starting to like Boudreaux enough to hope that he just liked her, despite what he knew and what he might suspect. It bothered her that she liked him at all.
Maggie looked back up at Wyatt, who was still watching her. “Well, I’m going to go talk to him.”
“Maybe I should go, too.”
“No. I think he’ll speak more freely if it’s just me,” Maggie said. “We do have some kind of weird honesty thing going on.”
Wyatt looked at her for a minute, then took a swig of his soda. “Okay. But if we pull one single case this year that doesn’t have something to do with Boudreaux, I think you should start distancing yourself.”
Maggie nodded, but she wondered if she meant it, exactly.
Bennett Boudreaux lived in a large but unassuming white frame house in the Historic District. Although the property took up almost an entire city lot and was owned by the richest man in town, it was curiously lacking in pomp and arrogance.
A wide porch wrapped around the entire house, with hanging baskets of flowers spaced periodically between the white wicker chairs and rockers, and the yard was filled with bougainvillea, hibiscus, and hydrangea in every conceivable color.
Maggie pulled into the oyster shell driveway behind Bennett’s gray Mercedes S-class and turned off the engine. She saw Amelia look up from where she was sweeping the porch, then go back to her work. Maggie walked up to the porch and climbed the three wide, brick steps.
“Good afternoon,” she said. “It’s Amelia, isn’t it?”
Amelia gave her just a glance, not sullen, exactly, but clearly disinterested. “Yes,” she said, then went back to sweeping.
“Is Mr. Boudreaux at home? His office said he wasn’t in today.”
Amelia didn’t stop sweeping, bu
t she slowed up a bit. “Mr. Boudreaux on the back porch.”
Maggie pointed beyond Amelia to the corner of the porch. “That way?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you,” Maggie said, then walked past the tall, cocoa-colored woman in the plumeria-covered housedress.
Her hiking boots clumped along the gray-painted wood planks of the porch as she made her way past more white furniture, more hanging flowers. Huge, twelve-pane windows revealed glimpses of ship’s lathe walls and overstuffed, floral furniture. Much more feminine than Maggie would have assumed for Boudreaux, but then she remembered he had a fancy wife.
As she closed in on the back of the house, Maggie could hear Boudreaux speaking. When she rounded the corner, she saw him standing at a small white wrought-iron table. Seated at the table was the smallest, oldest woman Maggie had ever seen, and she realized that this must be Amelia’s mother, the one few people had seen in the last couple of decades.
The little woman looked up as Maggie approached, her eyes enormous behind Coke bottle glasses. She wore a yellow bandana on her head and a faded, flowered housedress much like her daughter’s.
Boudreaux looked over his shoulder at Maggie and smiled. She was struck again by how handsome he was. He wasn’t over five foot seven or eight, but he was trim in his khaki trousers and lilac cotton shirt, and there was just a touch of silver in his full head of thick, golden-brown hair. But mostly, it was the eyes. They were the bluest eyes Maggie had ever seen, and he had a way of looking so intently at someone that it was like being pinned to a corkboard and examined.
“Well, hello, Maggie,” Boudreaux said as she approached.
“Hello, Mr. Boudreaux,” Maggie answered. Boudreaux was peeling one of several different types of mango on a cutting board. “I’m sorry, are you eating?”
“No, we’re just having some mangoes. Come on over.” He stood up straight as Maggie stopped at the table, then indicated Miss Evangeline with a hand.
“Maggie, this is Miss Evangeline,” he said, then looked at the birdlike little woman. “And this is Maggie Redmond. She’s with the Sheriff’s Office.”
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