Blood on the Bayou (21 page)

Barbara Beauchamp, grandmother of the murdered Grace and mother of her murderers, Libby and James. Barbara doesn’t know that James was Grace’s father as well as her brother, but she knows that the children she loved were killers. She lost her entire family to violence in less than six weeks’ time. I know we all grieve in our own way, but the woman with the goofy smile and her hand straying down to get a handful of Tucker’s ass does
not
look like she’s grieving.

She looks like a cougar with a claw full of man meat.

“You there?” Lance asks.

“Yeah, I think the phone cut out for a second.” I force myself to pull it together and end this conversation before Tucker gets any closer. “One question: Is this delivery going to the woman from the tape? If so, I’m bringing my gun.”

“You should always bring your gun. But yeah, it’s her.”

It’s her. A fresh wave of pain flashes behind my eyes. “See you at two.”

I end the call as Tucker and Barbara stumble by on the sidewalk across the street. It’s not quite eight, but from the weave factor, I’m betting they’ve already had a few. For a moment I don’t think Tucker’s noticed me, but then he turns and lifts a hand. “Cousin! Morning!”

“Sure is.” I grit my teeth. Hitch takes a long look at me, before shifting his curious gaze to Tucker. I never introduced him to my family, but I did talk about them from time to time, and I never talked about a male cousin close to my age.

That’s because I don’t have one. All of my cousins are girls, a fact I think I mentioned to Hitch at some point. But whatever. The lies I’ll have to tell him will be worth it. I need a powwow with Tucker. Now.

“You got a second?” I shout. “I wanted to talk to you about that shed you were going to build.”

“Well . . . we’re kind of on our way somewhere important,” he calls back, a leer in his voice I’ve never heard before, a leer that leaves no doubt where he and Barbara are headed. He’s bound for Camellia Grove and some plantation-house sexy time with Barbara in her big brass bed.

My nose wrinkles. I don’t like the thought of Tucker rolling around with Barbara, and not just because she’s old enough to be his mother. Barbara has aged well and can afford all the lotions and creams and
injections of deadly viruses that keep a middle-aged woman looking younger than she is. But she’s an elitist snob who’s always treated the people of this town as members of the servant class. I have no doubt she’s using Tucker.

But maybe he’s okay with that. Maybe he’ll sleep with anything with boobs—even if they’re fake and once nursed a child only a few years younger than he is—and I shouldn’t have been even a little flattered that he tried to get into my panties yesterday.

“It’ll only take a second.” I ignore a disapproving grunt from Hitch, who doesn’t realize that “building a shed” is code for “I’m in deep shit and need your help immediately.”

“If I don’t get a place to store that motorcycle, I’m going to go
crazy
.” I hit the word like a mallet upside a gong. “Really crazy.”

Tucker laughs, but he smells what I’m cooking. Tension creeps into his shoulders and he stands up straighter. “All right,” he drawls. “I guess I can spare a—”

Barbara interrupts him. Her whisper is too soft for me to hear, but I see her artificially plumped lips move. Tucker turns to whisper something back, but Barbara only gives a delicate shake of her head and fluffs her hair with pink-tipped claws. She doesn’t look my way, or give any sign that she’s aware there’s anyone else on the street.

Ever since it came out that her daughter tried to kill me with a shrimp muffin, the woman’s been giving me the cut direct. When I see her on the street, she sticks her nose in the air and turns around to walk in
the opposite direction. As if
I
committed some unforgivable social faux pas by daring to be almost murdered. I never expected an apology—it isn’t
completely
her fault that she raised a homicidal maniac—but this blaming the victim crap is crap.

Tucker turns back to me, but makes no move toward my side of the street. “Let me shout at you later, Cousin. We’ve got an appointment. The massage therapists are coming at eight-thirty.”

Massage therapists?
He’s blowing me off for a couples massage with Barbara Beauchamp?

“I’ve got work stuff lined up all day,” I say, hating how desperate I sound. “Are you sure you can’t—”

“I’ll call you.” Tucker lets Barbara tug him farther down the sidewalk. “Later, Red!”

“Suck it, Bubba,” I shout. Tucker laughs, making me want to race after him and punch him in his pretty face. “For real. You totally suck. I have a major,
pressing
need!”

But he doesn’t turn around. He’s
that
committed to being Barbara Beauchamp’s boy toy. I shake my head in disgust and imagine all the really mean things I’m going to say to him the next time we’re alone. Like the fact that he could have been born from the vagina he’s so hot to get into, and how totally gross and unprofessional it is to blow off a fellow magical person in need to get his daily dose of Frigid Rich Bitch with a superiority complex.

“Who’s that?” Hitch asks.

“My cousin,” I mumble.

“That man is not your cousin.”

I turn back to Hitch with what I hope is an innocent look. “He is. Unfortunately. On my mom’s side. A real loser jerk asshole. Don’t ever loan him money.”

“Wouldn’t think about it.” Hitch leans down to whisper in my ear. “I don’t like seeing you so eager for another man to build you a shed.”

Hm
. Maybe my code did not go as unnoticed as I assumed. Time to lie a little harder. “I’m not eager for Tucker to do anything. I just don’t like seeing my cousin with a woman like Barbara.”

“I’m not stupid, Annabelle.” He turns his head. His lips brush my cheek, and my breath rushes out. “If that man’s your cousin, I’m your Aunt Floe.”

“That’s what women call their periods,” I say, angry that Hitch can still make my stomach do that fluttery thing, even when he’s topping the list of people I want to smack with a dead fish. Or at least he was until Tucker strutted down the sidewalk. “That’s disgusting.”

“I’m hurt,” he says, ignoring me. “You never gave me a nickname.”

“Your name
is
a nickname, Herbert Mitchell. It’s stupid to nickname a person who already goes by a nickname. And besides.” I step away and start across the street. “You never gave me one, either.”

“Red is hardly original,” Hitch calls after me.

I don’t respond. I keep gunning for Fernando’s front door, knowing Hitch will follow. He has to come get his suit and whatever else he needs to head out into the bayou. Until then, I’ll spend my time pumping
Fern for information about what the hell is going on between Barbara and Tucker. Hopefully he’ll be hot enough for gossip that he’ll forgive me for standing him up last night because I need the dirt on those two. The sooner the better.

I’ve got a bad feeling Tucker’s relationship with Babs isn’t purely about physical pleasure and gigolo-type treats. I smell an agenda, an invisible-person agenda.

I
push through the front door of the flophouse into the gently wafting air-conditioning and even gentler wafting jazz music. Except for a few men lounging on the lobby’s vintage couches, sipping free coffee out of a mishmash of midcentury china cups, the place is pretty quiet.

Way too quiet for Fernando to be close by. I peek into the bar area, anyway, just in case, but Barry, one of the bar backs, is the only one there.

He stops chopping limes to shoot me a smile. “Hey, slut! What’s up?”

I try not to roll my eyes. It’s one thing for Fern to call me a slut, it’s quite another for him to spread the use of the moniker. Still, I know Barry doesn’t mean any harm. He’s a sweetheart and it’s not like he doesn’t get around. He’s a delicate, boyish type with skin so dark it’s nearly black, and a goatee so cute it makes me want to pinch his face and other gay men want to pinch all his other parts. He and Fernando had a brief thing a few years ago, but parted amicably. Fern isn’t the type to hold a grudge with his exes . . . only his best friends.

Ugh
. I need to find him, and head the pout off at the pass.

“Fern around?” I ask Barry as Hitch breezes into the lobby. He spies me, but doesn’t stop to say hello. He starts up the stairs to his room, pulling his key from his back pocket. I’ve only got a minute or two.

“Um . . . yeah. Somewhere,” Barry says. “He’s not in the laundry room because I was just there, and he’s not in the kitchen because the limes were in the big fridge and I had to—”

“Never mind, I’ll find him.” I cut him off before he can complete his list of all the places Fern is not. The bed-and-breakfast isn’t that big, and I’m not afraid to head up to the top floor and breach Fern’s inner sanctum if I have to. It’ll be faster to start looking.

I head up the stairs, but change my mind on the third step and turn back around. It’s so early—barely eight o’clock. I can think of only two places Fern might be at this hour. He’s either upstairs in bed, or out on the back patio watering his flowers before it gets too hot. In the name of avoiding climbing unnecessary stairs, I slip through the lobby and out into the back garden.

The dark red tiles on the patio are already damp and the flowers in the planters dewy and dripping. Fern’s definitely been here, but maybe he—

There.

I spot him at the far end of the garden, by the clutch of potted palms he brings out to give the hot tub area a tropical feel in the summer. I’m about to call out when I see the arm around his waist. Fern
isn’t alone. I step back and prepare to flee the scene—unlike Tucker and Bernadette and everyone else in Donaldsonville, I don’t make a habit of spying on other people’s liaisons—when curiosity gets the better of me.

Fern hasn’t been dating much lately. At least no one he’s felt the need to tell me about. But something in the way he’s standing—so relaxed, leaning into the man in front of him with such familiarity—tells me this isn’t a quick slap-and-tickle session. This is someone he cares about, who he’s been involved with for a while. And if that’s the case, why hasn’t he said anything to me about it? We’re best friends.

I’ve had my share of things I can’t share with him lately, but that’s because lives are at stake and unusually strange shit is going down. Back in the good old days, I never would have kept anything from him, and he usually can’t wait to dissect every aspect of his latest love affair.

I pause, easing far enough into the shadows of the arbor of grapevines to hide myself, while giving me a clear view of Fernando and Friend as they kiss. And kiss. And kiss. And then there’s a little groping and hips shift and I’m starting to get uncomfortable enough to sneak back through the door without discovering Friend’s identity, when Friend pulls away and shoots a wary look around the garden, as if he can sense his private moment is being observed.

I smash back against the bricks, holding my breath, hiding behind the grape leaves, praying I haven’t been seen. Because I know Fern’s friend, and
I know why Fern’s been keeping their relationship under deep cover. Friend is
Abe,
Cane’s older brother, captain of the DPD, a man assumed to be straight as a willow switch by everyone in town.

Holy crap.
I always thought Abe crossed the street when he saw Fern and me coming because he was a homophobe. But he’s actually one of the “homos”—albeit a deeply closeted one. Cane and his mom certainly have
no
idea that Abe is gay, and I have a feeling his mom would experience a cardiac event if she knew Abe was never going to give her grandbabies.

Dozens of questions rush through my mind—how long has this been going on? Why has Fern pretended to think Cane is such a hot piece when he’s been scoring with his almost equally hot brother all along? How could Abe let Cane arrest Fern for a child’s murder last month? How could he have so little faith in his lover?

Because they
are
in love. I can see it in the way Fern reaches for Abe’s shoulders, in the way Abe lets Fern whisper him back into his arms and pull him into the shade of the palms. In the way they move together, touching with such careful deliberation.

Poor Fern. He must have been ordered to keep this a secret.

Abe knows our town better than anyone. He knows homosexuality is tolerated, but not truly accepted, and that being “the gay cop” wouldn’t give him street cred with the criminal element. Abe and Fern may never be able to be openly together, and Fern’s crankiness suddenly makes more sense.

So does his disapproval of seeing me with anyone other than Cane. Abe has never been my biggest fan, but he knows that his brother loves me and wants to build a life together. And Abe wants whatever his brother wants. Usually, anyway. It makes me wonder if Abe knows what Cane’s doing in the bayou today, if he’s in on the sketchy business, or if, for once, Cane is acting as a solo agent.

Maybe Abe has something left to lose. A tall, sexy, something who is even now pushing him back against the brick wall surrounding the patio.