What Washes Up (4 page)

A few minutes later, Maggie leaned on Wyatt’s door jamb and waited while he finished up a conversation with one of the deputies. Once the deputy had left, Maggie walked into the office, pulling her purse up on her shoulder.

“Hey,” Wyatt said. “You heading out?”

“Yeah.” Maggie glanced into the hallway before going on. “Hey, I was wondering if I could talk to you about something.”

Wyatt tilted his head just a bit. “Sure. What’s up?”

Maggie looked back toward the door. “It’s kind of private.”

“Work private?”

“Mostly.”

“Stop skulking by the door. Come over here.”

Maggie walked over to stand near Wyatt’s desk, as he tossed an empty Mountain Dew into the trash and grabbed another one out of the mini-fridge behind him.

“You know, those things have flame retardant in them.”

“I know. That’s why I’ve never spontaneously combusted,” he said, cracking it open. “And I have a factoid for you, too. If you try any harder to look like we’re not talking about anything, people are going to start wondering why we’re not talking about anything.”

Maggie sighed. “I’m just trying to be careful,” she said quietly. “And it is private.”

“Okay.” Wyatt lowered his voice, despite what he’d just said. “You wanna come by the house later?”

When Maggie thought of Wyatt’s house, she thought of sitting on his dock on their first date, or of falling asleep in his arms on the couch after she’d finally let herself feel David’s death. If Wyatt was going to be upset with her, she didn’t want it to be there.

“Actually, can you come out to mine?”

“Sure. What about the kids?” he asked.

“They’re going over to my parents’ to spend the night,” she said.

Maggie expected one of Wyatt’s eyebrow dances and a smart remark. She didn’t get one. Instead, his eyes narrowed just a little.

“Okay.”

“I need to follow up on something with the foot first,” Maggie said. “About seven okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll be there.”

“Okay,” Maggie said, feeling uncomfortable with the way he was looking at her. “Well.”

“If you get shot this time, I’m not coming over there anymore.”

Maggie let out a nervous laugh and headed for the door. “I’ll try to avoid it.”

Lafayette Park was located on the bay, in a residential neighborhood just off the Historic District. Wyatt’s cottage was just a few blocks away and, as Maggie passed it, she wondered if she’d be as welcome there after tonight.

She parked in the small parking area on 13th Street and turned off the Jeep, took a deep breath. She could see a couple of children playing in the big white gazebo in the center of the park, where local couples liked to have their wedding photos taken. Two young mothers stood nearby, and through her open window, Maggie could just hear one of them call to one or more of the kids. The wind had picked up considerably since earlier in the day, and a sheet of dark, gray clouds looked low enough to touch.

Maggie rolled up her window and got out of the car. She could see Boudreaux, sitting on a bench that looked out toward the bay. Her hiking boots thumped dully on the brick-paver path that led there.

Boudreaux looked over his shoulder as she got nearer, then stood up and waited for her as she walked over to the bench. The wind ruffled his hair, and he ran a hand through it to get it out of his eyes.

“Hello, Maggie,” he said.

“Hello, Mr. Boudreaux.”

As she always was, Maggie was struck by how attractive he was. It had partly to do with his features, especially those intense blue eyes, but it had as much to do with his combination of roughness and casual elegance.

His light blue linen shirt and cream-colored slacks cost more than Maggie’s entire wardrobe, and she could probably take a decent vacation if she pawned his watch, but his deeply tanned skin was that of a man who had spent his life on the water, and his hands were those of an oysterman, with calloused palms and fingers that bore small white scars from rock and shell.

“There’s no one out on the pier. I thought we might walk out there,” he said.

Maggie nodded, and he held a hand out toward the long pier that extended into the bay. He fell into step with her as they walked across the back of the park toward the pier.

“I appreciate you meeting me,” he said politely.

“Actually, I was planning on calling you,” Maggie said.

“Is that right?’ he asked, looking over at her with those inquisitive eyes. “Well, serendipity.”

The young mothers were herding their children toward Avenue B at the front of the park, leaving Maggie and Boudreaux alone. Maggie got the faint taste of wet metal in her mouth as she breathed, and thunder rumbled quietly in the distance, over the sea.

“My timing may not have been perfect,” Boudreaux said. “I apologize. I’m afraid I don’t have an umbrella.”

“I don’t actually own one,” Maggie said.

“Neither do I,” he said, and looked at her with a small smile. “That’s right. You like the storms as much as I do.”

“Yes,” she said.

They stepped onto the thousand foot long pier, which had been badly damaged by Hurricane Dennis in 2005, then rebuilt in 2008. It was a popular place for locals to fish, but not today. Their feet thumped softly on the wood as they walked, accompanied by the sound of the sea oats and tall grass on either side as they rustled in the wind.

“How’s your arm, by the way?”

“Much better, thank you,” Maggie answered.

They walked in silence for a moment before Boudreaux spoke again. “I was very upset to hear what happened, Maggie,” he said.

Maggie wasn’t sure what she wanted to say to that, so she said nothing.

“This man that shot you. I understand he was from Eastpoint?”

“Yes, at least, recently. He was originally from Fort Lauderdale.”

“And have you tracked him back to Rupert Fain?”

“Like I said earlier, Mr. Boudreaux, it’s not my case,” Maggie said. “I’m actually not privy to all that much. But no, we haven’t exactly connected him to Fain.”

Boudreaux looked over at her, then looked out at the water. “I find that troubling.”

Maggie wondered if it bothered him for the same reason it bothered her.

“So do I,” she finally said.

She’d spent so much time wondering whether to confront Boudreaux about the man that shot her that the idea of walking away from this conversation without doing it made her feel tired.

“Mr. Boudreaux, do you remember a few days after I was shot, I asked you if you had tried to hurt me?”

He looked her in the eye. “Yes, I do. And I assured you that I hadn’t. Why do you mention it?”

Maggie didn’t think the way she felt was too typical of someone confronting someone about whether or not they had tried to kill her. Instead, it felt more like fear of disappointment.

“The man that shot me. Charlie Harper. After he shot me, he walked over to finish me off. He said something to me.”

“What was that?” Boudreaux asked.

Maggie stopped walking and turned to face him. He stopped as well and waited.

Maggie took a deep breath through her nose, trying to look like she wasn’t. “He said ‘I’m tired of cleaning up Boudreaux’s messes.’”

The change in Boudreaux’s expression wasn’t significant, but it was noticeable. His eyes narrowed just fractionally, and Maggie saw a vein in his neck pop, as though he were clenching his teeth. She watched him as he took a long, slow breath and let it out just as slowly.

“I didn’t send him to hurt you, Maggie,” he said quietly. “You are asking again, are you not?”

“I guess I am,” she answered.

He started walking again, and she followed. They didn’t speak again until they reached the covered area at the end of the dock. The wind was stronger there, and whipped at Maggie’s hair, pulling strands of it from its clip and lashing her face with them. She ignored it and watched Boudreaux as he put his hands on the wooden rail and looked out at the bay.

She and Boudreaux had been playing some kind of verbal hide and seek for weeks, ever since she’d been called to the beach over on the island, to investigate the suicide of his nephew, Gregory. She’d lived her entire life in Apalach and talked to Boudreaux maybe ten times in all those years, and never anything beyond “hello.” She’d never even worked a case involving him, though there had been several.

Suddenly, they were conversing over oysters on the deck at Boss Oyster, playing some sort of cat and mouse with the truth about her and Gregory. He’d let her know, without coming out and saying it, that he knew Gregory had raped her when she was a teen. She’d always felt that he suspected she may have killed him. She’d also worried about how he felt about that. He was known for being a vengeful enemy and fiercely protective of family.

But, for reasons she really didn’t want to look at too closely, she had a certain respect for Boudreaux. She even liked him, when she had the guts to admit that to herself. Even more troubling, she wanted his apparent approval of her to be genuine. She could handle someone wanting to kill her; she just didn’t want it to be Boudreaux.

Boudreaux turned around and leaned back against the rail, looked at her again.

“I think we have arrived at the point I predicted we would sooner or later,” he said.

“Which point is that?”

“Well, if I ask you what reason you think I have for wanting to hurt you, your answer is inevitably going to bring us to other questions you have in your head, but haven’t asked.”

“Would you answer them if I did?” she asked, but she already knew that he would. She’d always known that he was waiting for her to ask.

“Yes.”

Maggie’s heart started beating a little harder in her chest, and there seemed to be less oxygen in the air. She got as much of it as she could before speaking again.

“You know that Gregory raped me, don’t you?” The words felt like a foreign language. She’d never even said it out loud to herself.

Boudreaux’s left eye twitched almost imperceptibly. “Yes,” he said quietly.

No one knew what had happened when she was fifteen, except for a psychologist she had visited three times in her twenties. Therefore, no one she knew had ever looked at her with that knowledge in their eyes, and it struck her as surreal that this man would be the first to do so. Not her parents, not her ex-husband, but Bennett Boudreaux, Apalach’s own alleged crime lord, and a man she hadn’t even known until last month.

“Have you always known?” she asked.

“No,” he answered. “I knew nothing about it until the night before he died.”

Maggie looked out at the water a moment, trying to gather her thoughts, to marshal her questions now that she was asking them. “He told you?”

Boudreaux sighed. “He asked me to go over there because he wanted money. To go to South America. You were one of the reasons why. Apparently, seeing you around town, when he was here, made him feel a lot of guilt. Something he wasn’t very comfortable with.”

Maggie restrained herself from mentioning that she’d never been very happy seeing Gregory around town, either.

He looked out at the water for a moment, then looked back at her. “He showed me the letter he wrote you.”

The letter. An apology from Gregory, which had arrived in her mail the day of his funeral. Getting it had messed with her head. When she’d found out that Sport Wilmette, the owner of the foot, was an old friend of Gregory’s, she’d assumed that he’d sent the letter.

“Did you send me that letter?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Why, dammit?” she snapped.

He looked surprised. Surprised and angry. “Because he owed you a damned apology,” he said evenly.

“Do you know what it was like to get it after he was dead?” she asked. “It would have been a shock when he was alive, but the day of his funeral?”

“I’m sorry. I really didn’t consider that.”

Maggie watched a gull dive into the water near the grass, watched it take off again a moment later. She needed a break from Boudreaux’s gaze. When she was ready she looked back at him.

“Do you think I killed Gregory?” she asked.

“No, I don’t. He shot himself.”

Maggie let out a deep sigh. She’d had that question weighing so heavily on her mind for so long that she felt almost weightless without it. Not relieved, just suddenly unburdened.

“There was someone else there that day. In the woods. I never saw him,” she said. “It was Wilmette, wasn’t it?” Boudreaux had hinted as much during her investigation, but she wanted to hear it.

“Yes,” he said flatly.

“You said he asked you for money, to invest in some business. Was he trying to blackmail you?”

“I’m sure he thought of it as something else.”

“He wasn’t in much of a position to tell anyone.”

“I don’t think he thought it through,” Boudreaux said. “I told you. He was dumber than hell.”

Maggie was a little surprised that her next question was harder to ask than the previous one. She knew it was because she wanted him to answer “no,” but he would probably say “yes,” and she didn’t know what she would have to with that.

“Did you kill him for it?”

Boudreaux had freely admitted that Wilmette had been at his seafood business, Sea-Fair, the night before he’d gone missing. The place where he’d just built a fish processing room, complete with knives and stainless steel tables, and hoses for washing blood down the drains in the floor. And, a few nights after Wilmette had last been seen, she’d run into Boudreaux at Boss Oyster. He’d been on his way out to do some “night fishing.” A few days after that, poor Axel Blackwell dragged Wilmette’s foot up in his shrimp net.