No Limits (23 page)

To do that he had to go back to the beginning, to start over and let none of what he knew get in the way of the things he needed an open mind to learn. A mystery dinner theater, huh?

He took a deep breath and a seat on the edge of a blue corduroy recliner. “What’s the deal with the boxes? And is there any
place in town that delivers food? I can’t think on an empty stomach.”

“No delivery, but I’ve got the makings of crabmeat omelets,” Paschelle offered, jumping to her feet. “Will that work?”

Simon nodded. “It’ll more than work. Thanks.”

“No problem.” She waved a hand as she climbed over boxes to get from the couch to the kitchen. “This stuff is all y’all anyway. I’m just a fly on the wal
l
.”

Once Paschelle was gone and Micky had settled on the far end of the couch from King, Simon looked from his cousin to Terrill and asked, “What stuff is she talking about, and who makes up the y’all?”

“The y’all is the three of us who grew up here,” Terrill said, kneeling in front of the small square coffee table and the open box on top. “Maybe Micky, too, if Bear really did try to shut her up, son of a bitch. He’s always been one, but goddamn if he’s hurt Lisa…”

“Have you confronted him?” Simon watched the other man struggle to pull in a breath.

“Are you dealing with suspicions, or real evidence?”

Terrill looked up. “I haven’t confronted him because what I wanted you to see I only ran across this afternoon.”

“In these boxes.”

“In this one here, if we’re wanting to be exact.” Terril reached inside for a single sheet of paper. “Before Lisa went missing, she’d been working on the Landry genealogy. These boxes have been in Bear’s attic for years. Lorna’s handiwork, I’m sure. He’s never been organized, and she’s the only one who’s ever worked for him.”

“Even after going into business for herself?” Simon glanced at King, remembering their earlier conversation about the unlikely pair.

“She may have her own office and her own business,” King said, “but she still works for the judge. She’s always worked for the judge.”

“If I can interrupt,” Micky said, looking at each man in turn before going on. “You said Lisa had been working on the family genealogy.”

Terrill nodded.

“And she was going through these boxes?”

He nodded again.

“Are you thinking she uncovered something in his files that your father didn’t want known?”

“That’s what I’m thinking now. At first I thought she’d gone asking questions of someone she shouldn’t have. Or even been caught looking through public records someone thought should be private.”

“What changed your mind?” Simon asked.

Terrill rattled the paper, handed it to Simon as King sat forward and said, “Looks like Le Hasard might not have been in the family as long as we thought, cuz.”

What the hell?

Simon frowned at King, looked down at the parchment he held—a handwritten transfer of ownership passing the four thousand acres in question from a Ross Landry to Zachary Benoit, his and King’s great-great-grandfather, as payment for winnings due in a poker game. It was signed by three witnesses.

Priceless. Seriously priceless. Simon rubbed at his forehead, then started to laugh. Micky snatched the paper out of his hand to read it for herself.

“So one of your grandparents,” she said to Terril , “bet the farm and lost it to one of their grandparents? Is that what this says?”

“That’s what it looks like to me.” Terrill returned the paper to the box.

“Except if that’s the original,” King mused aloud, “why’s it in a box of Bear’s things instead of on file with the parish’s property tax assessor’s office?”

“I imagine because Zachary Benoit never had a chance to file it. He was found with a bullet between his eyes the next day,” Simon offered in response, having noticed the document’s Christmas date. “I did a family tree in fifth grade. I
remember my mother tell
ing me that he’d been found the day after Christmas, and that no one ever learned who killed him.”

“But if the transfer was never filed,” Terrill said, changing his mind midsentence. “It had to have been. The deed’s in your name now, right? You’ve been paying taxes on the place?”

“It’s mine,” Simon said. “But this is the first I’ve ever heard about the property having belonged to a Landry, or been lost in a poker game.”

“Finding that out wouldn’t have been enough to get Lisa in trouble, would it?” Micky asked.

“Not unless there’s a reason Bear doesn’t want it known that the property used to be ours. I didn’t know,” Terrill said, looked at Simon then King. “You two didn’t know.”

“And so you’re thinking the reason it’s been kept secret might be in a
l
l this stuff?”

Simon asked

“Far-fetched?” Terrill asked.

Simon didn’t think so. “Well, look at the big picture. Lisa was working on the Landry genealogy. The boxes she was digging through turned up information none of the remaining Landry or Benoit descendants knew—”

“With the possible exception of Bear,” Terrill reminded him. Simon nodded. “With the possible exception of Bear. And now Lisa is missing.”

Micky picked up his next thoughts. “And when someone outside the smal
l
circle Bear controls shows up and asks about his daughter-in-law, she’s run off the road.”

“I guess that would make the question, what exactly did Lisa discover?” King asked, and Simon responded, “And how far would Bear go to keep the information from getting out?”
Thirty-two

M icky didn’t like to think of herself as a wuss, but she couldn’t take it anymore, this speculation over what might have happened to Lisa, what she knew, what she could be going through even now—wherever she was, if she was stil
l
alive. All of those unknowns were getting to be too much, especially when she thought how things might have been different if she’d made the effort to stay in touch with her friend, if she hadn’t let her own life get so out of control that she forgot about Lisa and what they shared.

Then she wondered if her coming here was the very act that might have put the wheels in motion to save Lisa from her fate. It was al
l
too much to process on an empty stomach, or with her body continually reminding her of the afternoon spent naked in Simon’s arms. Even the short walk to the kitchen to offer her help to Paschelle had Micky grimacing. And, unfortunately, she hadn’t put on a full happy face before the other woman turned.

“Are you okay? Is it your arm?”

“You wouldn’t happen to have any gauze and tape, would you?” she asked, gladly latching on to the topic. “We were on our way to the pharmacy when Terrill found us.”

“I think I might still have some.” Paschelle wiped her hands and crossed the kitchen, opened a door that led into a small bathroom. After banging a couple of cabinets, she returned with the supplies.

“I taped King back together not long ago. He was drunk, missed the steps, hit his head on the corner of the porch,” she said, gesturing to her own hairline. “Super Glue and butterfly bandages. Stitches might hurt, you know.”

Knowing, Micky smiled. She sat at the table topped in red Formica and began to unwrap the gauze she’d reused after drying it in front of the upstairs fan. Paschelle joined her, wincing in sympathy. “That’s going to leave some kind of scar.”

“I know. I’m sure it won’t make my people happy, but the way I see it, they’re lucky I’m alive.” My people? Had she really just said that?

“You’re lucky you’re alive. Especially since you survived the fal
l
and escaped from whoever it was who rammed you.”

Micky arched a brow. “Are people talking? Do they know it wasn’t an accident?”

Paschelle opened the box of gauze pads, not looking the least bit chagrined that she might have listened to gossip. “All I know is what I’ve heard from y’all and most of it just now. I don’t plan to mention it to anyone. The only people I talk to are Lorna and King. He obviously knows, and I’d rather Lorna not know that I do.”

“You work for her. Are she and Judge Landry as tight as the guys think?”

“He’s always at the office, yeah,” she said, nodding. “But I’ve worked for her only a couple of years. I’m not the best person to ask.”

“You’re not from here?”

“I guess I am now,” she said, retrieving a pair of scissors from a kitchen drawer. “I grew up in New Orleans.”

“Were you there during Katrina?” Micky wondered what the other woman might have lost.

Paschelle nodded. “Partied like it was nineteen ninety-nine, then left the city when it should have been too late to get out, and ran out of gas in front of Day’s Dress for Less.”

“And you just stayed?”

“I just stayed. Didn’t have anywhere else I needed to be.” She added, “And then I met King,” her face coloring slightly with the admission.

Micky had noticed Simon’s lack of comment when Terrill had mentioned King and Paschelle dating. She’d met him at Red’s before meeting Simon. She understood his appeal

—base though it was. She also understood Paschelle blushing. If King was anything like his cousin…

“You know, when you came into Lorna’s office,” Paschelle said, snipping off several lengths of tape, “I couldn’t place you until the judge said your name. Do you know how beautiful you are? I mean, al
l
made up in your ads, you’re stunning. But you don’t even need the clothes and the color and the jewels and the hair. Look at you. Jeans, sneakers, a baseball jersey, and a ponytail. You’re hot dogs and apple pie and stil
l
drop-dead gorgeous.”

Micky was used to compliments. She was always appreciative, but Paschelle’s words left her speechless and humbled and embarrassed when she thought she was past feeling any of those things.

And then she wondered if it was the billboard more than anything giving Simon hell. If he wasn’t able to see her as herself. If he felt more of a responsibility to keep her out of harm’s way—and out of his life—because of who the rest of the world thought she was.

“Thank you,” she finally said. “I’m enjoying being incognito. If not for the circumstances, I’d be enjoying it even more. I don’t get a break from the public eye very often.”

“God, why would you want to? Live here, like this, instead of traveling the world, meeting the people you do?”

The most interesting person she’d met in years she’d found here in bayou country—

even though he lived half a city away. She couldn’t believe this was all they were going to have, this madness, this mystery. This attempt on her life, a fate that might be worse for Lisa.

“Do you know Lisa? Have you two met?”

“Sure. She lives right across the street.”

Of course. Small towns. Friendly neighbors. Even the nosy ones were probably just looking out for their friends…and might not be welcoming of a stranger who showed up looking for one of their own when that one had gone missing. But Paschelle was Lisa’s neighbor, too. Micky’s pulse picked up as inspiration struck.

“Do you know the other people on the street?”

The other woman nodded briskly, her razor-cut hair swinging as she began to unroll the gauze. “Sure. To say hi to. Mrs. Callahan always gives me tomatoes and cukes from her garden. I pay Mr. DuPont to mow since the yard is so big and he has a tractor.”

“I’m sure Terrill has questioned them already, but do you think they’d talk to me if you introduced me? Lisa and I went to school together. She’s been my best friend for years.”

Paschelle looked up. Her eyes widened. “And you might think of something to ask that Terrill hasn’t?”

“It’s a dumb idea, isn’t it? I mean, either they saw her leave with someone or alone, or they saw someone take her.”

“Assuming they saw anything at all.”

“Like I said, dumb.”

“Not necessarily. Mr. DuPont has been visiting his daughter in Houston since Monday morning. I’ve been collecting his mail. It’s late, but if you want, we can walk it over and see if he saw Lisa that day.”

Micky was already reaching for the scissors and the long length of gauze. “You finish Simon’s omelet. I’ll patch up my arm. If we could find something that would help…”

She couldn’t even put what she was thinking, what she was feeling, into words. “Just cook. Go. Cook.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Paschelle said with a smile.

Thirty-three

T he omelet helped, but Simon had just about run his last lap for the night. Out of the dozen boxes, they’d knocked back six filled mostly with documents related to Bear’s business as a land man. They’d run across a few newspaper clippings, too—most were stories detailing cases over which he’d presided while on the bench and had been dropped down loose inside—but nothing seemed out of the ordinary or rang anyone’s mystery dinner theater bells.

Simon pushed up from his chair and stretched. King had headed for the kitchen and another beer twenty minutes ago. Simon decided he’d better grab one for himself before they were a
l
l gone, and offered to bring one back to Terril .