Sins of the Storm (5 page)

You get touched by that light, boy, it’s like being touched by an angel…

“Obsession,” he corrected. This was exactly why he didn’t want her snooping around, trying to reenact her father’s final days. Marcel Lambert faced charges, but he was out on bail. And his reach was far. The second he learned she was back, that she was stirring up waters best left still—

On a hard breath, Jack pivoted toward her and reached for the map.

But Camille was faster.

The violence in his eyes, his voice, stunned her.

She held her hand over his, not about to let him yank the map away from her. Not about to let him yank anything away.

All the while she slid her free hand into her purse, where she deposited the small microcamera she’d withdrawn while Jack had been watching the Camaro being pulled from the canal. Over the years, she’d learned to be very careful.

She’d also learned to take nothing for granted.

Stay here.
That’s what he’d told her before he’d torn out of her hotel room. But she’d seen his eyes go flat, his mouth tighten, and instinctively she’d known he hadn’t told her everything.

The second Mrs. Landry had said the words
high-speed chase,
the awful coldness had seeped deeper. Because Camille had known….

Now she looked at the hard-eyed man crowding her against the squad car and tried to see the boy he’d been, the one who’d once scoured the swamp in search of the relic he now condemned.

But the knight in shining armor from her childhood, the one she’d loved with every corner of her young heart, no longer existed.

The reality of that cut more than it should have. This was what she’d wanted, she reminded herself, to research her book and testify against Lambert, to make sure the man paid for his crimes, then walk away. And never look back. To sever all those ridiculous, tattered ties that still bound her to this place. This man.

This stranger.

But here in the muggy, midmorning sunshine with her fine-boned and pale hand resting atop his much larger one, something inside her shifted.

“It’s my family,” she reminded. And the religious artifact her ancestors had smuggled from France—
that her father had given his life for—
was more than just a legend. “
My
legacy.”

“And it’s gone.”

Her heart kicked. It had been April. She’d still been in bed when one of the national news shows had previewed a segment about mysteries and secrets and greed, murder and scandal—and étouffée. She’d sat up slowly, fisted the sheets as one commercial after another dragged across the television screen. Then the anchor returned, and within ten seconds she’d been staring at her brother’s face.

The shock had stolen her breath. She’d untangled herself and moved toward the set, lifted a hand and touched him. Touched Gabriel. All the while the anchor had tossed out the details of the story like tawdry gossip: a twenty-year-old family feud had boiled over down in the Big Easy, leaving a celebrated restaurateur facing two sets of charges—the murder of a young French Quarter waitress, and the attempted murder of two assistant district attorneys. At the heart of the scandal, a storied religious artifact dating back to the sixteenth century….

“They destroyed it,” Jack said now. “It’s over.”

Maybe for him. Maybe for everyone else. But not for Camille. And it wouldn’t be, it couldn’t be, until the truth about that night, until the truth everyone claimed was nothing but a figment of Camille’s broken imagination, was exposed.

Lambert had confessed. He’d actually admitted everything to Gabe. When he’d thought Gabe would not live to repeat it. He claimed her father found the stained glass and attempted to double-cross Marcel and his brother, his financiers. There’d been a struggle. And the priceless artifact had shattered.

Coercion, Lambert’s lawyer claimed. The man had said what he’d had to say to save his life.
From Gabe.

The absurdity of that, the fact the judge had actually bought the claim, fired through her.

“Then what’s the harm?” she asked, sliding her hand from Jack’s to the faded map her father had concealed from the world. Maybe it was the one he’d used to find the stained glass. Maybe it was a decoy. Maybe it was nothing, a wild-goose chase—or dead end.

Or maybe it was something he’d died to protect. “This isn’t yours to destroy, Jack. It’s mine. My family’s.”

His smile was slow, insolent. “Sorry,
cher.
What it is is evidence.”

Ignoring his smugness, she ran her finger along a line that seemed to indicate a break between land and water. The map was a close-up. All she had to do was figure out the broader location—an area bordered by a beach?—and she could see for herself.

“Then you better take good care of it, Sheriff,” she said with her best Southern belle smile. “It sure would be a shame if anything happened to it on your watch.”

The taunt registered in the dark glitter of his eyes. “Trust me,
cher.
” Not Cami. Not
’tite chat.
“Nothing’s going to happen on my watch.”

He watched her. She could feel him even though the deputy did his best to be inconspicuous. He was just a kid who wore jeans and a T-shirt and pretended to work under the hood of a rusted pickup. But she’d seen him at the accident scene. He’d been with Jack. He’d had a gun.

Now with a wrench in his hand, he tapped his foot to the beat of a jangly zydeco tune.

Camille could only imagine what it was Jack expected her to do. She glanced at the file on the hotel bed, then again toward the window, and finally she saw the car. Sleek and black, the convertible glided into the parking lot and straight into a spot outside her door. Quickly she grabbed her notebook and her purse, then slipped into the warm blast of late afternoon.

It was like stepping into a sauna.

The deputy looked up, and though Camille knew better, knew it was best to ignore him, pretend she had no idea he was there, she tossed him a wink.

His flush almost made her laugh.

At the car, one darkly tinted window slowly lowered. “Ready?”

“As rain,” Camille said, opening the passenger door and slipping inside.

Her cousin’s smile, wide, conspiratorial, almost blinded her. “Thought I’d wait to lower the top until we were out of here.”

“He’ll get the plates,” Camille pointed out.

Saura laughed. “But until then he’ll sweat a little.” She zipped the car backward, then slid into Drive and sped forward, gunning the engine as they turned onto the highway.

And for the first time since she’d returned to Bayou d’Espere, Camille could breathe. She rolled down the window and welcomed the slap of warm air as the outskirts of town raced by in a blur.

“That bad?” Saura asked.

Camille lifted her hand to the open window. “He knows,” she said. “He knows there’s something I haven’t told him.”

“Then maybe you should.”

“Not yet.” Not until the last possible moment. Doors would open for Camille Fontenot…doors that Jack himself would slam and lock for true crime writer Cameron Monroe. “Do you have it?”

Saura whipped the car around a curve. “In the backseat.”

Camille glanced back, saw the laptop—and the portable printer. “You’re a goddess,” she said, and when Saura shot her one of those knowing smiles, something inside of Camille slipped quietly into place.

Older by a few years, Saura had always been more like a sister than a cousin. That was the way of it in big families. You had your siblings, but the bonds didn’t stop there. You had cousins…and Camille had had Saura.

And she’d never forget the shock of opening her front door six weeks before and finding Saura. She’d tracked Camille down, smiled a quirky little smile, then started to cry. Saura, her tough, gutsy cousin, had cried.

Time had plowed forward, but Saura still wore cutoff shorts that showed off her killer legs, and she still wore her long dark hair in a single braid down her back. But now a woman’s wisdom shone in her dark eyes, a woman’s loss—and a woman’s love.

The rush of emotion surprised Camille. She’d gotten into the car that long-ago summer afternoon of her own volition, that was true. And when she’d reached New Orleans, where Saura had been waiting, she’d kept driving. She could have turned back. She could have called. But she’d never planned to stay gone.

She’d never planned a lot of things.

“What first?” Saura asked. “Pictures or sleuthing?”

And despite the thickness in her throat, Camille smiled. Looking at Saura Robichaud-soon-to-be-D’Ambrosia, no one would ever suspect she was one of the most successful, covert private detectives in New Orleans.

“Sleuthing,” Camille said, sliding a pair of dark sunglasses over her eyes. She had a few bars to hit, a whole list of questions to ask. Starting with the actions of Jack’s father the night he disappeared and ending with the drifter who’d come close to wiping out an entire family in his rush to avoid the authorities. If someone had seen him…maybe they’d seen who he was with. Or heard who he was talking to.

Then, later, in the privacy of Saura’s car, where the all-seeing Sheriff Jacques Savoie would have no way of knowing, they could print the pictures Camille had taken of the map.

“I’ve got someone,” Saura said, and Camille twisted around to see the beat-up pickup from the hotel ambling toward them.

Glancing at her cousin, she reached for the radio and cranked up the volume. “Then let’s lose them.”

“Find her.”

“She’s with her cousin—”

Standing in the waiting room, Jack swore quietly, but the nurses gathered around the station glanced up anyway. The younger grinned. The older…did not. “They could be halfway to New Orleans by now.” If he was lucky. More likely, Camille and Saura were well on their way to trouble. He didn’t for one second believe Russ lost them by accident. That had been Saura, adept at vanishing into shadows…even when there weren’t any. “Keep looking.”

“Roger that,” Russ said. “That car sticks out around these parts. Finding them shouldn’t be hard.”

Jack bit back the hard sound that wanted to break from his throat. Russ meant well, but he didn’t know the Robichauds. “Try Boudreau’s.” With the name of the bar came the memory. Both scraped. For years Jack had avoided the hole-in-the-wall, even as a teenager when sneaking into Boudreau’s had been a coveted rite of passage. Except the once…

What the hell are you doing here?

She’d looked up at him with heavy-lidded bloodshot eyes, and smiled.
The better question is what are
you
doing here?

Now, as sheriff, he routinely pushed through the doors of the last place his father had been seen alive. But never for the whiskey Gator had adored….

“I’ll let you know,” Russ was saying.

Jack ended the call and punched another series of numbers, frowned when he got Detective John D’Ambrosia’s voice mail. “It’s Jack,” he said. “Seems your fiancée is playing
Thelma and Louise
again….”

Minutes passed. Russ didn’t call. Jack crossed the small waiting room to the floral sofas, where Margot sat with Annie asleep in her lap. Little Greg stared at the cartoon on the television, while his father stared out the window.

“Mrs. Landry, can I get you something?” Jack asked. “Some water maybe?”

She smiled tightly and shook her head. “Only one thing I want right now, Sheriff, and only Dr. Graham can give me that.”

Jack nodded. “I understand.”

“Well I don’t.” This from Greg. Normally neat and tidy in a starched shirt, now his collar hung open and his tie lay draped around his neck like a broken noose. He strode toward them, prompting Jack to step back, out of the children’s hearing.

He knew the look in the other man’s eyes too damned well. “Greg—”

“A high-speed chase?” Janelle’s husband bit the words out. “Here in Bayou d’Espere? What were your boys thinkin’, Jack?” Not sheriff. “This isn’t N’awlins. Janie and the kids could have been—” He broke off and paled, the unspoken word hanging there between them.

Killed.
Janelle and the kids could have been killed. Just like—

“It has to do with her, doesn’t it?” Greg asked, and the sheen in his eyes turned to accusation. “The Fontenot girl. I saw her there with you.”

Jack held himself very still. “There was a break-in at Live Oak. A safe-deposit box was stolen.”

“I know all that.”

“The driver of the car that hit Janelle—”

“Was the man who broke into the savings and loan. I know that. But don’t you just find it a little odd? The second Camille Fontenot shows her face in this town again, we have our first bank robbery in twenty-five years—and our first high-speed chase?”

Not odd.

It was exactly what Jack had feared. All his life there’d only been one thing, one person, he’d never been able to rein in.

And like the hurricane that had decimated the Gulf Coast almost fifty years before, her name was Camille.

Not much light remained. The sun dipped low against the western horizon, leaving blood-red streaks and swirls in its wake. The trees darkened into hulking shadows. The breeze, still warm, kept right on whispering.

“Maybe we should come back in the morning.”

“No.” With her hand to the car door, Camille turned toward her cousin. “I need to do this.”

“Then let me go with you.”

“No.” The word came out harsher than Camille intended, so she softened it with a smile. “This is something I need to do.”

Saura wasn’t one to sigh or acquiesce, but she leaned back against the driver’s seat and did just that. “I know,” she said. And she did. More than most, Saura Robichaud knew about exorcising demons. “But I’m going to be right here,” she said. “If you need me—”

“I will,” Camille assured her. They’d spent the better part of the afternoon talking to locals about the conspiracy theories surrounding her father’s death. Some folks had recognized Camille, welcomed her back. Others had recognized her, and shut down completely. Some hadn’t made any connection at all.

After leaving the country grocery, Camille had climbed into the backseat and printed the pictures she’d taken of her father’s map, while Saura had once again given the deputy the slip.