The Gates of Evangeline (26 page)

Andre rubs his forehead like I'm giving him a pain. “You're telling me you went to the sugar mill to have relations with some married man and you accidentally found human remains?”

It sounds vaguely plausible, so I run with it. “Well, yeah.”

He sighs. “What are you, fifteen? The
sugar mill
? Get a motel like a grown-up.” He leaves the room without looking back. Hopefully that means he's crossed me off the Possible Undercover Agent list, although I'm guessing there will be no more intimate fireside chats.

I slink off, now extra glad I've made alternative sleeping arrangements.

•   •   •

J
USTINE AND
I
SPEND
the night devouring Toll House cookies and watching every terrible reality TV show we can find about New Jersey. Detective Minot returns very late, and if he's taken aback by the sight of me sprawled across his couch in my pajamas, he does a good job hiding it.

“How are things going?” Justine asks, passing him a cookie.

He shrugs. “Progressing. We have a search planned first thing tomorrow. We got a cadaver dog lined up and a forensic anthropologist from the university on call if we find anything.”

“A cadaver dog?” I'm surprised. “Can those guys really sniff down something thirty years old?”

“A good one can.” Detective Minot lingers in the doorway a moment, and I get the feeling he's debating whether or not to tell me something. “Listen, Charlotte. Don't be disappointed if we don't find anything connected to the kidnapping. You did your part. All anybody could've asked for and more.” He sounds so fatalistic. After all we've been through, it irritates me.

“I bet you'll find more than you think,” I tell him.

“Maybe so. But thirty years is a long time.” He holds up one hand in a halfhearted wave. “Good night, ladies. Got a long day tomorrow.”

Before we go to bed, I ask one more thing of Justine: to see Didi's room. She doesn't ask why, just leads me to a strangely familiar pink bedroom. The hospital bed and IV drip are gone, but I recognize the layout and some details from my dream. The ballet-shoes lamp. The shelves of teddy bears. I shiver at my own impossible accuracy.

“I know it's a little babyish for an eleven-year-old,” Justine says. “Didi kept wanting to redecorate, but then she'd get sick again and . . . there was never time.”

I pick up a few items in the room, hoping to get a better sense of the little girl. I'd like to have something comforting to tell her mother. That I feel a presence, that I'm picking up some happy memory. Instead, the room feels vacant. The girl who lived here is gone.

“It feels so empty, doesn't it?” Justine says as she rearranges a slumping teddy bear. “I keep telling myself she's in heaven. It's the only thing that brings me any comfort. That and prayer.”

I say nothing. I like Justine, but we're miles apart on the God issue.

“Your son's in heaven, too, Charlotte,” she says, flipping off the light. “He and Didi—they're beyond pain.”

I'd like to believe in eternal paradise. I'd like to believe that Keegan is off in the clouds riding a friendly dinosaur, driving a dump truck, eating the frosting off a cupcake. Heaven is a beautiful idea, but everlasting happiness and perfection are about as believable to me as Santa Claus.

Yes, Keegan and Didi are beyond pain. That doesn't mean that I am.

•   •   •

I
DON
'
T W
ANT TO OVERSTAY
my welcome with Justine, so in the morning I head off to the library again. Though more productive than yesterday, I periodically find myself spacing out, thinking about the search.
What will turn up? And will it be enough?

With the right bones, forensic anthropologists could offer many plausible theories as to how Gabriel died. And if investigators recover bullets, they could even potentially locate the weapon. Beyond that, though, I have trouble envisioning any discoveries that would provide definitive answers about the killer—probably why Detective Minot was so pessimistic last night.

I do know one thing: if the remains of a very young child are discovered on Deveau property—even if investigators can't positively identify the bones as belonging to Gabriel—this case will be catapulted back into relevance. My book will go from bad idea to possible bestseller. There will be a mad scramble in the publishing world to see who can release a Deveau kidnapping book first, and I'll have the head start.

I write until midday, then make a pit stop at Evangeline for lunch. The kitchen is as busy as I've ever seen it. Leeann, Benny, Paulette, and several guys from Evangeline's landscaping service sit around the breakfast nook chatting animatedly as they wolf down their lunches. Even the old dog has joined the gathering; he lingers by Leeann's feet, tail thumping.

The room quiets when they catch sight of me. “Don't worry 'bout Charlie,” Leeann reassures them. “She not gonna rat y'all out.” She slips the dog some chicken and fills me in. “We just talkin' 'bout what a terror Brigitte's been.”

I nod and the conversation resumes, but my eyes are on Paulette.

She's the only one present who doesn't look outraged. She grips the edge of the table, taking deep breaths, eyes half-closed.

“Paulette,” I say, concerned she's about to give birth on the kitchen floor, “are you okay?”

“She just havin' some contractions,” Benny explains. “False labor, they call it.”

“Did you call your doctor?” I ask.

“I'm all right,” Paulette insists weakly, looking anything but. “I ain't givin' that woman a reason to say boo.”

I make a mental note to keep an eye on Paulette and fix myself a plate at the island. As I scoop some potato salad, I spy Hettie and Andre out in the garden. Even from a distance, Hettie's pale and skeletal, propped up in a wheelchair with several pillows. Her mouth is moving, though. She looks alert. Must be having one of her good days.

But Andre's clearly upset. He shakes his head, puts a hand up as if to silence her, but she continues anyway. His face crumples up. She places a quavering hand on his arm, attempting to soothe him, but he's weeping, wiping away tears with the palm of his hand.

I step away from the window, not wanting to gawk. I remember how Noah gave her the narcissus bulbs a few weeks ago, saying they should be out by Valentine's Day.
Not sure I care to make it that long,
she told him. Valentine's Day is now less than two weeks off, and however ready Hettie may be, Andre seems unprepared to let her go. I don't entirely fault him. Who will be left? His ditzy sisters? A jet-setting niece too busy to visit her dying grandmother?

I scarf down my lunch and head back to my cottage to work, wondering again how Gabriel ended up in the sugar mill. When someone knocks on my door thirty minutes later, my heart does a crazy little dance.
Is it Noah? Is he back after all?
I throw open the door, ready to pounce, and find myself faced with a much less appealing sight.

I thought my last encounter with Andre Deveau was bad. Now he stares despondently at my doorstep, eyes red-rimmed and swollen. Something tells me we're about to plunge to new depths of discomfort.

He lifts his gaze slowly to mine, and for a second I forget that he's approaching fifty years old. His blue eyes are young, almost boyish. And lost.

“Hi,” he says, but what I hear is,
I want my mommy.

H
aving made it through childhood without any real mother to speak of, I have limited sympathy for grown men with mommy issues. I suppose everyone's entitled to an off day, and coming to terms with your mother's imminent mortality probably constitutes an off day. That doesn't mean I want to dive into Andre's emotional mess.

“Hi,” I greet him. “Are you all right?”

He plays it off. “I just came by to apologize for yesterday. I hope I didn't make you feel unwelcome.”

Riiiiight,
I think.
You came to apologize, never dreaming that your big red eyes would evoke sympathy.
The man is looking for a makeshift therapist, and the fact that he didn't go to Jules says a lot about their relationship. I shouldn't be surprised he picked me, not after I encouraged him to blab for hours about his dysfunctional family last week.

“There's nothing to apologize for,” I say. “
I'm
sorry. I wish I could've told you about the bone myself.”

“I understand your situation,” he says, holding up a hand. “And I didn't intend to dig into your private life. I'm the last person to judge who you have—relations with. I was just having a hard time processing the, uh, discovery of human remains on our property.”

I have to crack a smile. “Best excuse I've ever heard for bad behavior. No hard feelings.” I wait a few long seconds to see if he leaves, but he's planted himself firmly on my porch. “So . . . ,” I begin. “How's your mom?”

“Confused. She goes in and out. Half of what she says is just—fantasy.”

I'm not sure what to do from here. Tell him I'm busy? That I've got somewhere to be? Compassion wells up, despite my best efforts to remain aloof. Of the four remaining Deveaus, I like Andre best, and his presence on my doorstep now is a sad reminder: he has nowhere else to go.

“You're welcome to come in,” I say.

He shakes his head. “That'll get the rumor mill going. And I'm not . . . like that. I'm not the person my sisters think, believe me.”

“You mean a womanizer?” I meet his gaze straight on, done playing along with a lie he shouldn't have to tell. “You're not even close. I can see that.”

Andre swallows. “You can see that?”

He wants to talk about it,
I think.
He's tired of hiding.

I go for broke. “Maybe I'm reading things wrong, but I thought you and Jules were . . . good friends. Not that it matters.”

He closes his eyes and exhales slowly. “Oh, it matters. Louisiana is not like New York. You don't know what that could do to me professionally. Please tell me you aren't going to—”

“I'm writing about Gabriel, not your love life,” I promise. “I hope Jules makes you happy.”

“Happy? I wouldn't go that far.” He gives me a crooked smile, as if aware how ridiculous he looks. “Anyway, I guess we're even. I know the dark secrets of your love life, now you know mine.”

It takes me a second to realize he's referring to my supposed affair with a married cop. I cringe.

Andre looks around at the other cottages. “This isn't a good place to talk. I was going to take the boat out, anyway. You can come with me.”

Instantly, my guard goes up. “What boat?”

There's no way I'm getting in that rowboat with him. Or anybody else. Ever.

“The airboat. It's docked out front.”

I stare Andre down for a moment, deciding whether or not I trust him. He was eighteen when Gabriel disappeared, and although I don't think he was involved, I don't know he wasn't. As Detective Minot pointed out, he doesn't have a solid alibi for the night Gabriel went missing. And I've just revealed myself to be in possession of information that could, in his view, destroy his career. Is this really a man I want to tour the desolate swamps with? Alone?

“All right,” I say slowly, “let me just grab my phone.” I duck inside and send Detective Minot what is hopefully not my final text.
Going for boat ride in swamp w/ Andre D. If I don't call you in 2 hrs, send in cavalry. Not kidding.

•   •   •

G
IVEN THE
D
EVEAU FAMILY
'
S BANKROLL
, I was expecting something a little more glamorous than the four-seat floating hunk of metal we find tied up at Evangeline's dock. With a giant, fanlike apparatus in the back and a front that curves inward like a sled, the boat's not exactly pretty.

Andre chuckles at my skeptical look. “This baby's made for the swamps,” he explains. “Flat-bottomed for shallow areas. The propeller and engine are up inside that cage so they don't catch debris. And the seats are raised so we can see whatever's floating by.”

“Floating by? Are we looking for something?”

“Stumps, branches, birds, gators, anything we don't want to hit.” He squints at me. “You don't get motion sick, do you?”

I shake my head and watch as he steps onto the flimsy vessel. It doesn't capsize, which is at least one point in its favor, but I'm still reluctant to board. “How old is that thing?”

“Couple years,” he says. “It's funny, but I never spent any time in the swamps growing up. We were all about the ocean. Then a few years ago, I don't know, I decided it was time to explore my own backyard.”

Sydney and Brigitte also mentioned family sailing trips. It didn't seem like an important detail, sailing around the Virgin Islands and chartering yachts in Greece, but maybe it was. The Deveau family is not, by all accounts, comprised of swamp people. Yet whoever took Gabriel out in that rowboat must've been able to navigate the swamps in the dark while hauling around a two-year-old who may or may not have been conscious. That, in my mind, rules out Andre.

Andre opens a metal box at the front of the boat and tosses me a life jacket—another point in his favor. He doesn't take one for himself. Water safety devices must be reserved for the squeamish. I strap myself in and he holds out a hand. “Ready?”

I climb onto the airboat and secure myself in a seat. “Let's go.”

He unties the boat from the dock and pushes us away from the shore. After starting up the noisy engine, he settles into the operator's seat in the rear. The boat zips down the bayou at what feels like a dangerously high speed. Once, this would've freaked me out. Now it's exhilarating. I stay on the alert for bad Gabriel vibes, feelings that might signal we're approaching his death site, but nothing comes. It's just a pleasant afternoon on the water.

Though we pass a couple of shacks with rickety docks, this section of the river is largely unpopulated and there aren't any other boats out. After ten minutes or so, Andre eases up a bit. “There's an inlet up here,” he yells, and sure enough, the bayou splits off ahead of us. He urges the boat into a sharp turn, and we travel through water that rapidly narrows and becomes more mucky. Then the waterway flares out, and soon it's no longer clear where the shore ends and the water begins. Trees rise up out of green clumps that may be land or floating plants. Andre slows us down, then turns off the engine.

“Well,” he says, “it's not the ocean, but it's got its own kind of beauty.”

“It's nice,” I say, but the truth is I can't see these swamps as anything but a horrible place to die. “Do you take Jules out here?”

“Just once.” He laughs, the first lighthearted gesture I've seen from him all day. “He hated the wind in his hair. Doesn't like convertibles, either.”

“Somehow that doesn't surprise me.”

“He's beautiful, isn't he?” Andre smiles wistfully.
“Oh thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power / Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle, hour.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“Shakespeare,” he says, and I remember that book of sonnets I found, wonder exactly how many times he read it. “Look, I understand why you'd think Jules is just some brainless boy toy, but that's not how it is. I care about him.” His eyes don't leave the water, but I imagine this admission is a fairly major one for him.

“Well—good. I hear that's more satisfying than brainless boy toys.”

“It's certainly more complicated.” He steps from the operator's chair and seats himself beside me as if we're old buddies. “I'm forty-seven years old, Charlotte. Too damn old to be sneaking around like some nervous schoolboy, but here I am. I don't know what the answer is.” He glances up at the overcast sky. “I tell you, some nights I don't sleep at all.”

With the clouds moving in, it's getting chilly. I hug myself, glad for the extra layer the life jacket provides. “I don't sleep so well either,” I confess. “But Ambien helps.”

Andre smiles. “Jules takes Ambien, too. Myself, I'd rather have a few nightcaps.”

We bob along, both caught up in our own thoughts. Unlike the bayou, which moves, wanders, flows slowly to a destination, the swamp is still. But it's a pregnant stillness, like something crouched low, waiting, and I don't like it. As if to confirm my bad feeling, Andre rises slowly to his feet and points at some nearby brush.

“Gator,” he says.

I follow the line of his finger and find a bumpy head peeking out near some weeds. The eyes are olive colored, and they don't blink. “God, he's
huge
.”

“Four feet, maybe. Pretty small.” He peers admiringly at the creature. “Plucky little bastard. You don't see a lot of gators this time of year. They're sluggish in the cold.”

Andre starts up the engine and urges us deeper into the swamp. The rainfall, I'm told, has been decent this winter, so the water isn't quite as low as usual. As we skim across the muddy shallows, I can better appreciate the airboat's ability to seemingly walk on water. With all the random twists and turns we're making, though, I'm increasingly anxious about Andre's ability to navigate us back home.

Eventually he kills the engine again, taking in the view around us as if it's somehow different from the last fifteen minutes of swamp. I try not to fidget, but I've had enough already.

“So.” He stretches. “Who's the bad guy?”

“Bad guy?” My mind is on the sugar mill. I'm trying to figure out why someone would've drowned Gabriel in the swamps and then buried him miles away on dry land.

“Your book,” Andre presses me. “Not a satisfying story if you've got no one to blame. And pardon my saying so, but at the point you're trying to punch holes in Bridgie's alibi, you must be running pretty low on theories.”

I'm embarrassed by my inelegant mishandling of the topic at dinner yesterday. As much as I dislike Brigitte, there's no reason to think she had a hand in Gabriel's disappearance. “I wasn't accusing her, I was just trying to understand—”

Andre chuckles. “A word of advice? Don't piss Bridgie off. She's hardly a criminal mastermind, and she had zero incentive to hurt our brother. But she sure can harbor a grudge.”

“So I've seen. She's still bitter about you missing her sweet sixteen party.” I hunch forward in my seat, trying to concentrate my warmth in a ball. “How'd you wrangle your way out of attending, anyway?”

“Oh.” He yawns. “My relationship with my family was—strained at that point. So I did what I wanted. Hung out with a friend in the city.”

“A friend,” I repeat. I brush some hair from my eyes, considering how best to approach this. I don't think Andre hurt his brother—I doubt teenage Andre really even thought much about Gabriel one way or another—and I want to give him a chance to explain himself. “Agent Schaffer says that he fabricated your friend for reports,” I murmur. “That your father paid him off.” I watch his reaction carefully, searching for signs of panic, but Andre looks tired, not rattled.

“Yes, well. My father didn't like the friend I spent the night with. Go figure.”

“A man?”

He nods. “From a club. Kyle Komen. I met him that night, but we dated for a couple months after. I guess you could call him my first boyfriend.”

“You told your dad about him?”

“Sort of. He read between the lines. He had me tell the officers I'd been with a prostitute, presumably female. Thought it would go better for me that way.” A twisted smile plays across his lips. “Funny, right?”

“So your father knew you were gay.”

That's a surprise. Somehow Neville was the last family member I expected to be in the know.

“He never acknowledged it, but he knew,” Andre says. “Listen, if your friend in the police department needs to check my story, tell him to talk to Kyle Komen, K-O-M-E-N, in Lake Charles.” He licks his lips. “I trust this can be handled confidentially.”

“Of course.” I really want to leave now. Not because I'm having some profound psychic impression, but because I detest the swamp. I've never liked water you can't see the bottom of, and this? It's a watery graveyard for plants and probably animals, a feeding ground for dark, slippery things that feast on decay. Things you can't see. Things that wait for you to die. I breathe in, trying not to reveal my disgust. “You know, you're right about me running low on theories,” I tell Andre. “But I've got to come up with something for this book. Any ideas?”

Andre shrugs. “I thought it was done with when they arrested Roi Duchesne. He'd lied to get the job at Evangeline, had a criminal history, and my father had fired him a few weeks earlier. He made sense. And I didn't like him.” He stares vacantly at the water, and I think how easy it is to imagine a body in it, a human face just beneath the surface, hair fanning out, eyes wide and unseeing. “Life would be simpler, wouldn't it,” he says, “if guilty people were always the ones you disliked.”

“It must be awful. Not knowing.”

“I think about my brother a lot.” Andre's index finger grazes his lips. “Sometimes I think he was the lucky one.”