The Homecoming (9 page)

Velcro, who’d learned the sound of the Camaro’s engine, bounded out of the screen door and came racing toward him, ears flapping, tail wagging. She was followed by Laffitte, the coonhound his parents had adopted from the shelter after their previous Laffitte died of cancer.

When Velcro started barking like a seal and doing the happy dance in crazed circles, Sax caught hold of the mutt’s collar and headed up the steps into the house. The much better-behaved hound followed on their heels.

His parents and brother were in the kitchen, which in every Cajun home was the heart of the house. His father was standing at the stove stirring up a pot of gumbo while his mother chopped peppers.

Wearing an old WHO’S YOUR CRAWDADDY? T-shirt, Cole was sprawled in a chair at the scarred table that still bore the initials Sax had carved into its wooden top back in middle school.

“Saw that pea-soup green SUV out there,” Sax said to his brother as he went over to the stainless-steel refrigerator his mother had fussed about him spending money to upgrade to. But from the way she was always polishing it with a dish towel, Sax knew she took great pride in having something that ordinarily would’ve been beyond their means. “Still hiding out from your beloved?”

“I’m not hiding out from anyone. And it’s not pea-soup green. It’s kiwi.”

“Maybe it’s time we staged an intervention,” Sax suggested. “Because the fact that a Marine even knows kiwi’s a damn color shows you’re in a world of hurt.”

He pulled out a bottle of beer, pausing on his way over to the table to nuzzle his mother’s neck. “Damn if you don’t smell good.”

Maureen Douchett laughed and pushed at him. “Only if you like peppers. And don’t be trying to sweet-talk your mother, Sax Douchett, because I know you too well for it to work.”

“Funny, that’s not the first time I’ve heard something along the same lines today,” he said, snatching a pepper and pulling his hand away to pop it into his mouth before he got smacked. “So, where’s Gramps and Grandmère?”

“Ever since the tasting day for the wedding cupcakes Kelli decided to have instead of a traditional cake, your grandmother’s had a craving for a lemon coconut cupcake,” Maureen said. “So they left right before you arrived to get her one.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” His grandmother’s memory had faded dramatically since the last time he’d been home.

“It’s only three blocks to Take the Cake. With no side streets to confuse her. Plus, it’s not as if she’s alone. Your grandfather’s with her.”

“I could’ve stopped and picked some up on the way, if you’d called.”

“It’s a good sign that she’s been thinking about something that happened two days ago. Meanwhile, as much as we love having them move in with us, it’s also good for them to get out and have some private time together.”

It still concerned him. But, deciding his parents knew best how to handle the situation, since they’d been the ones dealing with it, Sax turned toward his brother.

“Now that the cupcake-versus-cake issue appears to have been settled, how are things goin’ in matrimony land?”

“Gotta admit the cake tasting was pretty fine. At the moment, Kelli’s sister’s over at the apartment planning the bachelorette party. I was told to make myself scarce.”

“And naturally you followed orders like an obedient jarhead.”

“Hey.” His mother waved a wooden spoon at him. “No one’s allowed to disparage Marines. Especially beneath my roof.”

“And especially not some
sailor
.” Cole heaped an extra amount of scorn on the word.

“SEAL,” Sax corrected. “There’s a world of difference.” He took a pull on the bottle. “What, exactly, do females do at a bachelorette party? String lots of pink hearts from the ceiling and dance with one another, like back in junior high?”

“It’s obvious you’ve been away from real life too long,” Maureen said. “These days women cut loose. In fact, the plan is for a girls’ night on the town.”

“With Bon Temps still shut down, there isn’t much nightlife,” Sax pointed out.

“They’re not talking about Shelter Bay,” Cole volunteered. “They’re going into the big city.”

“Portland?” Sax decided a girlie buff-and-wax spa day must be on the agenda.

“Well, not Tillamook,” his mother supplied. “Of course we’re going to Portland. The Chippendales are playing there.”

Sax nearly choked on his beer at that announcement. “
You’re
going to go to a male strip show?”

“Are you suggesting you’ve never been to an establishment where
women
took off their clothes?”

“Sure. But I’m a guy. A SEAL. You’re a . . . well, hell, a
mom.
”

The idea of his mother watching some guys in G-strings grind their pelvises was too much to handle. Even worse was the image of her getting a lap dance from some sweaty guy younger than her own three sons.

“I’m sorry,” she said sweetly. Too sweetly.

All the Douchett males had learned to recognize— and fear—that sugary tone, which was, in its own way, a lot like the ominous steam rising from Mount Saint Helens.

“Did you happen to have suffered a head wound no one told us about while you were off fighting terrorism?” she asked.

“Not that I recall. Why?”

She flashed him a dazzling smile that he’d seen bring grown men to their knees. She might be in her fifties, but the sheen hadn’t worn off the Maureen O’Hara (for whom she’d been named) charisma back from when she’d been Maureen Alice Duffy, second runner-up to Miss Oregon.

“Because that’s the only reason I can think of that would have you coming home expecting to see Mrs. Cleaver in the kitchen. I was singing onstage up until the day you were born,” she reminded him.

“Then she was back to singing at Bon Temps five days later.” Lucien confirmed the story Sax had heard so many times before.

His grandparents had moved from Louisiana in the fifties, after Hurricane Audrey devastated the shrimping business for a time. Hearing that crab boats in the Pacific Northwest were hiring, they’d packed their few remaining possessions and their only son, Lucien, into an old Ford pickup and moved to Shelter Bay.

Shortly after his parents had gotten married, his mother, having learned Cajun cooking from her mother-in-law, had opened up Bon Temps as a take-out joint in a building about the size of a broom closet. It hadn’t taken long for the place to expand and become so successful that by the time Sax was born, Lucien had been able to leave his days of fishing, except for pleasure, behind.

“We kept your cradle in the dressing room,” Sax’s father said. “Your mother used to nurse you between sets.”

Okay. Maybe he was being overly sensitive, but even the mention of his mother’s breasts, along with that vision he needed to get out of his head about her maybe getting a lap dance, had Sax’s brain on the verge of exploding.

“I was just saying that it might not exactly be appropriate,” he mumbled, feeling like he was seven years old, when he’d been called on the carpet for hitting a baseball through the kitchen window.

“And, gracious, if I had a sudden desire for etiquette lessons, the first person I’d turn to would be a Navy SEAL.” His mother’s lips, darkened to the color of a cardinal’s wing, which set off her fair skin and glossy black hair in a way that was not the least bit maternal, smiled. Her green eyes, threatening with that fiery Irish temper that could blow them all out to sea, did not.

“She’s got you there,” Cole crowed. Then damned he if didn’t go over and fist-bump their mother.

“One of these days, when you get yourself a wife of your own, you’ll discover that the problem with men insisting on putting women up on pedestals is that they give orders better from up there,” Lucien said with wink.

“Sounds like Cole’s already whipped,” Sax said grumpily. “And if I’d wanted a woman to argue with me, I’d get in my car and drive over to the sheriff’s office.”

“You always did have a thing for that girl,” Maureen said.

“He did not,” Cole jumped in before Sax could open his mouth. He shot a hard look at his brother. “Everyone, including you, knew she was Jared’s girl.”

“The heart often ignores what the head knows,” his mother said. “Why else would I have turned down that offer to move to Hollywood to marry your father?”

“You would’ve been a big star,” Lucien said magnanimously. The way his eyes still gleamed when he gazed at his wife of forty years had Sax thinking that if he ever found a woman who made him feel that way, he might up and marry her on the spot.

“It was a very small offer.” She returned his smile, then leaned over and brushed her mouth against his. “More than easy to turn down. While, yours,
cher
, was impossible to resist.”

Sax’s dad patted her butt. His parents had always been open with their affection, which had embarrassed the hell out of Sax back in high school, when they’d slow-dance down at Bon Temps, twined around each other like snakes. But Sax had grown up a lot since then, and although the idea of the male strippers still irked, he’d also discovered what most Cajuns seemed born knowing: that life could be short and often hard, so you might as well live it to the fullest.

Laissez les bon temps rouler
.

Let the good times roll. Something he sure as hell hadn’t been doing a lot of lately.

“Before things besides the gumbo heat up to boiling in here,” Cole said, suggesting his mind was running along the same track as Sax’s, “what happened out at the beach? Did they find the rest of a skeleton?”

“Not an entire skeleton. But they did find a skull.”

“No!” The knife she’d been using to slice the peppers clattered to the granite countertop as Maureen made a quick sign of the cross. “Not on Douchett property?”

“Fortunately not. It was in a cave on the beach right below the house, though.”

“Could’ve washed up from a storm,” Lucien suggested thoughtfully.

“That’s a possibility.” Sax took another pull on the bottle.

“Any outward signs of murder?” Cole asked.

“If you’re talking about an ax blade stuck in the back of the head, no. But the teeth still seemed to be there—”

“We’re about to have supper,” his mother objected.

“Sorry. Anyway, I told the sheriff that I know someone who might know someone who might be able to help her identify whoever it was.”

“I wouldn’t have been able to sleep at night if I thought anyone was murdered on family land,” Maureen said.

“It looked like it’s real old.” Sax shrugged. “Bad things happen.”

“Not in Shelter Bay,” his mother insisted. “Which is why, I recall, Ben Blanchard moved his family here from Portland in the first place.”

“Not much crime around here—that’s the truth,” Sax agreed, even as he remembered the way Kara’s eyes had lit up at the sight of that skull.

Being a single mom, she’d probably moved back home from California partly for much the same reason her father had brought his family from Portland so many years ago. To build a safe, boring life for her child. Which Sax could understand, having grown up being able to run free with his brothers without some stranger-danger pervert grabbing them while they were out digging up clams.

But now a mystery had landed in her lap.

And, while he could tell she took her job damn seriously, he also knew that on some level she was jazzed at having herself a possible crime to dig those pearly white teeth into.

What would it take, Sax wondered, to have Kara Blanchard Conway look at him the way she’d been looking at that bleached-out old skull?

Kara had completed the search just in time. The thunder and lightning that had been threatening out over the water had turned into a storm that brought a hard, driving rain inland.

Fortunately she’d put all the evidence in a plastic tub secured with a padlock; in the event this did turn out to be a murder case, no way did she want some dickhead defense attorney getting the killer off on a chain-of-evidence technicality.

Holding the handles on each side, she dashed through the rain into the one-story building that held a reception area, bullpen (such as it was) for her deputies, her own office, a coffee/lunch/conference room, and two jail cells, which usually served only as free motel rooms for drunks sleeping it off.

Her day dispatcher/receptionist/secretary, who’d seen her coming, opened the glass door, saving her from having to set the box down.

“Got a real duck strangler out there.” Maude Dutton was seventy-three years old, round as a berry, with a towering Marge Simpson beehive dyed to a flaming Lucille Ball red. The employee Kara had inherited from her father was also a champ at stating the obvious.

As Kara hung her slicker on the hook by the door, Maude poured her a mug of coffee from the carafe she always diligently kept filled. The one thing all cop shops—big city or small town—had in common was that they ran on caffeine.

Maude studied the box over the top of the half-framed granny glasses she’d been using to work on the computer. “John said you’d finished out at the Douchett place before the storm hit.”

“Just barely.” Kara took a paper napkin from the stack and wiped her wet face.

“So, the dead guy’s head’s in there?” Maude was eyeing the box as if Jack the Ripper himself were about to leap out of it.

“Can’t tell if it’s a male or female. But it is a skull, though not all bloody, like some slasher horror movie. Time and weather have washed it down to a slick, smooth skull.”

“Still creepy, if you ask me,” Maude stated with an exaggerated shiver. Then she shook her head, sending the dangling painted totem-pole earrings that were a jarring accessory to her khaki uniform—starched so stiff Kara suspected it could probably stand on its own—bouncing. “Never used to get things like that happening in Shelter Bay.”

Kara thought she detected just a hint of accusation in the dispatcher’s tone. It wasn’t the first time Maude had seemed to suggest that Ben Blanchard’s replacement had brought big-city problems with her from California.