Alligator Moon Read online

  Someone knocked on the window of her car. “Are you all right?”

  She looked out the window. Fred Powell. She nodded and opened her door. “I’m fine,” she said.

  “You don’t look it.”

  “Guess it’s the heat.” She threw her feet to the shell parking lot and stood by the side of the car.

  “You coming in?”

  “No. I’m just going to my cabin.”

  “I’ll walk with you, make sure you get there okay. You don’t look too steady on your feet.”

  “That’s okay. Actually, I’m not going to the cabin now. I forgot something I needed from the grocery store. I want to get it before they close.”

  “I’ll drive you if you want.”

  But she didn’t want. She didn’t want to hear his voice or attempt inane conversation. But as much as she didn’t want to deal with Fred, she still wasn’t ready to be alone.

  “Thanks for the offer, but I’m fine.” She crawled back behind the wheel, closed her door and backed from the parking lot. She turned south, heading for John Robicheaux’s shack in the swamps without even knowing when she’d made the decision.

  ANNABETH SHOOK the martini, poured the drink into a crystal glass and carried it back to the den where Norman was sitting on the leather sofa and watching the evening news. As excited as she was, she was also nervous, mainly because the timing was so bad.

  The trial had gotten to Norman and now he was faced with Dennis’s death and trying to get used to working with a new anesthetist. Not the best time for hitting him with a life-changing surprise, especially when he’d never really wanted more children.

  He claimed he’d done the parenting bit in his first marriage. But she wanted a baby more than she’d ever wanted anything. And the drugstore kit had tested positive.

  A baby. She’d be satisfied now. Everything she’d done to make her life with Norman work would be worth the cost.

  She pressed the glass in his hands and sat down beside him, glad she was wearing the shoulder-baring sundress he’d bought her the last time they’d gone shopping in New Orleans. It showed off her tan to perfection and did nice things for her breasts.

  “I love you,” she whispered, putting her mouth to his ear. “Are you ready for your surprise?”

  NORMAN HATED surprises, and he had an idea this one was going to be worse than usual. Annabeth was fidgety and trying too hard to please him. That was never a good sign.

  “Why don’t we wait and you can tell me the surprise after dinner?”

  “I’m too excited to wait.” She snuggled close beside him, let her breasts brush his arm while she ran her hand up and down his thigh. Even having been with Susan just a few hours ago, her actions would have ordinarily made him horny and ready to deal with the surprise, but with the stress he was under now, once a day was pretty much it for him.

  Annabeth slid the TV controls from his hand and pushed the power button. He watched as the screen went black, then pulled her onto his lap. He might as well make the most of the moment. It didn’t look as if it were going away.

  “So what is this big surprise?”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  He heard the words, but they didn’t sink in, at least not at first. When they did, he just stared at her, wondering how in hell she’d come to a conclusion like that. “You’ve got to be mistaken, sweetheart.”

  “No. I’m two weeks late for my period.”

  “Lots of things can cause that. Stress, for one, and we’re dealing with more than our share of that.” Poor Annabeth. He actually felt sorry for her. He knew how much she wanted a baby, but it wasn’t going to happen. He was fifty-eight-years-old and he had no intention of spending his sixties raising kids.

  “You can’t be pregnant, baby.”

  “I thought that at first, too, but I am. I bought one of those pregnancy kits at the drugstore. It tested positive.”

  The pressure started to build at the base of his skull and in his temples. He stuck a thumb under Annabeth’s chin and forced her to meet his gaze. “Are you certain?”

  “I haven’t seen a doctor yet, but I’m two weeks late and I tested positive.”

  He jumped up, letting her fall from his lap to the floor. “Who’s the father, Annabeth?”

  “You are, Norman. You know that. It couldn’t be anyone but you.”

  His world had been falling apart for weeks. Lie by lie. Death by death. But nothing had made him feel as cold and empty as the gall knotting in his gut right now.

  “Who are you sleeping with, Annabeth? I want to know and I want to know now!”

  “You. Just you.”

  “You’re a lying bitch.”

  She winced as if he’d hit her. He did want to hit her, wanted to knock her across the room and hear her head slam against the wall.

  “Why are you doing this to me, Norman? Why are you saying these things?”

  She was crying, whimpering like a kicked dog. “Easy. I can say these things real easy, Annabeth. I had a vasectomy five years ago.”

  “A vasectomy? How could you? You knew how badly I wanted children. You knew it when you married me.” She turned on him then, started beating her fists into his chest.

  He grabbed her hands and held them. “How dare you berate me when you’ve been spreading your legs for some other man.”

  “What about you, Norman? Do you think I don’t know that you and Susan leave the office sometimes for two or three hours at a time? Do you think I don’t know what you do when you go up to New Orleans on your so-called business trips? What about you?”

  She was wailing, her voice grating on his nerves so bad, he had to struggle not to rip her tongue from her mouth. “There will be no baby in this house, Annabeth. Not in nine months. Not ever.”

  He pushed her back onto the sofa, knocking his martini from the coffee table in the process. The liquid flew into the air, spraying the front of his shirt. He watched the two olives roll off the edge of the table and plop to the floor. He squashed them into the carpet with the toe of his shoe, then kicked the damn table over on top of them before stalking out of the house.

  She wasn’t the woman he’d thought she was, and he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to crawl into bed with her again. But he would find out who she’d slept with. And the guy would rue the day he’d screwed around with the wife of Norman Guilliot.

  Sure he had his little indiscretions, but that was different. Men needed more sex, but he wasn’t in love with the others. He never cared about anyone but Annabeth.

  “YOU WORK LONG HOURS for a reporter,” John said, opening his door and staring at Cassie without inviting her in.

  He was barefoot, shirtless, the snap on his worn jeans open. She stared, the hot blast of awareness colliding with the cold apprehension that had brought her here.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Yeah.” He held the door open while she stepped inside. “You don’t look so good.”

  She wished she could say the same.

  John grabbed a pile of magazines from the sofa and stacked them on the coffee table, then motioned for her to sit. He slouched against the bookshelf. “What’s up?”

  “I was hoping we could talk, but if you have plans, I can come back another time.”

  “It depends.”

  “Depends on what?”

  “Depends on what you want to talk about.”

  “About Dennis,” she said, choosing an obvious topic.

  “Then I have plans.”

  “What answer were you looking for?”

  “The truth.”

  “What makes you think that isn’t the truth?”

  “You got trouble written all over you, Cassie. Not mine or Dennis’s, but yours. Is this about your mother?”

  She almost blurted out the details of the telephone call, but caught herself just in time. If she told John the total truth, he’d likely try to talk her out of going to Cocodrie alone or else follow her there and ruin everything.

  “I ca
lled the airlines as you suggested,” she said, deciding to try a partial truth. “Apparently Mom didn’t leave the country. The only flight she’d booked was a round trip to New Orleans.”

  “And that’s what has you pasty white and looking like you just made a pact with the devil himself?”

  “No. I mean yes. In a way.”

  “Don’t know how you’re going to make it in the reporting business if you don’t learn to lie better than that.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t miss a thing, do you?”

  “I’ve been known to miss it all. But you’re easy to read.”

  “I guess I’m simple and uncomplicated.”

  “I’d never say that, chère.”

  “What would you say about me, John?”

  “On a scale of one to ten?”

  “On the scale of your choosing.”

  “I’d say you’re a…” He shook his head. “I’d say a smart guy wouldn’t go there. How about a drink? I don’t have any hard liquor, but there’s wine. Not the finest stock, but it’s drinkable.”

  No hard liquor. That surprised her. “Wine sounds good.”

  “Chardonnay, Merlot, a Cab?”

  “Whatever’s open.”

  “A corkscrew’s not that difficult to operate.”

  “Then I’d like the Cabernet.”

  “I’ll grab a bottle and some glasses and we’ll take it out to the dock. There should be a breeze along the bayou. There usually is by evening. It will be a good place to not talk about whatever’s bothering you.”

  She paced the room when he left, ending up at the old, scarred desk. She stared at the newspaper clipping on top of the stack.

  Toni Crenshaw’s Body Found By Fisherman In Pearl River.

  She picked it up and read the account of how Gregory Benson, a man found not guilty on a molestation charge just months before had kidnapped the ten-year-old girl and held her captive in his house, raping her repeatedly and beating and starving her before strangling her and dumping her frail, lifeless body in the river.

  She jumped at the sound of John’s footsteps returning with the wine. The clipping slipped from her fingers as she turned toward him.

  “Reading the gory details?”

  “It was out. I couldn’t help seeing it.”

  “I guess not.”

  “It was a long time ago, John.”

  “I bet the Crenshaws wouldn’t agree with you. I bet they see the tortured body of their little girl every time they close their eyes.”

  “Gregory Benson was a vicious, crazed man.”

  “Only on the inside where no one could see. On the outside, he was just a man like any other. Evil doesn’t have a face, Cassie. All it has is a black, rotted soul.”

  His eyes were glazed, as if his own soul had been taken over by some creature from a darker world. She could only imagine the torment he must put himself through every day of his life, blaming himself for what had happened to that little girl.

  He was a beaten, anguished hull of the man he must have been before he’d represented Benson and gotten the man off only to have him kill a child. And still she was more attracted to him than she’d been to any man since…since Drake.

  The wise thing to do would be to leave right now before she wound up in his arms—or in his bed. She was too vulnerable tonight to leave herself open to temptation.

  But she couldn’t bear the thought of being alone, so she took the glass from his hands and followed him out the back door to watch the sun slide beneath the horizon on a dock at the edge of the swamp.

  CHAPTER TEN

  CASSIE SAT next to John, her legs dangling over the end of the short dock, her feet swinging about a half foot above the surface and not three feet from where a large turtle had just poked its head out of the murky water. Thankfully, there was a slight but very welcome breeze.

  “The heat takes some getting used to,” she said.

  “It’s no hotter here than it is in New Orleans.”

  “True, but we spend most waking summer hours in air-conditioned buildings. In Beau Pierre, the outdoor life seems to go on as usual.”

  “It’s the air conditioning that spoils you.”

  “Could be.”

  They were talking of the weather, the subject people always reverted to when more relevant topics came with too many complications. Her mother. His past. Dennis’s death.

  “How much longer will you be in Beau Pierre?” John asked, apparently ready to move beyond the topic of the temperature.

  “I’m not sure. I could be going back to New Orleans as early as Monday, but it’s more likely I’ll be here until Wednesday.”

  “When is your mother supposed to return?”

  “Thursday.”

  “Will you go to Houston for the homecoming?”

  “I’ll at least go to the airport for the flight Continental Airlines has her booked on.” But tomorrow’s meeting in Cocodrie might change everything. She pulled her feet back to the dock and hugged her knees to her chest, fighting the urge to spill her guts.

  “And how did the article go?” John asked.

  “I haven’t written it yet,” she admitted. “But I plan for it to say that you believe your brother was murdered and that you think the murder is related to the Flanders v. Guilliot trial.”

  “All true. And what do you plan to say about the famed surgeon?”

  “I don’t plan to mention him by name, but I’ll say you think Dennis was killed because someone was afraid he knew too much and that he’d talk. Our readers are smart enough to figure the rest out for themselves. They’ll make their own decisions about whether or not they buy into your theory.”

  “You’re obviously not convinced.”

  “I think it’s possible, but I’ve talked to a lot of people in Beau Pierre this week, John. No one sees the doctor the way you do.”

  “The people who know him best aren’t going to talk. Certainly not his surgery team. They’re named in the suit.”

  “Then how can you be so sure one of them didn’t kill Dennis?”

  “Guilliot’s got the most to lose if the trial goes against him. The others may lose their jobs, but they’ll find new ones. No one will remember their names or that they’re connected with the trial. Guilliot will lose his whole lifestyle if his reputation is ruined. He’d be just another surgeon in a hospital somewhere, not ruler of his kingdom.”

  She nodded. “Dr. Guilliot did seem a little bigger than life in the Magnolia setting, and most of the locals see him as a celebrity of sorts, the town’s claim to fame.”

  “And how do they see Dennis?”

  She’d have to tread lightly there. The people of Beau Pierre liked Dennis but few saw him as together as John did, and he was nowhere near as high on their list as Guilliot. “They said Dennis liked to pass a good time.”

  “I’m sure that’s not all they said.”

  “Some said he drank too much. Several mentioned the fact that he liked women—the married ones as well as the single ones.”

  “He wasn’t always smart about whose legs he crawled between.” John finished off his glass of wine and poured another. “Dennis wasn’t perfect, but he didn’t kill himself. He didn’t deserve to be killed, and I’m not giving up on this until I find out what really went on in that operating room the day the preacher’s wife died.”

  “But nothing you want to share with me.” She took another sip of her wine. This was getting them nowhere and she was tired of trying to concentrate on Dennis Robicheaux when her mother was foremost on her mind.

  “Let’s not talk of problems for a while, John. Not mine or yours.”

  “Fine by me, but I predict you’ll have difficulty with that.”

  He gulped down his wine as if it were medicine, then lay back on the dock and closed his eyes.

  She studied his sun-bronzed face and the deep wrinkles that had settled around his eyes even though he wasn’t much over forty. The bayou surroundings suited him, fit him the way his
skin fit his lean, hard body.

  She scooted farther back on the dock so that she could stretch out beside him and hopefully let the peaceful atmosphere ease the tension that had settled in her shoulders and the back of her neck.

  Her full skirt bunched under her as she lay down, and she tugged it loose, tucking it under her legs so that it didn’t catch the wind and inch up her thighs.

  John opened his eyes at the movement, but closed them again without saying a word or giving any indication that he liked or didn’t like having her so close.

  She wondered if he’d ever let any woman get really close in any way that mattered.

  “Why didn’t you ever marry, John?”

  He opened his eyes and rolled over on his side, facing her. “Is this for the enquiring minds of the Crescent Connection readership?”

  “It depends,” she said, playfully mocking him.

  “On what?”

  “How juicy your answer is.”

  “Then I’m safe.”

  “So what’s the story?”

  “I never had time for working on a relationship when I was at Tulane. I had less time after I started working as an attorney.”

  “And since you’ve been back in Beau Pierre?”

  “No way I’d marry any woman with standards low enough to settle for me.”

  “But you have dated?”

  “Dated? No. I gave that up when I graduated from college. I never cared much for it anyway. All those expectations. It’s a woman thing.”

  “You surely don’t expect me to believe you haven’t slept with a woman since you graduated from college or even since you moved back to Beau Pierre?”

  “You didn’t ask if I’d slept with a woman. You asked if I dated.”

  “Touché.”

  “So what about you, Cassie? What was it like being married to the dashing and brilliant attorney Drake Pierson?”

  “Mostly it sucked, but it had its moments.”

  “Yeah. Enlighten me. Tell me what kind of moments stick out in a woman’s mind.”