Monica felt as if she'd been slapped. Faith Devlin was asking around town about her father? The very thought outraged her. Wasn't it enough that her slut of a mother had taken her daddy away, and she'd never seen him again? Her face flushed with anger. "What sort of questions has she been asking? My God, what business is it of hers?"
"Personal questions, what sort of person he was, things like that. She came here yesterday, because she'd heard I was Guy's best friend. Talking to me is one thing, but Gray found out this morning that she'd been pestering Ed Morgan with questions, too."
"She's been asking Ed Morgan about Daddy?" Monica cried. "The man's the biggest gossip in town!"
"Gray took care of it," Alex said soothingly, and patted her hand. "You know Gray. He had Ed stuttering and back-stepping within ten seconds."
Gray in a temper was a fearsome sight, with those dark eyes turning so cold and deadly. She couldn't imagine Ed Morgan withstanding him for even ten seconds. The notion entertained her for a brief moment, but then was pushed aside by her indignation at Faith Devlin's gall.
"I understand her curiosity," Alex said, "but as I told Gray, it could be disastrous for your mother to find out."
"Well, / don't understand her curiosity!" Monica cried. God, it took so little to bring it all back, the sense of loss, and of being lost, and the suffocating pain. Hatred swelled within her. She pulled her hand free, and turned away. "Gray shut up Ed Morgan, but what's he doing about her?"
"I don't know." He shook his head. "I know you don't agree, but when she first moved back, I was all for leaving her alone. What happened wasn't her fault, and she deserves the right to live where she wants. That was something Noelle should have faced, and made the best of. This is different. This is deliberate, and it's something that is her fault."
"Gray will take care of it," Monica said. "He has to."
"I don't know if he can."
"Of course he can! There are a lot of things he could do."
"Then let me put it another way. I don't think he can be that drastic with Faith, considering how he feels about her. Wake up, Monica!" he admonished. "Pay attention to your brother. He's attracted to her. Nothing about this is easy for him."
Monica felt the blood drain out of her face, leaving it stiff. Gray was... attracted to that woman? No. God couldn't be that cruel. He wouldn't make her live through that nightmare again.
Unable to say anything else, she warded off Alex with an outstretched hand, unable to cope with the sympathy she could see in his eyes. Hurriedly she left his office, and it wasn't until she reached the street that she realized she hadn't told him she couldn't be with him anymore.
It would kill Mama if Gray took up with Renee Devlin's daughter. The gossip would be so vicious, she would never be able to lift her head again. Monica gave a bitter little laugh. And to think she'd been worried what Mama would think about Michael McFane!
Thirteen.
Mr. Pleasant's office was located on the top floor of a two-story building. Faith climbed the stairs, hoping against hope that she would find him there, that his telephone had been out of service, that he would be all right. A malfunctioning telephone wasn't much of a possibility, because if he hadn't been able to call out, he would have known about it and simply gone to another phone. Surely, too, he would have noticed if there were no incoming calls. Maybe he'd taken another case, and forgotten about her.
She doubted Francis P. Pleasant ever forgot anything.
His office was the first door on the left. The upper half of the door was glass, but the interior blinds had been closed, preventing her from seeing inside. The day she had met him, the blinds had been open. She tried to open the door and found it locked. Not really expecting a response, she knocked, and put her ear against the glass. The room beyond was silent.
There was a mail slot in the door. Faith pushed the little flap open, and angled her head to look inside. Her view was extremely limited, but she could see the mail, quite a lot of it, scattered across the floor.
He wasn't here, and the amount of his mail indicated that he hadn't been here in several days.
Growing more worried by the minute, Faith walked down the hall to the next door. According to the lettering on the door, she was at the law office of Houston H. Manges. She could hear the clatter of a typewriter and voices, so she opened the door and entered.
Houston H. Manges's environs were small and cramped, with file cabinets crammed into every available space. She was in the reception area, populated by a tiny white-haired woman and three rubber plants, one of which had reached gargantuan size. The room beyond, which she could see through the open door, was about the same size, with floor-to-ceiling books. A heavyset man lounged behind a battered desk, and he was talking to a client who sat in one of the two cracked imitation leather chairs positioned in front of the desk. All that was visible of the client was the back of his head.
The tiny woman looked up and smiled in question, but made no move to close the door and give her employer and his client any privacy. Faith gave a mental shrug and approached.
"I'm a client of Mr. Pleasant, next door," she said. "I've been trying to reach him for several days and can't seem to locate him. Do you happen to have any idea where he is?"
"Why, no," the tiny woman said. "He left about a week ago to go to this little town up close to Mississippi, I don't remember the name. Perkins, something like that. I assumed he was still there."
"No, he left there the next day. He has a bad heart, and I'm worried about him."
"Oh, dear." The small face took on a distressed look. "I never thought about his heart. I knew, of course. His wife, Virginia we used to have lunch together, it was so sad when she died told me about his trouble. It was really bad, she said. I never thought to check on him." She reached immediately for the phone index, and flipped through it until she came to the Ps. "I'll try his home phone. It's unlisted, you know. He didn't like business intruding on his private life."
Faith knew. She had called information, trying to get the number. It was her lack of success that had spurred her to drive down and try to find him.
After a minute the little lady hung up the phone. "There's no answer. Oh, dear. I am worried now. It isn't like Francis not to let someone know where he is."
"I'm going to call all the hospitals," Faith said decisively. "May I borrow your telephone?"
"Of course, honey. We have two lines, so people will still be able to get through. If a call comes in, though, I'll need you to hang up so I can answer it."
Thanking God for southern hospitality, Faith accepted the New Orleans directory and flipped to the listing of hospitals. There were more than she had expected. Starting at the top, she began dialing.
Thirty minutes and three interruptions for incoming calls later, she hung up in defeat. Mr. Pleasant wasn't a patient in any of the local hospitals. If he had taken ill while driving back from Prescott, he could be in a hospital somewhere else, but where?
Or something could have happened to him. It was a possibility she didn't want to consider, but one she had to accept. If Guy Rouillard had been murdered, and Mr. Pleasant had been asking questions that made someone uncomfortable... She felt sick at the thought. If anything had happened to that sweet old man, it would be her fault for involving him. It wasn't as if she'd had anything to go on, other than Renee's statement that Guy hadn't been with her at all, that she hadn't seen him since that night twelve years ago.
Most people wouldn't have suspected murder. Most people wouldn't now be afraid that poor Mr. Pleasant had somehow run afoul of the same person who had killed Guy. But neither had most people been dragged out of their home in the middle of the night and thrown into the dirt; until Renee and Guy had disappeared, Faith's life had been predictable, if a bit grim. But that night her trust in the comforting ordinariness of life had been shattered, and she had never regained that sense of security, of obliviousness to things that just didn't happen to normal people. It was as if a curtain had been torn aside, and after that night she was acutely aware of all the dangers and what-ifs. Bad things were not only possible; in her experience, there was a damn good chance they would happen. She had held Scottie's hand as he died, she had identified Kyle's body in a morgue... Yes, bad things happened.
"What are you going to do?" the little secretary asked, automatically accepting that Faith would do something.
"File a missing person's report," Faith said, because it was the only thing she could think to do. Mr. Pleasant had disappeared as suddenly and thoroughly as Guy Rouillard had; he had been asking questions about Guy. Coincidence? Not likely, but neither did she have any evidence that would warrant a criminal investigation. The best she could do was file a missing person's report. At least that would trigger an investigation of some sort.
She asked directions to police headquarters, and managed to find it with only two wrong turns. A desk sergeant directed her to the proper office, and soon she was seated in a straight-back chair reciting what information she had to a tired detective in a tired suit, who nevertheless managed to seem interested.
"You called the motel where he'd been staying, and he'd checked out?" Detective Ambrose asked, his world-weary eyes warming a bit when he looked at her.
"The clerk didn't actually see Mr. Pleasant. He said the key was left on the nightstand, and Mr. Pleasant's things were gone."
"Had the room been paid for in advance?"
Faith nodded.
"Nothing unusual in that, then. Let's see. No one has seen him since he left Prescott, the mail is piling up at his office, there's no answer at his home, and he has a bum ticker." The detective shook his head. "I'll go by his house and see what I can find, but..." He hesitated, sympathy in his expression.
But probably the old guy's heart failed, was what he was thinking. Faith hunched her shoulders in misery. She would hate it if Mr. Pleasant had died, and she hadn't been there to hold his hand or even attend his funeral. She had checked only the current admissions at the hospitals, not whether he'd been a patient any time in the past week. But he'd known about his heart, had been prepared, had even been waiting to join his wife; she would grieve, but there would be a sense of lightness if he'd gone that way. The real nightmare would be if the detective couldn't find him. Then she would fear the worst, and have no way of knowing for certain.
She extracted a business card from her purse and handed it across the desk. "Please call me if you find anything," she said. "I didn't know him very well, but I liked him a lot. He was a sweet old man." To her horror, she realized she was referring to him in the past tense, and flinched.
The detective took the card, and rubbed his fingers along the thin edges. "There's something I'd like to know, Mrs. Hardy. What was he investigating for you?"
She'd known he would ask, and told him the truth. "Twelve years ago, my mother ran away with her lover. I wanted Mr. Pleasant to find them, if he could."
"And did he?"
She shook her head. "He hadn't the last time I talked to him."
"Which was...?"
"I had dinner with him, the night before he left the motel."
"Did anyone see him after that?"
"I don't know." It was easy to see the direction of this line of questioning. At least the detective was taking her seriously.
"Did he seem all right when he left?"
"He seemed fine. I had some unexpected company, and Mr. Pleasant left right after dinner."
"So you weren't the only one to see him?"
She gave him a faint smile. "No."
"Who was your visitor?"
"A neighbor, Gray Rouillard. He came to see about buying my house." It was amazing how far the bare facts could be from what had really happened. She was becoming an expert at exposing the tip while keeping the rest of the iceberg of truth submerged.
"Gray Rouillard," Detective Ambrose repeated, tired eyes lighting with recognition. "Would that be the same Rouillard who played football for LSU, oh, ten or so years ago?"
"Almost thirteen years," she said. "Yes, he's the same man."
"The Rouillards are big stuff in this part of the state. Well, well. So you're selling your house to him?"
"No. He asked to buy it, but I don't want to sell."
"Are you on good terms with him?"
"Not exactly."
"Oh." He seemed disappointed. Faith stared at him a moment, then her mouth curved in a tiny smile. This was the South, after all. Pro football had made some inroads, but college football still reigned supreme.
"No, I don't have any influence with him to get tickets to the games," she said.
He shrugged, and a responding smile twitched his lips. "It was worth a try." He clicked his pen and rose to his feet, indicating that he had no more questions to ask. "I'll see what I can find out about Mr. Pleasant. Will you be in town awhile longer, or are you going home now?"
"I'm going home. My only reason for driving down was to see if I could find him." Gratefully she stood up from the straight-back chair, and refrained from stretching.
He put his hand on her arm, the touch light. "You know my first check will be of the obituaries," he said gently.
Faith bit her lip, and nodded.
His hand made two brief pats. "I'll let you know."
She cried during most of the drive back to Prescott. She had cried very little in the past twelve years, some tears shed for Kyle and more for Scottie, but the thought of losing Mr. Pleasant made her ache inside. She hadn't had much room for optimism in her life, and she expected the worst.
Detective Ambrose was on the ball. When she checked the answering machine immediately on arriving home, there was a message from him: "I've checked Mr. Pleasant's residence, and there's no sign of him. The mail has piled up there, too, and the neighbors haven't seen him." A pause. "He hasn't been listed in the obits, either. I'll keep checking, and get back to you."
He wasn't there. The thought echoed around and around in her mind. No one had seen him since he'd left Prescott. Assuming he had ever left.
Pure rage began to build, and push aside the grief. Her mother and Guy had created a tangle, twelve years ago, that was still wreaking destruction. Faith had to absolve Renee of any involvement in Mr. Pleasant's disappearance, since her mother hadn't known the man existed, but she was still part and parcel of the root cause.
For Faith, deed followed closely on the heels of thought. Furiously she picked up the telephone and dialed her grandmother's number.
She was thwarted, however, by the endless ringing on the other end. No one was home.
She called four more times before she got an answer, and her grandmother's cracked voice called Renee to the phone. "Who is it?" she heard Renee ask in the background. "That girl of yourn, the youngest one."
"I don't want to talk to her. Tell her I'm not here." Faith's hand tightened on the receiver, and her eyes 'narrowed. She heard her grandmother fumbling with the phone again. She didn't wait for the parroted excuse. "Tell Mama that if she doesn't talk to me, I'm going to the sheriff." It was a bluff, at least at this point, but a calculated one. Renee's response to it would tell her a lot. If her mother didn't have anything to hide, the bluff wouldn't work. If she did There was a pause as the message was relayed, then more fumbling with the telephone. "What on earth are you talkin' about, Faithie? What's the sheriff got to do with anything?" The tone was too bright, too cheerful. "I'm talking about Guy Rouillard. Mama " "Would you quit harping about Guy Rouillard? I told you, I ain't seen him."
Faith suppressed the nausea roiling in her stomach, and made her voice more soothing. "I know, Mama. I believe you. But I think something happened to him that night, after you left." Don't let Mama think she was suspected of anything, or she'd close up tighter than a miser's purse. "I don't know nothing about that, and if you're as smart as you think you are, missy, you'll stop pokin' your nose into other folks' business."
"Where did you meet him that night, Mama?" Faith asked, ignoring the motherly advice.
"I don't know why you're so worried about him," Renee said sullenly. "If he'd done what he should, I'd've been taken care of. You kids, too," she added as an afterthought. "But he kept puttin' it off, waiting until Gray was out of school well, it don't make no difference now."
"Did you go to the motel? Or did you meet him somewhere else?"
Renee drew in a seething breath. "You're like a bulldog when you get something on your mind, did you know that? You always were the most stubborn of my kids, so bound and determined to have your way that you'd do what you wanted, even knowin' your Pa would slap you for it. We met at the summerhouse, where we usually went, if you just have to know! Go nosing around there, and you'll find out in a hurry that Gray ain't nearly as easygoin' as Guy was!"
Faith winced as Renee slammed down the phone, then drew a deep, shaky breath as she replaced her own receiver. Whatever had happened that night, Renee knew about it. Only her own self-interest could stir her to do something she didn't want to do, so she had a reason for not wanting Faith to talk to the sheriff. Getting her to admit it, however, would take some doing.
It had to be the summerhouse, of course, Faith thought with resignation. Why couldn't Guy and Renee have rendezvoused at a motel, in keeping with the American tradition? Faith's memories of the summerhouse were bittersweet, like everything else connected with Gray Rouillard. She didn't want to see it again, for doing so would remind her too vividly of the child she had been, of the long hours she had spent lurking at the edge of the woods, hoping for a glimpse of Gray. She had lain on her belly in the pine needles and contentedly watched him and his friends swimming in the lake, listened to their boisterous Shouts of laughter, and woven fancy daydreams of one day joining in their fun. Silly dreams. Silly child.
There, too, she had watched Gray making love to Lindsey Partain. Her stomach tightened now as she thought of it, and her hands curled with an impotent mixture of anger and jealousy. At the time, she had merely thought how beautiful he was. Now, however, she was a woman, with a woman's needs and desires, and she didn't want even to think of him making love to another woman, much less see it.
That had been fifteen long years ago, but she could still call up his image in her mind as if it had been yesterday. She could hear his deep, smoky voice murmuring French love words and husky reassurances, see his powerful young body moving between Lindsey's spread legs.
Damn him. Why had he kissed her, that day in New Orleans? It was one thing to dream of his kisses, and another to know exactly how he tasted, how soft his lips were, how it felt to be in his arms and feel his erection thrusting insistently against her stomach. It was unfair of him to feed her hunger, and then try to use it against her. But then, everything about Gray was unfair. Why couldn't bis hair have thinned over the years, rather than remaining that thick, vibrant mane? Why couldn't he have put on weight, developed a beer belly and worn his pants slung low under it, rather than honing down to such lean muscularity, even more finely tuned than during his football days? And even if he hadn't changed, why couldn't she have, altering enough so that he no longer affected her so violently, or her heart would beat normally in his presence?
Instead, in that respect, she was still the adoring girl who had spent hours, weeks, months of her childhood lying on her belly in the woods, her eyes straining for a glimpse of her hero. Not even finding out that her hero could be a ruthless bastard when he wanted had been able to shake that painful fixation.
She didn't want to go back to the summerhouse, to the scene of her youthful foolishness. What could she possibly find there, after twelve years? Nothing.
But no one else had looked at it with her eyes. No one had suspected that Guy Rouillard might have spent the last hours of his life there.
Faith growled at herself. She was tired and hungry, after the long drive to New Orleans and back, as well as exhausted by worry over Mr. Pleasant. She didn't want to go to the summerhouse, but she had just given herself a convincing argument on why it was necessary. And if she was going, she should do it now, while the afternoon sun was still strong.
She grabbed her keys and stalked out of the house.