A Grave Mistake

A Grave Mistake

Stella Cameron

For Julian and Gerry Savoy, proud Cajuns

who answer all those questions.

Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Epilogue

Prologue

Near Chartres Street, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1:35 a.m.

His feet were wet.

Shit, why hadn’t he kept his mouth shut back there? Why had he asked for money?

He could still hear it, the jazz in that place, music as old as this town, older, the rhythm thumping, but not as fast or hard as the blood at his temples.

The goons they’d sent after him were too slow to have seen for sure where he’d taken a right off Chartres Street. Deep in a doorway, neon lights laying bright stripes on the soaked street, Pip Sedge couldn’t hold the breaths that burned his lungs, hurt his heart, so he pulled up one side of his suit jacket and plastered it over his face, hoping to muffle any noise.

The rain had all but cleared the late stragglers away.

Maybe he’d lost those two guys. He didn’t hear anyone running, but two hundred and fifty pounds or so of muscle—and fat—apiece had to make the going tough.

Shut the hell up. Shut up! His brain wouldn’t be quiet, it yammered at him, slid into a screaming chorus that went on and on. I’m a dead man. I’m a dead man. I’m a dead man. They would put a bullet in him. Chase him closer to the river, farther and farther from any help, shoot him in the back and leave him facedown in stinking mud and garbage.

Help? What help?

Quiet. Hush. Just keep cool.

Moving from the doorway could be suicidal. For all he knew there were eyes watching for his first step into the open.

He felt the air change, the spaces around him contract, and he strained to separate sounds. I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy. It was a horn player’s riff somewhere inside an old Dixieland number that could have been the soundtrack from a black-and-white movie. A shutter creaked back and forth, a little slam in between. The rain subsided to a patter.

Shadows gathered before his eyes. He blinked. Shadows shifted on the walls that faced him across the narrow road. Bars on windows shimmered wet. He took in air and held it, and his guts turned to water.

He could stand and wait to die, or he could try to outrun two lumbering punks with guns. And he could hope, just a little, that they wouldn’t see him until he was out of range, or that they didn’t see him at all.

If he got out of this, he already had a new plan. It had come to him earlier when he’d overheard those jerks congratulating themselves. He should have thought about it a long time ago.

Revenge time.

Pip dared to peer from the doorway, back toward Chartres Street. Nothing. No cartoon heavies hunched together, weapons cocked. Now he wanted to laugh, to scream.

He ran. One downward step and another, and he hit the sidewalk almost brushing the wall as he went. The newspaper blocking the holes in his shoes was sodden—what was left of the thin leather soles, sodden. At least they didn’t make much noise.

The rain fell heavier again, slanted into his face, but didn’t cool the blinding heat swelling in his head. He opened his mouth and let his breath drag in and out, lengthened his stride, punched the seething air with jabbing fists.

Asking for money, letting it out that he had proof he was owed, had been a crazy move. He’d launched into a diatribe about ruining reputations and putting people in jail, even though their sneers should have shut him up. He had threatened some of the most dangerous people in New Orleans.

His left ankle turned. Pain shot through his foot, up his leg, but what the hell, he could run with no legs if he had to. He ran on. With freedom in your sights, you could limp at the speed of a Jaguar.

The ankle buckled at every step. He stumbled and caught at a street-sign pole. He wanted to be sick.

There could be a bone broken down there.

He was almost on top of a small cross street. He was going to make it. His breaths turned to sobs. His eyes filmed over. He would make it. There wasn’t any sound of heavy men running in hard shoes. All he heard through the roaring in his brain was the approach of a car from the left.

He paused, panting, his veins fluttering, and checked his pockets to make sure he hadn’t dropped anything. He hadn’t. Bending over at the curb, his hands on his knees, Pip waited for the car to pass. Damn them all. He’d taken too long to find a way to get back what he’d lost. He’d owed them big, but not so big they should have taken everything he had.

He had to show Zinnia he was man enough to fix things.

The first shot caught him in his injured leg. He screamed and began to crumple forward.

The second shot punctured his right shoulder, drove straight back. He heard the bones explode, felt the flesh burn, saw red blossoms like flames. He couldn’t see.

The third shot…

1

Toussaint, Louisiana

Jilly Gable had a man to confront. Maybe this time Guy Gautreaux would keep his big mouth shut and let her finish what she had to say before he piled in and told her what to do and why, and reminded her of his earlier warning that the reappearance of her long-lost mother could be bad news.

Guy had trouble with the concept that a woman could have a change of heart after thirty years of not giving a damn about a person. He didn’t believe people changed; he thought that as years went by they became more of what they had always been. In this case, once a bad mother, eventually a really bad mother.

Jilly pulled her aging VW Beetle into the forecourt at Homer Devol’s gas station—the last gas station on the way out of the town of Toussaint, and first on the way in, depending on whether you were going or coming and which side of the sign you looked at.

Homer usually went to pick his granddaughter up from school in the afternoon, leaving Guy to tend the gas station and the convenience store beyond, where a string of colored lights outlined the roof. The lights stayed on all day and into the evening, all year.

Pots of showy geraniums hung beneath the eaves with ivy trailing to the ground.

Jilly looked around. Nothing on two legs moved. With her head out of the window, she called, “Homer! Guy!” then she screwed up her eyes and listened. No response. She looked quickly toward the road. All day she’d had a sick sensation that she was being followed, watched. Last night she had got a warning, even if it wasn’t direct, that someone was watching her movements. Who better to advise her than Guy, a New Orleans Police Department homicide detective on extended leave?

Way to the left, closer to the bayou, Homer’s split-timber house stood on stilts with its gallery facing the bayou across the sloping back lawn.

She got out of the lime-green Beetle and went through the useless exercise of trying to take in a breath. Hot didn’t cover it. Heat eddies wavered above the burned-out grass and did their shaky dance on tops of the roofs. From where she was she could see cypress trees crouching, totally still, over Bayou Teche. Beards of Spanish moss hung from branches as if they were painted there, and the pea-green surface of the bayou might have been set-up Jell-O. Even the gators would be sleeping now.

She reached behind her seat and hauled out several bakery boxes tied together with string. If she didn’t get them inside fast, the contents would be gooey puddles. Jilly owned All Tarted Up, Flakiest Pastry In Town, one of Toussaint’s favorite gathering places. Her brother, Joe—a lawyer—had been her partner until his marriage the previous year. She’d been able to assume the loans and she loved having the business to herself.

Guy’s beat-up gray Pontiac hugged a slice of shade beside the store, but she saw no sign of the man, either in the gas station or the store. He didn’t live out here and mostly stayed away from the house.

A walk toward the bayou ended her search. He stood on the dock, a cell phone clamped to his ear, his arms crossed, and his face pointing away from her.

A door slid open behind her and she jumped, swung around and barely kept her balance. Homer’s fish-boiling operations were housed in this other building, one you didn’t see until you got close to the bayou. Ozaire Dupre walked out and turned to slide the doors shut, but not before the dense smell of boiling fish rushed free. Ozaire, caretaker at the church, man of many schemes, also helped out with Homer’s boiling and drove the giant pots of fish, and sometimes vats of his part-time boss’s own special gumbo, to backyard barbecues or any event looking for real Louisiana cooking.

Ozaire saw Jilly and frowned, shook his big, shaved head dolefully. “Better you keep me company today, girl. That one down there—he’s one big, black cloud, him.” Ozaire fooled some people with his short, thick, slow-moving body. In fact, the man’s strength was legendary in the area, and his speed if he chose to hurry.

A part-grown black mutt with long, silky hair loped around his legs but soon left to investigate Jilly.

“You say that every time I come,” Jilly pointed out, scratching the dog’s velvet head. “Who’s this good-looking fella?”

“That Guy Gautreaux’s a big, black cloud all the time, that’s why I say it.” Ozaire looked smug. His scalp shone in the sunlight and sweat ran down the sides of his round face and heavy neck. “Never got nuthin’ good to say. I reckon he’s got a curse on him. Bad-luck boy, that one.”

“You should be more careful what you say, you,” Jilly told Ozaire. “A man could get in trouble for saying things like that.”

“Get on. I’m just sayin’ it like it is. Last woman that boy got close to is in a cemetery.”

Last year Guy’s longtime girlfriend had been murdered in New Orleans. He blamed himself.

“Later,” Jilly said, exasperated. She held out the boxes. “We had extra at the bakery. They’re fresh. Put them in the store case for Homer to sell.”

Ozaire took the load from her and gave a rare grin. “An’ I thought you was bringin’ me a treat.”

Jilly wagged a finger at him. A bug flew into her eye and she dealt with it, then pointed at him again. “You get one. I’ve counted those pastries, I’ll count them again when I come back up. There better be no more than one gone.” Give the man the chance and he’d be hauling the stuff off to sell to whoever was using the church hall at St. Cécil’s.

“That there’s a dog what’s a prize, that’s what he is,” Ozaire said, as if the topic had never been pastries. “Can’t keep ’im, no sir. My Lil says four dogs is enough. But this guy’s too good, got too much character to drop him at the pound and have ’em put him down in a couple of days.”

Jilly had been the recipient of Ozaire’s earlier attempts to place strays. “Hope you find a home for him,” she said. The man’s love of dogs made her feel more kindly toward him.

“Reckon I have,” Ozaire said. “With your prickly friend, huh? Put in a good word, huh? For the dog’s sake, and for that miserable son of…” He let the rest trail off.

Jilly shook her head. “You’re too hard on Guy,” she told him, and headed toward the dock. She turned and walked backward a few paces. “I’m going to check on the pastries, mind.”

Jilly hurried downhill.

Guy was leaning over, pushing off one of the rental boats. A couple of guys with fishing gear started the outboard and phut-phutted into the middle of the channel. With the phone still clamped to his ear, Guy stood up and saw Jilly. He gave her a brief wave and started meandering back along the dock. They’d met the previous year when an investigation brought him to Toussaint and he’d become her friend, her best buddy, and she needed to talk openly with him about what was on her mind. He had never attempted to turn their relationship into something deeper, but Jilly had seen the hot looks he quickly hid—she wasn’t the only one frustrated by the sexless hours they spent together.

“Take your sweet time,” Jilly muttered. How could a man walk that slowly? “Just let me squirm as long as possible.” Do I admit I’m scared and I need to tell you about it? If she did, he’d probably jump all over her, say she was putting herself in danger. Get out of the situation. End of discussion.

Guy stood still, staring up at her, and continued his conversation. After the death of the woman he had loved he refused to go back to the NOPD, but they were holding a place for him. Guy was a darn good detective. Meanwhile, Homer had needed someone reliable and asked Guy if he’d work at his place—just to fill the time until he moved on. Guy accepted the job and gave it his all. He seemed grateful to Homer and treated his own place at the station as a trust, even though Jilly knew he had enough money to live on if he wanted to hang around his rented house and do nothing until he decided on his next steps.

Jilly didn’t want Guy to leave his haven in Toussaint, even though he had made it plain he didn’t intend to stay for good.

He stuck the phone back on his belt and speeded up. A tall, rangy man, in faded-out jeans and a navy T-shirt with holes in it, he could cover the ground quickly when it suited him. He met Jilly before she could put a foot on the dock.

She looked up at him, at his unreadable, almost black eyes, and wished she hadn’t come. Ozaire hadn’t been joking about the cloud.

“I wasn’t expectin’ you,” he said, and winced. He almost always said the wrong thing to Jilly, but not because he didn’t want to tell her how he felt each time he saw her. He guessed he’d never be polished.

“I’m not staying,” Jilly said. Not when he looked as if he wished she was somewhere else and couldn’t even manage to crack a welcoming smile.

He cocked his head to one side and took off his straw Stetson, then held it by the fraying brim. “You must have had somethin’ on your mind,” he said. “No reason to come this way otherwise.” And he wished she’d say something he’d really like to hear, like her creep of a mother had packed up and left town again.

“You can make a person feel pretty unwelcome, Guy.” She didn’t dare say it hurt her when he behaved as if she was a stranger with bad timing.

He ran a deeply tanned forearm over his brow, blinking slowly.

You got used to a man’s little mannerisms, got to like them even. Next he’d rake his fingers through his dish-water-blond hair. Yep, that’s what he did.

“Guy, can I ask your honest opinion about something?”

He swallowed and rubbed the flat of his right hand back and forth on his chest. Jilly, you can ask me anything. If I was any kind of a man, I’d get over what I can’t change and find a way to be what you need, what you want me to be. “Ask. Maybe I can be useful—maybe not.” He sickened himself. She wanted intimacy with him, the kind that never let her doubt he was on her side. But he was scared to give it to her. Stuff had happened, deadly stuff, to the only woman he’d gotten really close to.

Yeah, Jilly thought, she just wanted him to reassure her that she shouldn’t question her mother’s motives for being back in Toussaint. And she’d like him to put her mind at rest about one or two things that made her antsy when she visited the old Edwards Place, where her mother’s second husband, Daddy Preston, had set his wife up in lavish style. She’d dissuaded Edith from renaming the estate, so Edwards Place it remained, but Jilly didn’t like the house much. Too big and eerie, filled with memories and sad stories Edith insisted on relating.

Then there was what happened last night. Guy could help her get through that if he had a mind to. All he had to do was tell her it was no big deal, and that he was on her side.

Jilly gave Guy a little smile, then dropped her face so he couldn’t study her so closely anymore.

Would it be so dangerous to give her a hug? he wondered. A brotherly hug to take away some of the trouble he had seen in her eyes? He wasn’t the only one who had suffered loss. Jilly’s former fiancé turned out to be a felon and was destined to spend the rest of his life in the pen.

Jilly moved closer. She could feel him, always could when he was anywhere around.

“Okay,” he said, and put a hand on her shoulder. She wasn’t a fragile woman, but he felt clumsy around her. “Tell me about it, cher.”

It was just his way to be reserved. He cared what happened to her, the same as she did about him. “You don’t like it that Edith came back,” she said.

“I never said that.”

“You said she’d make trouble in the end. That sounded pretty much as if you didn’t think she should have come here.”

Had he said that? “I don’t think that was exactly what I said, but if you want me to take it back, I will. She’s been here awhile now and she hasn’t hurt you so far as I can tell.”

“Having her show up was a shock.” Jilly rested her forehead on his chest. “I’m still getting used to her. She’s not what this is about. Forgive me for being a whiny wuss, but I’m worried about something.” Guy looked down at the top of her head, at her thick, blond-streaked brown hair that reached her waist. A yellow ribbon, tied a few inches from the bottom, kept it behind her shoulders. That had been his old partner, Nat Archer, on the phone. Before long he would show up here, even though Guy had warned him previously that he didn’t want them seen together in Toussaint. From the sound of Nat’s voice, something big was going down. Ozaire was already backing a truck out and would be on his way back to St. Cécil’s within moments. Jilly ought to be gone before Nat arrived, too.

A half-grown black mutt with legs too long for its body ran back and forth and Guy made a note to call for the dogcatcher when Jilly left.

Jilly looked up at him. “I said I was worried.”

“And I’m waitin’ to hear why.”

“You are so tough, Guy Gautreaux. You never give an inch and you’re the only person I have to share this with.”

“You have Joe. I’d have thought your brother would have the best insight on this one.”

Hurt, disappointed, she tried to shrug away, but he exerted a little more pressure on her shoulder and she couldn’t go anywhere. “Joe isn’t objective about this. He hates Edith. He isn’t into giving people second chances. But then, he’s my half brother. Edith isn’t his mother.”

“Joe Gable has his head screwed on right.”

“Damn it, Guy.” She punched his unyielding chest. “I think you’d side with anyone but me.”

He shook her gently. “Could it be that Joe and I have your best interests at heart? Could that be it? Joe might remember picking you up when your dad was long gone, who the hell knows where, and the people he hired on the cheap to look after you kicked you out because he’d quit sendin’ money. You were fourteen years old. Joe might harbor a grudge against the so-called mother who walked out and left you with that angry son of a gun who fathered you and left you just like she did.”

“Yes,” she said. “That could be. Sorry I bothered you. Joe and Ellie won’t be back from Italy for weeks, anyway. Forget it. It’s no big deal.” Except that she felt she could choke, and wished her brother and his wife weren’t so far away.

Yes, it was a big deal. He could feel that it, whatever it was, could be a very big deal. “I’ve got a clumsy mouth, you know that? When it comes to your old man, I’d gladly help Joe feed him to a gator.”

The suspicious sheen on her light hazel eyes turned his stomach. If she cried, he was a goner.

“I want to hear what you came to say and you aren’t leavin’ till you tell me,” he said in a hurry.

Jilly met those black eyes of his and he made a valiant attempt to give her a reassuring smile. “Okay,” she said. “No, it isn’t okay. It’s going to sound stupid. Forget it.”

He put his mouth by her ear. “Listen to me carefully. You and I will stand right here until you come clean.” He was starting to get a really nasty feeling that this could chew up some time and prayed Nat would take longer than expected to arrive.

“You know there’s a live-in staff at Edwards Place?” she said.

“Only because you told me. I haven’t been invited to tea yet.”

She looked at him sideways. “There’s a new man who came from New Orleans a couple of days ago. I think he’s a bodyguard.”

He didn’t know how he felt about that—if he felt anything at all. “Edith and that woman who came with her are pretty much alone. Could be they feel safer with a man watching out for them.”

“When this one arrived—he came in on the chop-per—I think Edith was as surprised as I was. That he was there, I mean. She knew him, even though they didn’t say much to each other. He just went to a room as if he knew it was going to be there, and moved in.” There was no reason to mention that Edith’s daughter-in-law, Laura Preston, threw a tantrum at the sight of the man.

“Mr. Preston flew in, too,” Jilly went on. “I was glad to meet him finally.”

“Is that right?” All of Guy’s nightmares were coming true. The so-called happy family wanted to draw Jilly in, to change her.

“Yes. He’s a nice man. He couldn’t have been kinder to me. He said he hoped I’d let him think of me as the daughter he never had.”

“Did he?” Guy had turned ice cold. Goose bumps shot up his arms. “Is he staying at the house now?”

“He had to go back to New Orleans, but he said he’ll be spending a lot of time here. I can’t get used to the idea of someone having a helicopter pad in their garden.” She held out her left arm to show him a thick gold bracelet with a diamond clasp. “I feel funny about it, but he gave me this. He gave one each to Edith and Laura, too.”

Guy felt his nostrils flare. Every alarm bell went off. What could this guy possibly want from Jilly?

“Very nice,” he said. “But the bodyguard stayed?”

“Yes. Daddy Preston went back alone.”

Had he misheard her? “What did you call him?”

She reddened. “That’s what everyone calls him. At least, Edith and Laura do.”

“So you call him what? Daddy?”

“No. I wouldn’t be comfortable—even though he did ask me to. I call him Mr. Preston.”

If he had the right, he’d tell Jilly to stay away from that place. He didn’t have the right and wasn’t likely to. “You were talking about the new bodyguard. Did he seem threatening to you?”

“No-o. Not at first.”

He gripped both of her arms. “Explain that.”

“I think I was followed back to my place last night. It was getting dark but when I got out of my car in the driveway, a car drove by slowly.”