In the bathroom of the master suite, Emma stripped and stepped under a pulsing stream of hot water. She let it beat down on the top of her head, turned, and hoped the jets would ease the knots in her back.
She washed her hair, winced when she touched the bump Orville had caused, and hurried to finish.
How dare he say she needed him because she was afraid to be alone at night? It was as if he’d stopped noticing her at all years ago, about when he’d started being a casual resident who passed through his home to get clean clothes and hand out orders. Tonight would be another night alone, and she wanted to spend it in the house where she’d been born.
Back in the red-and-white bedroom, Emma threw on a clean T-shirt with black sweats on top.
The phone rang, and she jumped. Her hands flew to her cheeks. “Settle down,” she muttered, and picked up on the second ring. “Hello?” She listened to electric silence. “Hello?” she repeated.
“Damn you,” she said and hung up. My, she was brilliant. That could have been the killer. If so, she’d just made sure she antagonized him.
Soon a canvas tote held all she needed for a night away. She wrote a note of explanation to Orville, said she would be back in the morning and ran downstairs to tape it to the front of the refrigerator. Since the first thing he did when he came in from the garage was get a beer from the kitchen, he was bound to find the note.
She gathered a few grocery essentials and put them in a bag.
Her hair would be a mess, because she didn’t want to stop and dry it. But, as Orville had reminded her, she would be alone, so there was no one to impress.
The back of the Lexus was filled with boxes of merchandise for the store. She would need to get there fairly early in the morning. Sandra Viator worked with her and had a sales-woman’s heart—she also had an eye for making the shop appealing and for drawing people in. People read the name, “Poke Around,” in incongruously perfect script surrounded by beribboned country bouquets, fancy packages, cups of hot coffee and grinning alligators, and smiled. Sandra and Emma got a fair amount of traffic from people who were too curious not to go in.
Sandra was Emma’s best friend; she was also married to Carl Viator, partner and close ally of Orville. The four of them socialized together, not so much now as they had, but Carl and Sandra had witnessed Orville’s bad treatment of Emma often enough. Carl tried to look out for Emma without making Orville mad, and Emma could tell Sandra anything. Emma didn’t want to think about life at Poke Around without Sandra.
It wouldn’t happen, because she wouldn’t have the business once she was divorced.
Emma hopped into the vehicle and jabbed the button to open the garage door. Her sweaty fingers fumbled the keys. The call had bothered her, but most of all she wanted to be in her childhood home, well locked in and comfortable in her old room.
She pressed the button harder. Not a thing.
Emma got out of the vehicle, went immediately to set the alarm inside the house, then locked the door to the garage. Since they rarely used the alarm, Orville would be in for a surprise unless he acted quickly. But he would just have to understand the precaution.
She hurried to the Corvette, where the keys were usually left in the ignition, and got in. The keys hung there. Emma plunked her finger on the opener button.
The garage door slid upward.
She closed it again.
Driving the Corvette was out of the question—Orville would go ballistic. She remembered the control panel she’d never had a reason to use, went to find it inside a metal door set flush with the garage wall, and peered at the switches. Throwing a switch to engage the vacation mode would keep a door shut. The one for the door behind Emma’s car had been set to the vacation position, and pulling it back wasn’t easy.
You had to want to keep a garage door closed—or get it open.
Obviously Orville had decided he would make sure she didn’t go out. He never had given her any credit for intelligence.
The phone call. Emma shivered and jumped into her SUV. She locked the doors and sighed with relief when the garage door behind her swung open.
What if the call had been to find out if she was there, then an intruder had sneaked inside somehow and gone into the garage to make sure she couldn’t get away quickly? He would have had time to get to her by now—unless he planned to follow her into the garage but had heard her put on the alarm and was waiting for her to leave so he could escape unseen. Or he could be “just” a burglar….
Emma wasn’t sticking around to check for killers and thieves inside the house.
She put her foot to the floor and shot out into a hot, black night. Thrown back and forth by her own jerky foot on the brake and the gas, her already aching head throbbed. Only a few houses stood in this section of the golfing community—mostly because the lots were huge and the homes outrageously large. There were no streetlights. The residents provided their own illumination, and that left long dark stretches between properties.
Nothing moved, or nothing that Emma saw. At the rate of speed she traveled, everything became blurred.
A route through town would be safest.
Should she call Billy Meche? Not unless she thought a call, possibly a wrong number, and her own fearful imagination were worthy of a complaint to the law.
The clock on the dash showed midnight had just passed. Her breathing came in short, shallow bursts, and her heart beat so hard she heard it in her ears.
In ten minutes she reached the outskirts of town and slowed down to drive along Main Street. Here there was a lot more light, and she drove past businesses and offices she had known all her life.
Two police cars blocked off civilian vehicles parked outside Buzzard’s Wet Bar. Several people were rolling around on the ground, while the cops leaned on their cars, waiting for a break in the action to take the brawlers in.
A neon pig flashed atop the butcher’s shop. Dangling strands of white Christmas lights, missing more bulbs than the number alight, flashed in the single window of Kay’s Hand-crafts. By daylight, cobwebs could be seen in the corners of that window.
Emma reached the square and steered around the grassy park in the center. Bars covered the grocery store window, and the establishment was dark inside. Sadie and Sam Moss believed in security. The Moss family had owned the store for several generations. The first proprietors had been Sadie and Sam, and those names were repeated across the windows and the door in gold lettering. The store kept the same name regardless of who was in charge. Coincidence had led a Moss boy—another Sam—to marry a girl named Sadie, back twenty-five or so years ago, and now the name fit the owners once more.
A car pulled to the curb just before the stop sign at the junction of Main and Rice Streets. Emma held her breath. Much farther up Rice, Patrick Damalis had his plush establishment in what resembled a Tudor mansion. The owner lived on the premises and advertised that he could accommodate any event. Patrons came from many miles for wedding receptions, banquets and business meetings. She imagined Pat’s Pack met in a private room somewhere. Patrick’s was the best restaurant in town, would be in most towns. It was incongruous in a place where grits, sausage, three poached eggs and a basket of hot, sweet calas—rice fritters dredged in powdered sugar—was considered as gourmet as a meal needed to be. You went to Ona’s on the next block for that.
The car at the stop sign wasn’t a Mercedes, and the driver wasn’t Orville. The couple in the front seats lip-locked together, and the driver rose over his companion. Emma saw elbows and struggling bodies. He must have put the parking break on.
She drove as fast as she dared, with images whirling through her fevered brain. Orville doing whatever he did in the secretive men’s club people avoided talking about. Denise as she’d been in life, confident and smiling—in death, a grotesque, defiled mannequin. Then she saw the shadows of Finn Duhon’s thick lashes reflected in his eyes, and the way his mouth flipped up at the corners when he smiled—the dimples beside his mouth.
She fiddled with buttons until a Mario Frangoulis CD helped close out the mad rotation of imagined slides. Pointe Judah’s small downtown, with its rows of houses stretching out behind the business area, didn’t take long to leave behind. Nor did a trailer park on a piece of land that bordered Bayou Nespique to the west.
Emma’s folks liked privacy. They’d bought north of town on a winding road where the few people who already lived there had built way back in the trees. Without the trees, negotiating the road in the dark might have been less dangerous. As it was, each turn came up before her headlights picked out a solid wall of trees ahead, indicating a sharp bend.
Just let me get there in one piece. She second-guessed every decision she made now.
At least Emma knew the twists and turns well. She held back on the gas when all she wanted to do was race ahead. The changes in elevation were small, and rose and fell slowly. She came to a T-junction and turned right without slowing down. The trusty Lexus didn’t even begin to fishtail.
On a long, slow, downhill drop, Emma looked in the rear-view mirror and came close to missing a left-hand jog. Headlights glared behind her.
Idiot, you’re not the only one on this road.
She punched off the CD player. The distraction muddled her. She negotiated three more turns, and when the road straightened out, the lights were still there—and much closer.
When she accelerated, the other vehicle dropped back, but when she slowed, the lights grew closer.
If she turned off into the next driveway she came to, it would prove whether or not she was being followed.
Gravel kicked up by the front tires pinged on the under-carriage.
She could just drive on to the next town.
Or maybe she could make a dash for home and lock herself inside before he could get to her.
Emma floored the vehicle and shot forward. This stretch of road rose and fell more than most parts, but it was fairly straight.
Trees swung up in front of her when she didn’t expect them. Emma attempted to ease the brake on, but it was too late and the trees too close. She stamped on the brakes, and this time the rear wheels of the Lexus did skate a little on the loose gravel. Just the smallest slide before she had it completely under control again.
She didn’t have to look in the mirror. Headlights broke over her, blazed inside the vehicle. Emma screamed, managed to shut her mouth, but broke into a clammy sweat.
On the straight again, she wrapped her shaking hands around the wheel and prepared for another dash.
The dark-colored predator suddenly swung wide, into the oncoming lane, and traveled beside her. From the corner of her eye, Emma saw a light go on in the cab of the large pickup.
Reluctantly, she made herself look at the other driver.
Finn Duhon? She almost choked. He rolled down his passenger window and indicated for her to open her own.
Emma followed his directions, and she heard Finn’s voice faintly as the wind ripped his words away. “Slow down. You’ll kill yourself.”
She took her foot off the gas, and they both lost speed.
“I was worried about you!” he yelled. “Your husband left you alone, and you shot out of there. I’ll make sure you’re safe where you’re goin’.”
“Get back on the right side of the road,” she shouted, peering ahead. It was his fault she’d driven wildly.
“Okay,” Finn said. “Your parents’ house, right?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll go first. Maybe that way I can get you there alive.”
He waved, and Emma waved back. Her heart had slowed a little but her head still ached, along with her eyes now.
Before long, Finn made a right turn into the driveway of the Balous’ two-story house.
Emma followed, but slammed on the brakes once she was off the road.
What do I really know about this man?