CHAPTER 34

I remembered that Ann had said there was a red rose on her porch the night of the break-in. Red roses were a symbol of love. The problem was, I didn’t know that much about Ann. She could be in a relationship for all I knew. But wouldn’t that person be out searching with her instead of me? I stretched my arm and grabbed my phone, trying not to disturb Rip. I’d never looked Ann up on social media. I spent a few minutes searching. Nothing. Zippo. At least on my Ann Williams. There were thousands of Ann Williamses out there. Is that why she went by Williams instead of Lafitte? I tried a quick search on Ann Lafitte. Nothing there, either. Ann might have one of those services that scrubbed all traces of you off the internet.

“What are you doing?” Rip asked. He kissed the back of my neck. “What’s keeping you awake?”

I rolled over so I was facing him. We’d talked about trust earlier. Now was the time to trust him. I had to talk this out with someone. I explained my thought process to him.

“Does that make sense?” I asked him. I felt bad for waking him, but his past as a criminal defense lawyer could be helpful here.

“It makes sense as much as anything does.”

I was hoping for more enthusiasm. “Do you know if Ann’s in a relationship with anyone?”

“She keeps to herself.”

“Any rumors?” I asked.

“None that I’ve heard. Do you have any thoughts?”

Who could it be? Who did I know that loved Ann? “What about Deputy Biffle?”

“Dan?”

Rip sounded so shocked that I almost laughed. “Have you ever seen them together? There’s something going on, but I’m not sure what. Maybe he isn’t the straight arrow he appears to be.” How well did I really know him?

“I’m fairly certain he’s exactly who you think he is.” He paused. “Wow. Dan and Ann? That’s just wild.”

“Ann talks about her large extended family in New Orleans. Some of them must love her.”

“I’m sure they do,” Rip said.

“Have you ever met her Aunt Angelique?”

“No.”

“Angelique loves her and is in town. Why show up right now when all of this was happening?”

“Do you know if Angelique spends a lot of time here?” Rip asked.

“I don’t. I was hoping you would.”

Maybe Angelique had planted things in my head while I was hypnotized so I wouldn’t figure this all out and I’d look in the wrong direction. However, even though I’d been hypnotized, at the time, it seemed like I knew, on some level, what was going on.

“I’m going to look her up.” Rip and I lay shoulder to shoulder while I used my phone to look up Angelique Lafitte in New Orleans. Her website popped up right away.

“Her website looks legit,” Rip said once we’d scrolled through a few pages of it.

“She has certifications with various professional organizations,” I said.

“And there are lots of articles about her doing charity work in New Orleans.”

“It looks like she’s generous with her time and money.” I kept scrolling. “Oh, look at this.” I pointed to an interesting article that said she’d worked with the police on several cases by helping victims remember details that led to arrests. I frowned at my phone. “There’s nothing here that makes her look sketchy.” I would have to look elsewhere.

“That doesn’t mean she isn’t.”

Rip would know better than I about that. I set my phone back on the nightstand. Rip cuddled up against me and was soon asleep. My eyes drifted closed for a moment as I scrolled through people who knew Ann. The heritage business owners. Rip. I listened to his even breathing. He sighed a small sigh. But then my eyes went wide again. What about Dex? Little pings started zinging around in my head. Pings that I couldn’t ignore, but I didn’t want to wake Rip back up to tell him.

I thought back over the conversation I’d had with Dex the night he’d driven me home after Angelique hypnotized me. I’d told him my theory that maybe someone who was angry with Ann could have killed Enrique. He’d said that it was possible and that he’d think about who could have been mad at Ann. Had he been playing me? He hadn’t ever followed up with names.

I didn’t see any evidence of a romantic relationship between Ann and Dex, but they were definitely more than just employer and employee. Who knew what went on between them when I wasn’t around? Now how to go about proving it, and did I even want to? Normally with this kind of strong feeling, I’d call Deputy Biffle and tell him what I suspected. But I couldn’t do that to Dex or Ann. Not without some evidence to back up my concerns. How in the world was I going to get that? Wait. Maybe I did have a piece of evidence.

The security firm said there was no sign of a hack, but Dex probably had all the codes to Ann’s house. He might have signed in and known how to erase the sign-in from the system. But there must be a trace of it somewhere. I’d been to Aymar Security once before. There would be no reason for them not to talk to me about the situation again. Dex might even have his own key fob for Ann’s house.

Dex spent a lot of time at Two Bobs. It was more or less Ann’s unofficial office. In the past, when I’d had to seek her out, I always went there first. Dex often sat and held a table for Ann, so he would have been able to hear and observe a lot of things. Maybe bad things about Enrique. Maybe even before he knew about Enrique’s past with Ann. Dex was loyal to Ann. There was no doubt about that. How would I feel if I found out someone I cared deeply about had been hurt by someone I knew?

I would want to kill that person, preferably with my bare hands. I’d been shocked and angry the night Ann had called Enrique out. The night we’d found out he’d assaulted her, and not only her, but other women. I can only imagine how Dex must have felt. He might have snapped. I couldn’t picture Dex killing someone in cold blood, could I? I could picture him confronting Enrique and them fighting.

That Enrique’s body had ended up exactly where Ann had dived was another worry in all of this. Had Ann known Dex killed Enrique all along? Had she taken me with her on the boat that morning to throw everyone off about the real killer? I shook my head. Maybe I was crazy. Maybe this was half-asleep wild speculation. Plenty of people had a reason to kill Enrique. But oof, Dex felt right.

I finally managed to get back to sleep around two. My dreams were filled with people chasing me. Everyone from Enrique to Dex to Ann to Deputy Biffle. But by six, I’d had an early breakfast and a lot of coffee. I went back in the bedroom and kissed Rip’s cheek.

“Please set the alarm and lock up when you leave.” Then I did something I’d been debating ever since I woke up. I pulled a key out of the pocket of my jeans—black, of course—and placed it on the nightstand. “There’s a key for you, if you want it.” I turned and almost ran out of the room.

“Of course, I want it, Chloe Jackson,” Rip yelled to me. “And you’ve got to quit doing this when you’re running out the door.”

I was smiling when I climbed into Ann’s truck.

* * *

The smiling didn’t last long, because Dex wasn’t with her. The one time I really wanted to watch them interact, and I wasn’t going to have the chance.

“Where’s Dex this morning?” I asked, hoping my voice sounded casual but not so casual as to pique Ann’s interest.

“This seemed like a pretty low-risk task, since we know who’s been chasing us.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

Forty minutes and one airboat ride later, Ann and I found the spot where we’d started our hike yesterday. The grass was trampled, and there were multiple footprints on the water’s edge. Hopefully all ours. We headed in, following the trampled grass, footprints, and the occasional spot that looked like it had been recently hacked with a machete. Ann had brought another one with her. I hoped it was for underbrush and not because we needed a weapon. The trees formed a towering canopy over us, and the light was dim as the sun was rising. Sunbeams shot through small spaces between the trees. We walked about eight minutes, then stopped.

“This might be the area. If only I’d snapped branches along while we were here.”

“Or left a trail of bread crumbs,” Ann said with some mirth in her voice. “Don’t worry. We’ve only been out here a little while.”

We walked slowly. So slowly, we were almost not moving forward. We both had flashlights and scanned the ground thoroughly.

“It’s here,” I shouted. “Look.” I held my flashlight to further illuminate the stick with the zip tie around it. I was jubilant, but then I deflated a little. “Now what?” The woods seemed huge around us. I couldn’t hear any cars or even boat motors.

“We’ll assume that the wreck isn’t behind us,” Ann said. “I did another chart last night based on your description of the spot and based on storm patterns and the shoreline shifting.”

“That was smart.”

“If the ship came into this inlet for shelter, the wind could have driven it farther north. So we’ll look that way first.”

We headed off the path from yesterday and into the brush. Ann hacked through some of it; we dodged around other bushes, and forced our way through yet others. It was dirty, unpleasant work at times. What the heck I was doing out here when I could have been home in bed with Rip? However, Ann didn’t seem inclined to give up, so I trudged on, too.

We stopped for a water break.

“Did you bring the drone?” I asked.

“No. It wasn’t useful yesterday. It’s just too dense.”

I spotted a tree with some low branches and pointed it out. “I’m going to climb up and see if I can spot anything.”

“Knock yourself out,” Ann said. “I meant that as a figure of speech.”

I’d always loved climbing trees as a kid. I took a running jump to get to the first branch and snagged it on the first try. It was easy to climb, and soon I was about fifteen feet off the ground. I took a long look around.

“Ann, get up here. You’re not going to believe this.”