Gator Aide (30 page)

I spent more time than usual agonizing over my outfit for dinner that evening. It was one of the hottest nights I’d experienced here so far, and the thought of sweating through the next few hours was an unappealing one. At least, that’s what I told myself as I put on a blue gauze dress that hung off the shoulder. I went downstairs to check in on Terri before heading out for the evening. Twirling me around, he approved of my choice.

“Congratulations, Rach. You just might get lucky tonight.”

Digging through his jewelry box, he took out an antique locket on a thin gold chain and attached it around my neck.

“Accessories, darling. Never forget that word.” Terri put his arm around me, and I laid my cheek against his shoulder as he kissed the top of my head. “You look so good, I almost wish I were straight. And that’s saying a lot. So buck up and at least try to look happy.”

I found myself brushing away a tear from the corner of my eye, unsure of how it got there or why. “I wish you were straight, too, Terri. I really love you, you know.”

Another tear sprang up as Terri hugged me close. “I love you, too, Rach. God played a bad trick on us both. I should have been born a woman and you should have been the man. That way, we would have made the perfect couple.” Terri reached for a tissue and dabbed at my eyes. “Better yet, I’ll stay what I am and you could just have been a gay man.” I laughed as Terri touched up my makeup for me. “There. All better. Now kiss mommy good night and try to be bad.”

“I’ll check in with you later.”

Terri pulled Rocky onto the couch beside him as he turned on the first movie of a Tennessee Williams marathon.

“Let’s hope not. Try to loosen up a little bit, Rach. Having fun isn’t half-bad.”

Santou let out an appreciative whistle when he came to pick me up, making me wish I had gone with my gut instinct and chosen something less revealing to wear. I’ve never felt very comfortable where compliments were concerned, and tonight was no exception. Terri always laughed when I told him such things, saying it just confirmed the fact that he should have been the one to be born a woman. I liked being one; my problem was that I just didn’t know how to enjoy it.

“Where to,
chère
? And please, let’s make it a place without a dart board tonight.”

I had no problem with that. I was looking to play a different game. “If it’s all right with you, I’d like to go for a drive. There’s a restaurant I’ve been wanting to try over in Gibson. It’s a place called Pasta Nostra.”

Santou ran his finger down the long slope of his nose. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather just stay in town? You’re looking so good, I’ll even spring for Antoine’s.”

“I thought you wanted to stay out of the limelight, Santou. Remember, away from prying eyes?”

A hint of doubt began to eat at me again. I turned to face Santou, taking a good look at the man. Hooded eyes watched me intently under a mass of shiny, dark curls that clung to his forehead like wilted flowers. I was ready to call dinner off when, breaking into a grin, he leaned over and quickly kissed me.

“All right,
chère
. If that’s what you want, let’s go for a ride.”

The sun hung low in the sky, a burning red ball setting the earth on fire, the air heavy with humidity like thick soup on a slow boil. I could feel Santou’s skin next to mine, even though we weren’t touching. The silence in the car was as loud as the honking of horns at rush hour on Canal Street, as we drove down country roads. A black mushroom cloud hung over a chemical plant near a field heavy with green sugarcane. Lying on the side of the road, an old hound dog never bothered to lift its head as we sped by, raising a dense layer of red dust that settled back down on top of him. An ancient couple sat on the porch of their unpainted shack measuring time from their rocking chairs, escaping the heat which had collected inside their house all day. Screaming children in yards played hide-and-seek, using old, junked cars and the grey wooden boards of a dilapidated outhouse as places to conceal themselves. My mind was a million miles away as each scene passed. Santou spoke, startling me out of a daydream of secret videotapes and hooded masks hiding painful scars.

“Dolores Williams is out on bail and back home.” He didn’t take his eyes off the road, though no other traffic was in sight. “I thought you’d like to know.”

There were a lot of things I wanted to know, none of which I felt I was any closer to finding out.

“What’s going on with this case, Santou? Who are the good guys and who are the bad?”

He kept driving, slowing down only to let an old, arthritic dog limp its way across the road.

“Are you still a good guy, Santou? Or were you ever?”

Santou turned off onto a dirt ribbon that wove through a grove of willow trees draped in shawls of moss. He drove until the main road was out of sight, leaving only a plume of dust to mark our trail. The LeSabre heaved onto the grass under a spreading live oak, where he parked the car, turning off the ignition. I had never felt more vulnerable than at that moment, sitting there in my thin cotton dress.

“You think I’m crooked, Rachel? Is that what you’re saying?”

That was exactly what I was becoming afraid of. More than anything, I wanted him to convince me that it wasn’t true. Taking a deep breath, I knew I had to confront him with a few of the things that had begun to eat away at my trust.

“I found a set of rosary beads inside Valerie Vaughn’s apartment the other day, Jake. They’re an exact match to the beads you gave me.”

Santou sighed as he reached into his pocket, and my heart began to pound. One of the things I had found so intriguing about the man was that I was never quite sure what he was capable of. At this moment, it terrified me. I found myself wishing I had pants and sneakers on in case I needed to run. But looking around, I wondered,
run where
? I should have stuck my .357 in my bag, and felt like a fool for having left it at home.

“Did you give her those beads, Jake?” He looked at me without a word, his eyes guarded beneath hooded lids that began to strike me as more menacing than sensual. “Just how well did you know her?”

For some naive reason, I had always assumed they’d never met. Now I knew better. His eyes bore into me as what I feared most began to crystallize in my mind. “Were you sleeping with Valerie Vaughn?”

Santou leaned in toward me, but I backed away. “I thought you knew me better than that, Rachel. I didn’t tell you about knowing Valerie, because I didn’t think it was all that important for you to know.”

The sun flared through the windshield as it clung to the rim of the sky in its slow descent beneath the horizon.

“Valerie showed up at the precinct about two weeks before she died. She came to see me with some lame excuse about building-code violations at the club where she worked. I told her she had the wrong department. The police couldn’t help her with that. I knew it wasn’t why she was there, though. It was obvious she had something else on her mind. We began to chat. She hinted around the edges about some kind of trouble, but she was too afraid to talk. Valerie was a Cajun, and we’re a religious type of folk. So I gave her the rosary beads in my pocket. I hoped that would give her the courage she needed.” Santou ran a hand through his hair, the silver strands looking like pieces of tinsel against the brown skin of his fingers. “There wasn’t anything else I could do for her, Rachel. The next time I saw her, Valerie Vaughn was dead.”

I knew he was right. If Valerie wasn’t willing to talk, not much could have been done to prevent her death. But there was more that bothered me.

“Buddy Budwell bought Valerie Vaughn’s apartment building two years ago. Why didn’t you tell me he was her landlord?”

Santou didn’t say anything as he pulled out a Tums.

“I did some snooping around in the Hall of Records in both Terrebonne Parish and New Orleans today. Buddy’s chock-full of property and businesses, and oddly enough, most of it is co-owned by Global Corporation. Why didn’t you tell me any of that?”

Santou popped two of the Tums in his mouth. “None of it seemed relevant to this case, Rachel.”

“Then what makes you so sure that Hillard wasn’t paying Vaughn’s rent? Because Buddy told you so?”

Santou’s skin grew tight against the bone. “There was no proof of anything. I didn’t need you running around on a wild-goose chase, tipping our hand on something it wasn’t the right time to reveal. So I just didn’t bother to tell you.”

He was dodging me. Just as Hickok had done all along. “When is the right time, Jake? When Dolores Williams is locked up for murder? You know she had nothing to do with Valerie Vaughn’s death. Dolores was set up to be at the right place at the right time, with a crowbar lying at her feet. Or was that just coincidence? It strikes me that Dolores was made to learn what the inside of a jail looks like, so that she’d keep her mouth shut about whatever she might know. What do you think, Santou? Did the lesson work?”

Santou’s jaw clenched, letting me know I was on the right track.

“I don’t know what to think anymore, Jake. You’re the detective on the case. Why is it I feel it’s being squelched at every turn?”

“I’ve got no proof of anything, Rachel. Only lots of loose ends, just like you. You wondering about Kroll? Yeah, I think he’s a big supporter of Hillard Williams, and would do anything he could to protect the man from scandal. They go back a long way together and share a number of things, one of which is a fondness for the ladies, especially ones who play fast, loose, and enjoy certain games.”

That was information I already had, and Santou might have known that as well. It didn’t explain why he wasn’t pursuing this case to the fullest extent possible. Even worse, he seemed to be purposely lying low and allowing Kroll to cover up a murder.

“What about Gunter Schuess? I’ve got a woman he cut up for fun, who now looks like one of his calling cards. It seems he has a fondness for razors, and his handiwork has an uncanny resemblance to what I saw done on Valerie Vaughn.”

Santou got out of the car and walked over to a stream of water near a group of willow trees. “Will your stripper testify to the fact that it was Gunter?”

I followed his long, lazy strides. “What makes you think she’s a stripper? I never said that.”

Santou didn’t reply. Hunkering down, he splashed a handful of water on his face. I was hitting home runs, but felt like I was losing the game. Though I’d withheld information from Santou, now I was sure he’d kept even more evidence from me.

“No, she won’t testify. It seems she has an addiction to staying alive. But that information doesn’t help you at all, huh?”

A pair of dragonflies darted through the air, racing to take cover as the blossoms of water lilies folded up in a nocturnal cocoon. A cloud of gnats hovered above Santou’s head like a halo as his fingers splayed the water.

“What is it, Santou? Bad girls get what they deserve? Because it seems like the death of one hooker doesn’t hold much weight for you. In fact, it sounds as if Gunter might have left his mark on a few other lucky women in town. So, do you at least want to tell me why you’re protecting the guy?”

He turned to confront me, water running down his face, onto his neck and inside his shirt, his brown skin gleaming through the thin fabric.

“I’m going to get him on something much bigger, Rachel. I can’t waste it over a murder charge on a stripper.”

There it was again. Disposable women for a higher cause. “What have you got?”

“I can’t tell you that. But it’s going to happen. Very soon.”

The temperature dropped precariously, and I felt myself shiver.

“Is Kroll in charge of this?”

Santou moved close, and the temperature zoomed dangerously back up to a steamy ninety degrees.

“He knows nothing about it at all, and it has to stay that way. You’ve got to promise me that, Rachel. Otherwise, this whole case will be blown, and I’ve worked too hard and too long to let that happen.”

I could feel the heat radiating off his body as he drew closer still. “This means a lot to me. Things have happened in my life,
chère
; things for which I need to make amends. This case is the one that will do it. If I can pull this off, we’ll bag Hillard, Schuess, and maybe even Kroll. You’ve just got to trust me for now.”

His fingers caressed my face and then moved to my neck, where they lingered for a moment, before sliding down to where the gold locket lay nestled between my breasts. Holding on to the necklace, his hand came to rest over my heart. My pulse raced with an exhilarating mix of fear and sheer sexual longing.

“I need a week,
chère
. Can you try to trust me for that long?”

I wanted to believe him as much as I believed that tomorrow would be another hot, steamy Louisiana day.

“Why should I? Why should I believe anything you say?”

His hand sizzled through my dress, burning into my bare skin as he leaned in close. “Darlin’, if I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’.”

I sighed. “One week, Santou. That’s all.”

Laying the locket gently back down, his fingers played along my skin as he kissed me lightly.

“Let’s go find that restaurant.”

Pasta Nostra sat on the edge of the swamp, hidden away from view in a copse of ancient oak trees. Soft amber candles flickered in each of its windows. Inside, we were led up a flight of stairs by the maitre d’. An exotic mix of Cajun and black, his skin was the color of café au lait. Along with high cheekbones, full lips, and a slim nose, he had jet-black hair lying straight against his head, its ends pomaded into a small and perfect ducktail.

Seated on the second floor, we could see the swamp spread out beneath us, a tumorous growth encompassing everything in its path. A full moon’s light shimmered on still, black water, dancing in and out of clouds in a seductive game of hide-and-seek. It disappeared completely for a moment and the swamp was left with a foreboding air, as if it might strangle the restaurant and its occupants with its decaying vegetation. But the moon revealed itself once more, and the marsh glimmered like a secret fairyland at our feet. Lying near my hand in a tinted ashtray was the same matchbook I had found at Valerie Vaughn’s, and then again among the jumble of papers at Buddy Budwell’s.