Awash (The Forgotten Coast Florida Suspense Series Book 6) (18 page)

Wyatt got out of his cruiser and stalked around the back end. Some kid was laid out at Sky and Maggie’s feet with two probes stuck to him. Maggie was standing there staring, Sky was taking a picture with her phone, and E.T. was standing on the sidewalk with an ice cream cone in one hand and a yellow Taser in the other. He was about to ask what the hell happened when Stoopid popped up in the Jeep window with a little plastic cone around his neck, and Wyatt found himself with too many questions and not enough words.

“What happened, Sky?” Maggie asked.

“He put his hands on me,” Sky said.

“Boy run his dirty mouth all over the chile,” Miss Evangeline piped up. “I buzz him with my buzzer, me!”

The boy tried to roll over onto his back, and Wyatt yanked the probes from his shirt, then helped him over with a nudge of his foot.

“Call the police,” the kid said weakly.

Wyatt bent over him and poked at the emblem on his polo. “We are the police, moron,” he said. “Did you touch this girl?

“We didn’t do nothin’, man,” the other boy said.

Maggie looked at Sky. “Sky?”

“He was bothering Stoopid and I told him to stop, then they started harassing me,” her daughter answered.

“How old are you, kid?” Wyatt asked the boy on the ground, who appeared to be thinking about sitting up. “Smells like you might have had a few beers.”

“Twenty-one,” he said weakly. “Old enough to have a beer.”

“Too old to be hitting on a seventeen-year-old girl, though,” Wyatt answered. “You wanna call us? Press charges against Methuselah’s wife over there for zapping the crap out of you?”

The kid looked sullenly over toward Miss Evangeline, trying to look meaner than he was. Then he shook his head.

“Good,” Wyatt said. He held out a hand, and the kid took it. Wyatt yanked him to his feet, but the kids knees buckled and he more or less dangled from Wyatt’s grip. Wyatt looked at his friend. “Why don’t you take your spider monkey home?”

They all watched as the kid led his friend away back the way they’d come.

Wyatt turned back to look at Maggie. “My week is a cartoon,” he said.

“Wyatt, you should have seen it!” Kyle called excitedly.

“I think I’ve seen all I can take at this point,” Wyatt answered. He looked at Maggie, standing there with her hands full of ice cream. “Is that my Rocky Road?”

“Yeah,” she said, and handed it to him. Her own pineapple sherbet was half melted, and she walked over to the sidewalk and tossed it into the trash. “Let’s go, Kyle,” she said. “Come on, Clint Eastwood.”

Kyle hovered near Miss Evangeline until she’d managed to navigate herself and her walker off of the sidewalk.

“Boy, go get my slinkies for me” she said, pointing at her probes still lying on the ground.

Maggie looked at Sky. “Go home,” she said, sighing.

“I didn’t do anything,” Sky said.

“I know. Just go home. I’ll be there as soon as I can hand her off to her keepers.”

She opened the passenger door of the Jeep, dropped the towel back onto Stoopid, wrapped him up, and handed him to Kyle. “Here.”

“Is he in custody for something?” Wyatt asked.

“Mites,” Maggie said shortly.

“Sure,” Wyatt said.

Kyle handed Miss Evangeline her probes, then took Stoopid in his arms and followed Sky to her truck. Maggie looked up at Wyatt, who was licking his ice cream like he was at a parade.

“Bye,” she said tiredly.

“Bye,” he answered.

She walked around to her side of the Jeep and got in. “Come on, Miss Evangeline,” she called.

Miss Evangeline tucked her Taser back into her pocket and headed for the Jeep at the speed of plant. “Boy a fool. Touch that chile and don’t even know who she is,” she muttered. “Bones don’t float, no.”

Wyatt chewed a piece of walnut thoughtfully as he watched her fold her walker and get in, then he shut the door and walked to his cruiser. He pulled up far enough to let them out, then watched in his rear view as Maggie headed toward the Historic District.

M
aggie waited on Boudreaux’s back porch while he took his overnight bag upstairs and changed his clothes, then carried Amelia’s bag out to the cottage.

Maggie watched him as he retraced his steps along the path from the cottage to the back porch. He had changed from his black suit into gray trousers and a white linen button-down shirt. Even when casually dressed for home, he was more elegant than Maggie had been at her own wedding.

He came up the back steps and smiled at Maggie. “Apparently, you’ve made an impression on Miss Evangeline. Again,” he said.

“Oh, I’m sure I have,” she said, watching him walk over to the small bamboo bar near the kitchen door.

“You ladies didn’t have a set-to, did you?” he asked.

“Every conversation with her is a set-to,” she said.

Boudreaux nodded his agreement. “And yet, she likes you,” he said.

“I like her, too.”

“Would you like a cocktail?” he asked her.

“I think I would,” Maggie answered.

“I can make you a mojito if you like,” he said. “I’m just having a Cape Cod.”

“What is that?”

“Vodka and cranberry juice.”

“That sounds fine,” Maggie said. “Thank you.”

He took some small cans of cranberry juice out of the mini-fridge and began making the drinks. Maggie rested her head against the back of the white Adirondack chair she was sitting in, closed her eyes a moment, and enjoyed the evening breeze, which was just shy of chilly.

“So how did it go?” Boudreaux asked as he mixed their drinks.

“Well, I can’t fry an egg or cook a slice of bacon properly,” Maggie said, her eyes still closed.

“Who can, really?” Boudreaux said.

“But I
should
cook my rooster,” she added, opening her eyes. Boudreaux started across the porch with their drinks. “It went pretty well, until she Tasered somebody on Market Street.”

Boudreaux handed her her cocktail, took a swallow of his, and pinched at the bridge of his nose before he hit her with those eyes. “What was she doing on Market Street?”

“Thursday is ice cream day.” Maggie took a swallow of her drink.

“No, Saturday was ice cream day. Twenty years ago,” Boudreaux said. “She’s too senile, ornery, and armed to go anywhere now.”

Boudreaux sat down in the chair next to her.

“You didn’t tell me she was a con artist,” Maggie said.

“She’s so many things,” he said. “Who did she Taser?”

“Some jerk that needed it,” Maggie said. “It was overkill, but not completely uncalled for.”

“Are they pressing charges?”

“No.”

Boudreaux looked at her a moment, frowning. “Did someone do something to you?”

“No, it was just some guys from out of town, harassing Sky,” she said. “She could have dealt with it.” Boudreaux took another sip of his drink. Maggie looked over at him. “How was Louisiana?”

“It was fine,” he said. “Funeral notwithstanding.”

Maggie took a drink as she watched him. “Did you see your wife?”

“I must look like hell for you to ask me that,” he said.

“You look fine,” she replied.

“No. We have spoken on the phone once or twice, when absolutely necessary,” Boudreaux said. “But I haven’t seen her since July.”

“Did she leave you?”

“No. No, she’s not going to leave her credit cards and her big house and her allowance,” he said.

Maggie stared at him for a moment. “Why did you marry her at all? You said you’ve never been in love.”

Boudreaux took a sip of his drink. “She was a young widow from an old, politically-connected society family that had run out of money,” he said. “I was starting to make money, but I was an overeducated Cajun boy from the bayou. We served each other’s needs at the time.”

“You know it’s incongruous that you won’t divorce her because you’re Catholic, right?”

“I know that, yes,” he said. “But, despite the fact that I no longer need her family’s connections, I don’t see how getting divorced would benefit me.”

Maggie looked at him a moment, thought about her words. “Maybe you wouldn’t be so sad,” she said finally.

“Do you think my marriage makes me sad, Maggie?” he asked quietly.

“I think being alone makes you sad,” she said.

He looked at her over his glass as he took a long sip of his drink. The wind blew a small handful of hair across his forehead, and he ran a hand through it before he spoke.

“Perhaps that’s one of the things that draws us to each other,” he said. “We see a sadness in each other that we want to repair.”

“I have a wonderful life,” Maggie said. “I have a great family, and Wyatt.”

“And yet…” Boudreaux said.

“And yet, what?”

“You tell me,” he said.

“Maybe I’m a little sad sometimes,” she said. He waited, and she took a healthy swallow of her drink, stared at her fingerprints in the condensation on the glass. “I get this weariness, deep in my bones, when I think about another fifteen or twenty years in this line of work,” she said quietly. “That’s so many dead and broken people, so many grieving families.”

She set the glass down on the arm of the chair and glanced over at Boudreaux. He sat quietly, drink in his lap, his chin on his free hand.

“So many images I’ll wish I could bleach from my memory,” she added.

Boudreaux stared back at her a moment before speaking. “I suspect you’ll do it, though. I think you need to help people.”

Maggie shook her head slightly. “
Helping people
is keeping horrible things from happening. That’s not what I do. I come in after the horrible things. The best I can hope for is to put someone in jail.”

“Aren’t you underestimating the value of justice?” he asked.

“No, I just know that justice doesn’t put people back the way they were,” she answered.

“Perhaps not,” Boudreaux answered. “But doing nothing isn’t an answer.”

Maggie wanted to say something sharp, but caught herself. She wasn’t angry with Boudreaux, she was angry with the world.

“It takes something out of me,” she said instead. “This case I’m on now is taking something out of me.” She looked over at him. “A young girl I used to know. Raped.”

“How old?” Boudreaux asked.

“Fourteen,” she said.

“A year younger than you were,” he said quietly.

“Yes. And even if we catch this guy, even if he’s indicted for first degree sexual battery of a minor, he’ll probably cop a plea, or have some doctor there to tell the jury how disadvantaged or damaged he is. At best, he’ll get sentenced to thirty years and do ten, still be a young man when he gets out.”

“Well, if you find out who he is, you could always just let me know instead.”

Maggie turned back to look at him, her brows knitting together. Boudreaux gave her a slight smile.

“I’m a cop,” Maggie said, only a little surprised. “I’m not going to have you kill a rape suspect.”

Boudreaux calmly took a swallow of his drink. “I expected as much,” he said mildly. “But it would have been impolite of me not to offer.”

Zoe sat on the edge of the upholstered chair in the living room, holding her cell phone in one hand and petting the gray cat in her lap with the other. She sat ramrod straight, her ears listening for every sound in her immediate environment, as they had been doing all day.

It had been Aunt Paulette’s first day back at work, and Zoe hadn’t been able to do anything but watch and listen, even in the light of day. She turned on the TV for company, then turned it off because she was afraid it would mask other, stealthy noises. She desperately wanted a shower, but the idea of being naked while alone in the house was out of the question. She would wait. If she had to wait until tomorrow, she would wait.

Her aunt had called to check on her around five, had said she’d be home shortly, but it was now almost eight and she wasn’t there. This would not have surprised Zoe last week, and it didn’t surprise her tonight as much as she wished it would. She knew Paulette had stopped at one of her friends’ houses, to drink beer and maybe smoke a little. Her hope now was that she’d be home before dark, but dark was well on its way, and Zoe was starting to wonder how she was going to stand being so watchful for so long.