Night Moves: Dream Man/After the Night (33 page)

She had been on her way to town for yet another factfinding mission, this time to try having a word with Yolanda Foster, so there was a certain irony to the timing of the note’s appearance. After a moment’s consideration, she decided that she was still going to try. If the writer wanted her to take the threat seriously, he or she would have to be more specific.

First, though, she carried the note inside and locked it in the desk, being careful not to handle the paper more than necessary. In itself, this wasn’t something that warranted calling the sheriff, but if she received another, she wanted to be able to present both of them to him for evidence. She wasn’t eager to see the sheriff in any case. She had a stark memory of him standing beside his patrol car, beefy arms folded as he approvingly watched his deputies empty the shack of the Devlins’ belongings. Sheriff Deese was thoroughly in Gray’s hip pocket; the question was whether or not he would do anything even if she received a death threat.

The note properly stored, she drove to town. Lying in bed last night, unable to sleep, she had planned her strategy. She wouldn’t call Mrs. Foster; that would give her a chance to refuse a meeting. It would be best to take her by surprise, face-to-face, and slip in a few questions before Yolanda got over being startled. She didn’t know where the Fosters lived, however, and the address in the phone book had been unfamiliar to her.

Her first stop was the library. To her disappointment, the chatty Carlene DuBois wasn’t behind the desk; instead it was manned—or girled—by a frothy little blonde who barely looked old enough to be out of high school. She was chewing gum as she leafed through a rock music fanzine. What had happened to the stereotypical librarian with her hair pulled back in a bun and reading glasses perched on a thin nose? The gum-chewing rock fan wasn’t an improvement.

Realistically, Faith knew, she herself was probably no more than four or five years older than the little librarian. Mentally and emotionally, however, she wasn’t even in the same generation. She had never been young in the way this girl still was, and she didn’t think it was a bad thing. She’d
had responsibilities from an early age; she could remember cooking when the iron frying pan had been too heavy for her to lift, and she’d had to stand on a chair to stir a pot of beans. She had swept with a broom that was almost twice as tall as herself. Then she’d had Scottie to care for, the greatest responsibility of all. But when she had finished high school, she’d been prepared for life, unlike kids who had never taken care of anything and had no idea how to cope. Those “kids” were still running back to their parents for help when they were twenty-five.

The girl looked up from her magazine to pull her bubblegum pink lips into what passed for a professional smile. Her eyes were so heavily lined with black that they looked like almonds in a pit of coal dust. “May I help you?”

The tone was competent, Faith thought with relief. Maybe the girl was just stuck in makeup limbo. “Do you have maps of both the town and parish?”

“Sure.” She led Faith to a table on which a large globe stood. “Here are all the maps and atlases. They’re updated yearly, so if it’s an older map you need, you’ll have to go to the archives.”

“No, I need a current map.”

“Here you go, then.” The girl pulled out an enormous book, easily three by two feet, but she handled it easily as she placed it on the table. “We have to seal the maps in plastic and put them in the book,” she explained. “If we don’t, they get stolen.”

Faith smiled as the girl left her. The solution made sense to her. It was one thing to fold a map and put it in your pocket; spiriting out a huge, plastic-encased sheet would take some ingenuity.

She didn’t know if the Fosters lived in town or out in the parish, but she looked first in the town map, running her finger down the list of streets printed on the back. Bingo. Noting the coordinates, she flipped the page and quickly located Meadowlark Drive, in a subdivision that hadn’t existed when she had lived here before. With a name like Meadowlark Drive, she should have known. Land developers were an unimaginative bunch. After memorizing how to get there, she replaced the map book and left. The librarian
was engrossed in her magazine again, and didn’t look up as Faith passed the desk.

Prescott being the size it was, finding Meadowlark Drive took less than five minutes. The subdivision included acreage, rather than just lots, so the houses were fewer and farther apart than normal. There probably weren’t many people in Prescott who could afford to build there, either, as the houses looked to be in the two-hundred-thousand range. In the Northeast and along the West Coast, they would have been worth a cool million, easy.

The Foster house was designed to look like a Mediterranean villa, nestled comfortably amid huge oaks draped with Spanish moss. Faith parked in the driveway and walked up the brown brick pathway to the double front doors. The button for the door bell was disguised amid some scrolls, then discreetly lit so people could find it. She pressed it, and heard the chimes echo through the house.

After a moment there was the rapid tapping of heels on a tiled floor, and the right half of the door was pulled open to reveal a very pretty middle-aged woman, stylishly clad in slim taupe pants and a white tunic. Her short, ash brown hair was a tumble of curls, swept to one side, and she wore gold hoop earrings. Startled recognition flashed in the dark blue eyes.

“Hello, I’m Faith Hardy,” Faith said, hurrying to correct the woman’s horrified assumption that she was Renee. “Are you Mrs. Foster?”

Yolanda Foster nodded, evidently struck speechless. She continued to stare.

“I’d like to talk to you, if it’s convenient.” To tilt the answer in her favor, Faith took a step forward. Yolanda fell back, in an involuntary gesture of admittance.

“I really don’t have much time,” Yolanda said, her tone apologetic rather than impatient. “I’m having lunch with a friend.”

That was believable, unless Yolanda always dressed at home as if she were the nineties version of June Cleaver. “Ten minutes,” Faith promised.

Looking puzzled, Yolanda led her into a spacious living room, and they sat down. “I don’t mean to stare, but you
are
Renee Devlin’s daughter, aren’t you? I heard you were in town, and the resemblance—well, I’m sure you’ve been told it’s startling.”

Unlike a lot of people, there was no censure in Yolanda’s tone, and Faith found herself unexpectedly liking the woman. “Several people have mentioned it,” she said dryly, earning a chuckle from her hostess that made her like her even more. Liking her, however, didn’t deflect Faith from her course. “I want to ask you some questions about Guy Rouillard, if I may.”

The blusher-pinkened cheeks paled a bit. “About
Guy?”
Her hands fluttered a bit, then she clasped them in her lap. “Why ask me?”

Faith paused. “Are you alone?” she finally asked, not wanting to cause the woman any trouble if someone should overhear their conversation.

“Why, yes. Lowell is in New York this week.”

That was fortuitous in one way, and not in another, because depending on her conversation with Yolanda, she might want to talk to Lowell, too. She took a deep breath and went right to the heart of the matter. “Were you having an affair with Guy that summer before he left?”

The blue eyes darkened with distress, and the cheeks paled even more. Yolanda stared at her, the seconds ticking away in silence. Faith waited for a denial, but instead Yolanda gave a curiously gentle sigh. “How did you find out?”

“I asked questions.” She didn’t say that it had evidently been common knowledge, for Ed Morgan to know about it. If Yolanda wanted to think she had been discreet, let her have that dubious comfort.

“That was the only time I was ever unfaithful to Lowell.” The older woman looked away, and her fingers plucked nervously at her slacks.

“I’m sure it was,” Faith said, because Yolanda seemed to need to be believed. “From what I’ve heard about Guy Rouillard, he was an expert at seduction.”

An unwilling, rueful little smile touched Yolanda’s lips. “He was, but I can’t blame it on him. I was determined to sleep with him before I ever approached him.” Her fingers
continued their nervous little movements, now smoothing the upholstered arm of the chair. “I found out Lowell was carrying on with his secretary, and had been for years. I pitched a fit, let me tell you. I threatened him with all sorts of things if he didn’t stop, immediately, and divorce was the only one of them that wasn’t physically damaging. He begged me not to leave him, swore that she didn’t mean anything to him, it was just the sex, and he’d never do it again—you know, that kind of bull. But I caught him, not three weeks later. It’s so silly, the little things that give them away. When he undressed one night, his shorts were on wrong side out, the label visible in the back. The only way he could have gotten them turned wrong would be if he’d had them off.”

She shook her head, as if she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t been more careful. The words were spilling out of her now, as if she had held them inside for twelve years. “I didn’t say anything to him. But the next day I called Guy and asked him to meet me at the summerhouse on their lake. Lowell and I, and some other friends, had been there for barbecues and picnics, so I knew the place.”

The summerhouse again! Faith thought wryly. Between father and son, the sheets in those two bedrooms must have stayed hot. “Why did you pick Guy?” she asked.

Yolanda gave her a surprised look. “Well, I’d hardly have picked anyone repulsive, would I?” she asked reasonably. “If I was going to have an affair, I at least wanted it to be with someone who knew what he was doing, and from Guy’s reputation, I thought he likely filled the bill. Then, too, Guy was safe. I intended to tell Lowell what I’d done, because what good is revenge if no one knows about it, and Guy was powerful enough that Lowell couldn’t do anything to him, if Lowell found out his identity. I intended to keep
that
secret, at least.

“So I met Guy at the summerhouse, and told him what I wanted. He was very sweet, very reasonable. He tried to talk me out of it, if you can imagine! Talk about a wound to the ego!” Yolanda smiled, her eyes misty with memory as they met Faith’s. “Here was a man who tomcatted all over the state, and he turned me down. I had always considered
myself attractive, but evidently he didn’t. I almost cried. I did tear up a little bit, and Guy was frantic. He was so sweet, a real woman’s man. Tears turned him to mush. He started patting my shoulder, explaining that he really thought I was pretty and he’d love to take me to bed, but I had asked for all the wrong reasons, and Lowell was his friend—he went on and on.”

“But you finally convinced him?”

“What I said was, ‘If it isn’t you, it’ll be someone else.’ He just looked at me with those dark eyes that made you feel like you could drown in them, and I could tell he was wondering who I would pick next. He was
worried
about me, thinking I’d be down at Jimmy Jo’s, looking that crowd over for candidates. Then he took my hand, put it on his crotch, and he was ready. He said, ‘I’m it,’ and took me to the bedroom.” She shivered a little, her gaze unfocused as she looked back in time. She fell silent, and Faith waited patiently for her to sort through her memories.

“Can you imagine,” Yolanda finally said, her voice soft, “what it’s like to be married for twenty years, to love your husband and be perfectly satisfied in bed—and then find out that you had no idea what passion could be? Guy was . . . God, I can’t tell you what Guy was like as a lover. He made me scream, he made me feel and do things I didn’t—I only meant it to be that one time. But we stayed there the whole afternoon, making love.

“I didn’t tell Lowell. Telling him would have ended my revenge, and I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t stop seeing Guy. We met at least once a week, if I could manage it. Then he left.” She glanced at Faith, as if gauging the effect of her next sentence. “With your mother. When I heard, I cried for a week. And then I told Lowell.

“He was furious, of course. He ranted and raved, and threatened to divorce me. I sat there and watched him, not arguing or anything, and that made him even madder. Then I said, ‘You should always make sure your shorts are right side out before you put them back on,’ and he stopped dead, staring at me with his mouth open. He knew that I’d caught him again. I got up and left the room. He followed me about half an hour later, and he was crying. We made up,” she
said, briskly now. “And as far as I know, he’s never been unfaithful again.”

“Did you ever hear from Guy?”

Slowly Yolanda shook her head. “I hoped, at first, but . . . no, he never wrote, or called.” Her lips trembled, and she looked at Faith with anguish stark on her face. “My God,” she whispered, “I loved him so.”

•  •  •

Another dead end, Faith thought as she drove home. According to Yolanda, her husband hadn’t known about her affair with Guy until after Guy had already disappeared, which put Lowell in the clear. Yolanda had been too open, too oblivious to even the possibility that Guy had been killed, or that there was the slightest reason why she shouldn’t unburden herself to Faith. Instead she had wound up clinging to Faith’s hands while she wept for a man whom she hadn’t seen in twelve years, but with whom she had shared a summer of passion.

She had finally recovered her poise, flustered and embarrassed. “My goodness, look at the time—I’m going to be late. I can’t imagine—I mean, you’re a
stranger
—crying all over you this way, carrying on—oh, my.” This last as she fully realized just what she had been saying to this stranger. She had stared at Faith with horrified dismay.

Feeling compelled to comfort Yolanda, Faith had touched her shoulder and said, “You needed to talk about it. I understand, and I swear I’ll keep your confidence.”

After a few strained seconds, Yolanda had relaxed. “I believe you. I don’t know why, but I do.”

So now Faith was left with no suspects or leads, not that she’d had anything concrete to begin with. All she had was questions, and her questions were annoying someone. The proof of that was in the note she’d found that morning. Whether the note was indicative of a guilty conscience, she didn’t know.