Riptide (14 page)

Maggie looked out the kitchen window, felt her insides begin to calm, felt the adrenalin soothe her the way it energized others.

“Who’s the cousin?” Wyatt asked.

“Mark Kennedy. On Avenue D.” Maggie looked back at Wyatt. “Listen to me, though. Mark’s not a bad person. He came back from Iraq with one less arm and proceeded to get screwed over by every agency that could help him, including and particularly the VA. He was twenty years old, with no skills other than driving.”

Wyatt held up a hand and started to say something, but Maggie interrupted.

“Wyatt. He has a baby girl and a sweet wife. He grows maybe fifty pounds of pot in a year. David hasn’t run it for him for at least four years.”

Maggie suddenly realized, with a wave of shame and guilt, that she was defending David’s cousin, but had divorced David. She knew that if she allowed herself to think about that, she’d never be able to climb back out from under it, so she pushed it away.

“All I mean is that he’s not worth pursuing,” she said.

“Maggie, I’m not interested in this guy,” Wyatt said kindly. “But David said he got him on with some bigger guys and I need to start from there.”

Maggie nodded. “Okay.”

Wyatt was leaning back against the counter across from Maggie, and she wanted to go back two, three days, when she could have walked over there and leaned in and it would have felt okay. Two, three days, to when she wouldn’t have needed to so badly.

“Wait,” she said. “
David
told you that?”

“Yes.” Wyatt sighed, suddenly looking exhausted, and looked out her kitchen window. “On our damn date,” he said, so quietly she almost didn’t understand it.

Maggie felt snakes slithering through her upper intestines. Small, slow-moving snakes.

“I don’t understand about this battery. In the bilge?”

“Mack has a theory,” Wyatt said. Mack was Mack Jennings, the captain of the Fire Department. “He thinks someone called the cell phone once the bilge was likely to have a decent amount of diesel in it. The cell sparked the battery, and…”

Maggie nodded as he trailed off. She went to the kitchen sink and dumped her coffee, just to have a reason to turn her back. She closed her eyes as she saw David smile and wave. Heard the first muffled
boom
.
 

Jump!
 

Maggie stared at the water running over her hands. “So, does that mean that whoever did this had to be at Riverfront Park?”

“Yes.”

She held her hands palm down under the faucet, rinsed away emotions that did not, would not serve her now. That would not serve David or her kids. Then she turned off the water with a jerk and turned around, leaned against the sink.

“Stevenson’s is picking up David’s body tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “His ashes will be ready for me to pick up on Saturday.”

“Mike’s cousin Frank didn’t make it,” Wyatt said, and Maggie hated herself for forgetting that anyone else had been on the boat. She put a hand up to her mouth, then coughed to hide her shame.

“What about Mike?”

“He’s got a shattered leg and a lot of 2
^nd
and 3
^rd
degree burns,” Wyatt said. “They flew him to Tallahassee. He’s from Jax originally. I understand they’re going to ship the cousin back there.”

Maggie nodded. She and Wyatt were silent for what seemed like several minutes.

Maggie met his gaze until she grew uncomfortable. “I’m okay, Wyatt,” she said.

“No, you’re really not,” he answered. “Your mother says you haven’t slept.”

“I will.”

“She also says that, as far as she knows, you haven’t even let yourself cry.”

“You’ll feel better if I fall apart?” she asked quietly.

“I’ll feel better when you get some of it out, yes.”

“It’s not what I do.”

“Why
is
that?”

“I have to take care of the kids,” she said, and it was partly true.

“Then you better let somebody take care of you,” he said.

Maggie needed to not think about that too much.

“The kids wanted to go to my folks’. I was going to stay here, but now…I’m going to go over there, but I want my parents to take the kids out of town. We were supposed to take David’s ashes out Sunday, but it can wait. Until this is cleared up.”

 
“That’s probably not necessary, but I’m not going to say it’s a bad idea, either. Do you have any thoughts?”

“No, not really. But somebody just made an example of their father.”

H
alf an hour later, Maggie had taken a fast shower, put on some clean jeans and a tee shirt, and shaken out her wet hair while she packed a few items of clothing. Then she grabbed her service weapon from the nightstand, a Glock 23, and tucked it into the holster at the small of her back.

She carried her overnight bag down the hall, stopped and opened the closet. It took every bit of stretch she had to reach the Mossberg 500 on the top shelf, which is why it was there, although she’d taught both of her kids how to handle firearms, and not to.

She held it in the crook of her arm and reached behind the packages of toilet paper on the second shelf, grabbed the box of Hornady Low Recoil double-aught rounds. She popped the action lock button, activated the safety, and loaded two rounds. Then she locked the action again and stuffed the Mossberg and the box of ammo into a duffel she kept in the bottom of the closet.

She carried the two bags into the kitchen, stepped up onto the stool by the fridge, and pulled her Grandpa’s .38 revolver out of the top cupboard, grabbed a box of ammo out of a cookie tin, and dropped them both in her duffle.

She was pulling her cell phone charger out of the wall in the kitchen when she and Coco both heard a vehicle coming up the drive. Maggie zipped the duffel shut, slid it onto a low shelf in the island, and then went to look out of the window by the front door.

Bennett Boudreaux’s black Mercedes sedan pulled into the gravel parking area next to Maggie’s Jeep, and Boudreaux climbed out. If it had been any other time, Maggie would have appreciated the dramatic effect of the low, rumbling thunder in the distance as he shut his door.

Coco stood at attention next to her as she opened the door. They watched Boudreaux walk to the stairs, stop and look up.

“Hello, Maggie,” he said.
 

“Hello, Mr. Boudreaux.”

“I’m sorry for coming to your home uninvited and unannounced, but you didn’t answer my calls.”

“I haven’t been answering many calls at all.”

Boudreaux nodded, then looked at Coco. “Is that a Catahoula?”

“Yes. She is.”

“The state dog of Louisiana, you know,” he said.

“Yes.” Maggie felt a light pressure on her chest. “We got her in Grand Isle seven years ago, when we were on vacation.”

“Near my home,” he said quietly. A brisk bit of wind came up, and ruffled his thick brown hair as he looked over at the river beyond the trees.

Maggie reached back and pulled out the back of her tee shirt, dropped it over her holster. Then she reached around and casually untucked the front. It occurred to her that she was looking at a man who might like her, but who might just as likely want to do her harm, even kill her. It then occurred to her, with some wonder, how much it would hurt her feelings if he did.

He looked up at her. “This is beautiful. This place.”

“Thank you. It was my grandparents’.”

He had one foot resting on the bottom step, his hands on either rail. He looked down at his foot for a moment.

Maggie bit the corner of her lip. “I’m sorry,” she said.

He looked up at her and frowned. “For what?”

“For hitting you.”

He regarded her with something like curiosity. “You think I’m angry because you punched me in the face?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “It’s not something people do. Not to you.”

“I stopped having to prove anything to anybody a long time ago,” he said. “You didn’t embarrass me.”

“Well. I apologize,” she said.

“You were in pain. Shock as well, I expect.”

Maggie looked down at him as he looked around the yard. Why did she like this man? More accurately, why did she want so much for it to be okay to like him? And, after thirty-seven years of living in the same small town, passing each other on the sidewalk, or sitting on the same bay, how did he so quickly become a central character in her life? It was not her nature to be drawn to anything that might imperil her.

“Would you like to come up?” she asked anyway.

“Yes. Thank you.”

She and Coco stepped out onto the front deck as Boudreaux ascended the stairs, his deck shoes only making noise when he hit the seventh step. The post beneath it had weakened or settled, and David had been planning to come replace it.

Boudreaux looked down at the tread as it wobbled. “You should get your father to fix that,” he said, as he stepped onto the deck.
 

Coco, seeing that Maggie was okay with the stranger, wagged her back half from a seated position, and looked up at him with a semi-enthusiastic smile. Maggie could tell that Coco wanted to like him, but wasn’t sure she should. Maggie understood the confusion.

She led him over to the table and chairs on the side deck. “Would you like a glass of wine?”

“If you’re having one,” he answered.

“I think so. It’s Muscadine. Is that all right?”

“Really.” He almost smiled. “That would be nice.”

“Coco, stay,” Maggie said, and Coco sat next to the nearest chair as Maggie walked into the house. Through the window, she saw Boudreaux sit down in the opposite chair. If her world had not turned inside out, she would have felt the oddness of his being there more keenly.

She grabbed the bottle from the counter and two glasses from the rack, and headed back out. As she did, she saw Boudreaux with his hand stretched toward Coco, and Coco with her head stretched toward his hand. They lacked four good inches to make contact.

She set the wine and glasses down on the table. “You can say hi, Coco.”

Coco lifted her butt from the deck, just enough to sniff Boudreaux’s hand. He smiled, scratched at the side of her head, and then Coco sat back down as Maggie sat.

Maggie poured the wine and handed Boudreaux a glass. They both took a sip. For the first time, she noticed that almost every time they had a conversation, it was accompanied by a drink. It was an anomaly for her, someone who really didn’t drink that much or that often.

Boudreaux lowered his glass and cradled it in his lap, then looked beyond her somewhere. “I remember, twenty-two, twenty-three years ago, back when Craig played baseball. I loved it when his team played David’s, and when they didn’t, if David’s team followed them or something, I would watch David’s team play. He was so graceful, that kid.”

Maggie took a swallow of her wine to hide a lip that threatened to tremble.

“I remember seeing you there, too,” he said, and Maggie looked up at him. “Cheering him on like he was a gladiator, getting this proud little smile when he slammed one out past center field or slid into home. Getting worked up when there was a bad call.”

He smiled kindly at her. “I thought it was touching.”

Maggie lowered her eyes to her glass.

“I’m truly and deeply sorry, Maggie,” Boudreaux said, and when she looked up, it was as though his smile had never been there. His incredible, almost impossibly blue eyes looked right through her skin and muscle and bone.

“Thank you,” she almost whispered.

They stared at each other, and while it wasn’t specifically uncomfortable, it was unusually intense. There were times like these, when they were alone and he looked right at her, that she was within an inch of asking him some truly honest questions. It was as though his gaze was an invitation and he would actually give her honest answers, but only if and when she asked the questions.

But there were too many, and the answers might not be what she was prepared to hear or, more accurately, act on.

“Have you been apprised of the developments regarding your ex-husband, Maggie?” he asked softly.

It took her a moment to answer. “Do you mean that David’s boat was intentionally blown up?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, that is what I mean.”

“How do you know that?”

He turned his glass around in his hands. “Friends.”

“Law enforcement friends?”

“Some.”

“Do you know who hurt David?”

“No. And you may choose to believe this or not, but I would tell you if I did.”

Maggie thought that might, in fact, be true.

“But I think I know why,” he added.

“Why?”

Boudreaux leaned his elbows on the table, his glass in his hands. “He paid cash for a forty thousand dollar boat.”

“How do you know that?”

“He told me,” Boudreaux said. “I was buying his shrimp again, just like old times.”

Maggie and Wyatt had discussed that very thing, but Maggie felt the need to speak up for David. “He’d told me before that he was saving up. He also said he got a good deal from a guy in Mobile, in exchange for helping him rebuild a motor.”

“And he might have,” Boudreaux said. “But David was a small time transporter, running moderate amounts of medium-grade marijuana to Gainesville, a city that pays middle-of-the-pack wholesale prices.”