The Gates of Evangeline (21 page)

When he tells me his happiest memory of his father, I can picture it: Andre at age ten, his hair windblown after a ride in the convertible, attending the racetrack with his dad for the first time. Neville wasn't much for gambling—“he respected money too much to just throw it away,” Andre explains—but he wanted his son to admire the horses, and he let Andre place a few small bets. “I won eighty-six dollars,” Andre says, pride still lighting up his face.

I wish I had my tape recorder to capture each detail, but that would ruin the intimacy, destroy the charade that we are two equals engaged in friendly conversation, acquaintances by choice and not circumstance.

“I can't imagine being Neville Deveau's son,” I say. “I used to be so embarrassed by my father. I thought everyone was looking at him, judging anything he said or did or wore in public. I was being a paranoid teenager, but in your case . . . well, it was probably a legitimate fear.”

Andre considers this. “He wasn't the most visible figure in the circles we ran in. I'd say he was much better in public than private, actually.”

“You didn't get along at home?”

He shakes his head. “My father was a blowhard with a bad temper. I avoided him when possible. You could probably count our positive interactions on one hand.” He rises to refill his glass and realizes that mine is nearly untouched. “You don't like it?” he says, part disbelieving, part crestfallen, like a parent who has just received a negative report about his child.

“Just pacing myself.”

“This is good stuff, I promise you. Glenlivet Twenty-Five. A twenty-five-year-old single-malt whiskey with two years of finishing in sherry casks.” He takes a sip and closes his eyes, savoring it.

I make some agreeable reply and take a few more sips, but this is strictly social drinking. I want to minimize the alcohol, maximize the schmoozing, and remain as clearheaded as possible. Already, I can feel my book sprouting up around Andre's stories, feel the sad portrait of this family that I need to paint.

I ask him about family holidays, and he tells me about the lavish Mardi Gras parties his parents used to throw. Maddie Lauchlin—Nanny, he calls her—would spend a full month decorating the house. She erected a huge tree in the foyer and draped it in green, purple, and gold. She set up elaborate displays on every mantelpiece, decked out the front door with masks and beads and sparkling ribbons. She had doubloons made with Evangeline's image imprinted on them. I know little about Mardi Gras traditions, despite the fact that it's only about three weeks away, but the idea of Noah's grandmother pimping out the home in all kinds of tacky makes me smile.

“When did they stop with the parties?” I ask.

“After we lost Gabriel,” he says. “My father didn't feel we could maintain proper security with so many people around. I never cared. I'd rather spend Mardi Gras in the city, anyway.”

“Is that where you live now?”

Andre nods. “I have a condo in the French Quarter. But I'm not home much. Our family owns a place on St. Charles, though, right along several parade routes. Bridgie and her husband are planning quite the party there this year. Have you been to Mardi Gras?”

I shake my head, a little self-conscious.

“It's like spring break for kids
and
grown-ups. Hard to beat if you like alcohol.” He glances at my half-full glass. “Although maybe you don't.”

“I'm not much of a drinker,” I admit. “Shirley Temples are probably more my speed. Just plain old ginger ale and grenadine.”

He chuckles. “That's not the Louisiana way, honey. We work a little, play a lot, and don't stop drinking 'til we're unconscious.”

“Even your mother?”

“My mother's not from Louisiana. But I hear she had a good time back in the day.”

“Were you closer to her than your dad?” His mother has been a shadowy figure in his family stories thus far. Andre has no problem with portraying his father as a bastard, his sisters as superficial airheads, or himself as clueless and bewildered. But Hettie—she's largely absent.

Andre must sense my curiosity because he stares at the fire for a moment. “She's my mother,” he says at last, “so it's complicated, isn't it? I love her more than anyone on this earth. She's made her share of mistakes, but she'd do anything for me.”

Someday, like Hettie, I will be old and near the end. But my son will not be there to tell people about our complicated relationship, to reflect on what I did right and how I screwed up. I wonder if the stinging injustice of this will ever go away.

“Your mother's entitled to a few mistakes, right?” I say lightly. “But lay it on me. Where'd she go wrong?”

“Well, marrying my father comes to mind. And you can put that in your book, I don't care who knows it.”

“She was unhappy?”

Andre shrugs. “She wanted love. He wanted a uterus. You see the mismatch.” He gets up to stoke the fire. “My father mellowed out some toward the end, but it was a hard road for her. When he died, I thought she might finally get a few good years without him. She deserved that. But then they found the cancer. Which reminds me . . . I haven't been to see her since I got in today.”

Evidently Andre's visit was more about Jules. I wait for him to excuse himself, but he doesn't budge.

“I'll tell you a secret, Charlotte. Sick people scare the bejeezus out of me.” Andre shudders. “I don't want to see her . . . wasting away.”

I nod, but inside I'm raging.
Your mother is
dying . . .
Who cares what you want?
Of course I'm hardly qualified to join the “honor thy father and thy mother” police. If I learned that my own mother was dying, I wouldn't visit, wouldn't call, wouldn't care.

“Have you seen her recently?” Andre asks me. “How bad is it?”

“She's very thin,” I tell him. “And the last time I spoke with her she seemed . . . confused.”

“How so?”

“She was talking about Gabriel a lot. She didn't seem to know that he was gone.”

He frowns. “She
never
talks about him. What did she say?”

“She was just talking like he was alive and all grown up. Like he never went missing.”

He exhales. “Oh God. This isn't—she's not well.” Andre presses a hand to his temple. “Someone should've told me. I had no idea she'd declined to that point.” He downs the last of his Glenlivet and sets his glass on the table so hard I'm afraid it will break. “I've got to go see her.”

Southern hospitality and good manners prevail.

“Charlotte.” He takes my right hand in both of his and gives me his best sincere CEO smile. “It's been a pleasure. Next time I'll have that Shirley Temple for you.”

T
he chat with Andre gets me writing. I record the stories he told me as faithfully as possible, then work these anecdotes into the existing structure of my book. Noah pops in at some point, but I wave him off, too engrossed to offer any explanation beyond furious typing. He nods like he gets it and quietly retreats. By the time I have the new material down and reach a stopping point, it's half past one in the morning.

Entirely awake and alert, I find myself unable—or maybe unwilling—to go to bed. I try to resume working, but the spell is broken, my focus and drive dissipated. Two a.m. What to do? It occurs to me that I'm not the only one up at this hour. Deacon should be working security tonight, and I haven't spoken much with him since he helped me track down Dr. Pinaro.

I throw on a coat and step into the chilly night air, using the light of my cell phone to guide me. I'll walk to the house, I decide, and if I don't see Deacon, I'll come straight back. Yet as many times as I've made this trek, there's something especially nerve-racking about doing it alone at this hour. The light of my phone telegraphs my whereabouts and renders me blind to anything outside its small, glowing sphere. Beyond this dim circle, there's a blackness deeper than I've ever seen.

Thankfully, as soon as I near the house, Deacon intercepts me. All that high-tech security must've alerted him to the presence of some bumbling stranger. He examines me warily from behind the beam of his high-powered flashlight, much less friendly than he was our last encounter. Understandable. At this hour, criminal intent or mental illness are the only sensible explanations.

“I couldn't sleep,” I tell him, doing my best to look both sane and apologetic. “I was just trying to clear my head. Sorry for setting off the cameras.”

Having realized I am not an armed intruder, Deacon is magnanimous. “Aw, dat's awright. Ah had a few of dose nights maself. Sometimes yuh mind just gets da best of yuh . . .” He is peering at me.

“Charlotte,” I remind him.

“Well, now, Shalit, Ah'd be real careful ramblin' 'round at night when yuh dis close to da bayou. Neva know when a
cocodrie
's gone go fo' a ramble of 'is own.”

“You mean a gator?” I glance around the ground by my feet, but Deacon remains cheerful.

“You stain in a guest 'ohm? I'll walk you ovadaddy.”

I can't go back, not if I'm going to pick his brain. “Please. I'm going a little stir-crazy. Is there somewhere I could go sit a bit? To calm down?”

He scratches his frizzy white head and then makes the offer I'm looking for. “Guess you could come back wit me to da carriage house if you lak. Nuttin goin' on, just me keepin' an eye on da cam'ras. But Ah got a pot of coffee an' some doughnuts, if you hungry.”

I wonder if it's the smartest move to be following some old man I don't even know to a place no one would ever think to look for me if I went missing. And at two a.m.! Remnants of my former self—clearly a much more responsible Charlie—berate me for my stupidity. But I do it anyway.

From the outside, the carriage house resembles a four-car garage, but as Deacon leads me through the side door, I see only one car parked here. The rest of the structure houses a variety of tools, bicycles, fitness equipment, and other odds and ends. This is probably all the storage space Evangeline has, I realize. With all the homes in Chicory standing just a dozen feet or so above sea level, I'd wager basements are unheard of.

The carriage-house clutter is actually a reassuring contrast to Evangeline's immaculate interior until I spot the desk and panel of TV screens in the corner. A series of green night-vision images flicker on and off. Cameras blink on at the movement of scurrying animals, tracking them in the dark. It gives me the willies to think of all the times I've appeared on these screens while someone sat bored, observing me.

Deacon hits a few buttons to make sure he hasn't missed anything and then grabs a box of doughnuts off his desk. “Wan one?”

I select something jelly-filled. “So how long have you been working here?” I ask through a mouthful.

“Six yeeahs. Ah did security at da university in Lafayette, but ma daughta lives ova heah.”

Six years isn't long enough to know much about the family, let alone the case. This expedition has been a waste. I wander around the carriage house, glancing at flowerpots, a stepladder, some old cans of paint.
Just put in a few minutes of chitchat, then you can get out of here.

“You like Chicory?”

“Ah lak it well nuff. Worked heah at da mill some yeeahs afta I finished high school, met ma wife heah.”

“What mill did you work for?” From the corner of my eye, I watch one of the TV screens, where a fat, unidentifiable animal creeps around.

“Da sugah mill,” Deacon says. “Deveau family owned dat, too, but she wasn't makin' nuff money and dey closed 'er down.”

I don't remember hearing about a sugar mill before. “When was that?”

“Long time ago.” He chugs some coffee from a Styrofoam cup. “Late seventies, maybe? Neville neva did sell da land. Dem buildins still dere. Ah heah da teenajas go drinkin' dere at nights, get chockay.”

Before I can pursue this, my eyes fall on something large and wooden propped up behind a treadmill. The hairs on the back of my neck begin to rise. I take a few steps closer, hardly daring to breathe, and confirm my suspicion.

A long, thin rowboat. One I think I've seen before.

“How old's that thing?” I point at it, trying to keep both my voice and my hand steady.

“Dat dere?” Deacon shrugs. “Dunno. Been 'round since Ah rememba. You lookin' to take 'er for a spin?”

I shudder. “No. It—probably leaks.”

“Nah,” he says, “she's a good'un. Took 'er out in da swamp a couple yeeahs ago. Sometimes yuh wanna boat lak dat, small and quiet. Got right up close to a heron.”

Can this really be the boat I dreamed about? The one I sat in with Gabriel? Instinctively, I run my hand over the wooden side, follow the contours of the boat with my fingertips. I feel a faint crackling sensation, a charge that spreads to the palm of my hand.
He's going to show me,
I think.
Somehow he's going to show me.
And he does.

I'm pushing the boat into the water. Trying to hold it steady.

I'm peering over the side. Searching.

Water. Murky. So cold.

Panic.

I withdraw my hand quickly and glance back at Deacon, afraid that my face will betray my shock. He's adjusting one of the cameras, oblivious. I have to talk to Detective Minot, have to tell him what I've found.

This boat. This exact boat, in that swampy area by the dock. And the brown-eyed boy with dark hair and a chipped tooth. Jo-Jo. Gabriel Joseph Deveau. I can feel this object, this place, this person all linked together, a blazing triangle in my mind. And the evil. I can feel the evil, calculated and predatory, seizing me in the guts.

“I want to go home now,” I tell Deacon, and then I throw up.

•   •   •

I
REFRAIN FROM CALLING
Detective Minot until six a.m. He sounds so alert when he answers, I wonder why I bothered waiting.

“Charlotte! I've been thinking about you. I had a big break yesterday.” He's speaking so fast I can barely understand him. “Now, you can't use this in the book, you can't breathe a word of it, but—”

“A break? What kind of break?”

“A break in the case!” He's practically shouting. “This could be big. It
is
big. It's major.”

“Remy, what happened?” He sounds like an overexcited five-year-old.

“I spoke to Rob Schaffer yesterday, one of the lead FBI agents involved in Gabriel's kidnapping.”

“Okay . . .” The name is familiar. Agent Schaffer was quoted in some articles I've read about the case.

“He's in his seventies now. Wife is dead, no kids, lives on an oxygen tank.”

I sink down into my mattress, hands jittery with anticipation. “Let me guess. Schaffer suddenly felt the need to confess his sins?”

“He didn't seek me out. I don't think he had a guilty conscience. He just . . . didn't care enough to lie anymore.”

I'm getting impatient. “So what did he tell you, exactly?”

“The alibis. I've been telling you all along I thought Neville paid some people off, haven't I?” He breathes a long sigh of satisfaction. “Well, Schaffer was one of them. He fabricated a witness. Neville paid him twenty-five thousand dollars.”

Suddenly the exhaustion of the last twenty-four hours I've spent awake evaporates. “Jesus. He just . . . told you this? Over the phone?”

“He lives near Baton Rouge. I went to see him yesterday.”

I'm oddly hurt that Detective Minot didn't invite me along. We were just hashing things out together on Wednesday—he could've asked. And I thought I did a pretty good job with Danelle, all things considered. But of course a retired FBI agent would respond better to Detective Minot than to me. I remind myself that I have no real official role in this investigation.

“Wow,” I say. “They faked a witness? That
is
big. Was it the guy who delivered aspirin to Neville and Hettie in their hotel? Because then their alibis—”

“No, the room service guy is a real person,” Detective Minot clarifies. “I've got his Social. They could've paid him off, too, I don't know. But he exists. So far Neville and Hettie are still in the clear.”

“Then who are we—”

“Andre.” Detective Minot pronounces the name with relish. “Agent Schaffer was covering for Andre.”

Maybe it's because I just met Andre and liked him or maybe some deeper intuition is at work, but I can't bring myself to believe that Andre killed his little brother. Deceptive, sure. An outright liar? Maybe. But a pedophile and a child killer? No.

If I can trust the sensations I experienced by the dock, then sexual abuse played a part in Gabriel's disappearance. What Danelle said sticks with me. Andre didn't like boys; he liked men. Handsome broody men of about thirty, to be precise. Crushing over Sean Lauchlin and sneaking around with Jules are pretty normal behaviors for a gay man, a far cry from molesting one's two-year-old sibling. And if I'm wrong about the sexual-abuse angle? Andre makes even less sense. He didn't need a million dollars of ransom money, not with the bottomless financial support his parents offered. If Detective Minot is going to sell me on Andre as a suspect, I need something more compelling to go on.

“So Neville paid Schaffer off,” I say. “Does that really prove that Andre is guilty?”

“That's a lot of money to shell out if you think your kid is innocent,” Detective Minot contends. “Anyway, I didn't tell you Schaffer's explanation. Supposedly, Andre's spent-the-night-with-a-friend story wasn't far from the truth. He says Andre was with a woman that night. A prostitute. That's why Neville wanted to hush it up.”

“How would Schaffer know who Andre was with?” I demand.

“Well, that's the story Andre told him, at any rate. That he bailed on the twins' birthday party so he could have a night with a hooker. And Schaffer bought it. He thought he was doing the kid a favor, saving him from embarrassment. He figured if it was a prostitute, they'd have trouble locating the woman for questioning anyway. So he made up a ‘friend' to corroborate Andre's whereabouts.”

“Maybe Andre
was
with a prostitute that night,” I say. “Why are you skeptical?”

“You told me he doesn't even like women.”

“He was only eighteen!” It irritates me that Andre's sexuality is being used against him this way. “Maybe he was trying to figure things out, act straight, I don't know.”

“I thought you'd be a little more excited.” I can tell from Detective Minot's tone that he's starting to agree with me. “I thought we had something . . .”

“Maybe we do.” I tell him about the boat I saw in the carriage house, how certain I am that it's connected to Gabriel.

He mulls it over. “The boat's been sitting there for thirty years?”

“No, it's still a working boat.”

“So even if we found any physical evidence, which is doubtful, we couldn't prove when or how it got there.” Detective Minot lets out a long sigh. “Damn. All these dead ends.”

I feign optimism. “Well, you've established that Neville could buy off law enforcement. I still say you should work on that room service guy and see if his story about the aspirin changes any.”

“Maybe we're overly focused on the parents. Maybe I need to . . . look at the hired help again.” He sounds like he's given up.

Inwardly I curse myself for being so quick to tear apart his theory. I try to pull something from the ashes. “Whoever took Gabriel out on that boat had to have access to the carriage house, right? And familiarity with its contents. That might narrow it down.”

“Assuming the boat was stored there in 1982.”

“Let's assume it was.” I press forward. “Just a hunch, but I don't think a member of the family would've used that rowboat. Not in the dark. So let's look at former employees whose jobs centered around the carriage house. See if we can find someone who dealt with boats, someone who knew the swamps. Groundskeepers, a handyman, whoever.” I don't like the idea, but Noah's grandfather would most certainly have had access to both that boat and, given his wife's position, Gabriel. “Maybe we should focus more on Jack Lauchlin.”

“Okay. Fine.” Detective Minot still reeks of defeat.

“Hey, don't let this get you down. We're close. I really feel we're close.”

“That's what's driving me crazy,” he says. “I feel like we've got all the pieces. We're just putting them together wrong.”