Wild Man's Curse (Wilds of the Bayou #1) (14 page)

“Glad you’re leaving, Ms. Savoie.” He held a rifle in the crook of his left arm and a long flashlight in his right hand. Another fifteen minutes or so and full dark would fall. “Hopefully, we’ll catch this man soon. We’re close.”

“Okay, enough.” Ceelie stopped, giving them no choice but to stop with her. “I can tell something’s happened. I want to know what it is.”

“As soon as we get to my place, I’ll fill you in,” Jena said, her voice low. “I promise. We need to go so Deputy Meizel and his colleagues can do their job.”

“I’m holding you to that.” Ceelie clenched her jaw and gave a tight nod. She followed Jena off the porch and set her throwing materials and guitar in the passenger’s seat of the truck.

“Okay if I put your suitcase in the back of my truck?” Jena already had it wedged halfway behind the driver’s seat.

“Sure.” Between the Gibson, the bones, and the suitcase, the luggage was the least important. She wouldn’t take off without the former, but the latter didn’t mean much. Clothes could be replaced.

The sound of a generic ringtone could barely be heard above the swamp noises beginning to rise around them as night fell. Jena cursed. “Hang on.” She finished shoving Ceelie’s suitcase in the pickup and unclipped a phone from her belt. “Hey, Broussard.”

Tension drained from Ceelie’s muscles; she hadn’t realized it was there. Even before she’d thrown the bones, she’d had a feeling Gentry was in trouble. The bones had given birth to a fear that he was injured. Maybe worse.

Sometime when she’d begun to realize Whiskey Bayou was home, she’d also begun to think of Gentry Broussard as more than a pheromone-emitting uniformed guy with bedroom eyes and dimples. Though he surely to God was all that.

She wrenched her thoughts from bedroom eyes to listen to Jena’s end of the conversation, which so far had contained a lot of mild expletives and a few groans. “Okay, okay. Give me the address,” she said, pulling the little notebook and pen from her pocket. “Where’s the key? What about the dog?” Jena’s voice rose. “Broussard, we are not going to stand outside your house until you get home. If the dog doesn’t like us, he’ll have to get over it. I have a stun gun.”

Ceelie slapped a hand over her mouth when Jena held her phone a foot away from her ear while Gentry had a fit over what sounded like her threat to stun his dog. Did that mean a change of plans?

“See you when we see you.” Jena stuck her phone back in its belt clip. “I have to meet Gentry and our lieutenant at his place when he finishes up—he’s on his way to the sheriff’s office right now and doesn’t know what time. Want me to drop you at my apartment first?”

And miss a chance to check out Chez Broussard? “No way. I want to meet Hoss, and I want to know what’s going on. You promised.”

Jena smiled, and Ceelie thought she looked even more worn-out than Deputy Meizel. “So I did.”

CHAPTER 16

Gentry was ready for somebody to stick a fork in him. He’d been grilled and fried and was past well-done by ten p.m., and that had been an hour ago.

The halos from the scant streetlights scattered around the unincorporated community of Montegut bled together into a haze. He turned down Pelican Street toward his house, which backed up to an earthen levee and, beyond that, Bayou Terrebonne.

As if the night hadn’t already been bad enough, he had no doubt that two women had been rifling through his stuff and terrorizing his dog for hours; they’d probably sent out a memo to everyone in the department that his Big Bad Beast was a wriggling twenty-pound pudgeball with bat ears. Warren still wanted his own pound of flesh. To top it off, he had to call his mother and break the news that her dead eldest son the junkie was now alive and committing gruesome murders around his old hometown, including extracting the tongue of his former best friend.

Gentry swore he’d shoot himself with his own SIG Sauer if he didn’t fear that he’d fail and end up filling out reams of paperwork while detective John Ramsey hammered him with questions.

Maybe he could take care of Warren by reciting the same answers he’d been giving Ramsey for hours.

No, he’d had no idea his brother Langston had survived the shooting in New Orleans, nor how he’d done so.

No, he hadn’t heard from Lang prior to the phone call this afternoon.

No, he hadn’t been protecting Lang by not telling anyone the killer looked like his brother; he’d believed the resemblance was a product of his own guilty imagination.

No, he hadn’t been letting Lang hide out at his house.

Yes, they could search it all they wanted, if they felt the need to waste their time instead of being out searching places where Lang might actually be.

No, he had no idea what Lang wanted from Eva Savoie. He knew of no connection between them.

No, he hadn’t known that Lang was staying with Tommy Mason nor for how long; he’d visited Tommy on a simple fishing expedition.

No, he wasn’t screwing Celestine Savoie in order to help his brother get information or access to her cabin.

That one really pissed him off.

Warren had finally shown up with the sheriff, publicly chewed his ass up one side and down the other to make sure Knight and Ramsey heard his humiliation, then told him to get his worthless carcass home and wait so Warren could come by later and chew him up again.

The worst part? He had to own it. Well, maybe not that part about Ceelie—she deserved better than for them to think she’d fall prey to such a ruse even if he had been some heartless, manipulative son of a bitch. She was smarter than that.

Plus, he wasn’t a user. He wasn’t a game-player. He was just an idiot.

Gentry’s heart sped up and pumped adrenaline through his system at the sight of a dark figure moving between the support beams beneath his raised house. Jamming his foot on the brake, he stopped the truck with a lurch behind Jena’s and Ceelie’s vehicles. He killed the engine and had boots on the ground in a split second, gun drawn.

“Stop!” he shouted. “On the ground! Now!”

The figure froze, and two muumuu-clad arms flew into the air. “Don’t you be shootin’ at me, Gentry Broussard. It’s Maxine!”

Awesome. Now he’d almost killed his elderly neighbor, Maxine Vallieres. That would’ve made his night complete.

“Maxine, what are you doing under my house?” Gentry holstered his gun and pulled his rifle and a bag of burgers from the truck. A dark blur sped across the yard at him before he could react, followed by a sharp pain that shot through his ankle like a knife blade.

An outburst of angry growls and tugs on his pants leg followed. “Hoss? Why are you outside? Stop biting me.”

The whole world had gone nuts.

“I’ve lost Moose.” Maxine wandered over, wringing hands covered in a half dozen sparkling rings. His neighbor was a self-admitted home-shopping-channel addict. Her pink-sequined housedress glinted in the lights from her front porch. “Can you help me find him? He’s afraid of the dark.”

Moose was part pit bull, part chicken. “Sure. When was the last time you saw him? Why is Hoss outside?”

“I don’t know.” Maxine burst into tears, which made Gentry feel even worse about ordering her to hit the ground. “And you have a houseful of women, Gentry. Are they supposed to be there? I told them you never had women at your house.”

“Yeah, I knew about the women.” Awesome. Now they’d know he’d not only exaggerated his dog’s fierce-factor, but that he had no social life.

He had a sudden thought. “Maxine, have you seen Moose since the women arrived? Was he outside with Hoss when they got here?”

She stopped crying and settled her hands on her hips, lips narrowing. “Now that you mention it, yes. You think those women stole Moose?”

No, he thought they’d seen two dogs and made a false assumption. “I’ll get to the bottom of it; I bet Moose is in my house. You want to come in?” Might as well make it a midnight slumber party. Warren was divorced; maybe he could fix his lieutenant up with Maxine and divert his attention from Gentry.

“No, just send him out if he’s in there with those women.”

“Gotcha; get Moose away from the women. C’mon, Hoss, we need to stage a rescue.” Now that he had bitten and chastised his human minion, the French bulldog had wandered off in search of the ideal pissing spot du jour. Gentry caught him at the foot of the stairs and climbed up, trying to keep the canine and the burgers as far apart as possible.

He rattled his keys outside the door so the women wouldn’t be startled, and paused at the realization that no one else had ever been inside his house besides Maxine and the cleaning service that came every other week. There was loner and there was pathetic; he thought he’d settled into Pathetic Town.

Hoss went racing in ahead of him, followed by a flurry of screams from the living room as the Frenchie reclaimed his territory. Gentry stood in the doorway and watched the two dogs reunite on top of Ceelie, who’d collapsed into a ball of laughter on the sofa while Jena, all arms and legs, tried to untangle them.

He grinned, which felt really good after the day he’d had and the night and day ahead of him. Not to mention, Ceelie’s husky laugh tightened something low in his gut that had no business tightening.

“Moose! Come!” He had to call twice before the pit bull raised his brindle head, then took a leap off Jena’s back to bound across the room. Hoss was busy asserting his dominance over the women, so Gentry hooked a finger in Moose’s collar and tugged him toward the door.

“Here you go, Maxine!” He waved and released Moose, who flew down the stairs toward the woman who called herself his “mom.”

As soon as he’d made sure Maxine and Moose were safely inside their house, Gentry closed the door and walked back through the foyer. In the living room, things had settled down, or at least Ceelie had been able to sit upright and Jena had collapsed onto the floor. Hoss jumped down and ran to Gentry for an ankle bite. He scooped the dog up before he could draw blood. He’d never been able to break him of that bad habit.

“Where did Hoss go?” Jena asked. “Although I’ve gotta admit, Gentry, that dog is the biggest, laziest couch potato I’ve ever seen. Plus, he ate most of the pepperoni-and-sausage pizza we ordered for you.”

Gentry grinned, glad Maxine would have to deal with the noxious fallout from that feast. “It’s because that couch potato wasn’t Hoss. His name is Moose and he lives next door. This”—he hefted the squirming Frenchie—“is Hoss.”

Ceelie burst into laughter. “I told you, Jena. That little dog’s been sitting outside the door and howling at the top of his lungs since we got here.” She walked over to Gentry and ruffled Hoss’s big ears. “You sure are cute.”

“Thanks.” Gentry cleared his throat when Ceelie looked up at him with a playful sparkle in her eyes. A flush of heat spread over him that had nothing to do with the steamy night. “On behalf of Hoss, of course.”

“Of course. Jena’s filled me in on everything that’s been happening.” Her expression grew solemn. “You look exhausted. Are you okay?”

So much for pretending everything was normal. He set Hoss down and picked up the bag of food. “I’ve had better days, but . . . God, I’m sorry, Ceelie. My brother—”

“Your brother is a murderer who likes to torture old women and play games with his victims,” she said, steel in her voice. “But he’s not you, and I get why you wanted to be sure before saying anything.”

He closed his eyes, feeling ten pounds lighter. He hadn’t realized how much he wanted Ceelie’s forgiveness. How much he hoped she wouldn’t blame him or think he’d been helping Lang.

He greeted Jena, sat on the opposite end of the black leather sofa from Ceelie, and wolfed down burgers while they filled him in on the unexpected appearance of Tommy Mason’s tongue. He brought them up to speed on how Tommy lost it in the first place, sparing them the worst of the details. The sight of that blood-drenched chin would haunt his dreams for a while.

“His poor wife,” Ceelie said. “To have been the one to find him first.”

Gentry had been halfway through his second burger; at the memory of Jennifer Mason’s desperate face, his appetite took a hike. “It’s my fault.” He pulled the meat off the burger and gave it to Hoss, who’d been sitting at attention next to his elbow, patient except for the slight butt trembling. “I accelerated things by visiting Tommy. I might as well have—”

“Shut it.” Jena speared him with a pointed look. “Did you really think your brother was alive when you went to the Mason house? No, you didn’t. And as soon as you realized Lang could be alive, you tried to call Warren.”

“You should’ve tried harder.” Warren Doucet’s voice preceded him into the living room. “And you should start locking your door. If I were Langston Broussard and I thought the brother who tried to cap me three years ago was trying to get me caught, you’d be the next person I’d visit. It wouldn’t be for a friendly family reunion.”

Gentry halfway hoped Lang would show up—not while the others were around or could be put in danger, of course. He desperately wanted to talk to his brother, however. He wanted to find out why Lang had made one bad choice after another. He wanted to know how things had gone so wrong. Drug addiction explained a lot, but not everything.

He wanted to talk to his brother, and never mind that at the end of the conversation, one of them would likely end up dead.

First, he’d get his continued groveling out of the way and save Warren the awkwardness of firing his former partner’s son. “I’m sorry, Warren. Lieutenant Doucet. If you want me to resign, I under—”

“Shut the hell up, Broussard.” Warren Doucet might be in his forties, with short-trimmed hair that had a good bit of salt joining the pepper, but he was tough as they came. The lieutenant could hold his own with his younger agents physically and outthink all of them put together. “Any more pizza?”

“Gentry’s neighbor Moose ate most of it, but there are a few slices left,” Jena said, ignoring Gentry’s
eat-shit
look. “Have you met the infamous Hoss, Gentry’s guard dog?”

“That’s Hoss?” Warren looked down at the dog, and Gentry could tell he was trying not to smile. The light in his eyes gave him away. He shook his head and grabbed the pizza box. “Is it a dog or a bat?”

Jena returned to her seat on the floor with her back against the hearth. “Take the recliner, Lieutenant. Have you met Ceelie Savoie?”

“Not until now.” Warren introduced himself and took Jena up on the recliner offer. Gentry figured he should have offered his own seat, but he was almost too tired to move. Besides, he liked sitting on the sofa with Ceelie, even if Hoss was stretched out between them. At least so far, the dog hadn’t started snoring or farting. There was plenty of time for that to start, though.

“I need to be brought up to speed, Broussard, but first let me say this,” Warren said. “You’ve apologized, and as far as I’m concerned that’s all I need to hear. But you’re gonna have to apologize to Sheriff Knight, to our regional captain, and to Detective Ramsey—formally. That means a personal visit and a letter.”

Gentry nodded. He’d expected that, and he knew it could be a lot worse. “I know Ramsey thinks I’m working with my brother, but I swear to God I’m not.”

Warren chewed a bite of pizza and gave him a long, steady look before speaking. “I knew both of you boys when you were little kids. You’re probably too young to remember much, but I can tell you this. Your dad worried about your brother until the day he died. Hank never worried about you, not for a single day. You were just like him as a kid, and you still are. That’s a compliment. You’re welcome.”

He dug in the pizza box for another slice. “So save your breath about being an accomplice. Let it go. I never thought for a second that you were working with your brother. The sheriff’s just pissed off that we’re in the middle of his case. Not just you. Us. We’re all a team. Don’t forget that.”

Damn, he must be even more tired than he thought, because Gentry felt the burn of tears behind his eyes. So he kept his gaze trained on the floor. “Thank you, sir. For everything.”

Warren cleared his throat as if he, too, might be having a Moment. “Now, start at the beginning, from the minute you saw the killer who looked like Langston leaving the cabin. Don’t leave out anything.”

So once again, this time with help from Jena, who contributed the conversations they’d had about it, Gentry went through the story. It was a lot easier this time, without John Ramsey’s insinuating questions.

“I still don’t know why, though.” Gentry looked apologetically at Ceelie. “I don’t know why he would go after your great-aunt. There’s just no connection there.”

Ceelie scratched behind Hoss’s ears. The dog had moved to curl up in her lap, ignoring Gentry. Smart dog. “Do you and your brother look alike at all?” Ceelie asked, frowning and staring down at the dog. “I remembered something on the way back from Cocodrie today, although admittedly it’s a stretch.”

“Gentry and his brother could’ve been twins except for the height and age difference, at least when they were kids,” Warren said. “Why were you in Cocodrie?”