She watched the boys until they were out of sight, and then she turned and started up the walkway. The bushes were still dripping from the sprinklers, and the air smelled of wet grass and honeysuckle.
The door was opened by a young man in linen pants, leather sandals and a thin cotton shirt. His light brown hair was stylishly cut, and behind the thick black frames of his glasses, green eyes twinkled with good humor.
“You must be Detective Theroux,” he said, stepping back from the door so that she could enter. “Come on in. Lena is expecting you.”
He led her from the light-flooded foyer into a large room decorated in gray and black with punches of red. The layout of the house reminded Evangeline of the Courtland home, but the clean, minimalist furnishings were a far cry from Meredith Courtland’s lush, eclectic style.
But the view from the French doors was exactly the same—a sun-drenched courtyard and sparkling pool.
“I’m Josh, by the way.” He waved toward a spec-tacular leather sofa in silver. “Make yourself at home. I’ll go tell Lena you’re here.”
After he left the room, Evangeline wandered over to the French doors and stood admiring the garden. She and Johnny had always talked about landscap-ing the tiny backyard of their home, but there’d never been enough time or money and neither of them had much of a green thumb anyway.
She closed her eyes.
How she hated this. Hated having doubts about a man she’d once trusted more than anyone. Hated having her memories of their time together now stained with a terrible suspicion.
“You must be Evangeline.”
She glimpsed the woman’s reflection in the glass a split second before she spoke.
Evangeline turned.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “I should call you Detective Theroux. It’s just…you look so young!”
Thin, blond and elegant, Lena Saunders was dressed in snug black pants and a sleeveless black sweater that gave her a chic, artsy flair. Evangeline put her age at somewhere around forty, though she wasn’t sure why. The woman’s face was still smooth and taut and as pale as alabaster.
When she took Evangeline’s hand, her skin was cold, as if she’d just come indoors from a brisk, wintry day.
“Let’s sit,” she said and, leading the way, she perched on the silver sofa while Evangeline took the matching chair to her right. As they settled in, Josh appeared quietly in the doorway.
“Can I get you ladies something to drink? Coffee, tea?”
“Nothing for me, thanks,” Evangeline said.
“I’ll have coffee, black,” Lena told him.
He cocked a brow. “Decaffeinated, I assume. Otherwise, you’ll be climbing the walls by noon and that won’t be pleasant for either of us.”
She waved a dismissive hand. “Stop fussing. You’re getting on my last nerve.”
“What else is new?” he said with a grin before vanishing down the hallway.
Lena turned back to Evangeline. “Josh is my assistant, but sometimes he acts as if he’s my guardian.”
“I heard that!” he yelled from down the hallway.
Lena ignored him. “You must be curious as to why I was so insistent on speaking only with you today.”
“I am,” Evangeline said. “Captain Lapierre mentioned that you knew my late husband.”
“Johnny, yes.” She smiled faintly. “A lovely man. Such wonderful manners. A true Southern gentle-man.”
“He had his moments,” Evangeline murmured, feeling an all-too-familiar pang of loneliness.
“He was very helpful and so patient. Never acted as though my calls were an inconvenience, although I’m sure my questions got to be tedious for him after a while.”
“When was the last time you talked to him?” Evangeline asked curiously.
“Oh, it’s been a few years. I was so sorry to hear about what happened. You must have been devastated.”
“It’s been a rough time,” Evangeline admitted.
“I can imagine. He always spoke so highly of you. I could tell he was very much in love.”
Evangeline’s heart gave a painful thud as she glanced down at her hands.
“I’m sorry,” Lena said. “I don’t mean to bring up painful memories.”
“No, it’s fine.”
They both fell silent for a moment as Lena busied herself with the coffee service Josh had brought in.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like some coffee?”
“No, I’m good.” Evangeline was fascinated by the woman’s hands. They were smooth and pale with the long, elegant fingers of a pianist.
“How did you know Paul Courtland?” she asked when Lena had settled back against the leather sofa with her coffee.
“I didn’t know him. In fact, I never met the man, although I spoke with him once on the phone. I tried to explain why I thought his life might be in danger, but unfortunately, he didn’t believe me. You may not, either,” she warned.
“I’m here to listen to whatever you want to tell me,” Evangeline said. “But if you know who killed Paul Courtland, we can just skip to the chase as far as I’m concerned.”
“I can give you a name,” Lena said slowly, “but it won’t mean much unless I give you a bit of background information. Without context, nothing I say will sound the least bit credible.”
“Fine. Start wherever you like.”
Lena leaned forward and placed her cup and saucer on the coffee table. “Are you familiar with the concept of an evil gene?”
Evangeline frowned. “I’ve read some research about the criminal brain. Is that what you mean?”
“No, not really. The criminal brain refers to the correlation between serious crime and brain abnormalities in the perpetrator. The cause of the anomalies can be any number of reasons—head trauma, chemical ingestion, birth defects. But the concept of the evil gene suggests that the propensity for violence—for evil, if you will—can be passed down genetically from family member to family member. Not only that, current studies indicate that behavior and life experiences can alter the biochemistry of certain genes and these changes can be encoded into our DNA and passed on to our children.”
“Are you saying that Paul Courtland’s killer was born with an evil gene? Is that where this conversation is going?” Evangeline asked with open skepticism.
“No, not at all. Just the opposite, in fact.”
“Then I’m afraid you’ve already lost me.”
“Just bear with me. You’ll soon understand.” Lena paused, as if to gather her thoughts. “The subject of my current book is a woman named Mary Alice Lemay. Have you ever heard of her?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“I’m not surprised. She’s been confined to a state psychiatric hospital for more than thirty years. Her name has long since faded from the public consciousness.”
“What did she do?”
“She killed her three small sons. Two were hanged, one was stabbed and drowned. The boys were five, three and eighteen months. When the authorities arrived at the house, they also found evidence that Mary Alice had recently given birth to her sixth child, although they never found the infant’s body.”
Evangeline suppressed a shudder. “You said her sixth child. What about the other two?”
“Both girls, ages six and eight at the time. They didn’t have so much as a scratch on them. In fact, there was some indication that the youngest daughter, Rebecca, may have helped with at least one of the slayings. But at six years old, she could hardly be held accountable for her actions, especially if she believed, as her mother apparently did, they were carrying out God’s will.”
“Is that what she claimed? It was God’s will that she murder her sons?”
“She said she killed her sons to save their souls from eternal damnation.”
“Did it work?”
“I beg your pardon?”
