She was stranded in the middle of nowhere with a psycho and a cottonmouth water moccasin on the loose.
The tow truck dropped Evangeline and her car off at the nearest garage and, while the lone mechanic checked the extent of the damage, she called Sheriff Thibodaux to let him know what had happened.
“You sure you didn’t leave your door open? Maybe that’s how the dang thing got inside.”
“I didn’t leave my door open and I only had my window cracked. Someone put the snake in my car,” Evangeline said.
“This fellow you said you saw out there…what did he look like?”
“Tall and thin with black hair and a big scar on one side of his face. Have you seen anyone around town lately that fits that description?”
“No, but there’s a lot of fishing cabins back in the swamp. Could be somebody staying in one of those. I’ll keep an eye out for him. Meanwhile, I’ll send a deputy out there first thing in the morning to have a look around.”
“Thanks. I’d appreciate a call if you find out anything.”
“You bet.”
As she hung up the phone, the mechanic came around to give her the bad news.
“Two words,” he said as he rubbed at a grease streak on the side of his nose. “Busted radiator.”
“Oh, man, I was afraid of that. Any chance you can fix it?”
“You mean tonight? ’Fraid not. It’s already past closing time. I can get to it tomorrow after lunch, but that’s the best I can do. You need a ride somewhere?”
“You’re not headed to New Orleans, are you?”
“That’s a long way from here.”
“Yeah.” She gave him her card. “I’ll need an estimate before you start to work.”
“No problem. You sure you’ll be all right here?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll figure something out.”
What that something would be, she wasn’t sure. She could call her mother, but Lynette would worry herself sick the whole way. Besides, she had the baby today. As for the rest of her family, Vaughn’s old Plymouth probably wouldn’t even make it out of New Orleans, and at the moment, Evangeline wasn’t all that anxious to spend time cooped up in a car with her dad. She’d probably end up saying something she’d later regret.
So she called Nash.
When the black sedan finally pulled up beside Evangeline, she got up slowly and walked over to the car. The side window came down, and she leaned down to peer inside.
“Thanks for coming.”
“No problem,” Nash said.
“No, seriously, this is a huge imposition, and I’m really sorry to put you out like this. But I didn’t want to call my mother. She has the baby today and my brother’s car—”
“Evangeline?”
“Yeah?”
“Just get in.”
She opened the door and climbed in.
The interior of his car smelled of leather and aftershave, and Evangeline drew a long breath. She still had the fishy odor of the swamp in her nostrils, but this helped.
She turned to Nash. “I really am sorry to trouble you. This is a lot to ask of someone you hardly know. I’m a little surprised you agreed to come.” When he merely shrugged, she said, “You could have said no. Why didn’t you?”
“You know why.”
Dusk was drifting into night, and the lights from the oncoming cars polished his dark hair and reflected like pools of moonlight in his eyes.
Evangeline’s heart beat even harder as he reached for her hand. He held it until she slid hers away on the pretense of pushing her hair out of her face.
She turned back to the window because she didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to acknowledge the attraction that suddenly smoldered between them. She wondered if he realized what it had cost her to reach out to him. If he knew, even now, how hard she had to fight an overwhelming sense of guilt and betrayal.
No man had tempted her since the moment she met Johnny, but now when she thought of him, remembered what he’d done, she wondered if her love for him could even be real because the man she’d married had never really existed.
“You okay?”
She turned, met his gaze, then glanced away again. “I’m fine.”
“What did you find out?”
“Not a lot more than I already knew, but one thing’s certain. Something really creepy is going on here.” She took a few minutes to tell him about the man she’d seen beside her car and the snake that had crawled out from underneath the front seat.
“I know he put that snake in my car,” Evangeline said. “It didn’t just crawl in there by itself. Luckily, I had a fingerprint kit in my trunk and I managed to lift some latents from the door handle while I waited for the tow truck.”
“Give them to me,” he said. “I’ll run them through our computer.”
“Thanks.” She paused for a moment, watching the dark landscape flash by. “And then there’s the trail of origami cranes that someone has been leaving me.”
He turned with a puzzled frown.
“On the same day that Paul Courtland’s body was found, someone sent my son a mobile made out of origami cranes. I thought my mother had sent it, but she didn’t. Later, I saw one at the cemetery near Johnny’s vault and another in my brother’s office. Earlier today I drove up to the psychiatric hospital where Mary Alice Lemay is incarcerated. She tried to give me a crane that looked identical to all the other ones. The doctor I spoke with said she makes them all the time. It’s almost an obsession. At first, I thought the cranes were some kind of message, but now I think someone has been leading me to Mary Alice this whole time.”
Nash scowled at the road. “For what purpose?”
“I’m starting to wonder if all this could somehow be connected to Johnny.”
He gave her a startled glance. “Johnny? How so?”
“He knew Lena Saunders. According to her, he’s the reason she insisted on talking to me. When I saw her that first day, she said if I’d locate Rebecca Lemay for her, she’d help me find out what really happened to Johnny. She’s the one who gave me your name.”
Nash’s gaze seemed frozen on the road. “How did she know about me?”
“She claims to have a lot of contacts in law enforcement. And evidently she does because she was right about you.”
When he didn’t respond, Evangeline shrugged. “The point is, maybe she struck the same deal with Johnny. Maybe he went to the parking garage that night looking for Rebecca Lemay.”
“You saw the files,” Nash said softly. “You know what he was into.”
“I can’t accept that’s all there is to it.”
He waited a beat, then said, “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“I’m not very good at letting things go,” she said. “It’s a weakness. When Johnny died, I would catch glimpses of him everywhere. I’d wake up in the middle of the night, so certain he’d been standing over me, I’d get up and search the house. He was on the other end of any hang-up call. Hidden behind the tinted windows of every car that drove by the house. Sometimes his presence was so strong, I thought I must be going crazy.”
