Plunder: A Faye Longchamp Mystery #7 (Faye Longchamp Series) (27 page)

“You took him on the houseboat, alone—and into your room? Miranda couldn’t possibly have been home, because she’d never have allowed it. And what do you mean when you say, ‘The first time we met…’”

Amande ignored the final query and went with the first question. “She was taking a nap. So I wasn’t really alone with him.”

Faye would have grounded the girl on the spot, if she’d had any plausible status as a disciplinarian. Without that status, she could take no action other than to sputter. Most demoralizing of all…Amande’s teenaged agony meant that she didn’t even notice that Faye was on the verge of having a stroke over her behavior. She just kept babbling revelations that measurably increased Faye’s risk of cerebral hemorrhage.

Joe, in the meantime, was displaying the timeless wisdom of a man who knew when to keep his mouth shut.

“When we were talking at Manny’s place, just before you came, Dane asked to take another look at my Spanish coins, and I had to tell him they got stolen.”

So the man had been wangling a second invitation into a sixteen-year-old’s bedroom. Faye’s resolution to stick with safe, obvious topics left her, but there were so many unsafe and obvious topics that she hardly knew where to begin. She decided to ask them in chronological order, from the moment of the quite adult Dane’s hitherto unknown meeting with this underaged girl.

“You knew Dane Sechrist before the coins were stolen?” Faye’s sharp tone scared even her, and her resolution to take the questions one at a time crashed and burned. “When did you meet him? He knew you had those coins before they were taken? How many times have you seen him, anyway?”

Amande’s eyes went to the ground. “Just the two times. I met him at the marina a few days before you and Joe got here. He saw me outside with my metal detector and we started talking about archaeology. He asked for my phone number, but he never used it. All we did was talk…”

“Then why do you look like you just got caught robbing a bank?” A worse thought occurred to her. “Benoit said that he didn’t talk to anybody who recognized the name ‘Sechrist,’ but he talked to you. Amande…did you lie as part of a
murder investigation
?”

“I could never have told Grandmère I’d been talking to a man Dane’s age, and I think I panicked when Benoit asked me about him. Somehow, it felt like she wasn’t really dead and that she’d
know
I’d been sneaking around. I felt…ashamed, I guess, and I didn’t want anybody to know about…about Dane and me. He’s got to be at least twenty.”

There was no “Dane and me,” as far as Faye was concerned. Also, Dane was looking at twenty-five in his rearview mirror, if Faye was any judge, but she kept her mouth shut on that subject.

“Well, this man that you’ve been sneaking around with, but know nothing about,
did
use your phone number. He used it to call your grandmother,” Faye said.

“He did what?”

“He called your grandmother and made an appointment for the afternoon she was killed, which she kept. She had a piece of pie with Dane in Manny’s restaurant, in fact. He and Manny may have been the last people she saw. Obviously, Dane said she was alive when he last saw her, but nobody knows if he’s telling the truth. You need to be careful, Amande.”

“I am careful. And I don’t believe Dane killed my grandmother. He just couldn’t.”

Faye knew that Amande was basing that judgment on Dane’s friendly brown eyes and general good looks, and she knew she would have made the same judgment when she was sixteen.

It was a wonder anyone survived adolescence.

***

“Would you mind taking Michael to the cabin to get a fresh diaper, Amande?” Faye asked, as soon as Joe had eased the boat into its slip outside the marina store, and before he’d even had time to cut the motor.

She watched the girl walk away before peppering Joe with the questions that couldn’t be asked in front of her. “Did you hear what she said about meeting Dane before her grandmother died? And did you hear the part where she said he knew she had the Spanish coins in her room?”

“I did.”

“Benoit’s gonna blow a gasket when he finds out she lied to him.”

“She’s not the only one. Now we know that Manny was the one telling the truth. Sechrist never asked him for Miranda’s number. He already had it, because Amande gave it to him. Sechrist lied.”

Faye leaned down to gather Michael’s toys from the bottom of the boat. “Why?”

“Maybe he didn’t want anybody to know he knew about Amande’s coins, which would have made Benoit suspect that he stole them and maybe even that he killed Miranda. Or maybe he just didn’t want anybody to know he was talking to an underage girl. I think it was that, actually.”

Feeling that she was getting a rare glimpse into the convoluted workings of the male mind, Faye said again, “Why?”

“Because he couldn’t have gotten away with the lie unless he knew that Amande wouldn’t tell people she gave him her phone number. They must have agreed to keep their relationship—”

“They only met twice!”

“Relationship. Friendship. Whatever. They must have agreed not to tell anybody. Maybe because he really did know that she was underage, or maybe because she didn’t want her grandmother to find out she was interested in somebody, or maybe because he was up to no good. Hard to say. But I think they’d agreed to keep that first meeting secret, and Dane was sure enough that she’d do it that he was willing to lie to the detective.”

Faye thought it seemed extraordinarily cocky for Dane to presume that a woman would unswervingly follow his wishes. As she thought about it, though, she realized what Dane’s experience with women had probably been like, so far. The women in his life would have had to be young, and they’d probably been willing to do pretty much anything he asked. When he got older, and when he started focusing on women his own age, he might encounter a rude surprise.

Of course,
she
was always willing to do whatever Joe asked.

Usually.

Sometimes.

When he was lucky.

Maybe it was time to change the subject.

“I know you walked all over that island while I was swimming with Amande and Michael. What did you see? And I know you noticed that scuba gear in the fishing shack, didn’t you?”

“I did. Besides a few soda cans, I didn’t see nothing but a bunch of footprints, far from where you were. But I do mean a
bunch
of footprints. Somebody was looking for something. It looked like they might’ve been doing it with a metal detector, because the footprints were…you know…back and forth, back and forth.”

“Do you remember what brand of beer came in all those cans? I do remember that they were all the same. I’m also wondering what kind of beer Dane Sechrist drinks. If he’s hunting for treasure out here, it only makes sense that he might use the shack as a base camp. I haven’t had a chance to tell you what happened this morning. He came to visit me.”

“He what?”

“He said he was looking for a job, and maybe he was. But he also spent a good amount of time picking my brain about local archaeology. He played it cool, but he mentioned shipwrecks a little too often.”

“You think he’s onto something? Maybe he’s diving on a ship and he wants to know if it carried treasure?”

“I don’t know. I think maybe
he
thinks he’s onto something. But Dane’s not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.”

“Maybe he is, but he ain’t as smart as you.”

Faye liked it when Joe called her smart. For him, it was the same thing as calling her sexy.

“Be that as it may. Some of the documents he showed me were copied at the Historic New Orleans Collection. You know that place should just give up and hire Bobby, because he spends so much time there. He sees everything. He knows everything. He knows everybody.”

“Bobby knows Dane?”

“Of course he does. Better than that, he knows Dane’s research interests…and they center on Amande’s island.”

“So you think Dane is the slob that’s been throwing Busch cans around Amande’s shack?”

“Yeah, maybe Dane’s our Busch drinker, but something feels wrong. First of all, he doesn’t come off as a slob. He looks a little finicky to me. Every last little short blond hair is always in place. I got a look in his briefcase this morning. All the paperwork is neatly filed and in perfect order. I don’t remember what he was drinking when we caught him hitting on Amande, but it wasn’t Busch.”

“It was Abita. I remember, because I like Abita. You don’t remember, because you like the cheap stuff.”

“Which makes me the perfect date, now, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” said Joe, leaning down for a kiss. “Even when you’ve got sand all over your butt. I mean,
especially
when you’ve got sand all over your butt.”

Faye twisted in her seat to get a look at the back of her teensy bikini bottom, secretly glad that bathing suit manufacturers did not make mom suits in size 2.

“No need to twist yourself in a knot. There’s sand back there. I already checked.”

“Glad to hear it.” She brushed at the sand coating her bare belly, but it wasn’t going anywhere. Joe looked like he wanted to help. “Now I’ve lost my train of thought.”

“You were gonna tell me you thought the scuba gear might belong to Dane, and I was gonna say that he seems real serious about his diving. He wouldn’t be risking his life with gear that looks like somebody unloaded it cheap on Craigslist.”

Amande appeared in the distance, with Michael on her hip. It was time to wrap up this conversation. Faye could see that her time to speak privately with her husband was going to dwindle month by month as Michael grew, and she felt a pang.

“There are a lot of people running around here who seem to have time on their hands,” she said. “Take Tebo, for instance. I don’t see him around much. Where does he go? And Steve…where does he go in the daytime? Didi’s husband Stan turns up now and then. Where does he spend his time? Maybe he’s been going out to the island to check out the part of Justine’s estate that his wife
didn’t
inherit, but that’s a reach. He’s probably more interested in whether he can get part of Didi’s chunk of the houseboat and stock, since he’s surely getting ready to file for divorce.”

Joe grunted, managing to communicate his opinion of Didi’s worth as a wife with that single inarticulate sound.

“It occurs to me that the person sloshing Busch on the floor of that shack may have a right to be there,” Faye went on. “Amande isn’t the only owner, you know. Do you remember what kind of beer Steve was drinking last night?”

“Nope, but he and Didi looked like an instant couple when we saw them at Manny’s place. Maybe we need to visit Amande at home, so we can check the trash cans and see what they drank when they got home last night.”

“Can we do it soon?” Faye asked. “Because I really need a bath right now, and if I go mucking around in Didi’s garbage after I’ve had it, I know I’m gonna want another one.”

“I think we should wait until tomorrow morning, while she’s sleeping off tonight.” Joe nodded at the deck of the houseboat, where Didi and Steve sat in folding chairs, giggling and fawning over each other. “See? Instant couple.”

Faye tried not to gag.

“I think we’re gonna need an overnight babysitter again. Don’t you, Mrs. Doctor Longchamp-Mantooth?”

“Yeah, but first I’ve got to call Benoit and tell him that Miranda’s sweet little granddaughter lied to him about knowing Dane before her grandmother was killed.”

***

Benoit was not disturbed enough to suit Faye.

“You never did anything sneaky when you were sixteen?”

Faye was starting to wonder how long it had been since Benoit himself had been a teenager. Fifteen years, tops, probably less. That wasn’t long enough.

“To the best of my knowledge,” she said, “I wasn’t spending time with possible murderers when I was sixteen.”