As surprised as he’d been by Simon’s appearance in Louisiana after half the other man’s lifetime spent far, far away, he’d been shocked to see Michelina Ferrer in the man’s company. As far as Bear knew, those two had never met and had no reason to be together now except for the obvious.
Simon had been the one to rescue the woman following her plunge off the bridge. She would have told him about the vehicle that had rammed her from behind. She would have told him about their conversation at Red’s and her interest in finding out what had happened to Lisa.
What Bear wanted to know was whether or not she’d told him why the car had been rented in a name other than her own. Who was this Jane Mitchell whose name had been on the agency agreement, and who Terrill and his men had spent the day dredging the bayou to find?
Bear hadn’t talked to his son since last night. He’d seen no need, being quite certain that the driver’s body would never be found, that she’d drawn her last breath as she’d fallen. Not only was she still drawing breath, but she was keeping company with the very man Bear was doing his damnedest to extricate from his life.
So now, not only did he have to deal with Simon and shut up Lorna, but he had to figure out what to do about Michelina Ferrer who was not Jane Mitchell and, like Lisa, knew too much for her own good.
Twenty-one
M icky listened to Simon give his lunch order to their waitress, thinking he could feed a small country for a week on that amount of food, not to mention max out more than one of the credit cards she’d offered.
She started not to order at all, and instead tell the waitress she’d be eating from his plate. But her arm was already hurting. She didn’t want to lose a finger
or a hand should he not be will
ing to share his fries or his onion rings or a bite of his pecan pie. So she settled for a club sandwich with a pickle, no chips, no shake, just coffee. He’d been quiet on the drive from the pharmacy after they’d gone back for her meds. Granted, the trip to the diner had been short and hadn’t allowed for a lengthy conversation. Neither had he had time to make the call he’d said he would make. That wasn’t a problem. She’d taken him at his word then, and nothing had happened since to make her doubt him.
What she didn’t like was his assumption that she would go quietly back to New York. That there was nothing more here for her to do. That might have been the case when she’d first arrived and been unable to locate Lisa on her own. But things had changed since she’d run into Bear Landry at Red’s and he’d given off a vibe that made her feel like she’d stepped in a pile of shit that wouldn’t wipe free from her shoe. She and Lisa might not have been the closest of friends since the other woman’s marriage, but that’s what matrimony was all about, wasn’t it? Spending less time with the girls and more with the man in her life. At least that’s how Micky would want it to be. She had no idea if Lisa agreed, because they’d fallen out of touch—a situation that was primarily Micky’s fault. She was the one always telling herself they’d catch up the moment she had the free time. Lisa, on the other hand, wrote, e-mailed, sent Hal
l
mark cards that made Micky giggle, then had her eyes welling up with tears of guilt. So, no. There might not be anything she could do here, but she wasn’t going home just yet. Not until she was sure that a real search was under way, that there was someone in Bayou Allain on Terrill Landry’s side….
“Have you thought about talking to Terril ? Feel him out, see if he suspects anyone in Lisa’s disappearance?” Facing Simon across the booth that sat next to the window and being this close in the light shining through, it hit her for the first time how old he was. His crow’s-feet were deeper than she’d realized, fanning out from the corners of his eyes to his temples. His face was scarred. Not in some dramatic exhibition, but he’d been hit or cut badly enough to need stitches in a couple of places. Her hand went to her arm. The doctor who’d closed up the gash had recommended that she see a plastic surgeon instead, that he was an old sawbones and didn’t have the same equipment or experience, that his handiwork would leave a permanent mark. Greta would kill her. Papi, too. But she’d told the doctor to go ahead, that a scar was the least of her worries. And that much was true. She’d been thinking about the mess surrounding her, not about taking home a souvenir to remind her of all she’d been through.
But now she wondered if the marks on Simon’s face brought back the battles he’d fought, or if he even noticed them anymore. If they’d become part of the landscape of his face, as familiar as his nose or his mouth.
“Don’t you think if Terril had any suspects he’d have brought them in? It’s not just that Lisa’s his wife. He’s the law.”
“That’s not what I asked you,” she said, making sure she had his attention before saying more, delaying another few seconds while her coffee and his milkshake were served. “I know that Lisa’s his wife and that he’s the law. I asked if you’d thought about talking to him.”
“Considering we probably know more than he does?” He shook his head. “Why?”
“Well, crime TV fanatic that I am,” she finally admitted, “it’s not hard to tie together the happenings of the last few days. I mean, there’s only so much coincidence that can be a coincidence. After that, there’s always a trail. One thing leading to the next. Like my questioning Judge Landry about Lisa’s disappearance and then ending up in the bayou less than an hour later.”
Simon straightened in his seat, his full attention caught by something she’d just said, the vein at his temple throbbing, the tendons in his neck popping into relief. She frowned, unsteady. “What?”
“Less than an hour later. That’s what you said.” His words were clipped, his tone harsh.
“It could have been more than, but I don’t think so. I hadn’t been back on the road very long at all.”
“Tell me everything. After your meeting with Bear, what did you do? What were you on your way to do?”
Micky didn’t want to think back to that night, to the judge’s anger, to the feeling of being threatened even if he’d never put a threat into words. But she could almost feel herself pale when she remembered those headlights bearing down, getting closer and closer and brighter.
She cleared her throat, uncertain if she’d be able to pry words past the gravel tearing at her throat. “I went out to my car to catch my breath. I was furious and didn’t want to drive around in circles and wind up lost. I knew I was going to hire a P.I., but I decided I might as well drive back to New Orleans before doing anything else.”
“That late?”
“I’d expected to hook up with Lisa. I didn’t think I’d be needing to hunt down a room. And there aren’t a lot of local vacancies, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“So you left Red’s and that was it. The end of the world as we knew it.”
She started to accuse him of exaggerating, then realized his assessment was pretty damn close to the truth. She nodded. “I left Red’s…and here we are.”
That was it for the next few minutes while their waitress, Annette, worked to situate all their plates on the small table. Micky’s gaze took in the double meat-and-cheese jumbo burger, the pile of fries, the roller coaster of onion rings, the side salad drowning in dressing, the slice of pecan pie oozing sticky sweet sugar.
He was a big guy, her Simon, but that amount of food tripped every one of her celebrity spokesmodel, the-camera-adds-ten-pounds eating habits, not that she’d been sticking to her diet the last couple of days….
Wait a minute. Had she just called him her Simon? Wow. That had come out of nowhere. And it wasn’t true. It just wasn’t, she mused, reaching for her pickle while he grabbed up his burger with one big hand and speared his fork into his salad with the other.
He wasn’t hers, not her Simon, not even her rescuer. She’d rescued herself, climbed out of the sinking car and climbed to the shore, where she’d huddled against a cypress trunk, moss hanging spongy and pungent in her face, while she waited for the truck to come back and the driver to shine spotlights down on his handiwork. He never did. Either he didn’t want to hang around and get caught and questioned, or he didn’t think anyone could have survived that fall.
Simon had arrived at his house just as she was deciding between hitching a ride to the sheriff ’s office or flagging down a trucker to take her back to New Orleans. He’d fed her and clothed her and given her a safe place to sleep.
He’d run interference when strangers had come looking for her even before he knew a thing about who she was or what had happened. He’d taken her to the doctor, and shopping, and now here they were. But, no. He wasn’t hers. Even if he was the first man to have done so much for her without asking for anything in return. They always wanted something. A job at Ferrer. Their photo in the paper. An intro to someone—whoever they thought could advance them in the fashion industry or society. Whatever cachet they could get by dating her. And it was rarely about her. About sex, yes. About her, no. Yet Simon, who wasn’t hers, hadn’t asked for a thing. He set down his burger, reached for his shake, caught her staring at his mouth. “If your accident wasn’t an accident, then that’s our working timeline, and where we’ll find our suspect.”
She brought her gaze up to his. “I’ve been thinking the same thing since I first saw the headlights.”
“Did Bear know where you were going after leaving Red’s?” he asked before sucking on the shake through his straw.
“Did I tell him specifically?” She shook her head, waved the pickle from which she’d just taken a bite. “I told him I’d let him know if I heard anything from Lisa and I hoped he’d do the same.”
“That was it?”
She nodded. “I made it to the door without incident but for one burly beast nearly knocking me to the floor.”
“One of Bear’s men?”
No doubt. If only she’d paid attention to what he’d looked like. “He and his buddy were walking in that direction, but I didn’t look back, so I can’t say for sure.”
Simon continued his feast, obviously thinking as he chewed. She didn’t want to be caught staring again, so she picked up her sandwich and took a bite, surprised at how good the simple fare tasted.
Or maybe it was just that besides yesterday’s breakfast of bacon and eggs, she’d eaten nothing but camp rations—her own fault for sleeping as long as she had under her notrescuer’s watchful eye.
But as good as the sandwich was? Oh, what she wouldn’t give for pasta drizzled with garlic butter and sprinkled with Asiago and Parmesan cheese. There was nothing that made her tummy happier or her breath smell worse.
“I’d say a penny for your thoughts, but that look in your eye?” He lifted a brow, his laugh lines crinkling. “I’m not sure it’s safe to buy.”
She grinned. “It’s safe. I was thinking about how hungry I am. I’m a serious foodie. I just have to be careful of what I shove in my piehole, being a public figure and all.”
Simon sputtered. Ketchup dotted his plate and more than a little bit of the table. “Ah,
chère
. You’re ruining my fantasy here.”
She loved that she was his fantasy. “You mean that woman on the billboard would never be so crass as to say piehole?”
“That woman wouldn’t even think it.”
“I’ll bet there are a lot of other things that woman would never think to do that are on my list of favorites,” she said before she could plug the very orifice in question.
“Such as?”
In for a penny…“Showering naked outside.”
This time he almost choked. “When have you ever showered naked outside?”
She really was disappointing him, wasn’t she, she thought with a laugh. “More than a few times, actually. In Manhattan and in Italy both.”
He let that sink in, waited. “Is this an exhibitionism thing, or are you just a nature girl?”
“Which do you want it to be?”
“I don’t think we should go there.”
“Why?” she teased. “You don’t have an inner voyeur wondering what al
l
I exhibit?”
“If you’re showering naked, I’m going to assume it’s just about everything. I don’t need an inner voyeur to figure that out,” he said, chomping down on his burger again. He wasn’t going to play, or to bite into more than his food, for that matter. She wondered what it would take to get him to see the woman sitting in front of him and not the bil
l
board he’d juxtaposed her against. And then she wondered why that was what she wanted, if that was what she wanted.
After today, was she really going to see him again? “The reality never does live up to the fantasy, you know.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The multidimensional me. I’m not the embodiment of the billboard. I am who I am, not who you created.”
He set down his burger, wiped his hands and his face, challenged her with his gaze.
“You think I’m disappointed?”
She shrugged off the question. “You close down any conversation that gets personal.”
“Jesus, Micky. Everything we talk about is personal. We weren’t thrown together to talk about the weather.”
“Maybe we should. It’s neutral, impersonal. Hardly a subject to make you twitch,” she said only to find him frustrated, shaking his head.
“You think our conversations make me twitch?”
“Yes.” She didn’t say anything else. He aggravated her, the way he changed topics, as if they had nothing to talk about but the web of mysteries in which they were caught.