Authors: Jana DeLeon
“I appreciate the invitation, but I’m on my way to speak to the sheriff.”
She looked up again. “Is everything all right?”
“We had some trouble at Ms. Bettencourt’s house last night. I want the sheriff to look into it.”
“Is Josie okay?”
“She’s fine, but neither of us is interested in a repeat event.”
Marquette nodded. “Well, she’s lucky she’s got you looking out for her.” She gave him a wistful smile. “I guess I’ll see you around.”
“You have a nice day, and thanks again for the coffee offer.”
“Anytime,” she said, and started down the sidewalk toward the cafe.
Tanner took a deep breath and blew it out, mentally preparing himself for battle. Then he pushed open the door to the sheriff’s department and walked inside.
An older woman with poofy brown hair sticking out in every direction called out a greeting to him from a copy machine in the corner of the reception area.
“Good morning, Ms....”
“Bartlett,” the woman said as she ambled back to the desk with her copies, “but you can call me Cathy. What can I help you with this morning, Mr....”
“Tanner LeDoux.”
“Ah, yes. You’re the tracker that Josie hired. Heard about it this morning at the diner.”
“I’d like to speak to the sheriff. Is he in?”
She leaned forward and whispered, “Doesn’t move out of that chair unless it’s time to eat.”
“May I ask what this is about?” she asked in her regular voice.
Tanner held in a grin. “Yes, ma’am. There was an intruder out at the Bettencourt place last night, and he tried to drag Josie off into the swamp.”
“Oh!” Cathy’s eyes widened and she put her hand over her mouth. “Is Josie all right?”
“She hit her head on a rock and has a bit of a headache, but seems all right. She’s at the doctor’s office right now getting a thorough check.”
Cathy nodded approvingly. “I know you young people don’t think you need doctors unless you’re missing a limb, but I’m glad she’s getting checked. I lost my husband to a head injury.”
Sympathy coursed through him. “I’m very sorry. How did it happen?”
“Got hit with a net frame working on his shrimp boat. Tossed back some aspirin and refused to see the doctor despite my nagging. Dropped dead three days later. He’d been bleeding in his brain.”
“That’s a sobering story, Cathy, and makes me happy that I insisted despite her protests.”
She nodded and rose from her chair. “Follow me. The sheriff needs to find whoever attacked Josie. If it had happened before last night, you wouldn’t have been there, and things could have gone very wrong. It’s not safe, a young woman staying out in that big house. It’s too remote.”
“Emmett Vernon lives on property.”
She waved a hand in dismissal. “Emmett’s too busy gabbing at the general store or stalking through the swamp. Even if he was on property, he wouldn’t hear anything happening at the main house all the way from his cabin. And you couldn’t blast him out of there with dynamite, not even to protect Josie. The man’s got issues.”
“Yeah, I noticed the attitude.”
“Got a lot of men with that problem in this town.” She pointed her finger at the door with “Sheriff” stenciled on it. “Including this one,” she whispered.
“Sheriff,” she called out as she pushed open the door. “There’s a Tanner LeDoux here to see you about some problems at the Bettencourt place.”
She stepped back and Tanner walked into the office, getting his first look of Bobby Reynard since they were teens.
He felt an unexpected amount of satisfaction when he saw that the bully who had embarrassed him in high school now had a beer belly and sagging biceps. Apparently, Cathy had been telling the truth—the man only moved to eat.
He stepped up to the desk and extended his hand, but Bobby didn’t even bother to move forward and take it. Instead, he just stared at Tanner with a look that was part disgruntled, part bored.
Tanner sat in a chair in front of the desk, unwilling to be deterred by the man’s rudeness. Apparently, not everyone matured after high school.
“If Josie sent you down here thinking you’re going to get a different response than she did, you’re wasting your time. Trouble with bears wasn’t my job last week and it’s still not. I hear you’re some big-time tracker. You shouldn’t have any problem with wildlife.”
“I’m not here about bears. I’m here because someone attacked and tried to kidnap Josie in her driveway last night.”
Bobby raised his eyebrows, clearly unperturbed. “I’m sure she was mistaken. Probably someone just wanted to talk to her, but being a frigid bitch, she assumed the worst.”
Tanner clenched his hands by his side, exercising every ounce of control he had to keep himself from jumping out of the chair and pummeling the man into tomorrow. “The doctor came to see her last night. She’s at his office right now getting tests run for a concussion. Does that sound like a pleasant conversation to you?”
“You don’t say.” Bobby sat up in his chair. “Did you see the guy who attacked her?”
“No. I saw a light in the upstairs window of her house when we pulled up the drive. I left her in the truck while I went inside to check it out. He grabbed her out of the truck.”
“Did you find someone in the house?”
“No, but a window on the back of the house was unlocked, and I found tracks beneath the window in the flower bed this morning.”
“Can Josie describe her attacker?”
Tanner hesitated. He’d been dreading this part of the conversation all morning. “Yes, but it’s not going to do you much good. He was wearing a disguise.”
“A mask or something?”
“No. An entire costume.”
Bobby’s jaw set in a hard line. “I know you’re not about to tell me that she was attacked by the Honey Island Swamp Monster. Given your background, you of all people know better than to come into my office with that nonsense.”
“Look, I don’t think there’s a real monster stalking Josie, but I do believe her description, and that means someone is going to very creative lengths to scare her.”
Bobby sighed. “You seem like a nice guy just trying to do his job, so I’m going to give you some advice. Josie Bettencourt is not what she seems. On the surface, it’s all mannered and nice and easy on the eyes, but below the surface is a desperate woman who will do anything to ensure that her bed-and-breakfast is successful. Now, just what do you think it would do for bookings if news gets out that the Honey Island Swamp Monster has been spotted on her property?”
Tanner frowned, not liking that niggling feeling he’d just gotten. “Why would she be desperate? Clearly, her family has money.”
“At one time, the Bettencourts were darn near royalty in this town. But rumor has it that Josie’s dad got taken by his financial adviser and was near bankrupt before he died. Some think losing the money is what did him in.”
“
Rumor
has it. So what you’re saying is that no one knows for sure and everyone’s making a huge assumption?”
“Call it whatever you’d like, but old man Bettencourt’s financial adviser is doing a dime in Angola for embezzling his clients’ money, and Bettencourt testified at the hearing. Doesn’t take a detective to put those facts together. Then when Josie rushed home and got this fool idea of opening a bed-and-breakfast in her family home, I knew the score.”
Tanner stared at the man, all of the pieces falling into place. Josie’s working to the point of exhaustion. Her worry over the New Year’s opening. Her refusal to hire more contractors or pay higher rates.
Could Bobby possibly be right? Was all of this the master plan of a clever woman who was desperate to hold on to her family home?
Bobby leaned forward in his chair. “I see you understand my line of thinking.”
“I can understand why you’d draw those conclusions, but there’re a number of things that don’t add up. I tracked the creature through the swamp yesterday—saw it with my own eyes. Why hire me if it’s all a ruse?”
“Credibility? If a professional tracker says there’s something out in the swamp, then that makes it all the more compelling to investigate. You say you saw the creature?”
Tanner could hear the skepticism oozing from the man’s voice, and couldn’t really blame him. It was an outlandish sort of thing to buy into.
“Yes.”
“’Bout how far away were you from this creature?”
Tanner immediately knew where he was going with his line of questioning. It was the same direction Tanner would have gone if the situation were reversed. He resented, a bit, being on the wrong side of the desk.
“About twenty yards away when I saw part of the head. It was easily over six feet tall. I gave chase for about a mile through the swamp, but the creature outmaneuvered me and lost me by jumping in the bayou. By the time I got around the bend, he was out of sight and the root system on the banks didn’t allow for me to zero in on his exit point.”
The sheriff nodded, looking a bit smug.
“I want to be clear,” Tanner said. “I don’t believe in monsters, but I know what I saw, and there is no way that was Josie in a suit. The size was all wrong.”
“Oh, I agree that it couldn’t have been Josie. But she could easily be paying someone to do the job. Makes more sense, really.”
“If she paid someone to create this buzz, then why was she attacked?”
“You only got her word on that. She got away and wasn’t seriously injured. If something that size really wanted to hurt her—man or creature—couldn’t he have done a better job?”
Tanner clenched his jaw, trying to find a good argument to the sheriff’s words, but unable to come up with one. The reality was, if everything he’d said about Josie’s father was true, the sheriff’s theory wasn’t exactly that far-fetched. He didn’t want to believe it, but couldn’t stop that small feeling of doubt.
“I can see you’re torn over this,” the sheriff said. “I get that. She’s a beautiful woman and you’re trying to do your job. Tell you what—I’ll drive out to the house and take a look around. If I come up with anything that indicates something different than what I suspect, I’ll launch a full investigation. How’s that sound?”
Tanner knew the man would do only the most cursory of checking up, but he also knew when he’d been outgunned. He nodded and rose from the chair.
“Thank you for your time,” he said, and exited the building.
As soon as Josie was done at the doctor’s office, they were going home for a long discussion. This time without the lies.
Chapter Eleven
Josie glanced over at Tanner, wondering again what he was thinking. He’d been waiting outside the doctor’s office when she walked out and had asked about the checkup, but had only given her a cursory nod when she’d told him everything was fine.
She’d asked about his visit with the sheriff, but he’d only said he’d given Bobby the information and at this time, the sheriff didn’t need to speak to her. She had no doubt about that. If Bobby had even taken a note during his conversation with Tanner, it had probably gone straight into the trash as soon as Tanner had left the sheriff’s office.
He’d remained silent while driving back to her house, staring straight down the road, his expression one of concentration and aggravation. She could appreciate the sentiment. Bobby tended to leave her feeling aggravated, as well, and she supposed he was thinking about how to find her attacker. But his attitude was such a departure from the tenderness and care she’d seen the night before in her bedroom that she was a little confused.
As he pulled up in front of her house, he blew out a breath and looked over at her. “We need to talk.”
“Okay...” His tone led her to believe she wasn’t going to like the conversation.
“Are you broke?” he asked.
Her jaw involuntarily dropped open and she clamped it shut. Of all the questions in the world that she’d expected, that one hadn’t even been on the list.
“I don’t see what business that is of yours,” she said, offended at the question and his tone.
“It’s my business if you’re staging this creature sighting to get business for your bed-and-breakfast.”
A flush started up her neck and crept across onto her face and she struggled against the urge to slap him, because she knew that idea hadn’t originated with Tanner. “If you believe that, then I guess your work here is done. Please have Alex send me an invoice.”
She jumped out of the truck, slamming the door behind her, and ran into the house, holding back tears of shame and frustration. This was exactly the kind of situation she’d been trying to avoid. Even worse, it had been thrown in her face when she was completely unprepared and by the person she least expected to hear it from.
Itching for a drink, she hurried into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, then changed her mind. Alcohol wasn’t the answer. It never was. During her modeling career, she’d seen too many people ruin their lives with alcohol and drugs. She’d made it this long without using a crutch, and she wasn’t about to start using one now.
Instead, she grabbed a Diet Coke, walked over to the picture window in the breakfast nook and stared out across the lawn. What in the world had she done to deserve all of this? Maybe she was making a huge mistake in fighting to keep her family home. Her family was all gone and aside from Adele, no one in Miel seemed to like her much. What was she sticking around for—a bunch of wood and grass that she couldn’t even afford to maintain, much less pay for?
A single tear rolled down her check and she brushed it away with her fingers. At one time, she’d loved it here, had felt safe here. Now everything had changed. She’d come home hoping to start a new life with familiar, happy surroundings and now she didn’t even feel safe in her own home. She’d felt completely and totally alone when she’d fled France and come back home, only to find that back home, she was totally alone, as well.
“I’m sorry,” Tanner said, his voice soft.
She brushed another tear from her face and turned to look at him. “Sorry you were wrong, or sorry for assuming that horrid gossip about me was true?”
“Both, but I’m not going to take the entire blame for my question. Only for the way I presented it.”
“So you still think I’m lying? That I’m the kind of person who could risk my own safety and drag other people into my plot just to get some free marketing?”