Chapter 17

17

FYI: Beth Unger in Lafayette jail 6 months for DUI.

Annie typed the text and hit send. She had told Rayanne Tillis she would look for her missing roommate, despite Rayanne’s claiming she didn’t care. The answer to Beth Unger’s disappearance had been easily had with a few mouse clicks. Hopefully, following through on her promise would gain her a few trust points.

She had weighed the relative merits of getting a search warrant for Rayanne’s place on the chance of finding Robbie Fontenot’s laptop but had decided against it. If she searched the house and found nothing, she would also lose whatever slim chance she had at getting Rayanne to tell her anything she might have known about the comings and goings at Robbie’s place. If she found the computer, she could use potential charges as leverage to get answers, but she felt that Rayanne was much more likely to get mulish and uncooperative, and there would be no going back from that breech of what little trust she’d built.

Rayanne was an addict. Rayanne was a thief. Rayanne was a liar. But Rayanne Tillis was also her one possible source of information. She needed to cultivate this relationship.

She had stopped at the lamp factory on her way back from the Parcelles’ to find out what she could about Robbie’s employment there, and Rayanne’s as well. It had come as no surprise to her that Rayanne hadn’t worked there long enough to collect unemployment as she had claimed. Nor was it a surprise that she had been fired rather than laid off, having repeatedly shown up late or not at all or in no condition to work. So if Rayanne hadn’t been earning a paycheck or collecting unemployment, how was she paying her rent?

She probably qualified for food stamps but not welfare. As a low-income individual, she possibly could have gotten rent assistance from the parish, but applying for that required a certain amount of organization and initiative Rayanne didn’t seem to possess. Where was her money coming from?

She was an addict. No dealer would have trusted her with any serious amount of product to sell. She might have sold some of her own supply to help with the cost of her habit, but that wouldn’t amount to much. She was a sometimes prostitute for men who wanted it quick and cheap, not a high-priced call girl or a plaything for a sugar daddy. Danny Perry or Dewey Rivette might have been tossing her a few bucks here or there for information, but she wasn’t selling state secrets for thousands.

The house she lived in—and Robbie Fontenot’s house as well—was one of four on that block owned by local slumlords, the Carville brothers, Roy and T-Rex (so-called not because he resembled a dinosaur, but in the Cajun tradition. Because he was named after his father, who was also called Rex, the prefix T was added, T being a shorthand for petite . They were Rex and T-Rex, and T-Rex would be called that regardless of size or age until the day he died).

The Carville brothers ran a number of dubious businesses that skirted the bounds of legality, including Club Cayenne, the topless bar over on the industrial edge of town—not far from Rayanne’s neighborhood, as it happened. But Rayanne was not a candidate for pole dancing.

Roy Carville was currently on bail awaiting trial for having installed spy cams in a number of his rental properties and selling the bedroom/bathroom videos of his unsuspecting tenants on amateur porn sites on the Internet. Annie wondered if Rayanne’s home had been checked for cameras. Or Robbie’s, for that matter. She doubted the Carville brothers discriminated on gender or sexual orientation or anything else. That investigation had gone on while she’d been out nursing her concussion. She would ask Nick about it later.

Even as she made that mental note, her phone pinged with a text from him.

FYI: RF seen at Monster Bash talking to a BBPD uni.

Annie texted back:

Any idea who?

No. Check any CCTV cameras near Rotary Club booth.

The Rotary Club booth was always set up for festivals in the parking lot of Evangeline Bank and Trust. The bank’s cameras would be good, if the subjects had been standing in the right spot. If not, there was a camera across the street on the post office and one on the side entrance of the hardware store. She would start with the bank, but not until after she’d seen B’Lynn Fontenot.

The Fontenot family home was located on Belle Terre Drive, Annie’s favorite street in town, lined on both sides with live oak trees that created a thick green canopy over the broad street. The homes were old and gracious with dense, fragrant gardens all around. There was an air of quiet gentility about the place, as if no one who lived there could possibly have any cares at all. But of course they did. A big house did nothing to ward off the same kind of problems any family might have. Old money was the same as any when it came to buying trouble like drug addiction. Money didn’t prevent lives or families from being torn apart. It just made the trouble look better from a distance.

She had passed by the Fontenot house many times in her life, always enchanted by the wraparound porch, the steep roofs and gables that gave it a fairy-tale quality. The color scheme of pumpkin and cream with cranberry trim only added to the charm. Many times she had imagined sitting on that front porch swing, rocking the day away, sipping on a sweet tea, listening to the songbirds in the thicket of laurel trees that ran down the side yard. She had never imagined the lives of the people inside that house being anything other than perfect.

B’Lynn answered the door looking like she hadn’t slept, her dark hair swept back into a messy ponytail. The delicate skin beneath her eyes was purple, matching a bruise rising on her cheek.

“Are you all right?” Annie asked. “You look like you’ve been in a fight.”

“I’m fine,” B’Lynn said, stepping back and holding the door. “I turned my ankle and took a fall last night. Just clumsiness on my part. I was half awake. Come in, Detective. I’ve made coffee. I certainly need it. I imagine you could use a cup yourself.”

“I won’t say no.”

“Do you have any news?” she asked, leading the way down the hall. She walked gingerly, like she was trying valiantly not to limp, her left arm cradled carefully against her side.

“Not to speak of, no. Are you sure you’re all right? I can run you to the ER if you need.”

“I don’t think they have a cure for clumsiness. I’ll be fine in a day or two.”

“How’d that happen again?” Annie asked.

“I missed the bottom step coming down the stairs. There’s no one here to beat me up, Detective, if that’s what you’re thinking. I do a good enough job of that all by myself.”

Annie made no comment. Her encounter with Tulsie Parcelle was making her paranoid.

“Have you found out who that body is?” B’Lynn asked. “That’s all they’re talking about on the news today. That body and is it Marc Mercier. Is it?”

“We don’t know,” Annie said. “We’re hoping to match or rule out Mr. Mercier with dental records today.”

“His people can’t identify him?”

“Like I told you yesterday, the injuries are pretty devasting.”

“God help me, I’m just relieved it’s not Robbie,” B’Lynn said, going into the large, bright, butter-yellow kitchen. “I saw Marc’s mother all but attack that detective outside the hospital. I know that feeling—just wanting to shake an answer out of somebody. I’m sorry for her. Have a seat, Detective.”

“Please, call me Annie. Can I help with something?”

“No, I’ve got it,” she said, lifting the old-fashioned percolator coffeepot from the stove and bringing it to the table. The aroma of rich, dark Community Coffee scented the air like perfume as she poured it into the waiting mugs.

“Just like home,” Annie said. “My tante Fanchon, she won’t ever give up her percolator. Best coffee there is.”

“I find some comfort in clinging to old ways,” B’Lynn said, settling into a chair. She looked small and fragile, swallowed up in an old blue plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled to her elbows. “Feels like family even though they’re long gone. This was my grandmother’s coffeepot. This was my grandmother’s house. She’s still with me that way. It helps.”

“You live here alone?”

“Mostly. My daughter’s away at college. LSU. She’ll be home for the holidays.”

“I imagine it’s been hard for her,” Annie said. “Everything your family’s been through.”

“Yes. She had to live through all of that trouble with Robbie, her father and I falling apart, getting divorced. No matter how hard you might try, you can’t really shield the younger child. They know what’s going on. They absorb all that toxicity like a little sponge. Lisette always tried to be the peacemaker, bless her. She did everything she could to be the good kid, and the good kid always gets short shrift in these situations,” B’Lynn said. “I always tried to be conscious of that, and I still failed as often as not.

“Of course, Robert lavished attention on Lisette as if she was his only child. Thank God she’s a smart girl. Kids see right through us,” she said, dipping a tiny spoon into an antique china sugar bowl and stirring it into her coffee. “Did Robert ever call you back?”

“No, ma’am.”

She shook her head, scowling, and reached for her cell phone. Annie watched her pull up a contact and make the call, then wait for an answer. She rolled her eyes and mouthed, Voicemail .

“Robert, it’s B’Lynn,” she said. “I know you prefer to act like you don’t have a son, but you do, and he’s missing. The very least you can do is return the phone calls of the detective trying to find him. Imagine how you can bend her ear going on about how hard your life has been because of Robbie and your ball-busting ex-wife. She might even pretend to feel sorry for you, you narcissistic ass. Answer your damn phone!”

She ended the call and heaved a sigh as she set the phone aside. “Well, that felt good, anyway,” she said, raising her mug to her lips. “To think I used to worship that man. The things my generation of women were raised to value…What a bill of goods.”

She shook her head and sighed again. “His own father doesn’t care that he’s missing. Why would I expect anyone else to? I turn on the news this morning and all I hear about is Marc Mercier, Marc Mercier, Marc Mercier. Hometown hero. The savior of the youth football league. Missing three days. Everyone is up in arms about Marc. Robbie Fontenot barely gets a mention. His picture wasn’t on the screen long enough for me to recognize him. There’s so many layers of irony in that, I don’t know where to start.”

“It seems odd that they both happen to be missing,” Annie said. “Cops don’t like coincidences. Robbie hadn’t mentioned Marc to you?”

“No. Not at all. You have to understand. When Robbie got hurt, his life as he knew it ended. He lost his identity…and Marc Mercier stepped in and took his place on the football team, and the world kept on turning without missing a beat,” B’Lynn said. “Don’t get me wrong. Marc was a nice enough boy, even if he always did seem like he was running for political office. He was talented. Life gave him an opportunity, and he succeeded. But for Robbie…It was hard to watch. And nothing ever got better after that. It only got worse. So no, I don’t see him seeking out Marc for any reason.”

“It’s ten years ago,” Annie said.

“Ten years and how many stays in rehab? How many nights in jail? How many failures? How many disappointments?”

“Did Robbie blame Marc somehow?”

“Blame, no. Resent? How could he not?” she asked. “My God, I’m the adult, and look at me. I resent Marc for getting better news coverage than Robbie. How disgusting is that? If I were a better person, I would be calling his mother to offer my support.”

“Do you know the family?” Annie asked.

“Not really, no. They weren’t part of our social circle. Not to sound like an absolute snob, but doctors and lawyers mingle with doctors and lawyers. That’s just how that is. Boring as hell when I look back on it.”

“Those aren’t your friends anymore?”

“No. Robert kept those friends in the divorce. I became much too real for them. Dealing with an addicted child strips away your social veneer. You just don’t have any tolerance for pretentious nonsense. Anyway, you would have thought having an addict in the family was a communicable disease. They couldn’t stay far enough away. What kind of friends are those, I ask you?”

“Not very good ones,” Annie said. “Didn’t you find a support network? Al-Anon? Or a church group or something?”

“Oh, sure, for a while. Al-Anon. No church group would have me!” She laughed. “I’m too angry for them, too happy to call out God on his bullshit, pardon my language. I stuck with Al-Anon, but when the problem goes on and on and on…I got tired of the pity. After a while I just felt like a burden on the rest of them. A shining example of how not to succeed. I stepped away to give them hope.”

And shouldered the burden herself. She was so small and delicate. How had she not been crushed by the weight of it all?

“You find your own way to tough it out,” she said. “Or you walk away. Or it destroys you. Those are your choices.”

“Are Robbie and his sister close?” Annie asked.

“In their own way. Robbie’s very aware of how his problems impacted Lisette. But he’s her big brother, even so, and she loves him.”

“She hasn’t heard from him?”

“She told me he called her on Halloween morning. That was their holiday. Robbie used to take Lisette trick-or-treating.”

“And he didn’t say anything to her about his plans for the evening?”

“She said no. I didn’t mention it before because there was nothing to say.”

“I’ll want to speak to her anyway,” Annie said. “Robbie was seen that night downtown at Monster Bash.”

“Ah, well, that would be Lisette covering up for him with me, then,” she said. “She’s still his baby sister, but Robbie is a grown man. I realize he’s not going to lock himself in a cell. He’s going to live his life. He can go out if he wants to. I just have to hope he doesn’t make a bad choice while he’s at it. Who saw him?”

“I don’t know,” Annie admitted. “I had a text from another detective that Robbie had been seen that night in the vicinity of Evangeline Bank and Trust. I’ll get more details later, and I’ll be looking at surveillance video to see who he might have been with.”

“Well, that’s something more than we had, isn’t it?” B’Lynn said, latching on to hope once again.

That cycle had to be exhausting. Soul draining.

“Is this the house Robbie grew up in?” Annie asked.

“Yes. It’s been in my family forever. I inherited it from my grandmother on my mother’s side. We moved in here when Robbie was three.”

Annie envied her that family history, and the traditions and memories that came with it. She had no idea who her mother’s mother was, much less where she had grown up or how. Marie Broussard hadn’t handed down any family heirlooms or traditions.

“Does Robbie normally spend much time here?”

“Sunday dinner every week.”

“Your deal.”

“We have a lot of unpleasant memories in this house,” B’Lynn said. “But there are a lot of good ones, too. I want to keep building on the good with him. So, Sunday dinner. Sometimes Lisette joins us. Sometimes my mother and stepfather join us. More often than not, it’s just Robbie and me. We cook together. We have a nice meal. We play Scrabble and talk about everything except our problems. We pretend to be normal in the hopes that one day it might stick.”

“How does Robbie feel about that?” Annie asked. “Does he like it? Does he resent it? Does he participate or just go through the motions?”

“He tries,” B’Lynn said. “It’s a journey, and we’ve been over some rough roads, but we’re both trying. That’s what makes this so hard, him missing now. I really thought we were making some progress.”

“You said he thought he might have a line on a job,” Annie said. “You don’t have any idea what that was?”

“He didn’t say, but I believe he was looking. He doesn’t like having time on his hands, and he wants to pay his own way. He doesn’t like being financially dependent on me. He feels like he’s been a burden long enough.”

“Does he still have a bedroom here?”

“Yes. He calls it the Time Capsule because I haven’t changed anything about it in a decade.”

“Can I see it?” Annie asked.

“Of course.”

B’Lynn led the way up the oak staircase, the handrail worn as smooth as glass by a hundred-plus years of hands passing up and down. The old heart pine floors creaked and moaned as they made their way down the hall past a wall of ancestral portraits and photographs.

“Is there something specific you’re looking for?” B’Lynn asked. “He doesn’t spend much time up here except for the occasional Sunday-afternoon nap.”

“I just want to be in his space,” Annie said. “That house he’s living in doesn’t say much about him. Maybe I’ll get a sense of something here.”

“I’ve been doing the same thing,” B’Lynn confessed, leading the way into her son’s bedroom. “I find myself sleeping in here most nights since he’s been gone. It makes me feel closer to him.”

The room overlooked the front yard. The wall behind the queen-size bed was painted purple and stamped with gold fleur-de-lis. Sacred Heart high school colors. The rest of the walls were a rich cream. A thick purple rug covered much of the floor. It was a beautiful room fitted with everything a teenage boy could want—a good-size TV with a gaming console, a cushy recliner, a desk with a nice computer on it. The oak bookcases were loaded with books and keepsakes—a baseball glove, a collection of game balls from his football days, bobblehead dolls of his favorite players from various sports.

Annie picked a yearbook off a shelf and paged through it, finding a photo of Robbie Fontenot at sixteen or seventeen. Quite the teen heartthrob with his big dark eyes and shy smile. Young and bright and full of potential.

“What a cutie-pie,” Annie said. “He must have had girls swarming around him like bees to honey.”

“All he thought about then was sports,” B’Lynn said, sitting on the edge of the bed to rest her sore ankle. “Girls were a baffling mystery he mostly shied away from. He dated a little bit, but no one serious. Much to the dismay of the young ladies.”

“They didn’t come calling when he was laid up after his accident? Girls that age usually love the idea of a wounded hero.”

“Oh, they tried, but he didn’t want anyone around, didn’t want anyone seeing him that vulnerable. They gave up pretty quick and went on with their lives at school.”

“That must have been a pretty lonely time for him.”

“He pushed his friends away, then felt hurt when they didn’t come back,” B’Lynn said, picking at a loose thread on the purple comforter—a distraction from the pain of the memory. “He kept setting himself up for failure, then pointing to the failure as proof of why he shouldn’t keep trying to succeed.”

A self-feeding cycle of despair.

Annie sat down behind the desk. She wondered if there was any point in trying to get into the computer. Robbie had a laptop now, and only had access to this computer once a week.

“Did you get any useful information from our little thief?” B’Lynn asked.

“Not yet,” Annie said, opening a desk drawer to find the usual assortment of pens and pencils, markers and paper clips. “I’m going over to see her after I leave here. See if I’ve managed to seed a little trust. I’ve done her a couple of favors now. Hopefully, she’ll want to reciprocate.”

“I hope she’s appreciative,” B’Lynn said. “She went right back to living her life, such as it is.”

“How do you mean?”

“I couldn’t sleep last night. I drove over past Robbie’s, just in case he’d come back. Little Miss had company. I saw a man leaving her house about a quarter past one.”

“I suppose we can’t be surprised by that,” Annie said, pulling open the bottom left drawer, a deeper drawer filled with a stack of old Sports Illustrated magazines. Funny they were kept in a drawer and not on the shelves of the bookcase with other similar collections.

“I can’t help but feel sorry for her,” B’Lynn said, “despite her attitude. I’m sure she came by that the hard way.”

“I’m sure she did,” Annie agreed. “I don’t condone a life of crime, obviously, but some people have a harder road than others, and it isn’t difficult to see how they end up the way they do. Your son is lucky he has you to fight for him.”

She peered down into the drawer, looking alongside the stack of magazines to the bottom. Not the bottom of the drawer, she thought; it wasn’t deep enough to be the bottom.

She pulled the magazines out a dozen or so at a time, setting them on the desktop until she had a stack a foot high. What had appeared at first to be the bottom of the drawer was an old dark stained wooden box, a finely crafted antique, about nine by twelve, and maybe four inches deep. Annie lifted it out of the drawer and placed it on the desktop.

“Oh, my,” B’Lynn said, getting up from the bed. “That’s my great-grandfather’s writing box.”

“Writing box?”

“That’s what we always called it. It held his stationery and pens and an inkwell and so on. I thought it was down in the library.”

There was a small, tarnished, ornate brass latch, but no lock. Annie took a deep breath and carefully worked the latch open, bracing herself to find a stash of drugs. But when she lifted the lid there were no pill bottles or plastic bags. The box was three-quarters full of cash. Twenties, fifties, hundred-dollar bills, all neatly stacked, banded together by denomination.

“What in the world?” B’Lynn muttered.

Annie fanned through the little piles, thinking there had to be a couple thousand dollars there. She looked up at B’Lynn.

“I have no idea,” B’Lynn said. “Where would he get that kind of money?”

“I don’t know,” Annie said, but she had a strong feeling it hadn’t come from anywhere good.