Chapter 20

20

The Quail Run development on the far west side of Bayou Breaux had been one of Donnie Bichon’s first successes as a developer. High-quality single-family homes of varying sizes situated on generous lots. Rather than razing the entire building site, the developer had left in place as many mature trees as possible and worked around them. The result had been to give a new development the feeling of an established neighborhood. A decade on, Quail Run looked like it had been there for a generation. And with its brick houses and manicured gardens, it looked a world away from Mercier Salvage.

Nick turned onto Quail Trace and muttered a curse. The street was clogged with local TV news vans, the sidewalk crowded with camera crews and reporters. Locals loitered on the outer edges of the media mess, taking it all in. Across the street, a pair of BBPD uniforms stood outside their radio cars, watching and chatting.

Kiki Mercier’s on-air drunken tirade at Our Lady had chummed the waters for the press, her accusations against Melissa stirring their instincts for salacious sensationalism.

Nick hit his siren for a few quick blasts to chase the crowd out of his way and pulled into the Merciers’ drive.

The reporters descended on him like a swarm of mosquitoes as he got out of his vehicle.

“Detective Fourcade!”

“Lieutenant Fourcade!”

“Have you identified the body?”

“Is the body Marc Mercier?”

“Are you here to notify the widow?”

“There is no widow I know of,” Nick said. “We have not positively identified the body.”

“What’s taking so long?”

“Why is it taking so long?”

“Why won’t Mrs. Mercier speak to us?”

“Mrs. Mercier is under no obligation to speak to you,” Nick said. “If y’all had any decency, you would give the family space in this time. Now, stay off this property and do not harass this woman, or your next story will come from inside the Partout Parish jail.”

Several of them started to follow him up the sidewalk toward the Merciers’ front door. He turned and froze them in place with a look.

“I think most of you know I don’t have a sense of humor with this kind of behavior. If you want information, go to the law enforcement center and wait. Sheriff Noblier will be speaking to the media later this afternoon.”

“Is Melissa Mercier a suspect?”

“Do you think she killed her husband?”

“Who is the man who spent the night here last night?”

Nick shook his head in disgust and turned his back on them, going to the house and ringing the video doorbell. “Mrs. Mercier, it’s Lieutenant Fourcade.”

A moment later, the door cracked open and Will Faulkner looked out.

“Thank God,” he said. “Come in, please. This has been insane. They’ve been here all day. Bunch of damn vultures.”

“Mr. Faulkner,” Nick said, stepping into the foyer.

“Do you have news?”

“Is it Marc?” Melissa asked, emerging from a room down the hall with a red-faced baby on her hip. “Did the dental records match?”

“No,” Nick said. “They were unable to make a useful comparison. I’m sorry I can’t give you any kind of closure here either way.”

“What now?”

“Now we wait for the DNA results.”

Melissa drew a shaky breath. She looked like she hadn’t slept. Her blond hair was tied back in a messy ponytail. Dark circles ringed her eyes. Whether those dark circles were due to the stress, or the fussy baby, or Will Faulkner, he didn’t know.

“This is a nightmare,” she said, mostly to herself.

“Why don’t we all sit down?” Will suggested, the genial host. “Do you want me to take the baby, Miss?”

“No. I’ve got her.” She hefted the little one up on her hip.

“How old is she?” Nick asked as they moved into a family room where the television over the fireplace was silently showing news coverage of the outside of the house.

“Six months.”

“Teething?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s not letting you get much sleep, then, is she?”

Melissa settled into the corner of a thick tufted love seat the color of caramel with the baby on her lap. “I wouldn’t have gotten any last night anyway. That wind! I thought someone was trying to break into the house. And then I got this creepy phone call…”

“What was the call?”

“Well, it was nothing,” she said. “No one said anything. I don’t normally answer if I don’t recognize the number, but it was the middle of the night. Who calls in the middle of the night? Emergencies, right? I thought maybe it was something to do with Marc. But I answered and no one said anything. It sounds stupid now, but it scared me. I already thought someone was watching me, and then that. I kept saying hello, but nobody answered, and I thought I could hear the wind and the trees over the phone. It freaked me out. I called Will and asked him to come over.”

“You live nearby?” Nick asked.

“Yes. I’m just a few blocks away,” Will said, perching a hip on the arm of the love seat beside Melissa. They looked like they were posing for a casual family photo. “I came right over. I looked around the yard, but I didn’t see anyone. There was a loose shutter. That was probably the banging noise that woke her.”

“Did you recognize the phone number?” Nick asked.

“No. It was a local number, though,” Will said. “I called it back on Miss’s phone. The call went straight to voicemail. Automated voicemail, you know. There was no name or anything.”

“I’ll need that number.”

“Of course. Where’d you leave your phone, Miss? I’ll go get it.”

“In the kitchen,” Melissa said.

“I was so rattled,” she said to Nick. “I didn’t want to be alone. Kiki had called about a hundred times last night, drunk, accusing me of everything from adultery to murder. I wouldn’t have put it past her to come creeping around. I’m sure it sounds crazy, but I kept thinking she might come in and try to take Madeline. She’s obsessed. It’s unhealthy.”

“More than the average grandmother?” Nick asked.

“If you’ve been around her for more than ten minutes, you know how she is about Marc. Marc this, Marc that. Maddie is an extension of Marc. You’d think he hatched her and I had nothing to do with it at all. That would certainly make Kiki happy if it were true.” She laughed. “What am I saying? She’s delusional and irrational. I wouldn’t put anything past her.”

“We think Kiki might have given this address to the media,” Will said, returning from the kitchen with Melissa’s cell phone. “Marc and Miss are unlisted. They rent the house from me. How’d they find this address without someone telling them?”

“Can’t you do anything about those people?” Melissa asked. “They’ve been out there since this morning.”

“I called the police,” Will said. “But they’re out there doing nothing.”

“If the reporters don’t come on your property and they aren’t making a public nuisance, there’s not much we can do,” Nick said. “The sheriff is giving a press briefing in a couple of hours. They’ll decamp for that. In the meantime, don’t engage them. Their airtime is money, so if they’re not getting anything for their trouble, they’ll have to move on. Right now, they’re mostly interested in you, Will.”

“In me?”

“Mrs. Mercier’s husband is missing, and another man spent the night in his house. Whatever your relationship may be in fact, the optics are not good.”

“We’re not sleeping together,” Will said, looking him dead in the eyes.

“All they know is what they see and what they’re told,” Nick said. “Their imaginations fill in the blanks however they will. And people are all too happy to go down that road.”

“This town,” Melissa muttered.

“Is like any small town anywhere,” Nick said. “Gossip is an Olympic sport.”

“I was frightened,” Melissa said, tears rising. “And I called the one friend I have in this shithole place!”

She started to cry, and Will Faulkner put a hand on her shoulder and let her lean into him. If they weren’t a couple, they should have been, Nick thought. The ease they had with each other was natural. Faulkner was automatically protective of her and deferential toward her. It was hard to believe there wasn’t something more to the relationship, but at the same time, they didn’t seem to be trying to hide anything.

It was clear the Mercier marriage had been in trouble before Marc’s disappearance. If Marc was, as Luc suggested, just off having a temper tantrum, he had left the door wide open for Will Faulkner and Melissa to find their way together.

Luc had suggested Faulkner was gay, but that might just have been his redneck bias against a successful, educated, white-collar city guy.

“This is the number,” Will said, reading it off.

Nick typed it into a text to Wynn Dixon with find out whose number this is ASAP . Wynn responded instantly with a thumbs-up emoji.

“Do you have security cameras on the house?” he asked.

“Just the doorbell,” Melissa said.

Will shook his head in irritation. “I called my security people this morning. They’ll be here tomorrow to put cameras up.”

“Have you spoken with any of Marc’s friends?” Nick asked.

“The few that I know,” Melissa said, wiping her tears away. The baby fussed and reached out a chubby hand, trying to grab the tissue. “No one knows anything. Or they’re not telling me. I’ve tried five times to call his buddy Dozer. He doesn’t answer. His voicemail is full.”

“I spoke with Dozer today,” Nick said. “He says he lost his cell phone Halloween night.”

“I called everyone I could think of who might know Marc, even a little bit,” Will said. “No one had any answers. A bunch of people saw him at Monster Bash, but that’s more than a week ago.”

“What about Robbie Fontenot?” Nick asked. “He and Marc went to school together. Do either of you know him?”

“I don’t know him,” Will said. “I know his mother to say hello. We’ve been trying to get her to let us add her home to the annual charity house tour for some years. She lives over on Belle Terre. Gorgeous old Queen Anne house. But she’s a very private person. I don’t know the son other than by reputation—which is not good, as I’m sure you know.”

“Melissa? Have you ever heard Marc mention Robbie?”

She shook her head. “I’d never heard of him until the news yesterday. Is he somehow connected?”

“We don’t know. They just both happen to be missing at the same time. So far, I’ve found no recent connection between the two,” Nick said. “Will, if you can get me a list of the people you spoke to who saw Marc at Monster Bash, I’d appreciate that.”

“Yeah. No problem,” Faulkner said. “People keep asking me if there’s a search party they can join.”

“Until we have some idea where to look, there’s no sense in organizing a search,” Nick said. “For now, we’ve got the Wildlife agents and the sheriff’s office boats on the lookout. The second we have some clue as to a specific area, we’ll deploy all the search resources we have. We’re in the process of getting Marc’s cell phone records today. That might give us a starting point.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Will said. “If Marc’s not the one lying in the morgue, I will personally kick his ass when he comes back. Putting Melissa through this—and the rest of us…So irresponsibly thoughtless. And you know, as much as I like Marc, he can be spoiled and selfish, and here we are.

“I don’t mean for that to sound like I wish him ill,” he hastened to add.

“Of course not,” Nick said. “It’s normal, what you’re feeling, that swing of emotions. Sometimes that anger saves you from despair.”

The baby gave a little squeal of frustration and started to cry even as she tried to stick her fist in her mouth. Will plucked her off Melissa’s lap and started walking her around the room, bouncing her on his arm like an old pro, making silly faces at her in an attempt to distract her from her discomfort.

Nick rose. “I’ll have a look around your yard, then I’ll leave you. If I get any information, I’ll be in touch. And you both have my number if you need me.”

He went out the French doors into the fenced yard and walked the perimeter. Tall hedges all around created a private retreat decorated with rosebushes and climbing vines. An old live oak gave shade—and cover, he thought. Someone standing in its shadows had a good view of the house with three sets of French doors and no draperies. At night with the interior lights on, it would be like watching a giant television. But if anyone had been out there the night before, they had left no obvious signs.

He let himself out a small unlocked gate near the garage. As soon as the reporters saw him, they started rushing up the driveway.

“Stop!” he barked. “Stay off this property. I’m not fucking around. I can have deputies here in two minutes, and your bosses will be dishing out bail money.”

“There’s police officers right across the street,” someone pointed out.

“They appear to be largely ornamental,” Nick said. “My deputies will be the real deal. Mind your manners.”

He went to his vehicle and shut out their voices, starting the engine and kicking the AC on high just for the white noise.

His phone vibrated from the arrival of a text from Wynn. The name belonging to the phone number Will Faulkner had given him. The number from the call that had terrified Melissa Mercier in the middle of the night.

Robert Fontenot III.