Chapter 41

41

It was strange to feel any kind of optimism, Annie thought as she pulled to the curb in front of the Fontenot house, but the idea of finding something on Robbie Fontenot’s computer had rekindled the tiniest ember of hope inside her. Foolish, she supposed. Robbie had accumulated a pile of money doing something, and that something was quite possibly illegal. But the offhand remark he had tossed at Eli McVay stuck with her: that he was investigating police corruption. She was going to hang on to that tiny sliver of maybe, for Robbie and for B’Lynn.

A tan sedan was parked in the shade in front of the house next door, but Annie didn’t think anything of it as she got out of her vehicle. Her mind was occupied, wondering if Robbie might have written his passwords down somewhere, or if B’Lynn might know them. She knew a few mothers who didn’t allow their teenagers to keep their passwords to themselves. It wasn’t hard to see B’Lynn as one of them, even if her son wasn’t a teenager anymore. The computer on Robbie’s desk dated to his school days.

She climbed the steps to the front porch, rang the doorbell, and waited. B’Lynn had said she would be home, had answered Annie’s text with OK .

The heavy mahogany interior door stood open, which seemed a bit odd, but she might have wanted to let the fresh morning air in to lift the stagnant heaviness of her emotions from the house.

Annie rang the doorbell again as her anxiety began to stir. Slowly. Hesitantly. She tried to discount it. This was the Belle Terre neighborhood in broad daylight on a weekday. Next door, the neighbor’s gardeners were swarming around with lawn mowers and Weedwackers. The strong smell of gasoline perfumed the air. Just a normal day.

“B’Lynn?” she called through the screen door. “It’s Annie!”

The stillness of the place suddenly bothered her. What-ifs began to itch at the back of her mind. This woman had been through so much, all of it sad and crushingly disappointing. The night before she had come to the conclusion that the son she had fought so hard to save was very probably dead. She had spent the last ten years fighting for him, and just like that, her mission was over.

“B’Lynn?” she called again, trying not to imagine her dead by her own hand. “I’m coming in!”

“We’re upstairs, Detective!”

We ? We who? Annie wondered. Had B’Lynn’s daughter come home? Or maybe she had called on her own mother to come for emotional support.

We.

And there was something in the way she had said Detective , with a certain formal emphasis…

Annie stepped back as she pulled the screen door open, and the tan car at the curb in front of the neighbor’s house caught her attention. A tan sedan that had seen better days. Not the kind of car common to this street stocked with Mercedes and BMWs, but the kind of junker vehicles police agencies kept in their carpools for detectives to drive.

The tan sedan of Dewey Rivette.

What the hell?

“I’ll be right up!” Annie called, stalling for time.

What was he doing there? Annie had relieved him of his duty. And why wouldn’t B’Lynn have simply said he was there? Why wouldn’t Dewey have announced himself?

She quickly called for backup to come, no lights, no sirens.

Her heart was thumping as she stood in the doorway looking into the gracious old home. Her sense of self-preservation told her to wait. Her concern for B’Lynn told her to go in. One part of her brain told her she was being ridiculous, that she’d known Dewey for years and there was no reason to be afraid of him. Another part of her brain recalled that car running up behind her on the road to Lafayette, and her wondering what might have happened if they hadn’t been on a busy highway.

Then she remembered that Robbie’s bedroom overlooked the street, and anyone looking out the window would see the sheriff’s deputies pulling up. If there was a situation upstairs, she needed to be the distraction that kept the attention in the room.

“Annie?” B’Lynn called. “Are you coming?”

Her mouth as dry as cotton, Annie put her hand on the butt of her weapon.

“On my way!” she called, and went inside the house.