When Darkness Falls Read online

  She guessed he meant it as a compliment. "I flew in from San Francisco two nights ago. Apparently I wasn't very well equipped for this expedition."

  "You've been crossing the Atchafalaya Basin—nothing but camps and oil rigs for miles. It's lucky I decided to go for a drive this afternoon." He shook his head. "I'd hate to see you hitching a ride in one of those beat-up trucks the locals use."

  "You're not local, Mr. Lacoste?"

  "Chad, please. We don't stand on formality here in the bayou."

  So she had observed. "Chad. I take it that you don't live in this area?"

  "Not in Grand Marais, but outside of town on a piece of land drier than most, in a plantation house built by my great-great-grandfather. Quite a pile, really. I usually spend a few months each year at Bonneterre. The rest of the year it's New Orleans, New York, London. In fact, I haven't been back to the parish for several years." He smiled at her with open appreciation. "It looks as if my stay won't be as tedious as I'd feared."

  Before she could think of an appropriate response, he jumped out of the convertible and gallantly opened the passenger door. "If my lady will step into my carriage?"

  She grabbed her purse and the suitcase in the back of the Lexus and scooted into the convertible's leather seat, instinctively smoothing her trousers and doing up the top buttons of her blouse. Chad Lacoste hopped in beside her and gunned the engine. The moment she was buckled in, he stepped on the gas pedal and sent the BMW hurtling down the road.

  Dana braced herself, struggling to concentrate on the rather monotonous scenery. She felt Chad's eyes on her and wished he would watch the road instead.

  "Enough about me," he said abruptly. "What brings you to Beaucoeur Parish, Miss St. Cyr?"

  "Doctor," she said, clearing her throat. "But please do call me Dana."

  "Doctor. How interesting." He shifted gears and accelerated. She expected him to ask more questions, but he seemed to be waiting for her to speak. She decided to change the subject.

  "Chad… did you happen to see the man I was speaking to just as you arrived?"

  His face clouded, and she was reminded of the instant when her first would-be rescuer had changed so completely from lazy-eyed rogue to ominous stranger.

  "Remy Arceneaux," Chad said, biting off the words. "You don't want to have anything to do with him, Dana."

  "Oh? Does he have a bad reputation?"

  "Worse." His jaw set, and she was considering pressing for details when the first recognizable structures appeared by the road.

  Many of the buildings were little more than shacks or cottages, but as they crossed a bridge and entered the town proper, Dana noted that there seemed to be a single main street along which most of the businesses were located. Among them she recognized a brick church with a cemetery, a small market and hardware store, some kind of dance or game hall, and a tiny bank.

  "Welcome to Grand Marais," Chad said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. "If you can find anything 'grand' about it." He raced down the center of town at seventy miles an hour, past desultory pedestrians, barking dogs and the tiny police station. Dana guessed that there wasn't much more to Grand Marais than she could see—the side streets didn't seem very long, and the tallest building was only two stories high.

  She spotted a two-pump gas station next to an ancient hotel and tapped Chad's arm. "You can let me off there," she said. "They must have a tow truck somewhere in town."

  "You didn't tell me where you're staying."

  "With my great-aunt Augustine Daigle."

  Chad slammed on the brakes. Fortunately, no one was behind him. "Daigle?"

  "My grandmother's sister. I know she lives on the edge of town… "

  She could have sworn that Chad's tan face turned a shade more pale as he swerved into the gas station lot. He set the brake, left the engine idling and vaulted over the closed door as if some private demon nipped at his heels.

  "I'll be right back," he said. Without further explanation, he strode into the booth-sized convenience store attached to the station.

  Dana sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. She could get out here, of course, and find whatever passed for a taxi in a small bayou town like this. But it seemed rude to leave after accepting a ride from Lacoste, however reckless his driving. It couldn't be that far to Great-Aunt Augustine's.

  "Sally?"

  She turned at the unfamiliar voice. A middle-aged man, the station attendant by the look of his stained overalls and the rag in his hands, was staring at her in obvious confusion.

  "I'm afraid not," she said. "My name is Dana St. Cyr."

  "St. Cyr?" He twisted the rag into a tortured spiral. "But you look…you look just like her—except for the hair. And the clothes." He spoke the last part of the sentence as if to himself, but the uneasy expression on his face remained. "You knew Sally?"

  "Sally who?"

  Chad emerged from the convenience store before the attendant could answer. He glanced at the older man with a frown.

  "No gas today," he said brusquely. He paused at the side of the convertible and tapped a cigarette out of a new pack of Marlboros. "Smoke?" he asked Dana.

  She shook her head and looked for the attendant. He was gone. "Do I look like anyone you've met?" she asked Chad.

  He lit the cigarette with a gold lighter and took a drag. "Why? Has that man been bothering you?"

  For reasons she couldn't fathom, she had no desire to discuss the attendant's peculiar reaction with Lacoste. "Nothing," she murmured, reaching for the door handle. "I'd like to thank you for driving me into town. I'll just go see about that tow truck—"

  "Forget it." He dropped into his seat and released the brake. "It's already taken care of. And anyway, this is door-to-door service."

  While Dana glanced behind to see if the local police had noticed such an easy source of revenue, Chad shot out of the gas station, past several more commercial buildings and into a residential area at the north end of town. He took a sharp left at a tilted stop sign and followed a curved lane past small frame houses, some in disrepair and others neatly kept, with modest flower gardens and whitewashed verandas.

  He pulled up in front of one such house, an attractive cottage that smelled of fresh paint. In one motion he snatched up Dana's suitcase from the back seat and opened her door.

  "The residence of Augustine Daigle," he said, sweeping his hand with a flourish.

  After seeing the rest of Grand Marais, Dana wasn't surprised at the small size of her great-aunt's house. In fact, it seemed rather cozy.

  And when did you ever have any use for cozy? She stepped out of the convertible and gently pried her suitcase from Chad's fingers.

  "I don't know how to thank you," she said, and hesitated. Well, why not? If his worst habits were smoking and speeding, he shouldn't be too hard to manage. "Perhaps I can take you to dinner once I'm settled in."

  "Are you asking me on a date?" he said, grinning around his cigarette.

  "Let's just say that I don't know too many people in Grand Marais, and I may need a native guide."

  Chad laughed and slid behind the wheel. "That's one thing you can bet on, Doc," he said. "We'll be seeing each other again. Very soon."

  The rumble of his engine obscured every other sound, so it was several moments before Dana realized that the cottage door had opened. An elderly woman stood on the porch, arrayed in a bright floral housedress and Birkenstock sandals. Her white hair was neatly arranged in a bun, and her face was youthful in spite of a multitude of wrinkles. This was a woman who'd never visited a plastic surgeon.

  The woman took a single hesitant step forward. "Sal—" She stopped, blinked several times and slowly held out her hands. "You must be Dana. How wonderful to see you at last."

  "Aunt Augustine." Dana set down the suitcase and took her great-aunt's hands. "I know I wrote that I wouldn't be coming until next week… "

  "Hush. You should have come much sooner, chère." Augustine pulled Dana into a hug. She smelled of potpourri, oranges
and fresh bread. The intimate contact should have been uncomfortable, but it was not. Dana felt strangely moved, as if she had indeed come home.

  "We have so much to talk about," Augustine said, releasing her. "So much. But I have a question before we go in and have something cool to drink. Was that Chad Lacoste who just drove off?"

  So Aunt Augustine knew Chad. If his family was as wealthy as he'd implied, that was no surprise. Such affluence would be noticed in a place like this.

  "Yes," Dana said. "We just met. He drove me into town… My rental car broke down in the swamp. He said he'd arrange to have a tow truck pick it up."

  "I see." Augustine's brown eyes grew distant, and then she shook herself like a robin in a birdbath. She took Dana's hand and led her into the house. "I have your room all made up. It's small, but I hope you'll find it comfortable."

  "I'm sure I will." Though the words were rote courtesies, Dana found that she meant them. The whole cottage smelled very much like her great-aunt, and the wooden floor was carpeted with handwoven rag rugs. A piano stood in one corner. Antique furniture graced the small living room. The window air conditioner labored to cool the house, but its modest effects were considerably more pleasant than the damp heat outside.

  When Dana stepped into the guest bedroom, she was enchanted. The brass bed was piled high with plump quilts and decorative pillows, lace doilies were draped over the dresser and bedside tables, and a carved wooden rocker stood in one corner.

  "Here you are," Augustine said. "The bathroom is just down the hall. If there's anything you need that I've forgotten, tell me. I was about to heat up some gumbo for supper."

  Dana set her suitcase on the floor beside the bed and glanced longingly at the quilts. "Thank you, Aunt Augustine."

  "Call me Gussie. No one has called me Augustine since Jules passed." She caught the direction of Dana's gaze. "You take a nap, now, and I'll come get you when supper's ready."

  Once Gussie had bustled away to the kitchen, Dana kicked off her mules and collapsed onto the bed. It creaked and settled under her with a contented sigh that matched her own.

  It felt marvelous to close her eyes, and for a moment she thought she might actually fall asleep. But a certain persistent image danced behind her eyelids: a tall male form, friendly and hostile by turns, whose turquoise gaze locked on hers as if to convey a silent message of warning.

  Of what? Who is Remy Arceneaux, and why did Chad advise me to stay away from him?

  She sat up, raking her hands through her hair. The smell of onions and spices wafted through the house, reminding her how hungry she was after a very skimpy breakfast of beignets in New Orleans. Too restless to sit still, she slid off the bed and prowled about the room, touching this object and that, until she came to the dresser and the lovingly framed photo displayed there.

  Her first thought was that she was looking at a portrait of herself. She picked up the photo and studied it more carefully. The woman in the picture, arm in arm with Gussie, was alike enough to be Dana's twin in height, figure, coloring, even in features, but the small details made the difference clear.

  The woman in the photo was tanned from forehead to ankles—the kind of tan one got from strong sunshine and not a tanning salon. She wore very little makeup, and her blond hair was drawn back in a careless pony-tail, not sculpted into a neat bob like Dana's. She wore an open-necked, sleeveless plaid shirt, a pair of shorts with numerous overstuffed pockets and scuffed hiking boots. The last time Dana had dressed like that had been for a grade school field trip.

  Dana had no lost twins that she knew of; she'd been an only child. But the gas attendant had mistaken her for someone else. And Gussie had given her such an odd look when they'd first met…

  "Her name was Sally."

  Gussie stood in the doorway, hands tucked into the pockets of her apron. She looked from the picture to Dana's face, and in her eyes were answers to the questions Dana had yet to ask.

  "You two are alike as two mudbugs in a ditch," Gussie said. "That's why I was surprised when I saw you. I couldn't tell from that small picture you sent… I couldn't have imagined."

  Dana set the picture down. "Someone in town mistook me for her," she said. "Who is she?"

  "Your cousin—my granddaughter." Gussie sighed and sat down in the rocker, her wide hips just fitting between the curved arms. "You do look like her, but I can see you must be very different."

  "Does she live in this area?"

  "Sally… disappeared five years ago."

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  « ^ »

  A chill lodged on the back of Dana's neck. "Disappeared?"

  Gussie closed her eyes. "She was so full of life, from the time she was a little girl. She drew everyone to her, like a light. In school, the boys were all in love with her. More than one wanted her for his wife. But she chose to leave Grand Marais. She went to the city, to study at the university." Gussie smiled. "She wrote me sometimes. She worked very hard, and when she was done, she had a degree in the study of birds—'ornithology,' she called it."

  "I didn't know," Dana murmured. "I'm so sorry." Gussie seemed not to hear. "When her maman was dying… a little more than five years ago… she came home to be with us. She heard about a special bird in our swamps, very rare, and she stayed on to look for it. One day she went into the swamp and never came out again."

  The idea of being lost in those swamps was terrible enough, but to imagine dying there… Dana touched the grinning face in the photo with a fingertip. It seemed unbearably cruel that one so young and happy should have met such a fate.

  "They looked for her," Gussie went on. "They searched the 'chafalaya for days. They never found a sign of her. There were rumors—" she laughed "—there are always rumors. But Sally wasn't the kind to get herself lost in the swamp or anywhere else. We all knew she wasn't coming back."

  With rare impulsiveness, Dana knelt and took her hands. After so many years of examining faces from every angle, she knew what lay behind her great-aunt's impassive expression. Grief—hidden, unhealed, devastating.

  "I am sorry," Dana repeated softly. "I wish I had known her."

  Gussie patted her hand. "I'm sure she would have felt the same. This is the room I kept for her when she visited. She would want you to be comfortable here." She sniffed. "The gumbo needs stirring." She got to her feet and hurried out of the room, leaving Dana to contemplate her story.

  So much for the placid appearance of Grand Marais. Even small towns could hide a multitude of sins. Was one of them murder? How had Sally died, and why?

  Dana wasn't prepared to intrude on Gussie's grief just to satisfy her curiosity. Yet she couldn't help but feel, however irrationally, that she and Sally shared something more than a face.

  I could have gone anywhere to find myself and put my life back on course—New York, Hawaii, Europe. Is there a reason I felt drawn to come here, where so many of my mother's family lived and died?

  She knew the notion was foolish, that she should put morbid thoughts of poor Sally's disappearance from her mind. But even when she was full of gumbo and had enjoyed an hour of pleasant, untroubled conversation with Gussie, her mind bounced back and forth between two people, man and woman, each vanished in the endless swamp: Sally Daigle and Remy Arceneaux.

  Sleep was out of the question. Sally's eyes watched her from the photo, as if trying to convey a message from the other side. After a fruitless hour of staring up at the ceiling, Dana climbed out of bed and went to the phone Gussie kept in the kitchen. She thumbed through the phone book in the faint hope that the person she wanted had a listed number.

  There it was: Lacoste, Reuben. Chad's father, no doubt, unless he had other relatives in the area. Dana was prepared to take that chance. She punched out the number and waited tensely as the phone rang.

  A sleepy female voice answered with a formal "Lacoste residence." Dana introduced herself and asked for Chad.

  "I'll see if Mr. Lacoste is available, Dr. St. Cyr," the woma
n said, and put Dana on hold. Only a minute passed before a familiar accented voice came on the line.

  "Dana?" Chad said. "I didn't expect the pleasure of hearing your voice again so soon."

  "I'm sorry to be calling so late. I hope I didn't disturb you?"

  "Not at all. I'm at your service, day or night." He just managed to avoid innuendo in his tone, but Dana could not mistake his interest.

  "I know I owe you a dinner, but I have another favor to ask of you."

  "Fire away."

  "I'd like to go into the swamp, and I thought perhaps you might be able to recommend a guide."

  "Go into the swamp? That's not one of the amusements I'd expect a woman like you to enjoy."

  In that, he was correct, or would be at any other time. "I have a very specific reason. I've learned that my cousin, Sally Daigle, disappeared in that area a few years ago, and I'd like to see where…" Now she was sounding ridiculous. How could she explain this strange, unaccountable feeling she had to learn more of Sally's fate?

  "Sally?" Chad repeated. "No one knows where she was lost."

  At least he wasn't surprised; of course, he'd reacted when she'd given Aunt Augustine's last name. He might have known Sally. He, too, might have grieved her passing.

  "I know it sounds a little odd, but I'd really like to see what she saw before she… before she disappeared. Call it a whim, if you like. I do realize that I'll need an experienced guide—"

  "You've got one. It so happens that I grew up in this area, and I know the swamp as well as anyone except the old-timers who live on the bayou. I'll take you myself."

  "I wouldn't want to inconvenience you—"

  "No inconvenience. I knew Sally. She'd have been grateful that you took an interest in her."

  "Perhaps you can tell me more about her."

  Papers rustled. "I'm free tomorrow, if you want to go so soon. Maybe you'd like to rest a few days, get used to the climate."

  "If it's convenient for you, I'd like to go tomorrow."

  "That's fine. Tell you what—I'll pick you up tomorrow morning, around six o'clock. It's a good idea to get started early. The ground is fairly dry this time of year, but there's still a lot of mud—wear jeans and sneakers and a long-sleeved shirt. Mosquito repellant, too. I'll take care of the rest."