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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Other Books by Nat Burns

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  DAY ONE

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  DAY TWO

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  DAY THREE

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  DAY FOUR

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  DAY FIVE

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  DAY SIX

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  DAY SEVEN

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Bella Books

  Copyright © 2014 by Nat Burns

  Bella Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 10543

  Tallahassee, FL 32302

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  First Bella Books Edition 2014

  Bella Books eBook released 2014

  Editor: Medora MacDougall

  Cover Designer: Judith Fellows

  ISBN: 978-1-59493-378-3

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Other Books by Nat Burns

  The Book of Eleanor

  House of Cards

  Identity

  Poison Flowers

  The Quality of Blue

  Two Weeks in August

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank the southern half of the United States for being the unique and fascinating entity you are. I truly love to set my books in Southern locales because of the endless fascination and inspiration you provide.

  Thanks also to my wonderful editor, Medora MacDougall. Her sense of humor accompanies her wise corrections and I actually look forward to her edits on my manuscripts. I know—how strange is that?

  As always, tons of gratitude to Bella Books for publishing my flights of fancy and to you, dear readers, for remaining faithful and appreciative. It means a lot.

  About the Author

  Nat Burns is:

  A Goldie award-winning novelist with Bella Books

  An author with Regal Crest Enterprises

  A book editor with several publishers

  A music editor with a monthly magazine column, Notes from Nat.

  A previous board member of the Small Press Writers and Artists Organization, the Nelson County Education Foundation, Literacy Volunteers of America and the Golden Crown Literary Society.

  A retired journalist, software technician and editorial systems coordinator who has lived in Virginia, South Texas and now New Mexico.

  www.natburns.com

  www.facebook.com/natburnsworld

  @NattyBurns

  I’d like to dedicate this book to the family and friends who devotedly buoy me up when the times get rough. Thank you. Much love to you.

  Chapter One

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Anderson. You should have thought of that before you went bungee jumping with your friends while you were vacationing at Virginia Beach.”

  I shifted the phone headset, then listened absently, gently rolling the wooden cylinder of a yellow pencil back and forth across the pitted maple desktop. And I sighed, bored with the worn, familiar song I was hearing. I studied my drab office walls, thinking once again that I needed to get a mural of some sort. Or, at the very least, a movie poster.

  “I know, Mr. Anderson. I know. But you are supposed to be suffering the effects of whiplash. And I can’t find the physician you listed either. The one who you said would support your claims. We absolutely have to deny it.”

  I paused as I fished a second pencil from the pencil cup and added it to the first. The gentle susurrus of controlled sound was a comforting counterpoint to the angry shouting coming from the phone headset. I closed my eyes, wishing I had stayed home in bed that morning.

  “Yes, it is a lot of money. And my name is Denni, sir, Denni Hope. You can report me to whomever you please, but calling me those kinds of names won’t help you get approved.”

  I cringed as a new volley of angry words assailed me. “Mr. Anderson. Mr. Anderson? I am ending this conversation now. If you wish to take it up with our legal representation, the contact information is at the bottom of the email and the hard copy letter that I have just sent to you. The email and letter will explain in detail why the claim was denied and all about the appeal process. Goodbye, sir.”

  Taking a deep breath, I sat back in my chair and stared through the large plate glass window on the south wall of my office, watching the pedestrians moving busily on the street outside. The office work—with its ensuing confrontations—was my least favorite aspect of this job. Eyeing the desk in my peripheral vision, I grimaced at the four folders awaiting action. I was simply not in the mood to work. Period.

  The on-the-fly sleuthing was the fun part, anyway, catching people in lies and deceptions. Plus the research and fact-checking, the work of coolly building a case against someone trying to steal from Alan Carter’s insurance company. But taking this kind of abuse for something the client did to himself…well, it was not fun. I glanced at the waiting folders and sighed again.

  I knew I needed to get on with it, but my thoughts kept drifting to the real issue bothering me. I couldn’t shake the troubling nature of Patty’s call. I’d come back from lunch, and her message had been there waiting for me, a voice mail heralded by a red blinking light on my blocky office phone.

  Examining my feelings with some wonder, I tried to put aside the warm waves engendered in my body upon hearing Patty’s voice again, even on an answering machine. Yet I was alarmed to hear a panicked note, one that I’d never heard in the five years we’d been together as a couple.

  My fingers crept back to the pencils on the desktop. I studied the two rolling cylinders with a pensive gaze. Should I go? The panic in Patty’s tone frightened me. This was the troubling issue, not so much the destruction of Patty’s possessions or the fact that someone seemed to be hounding her. These problems could be dealt with, were dealt with every day in my line of work. It was that small tremble in Patty’s voice that haunted me. That tiny clue that let me know just how close Patty was to losing it.

  Even more troubling was the feeling Patty’s distress provoked in me. No matter how I tried to demonize Patty because she had heartlessly left me for another, the powerful love I’d felt for her lingered. And now she needed me.

  A looped-togethe
r line of preschool-aged children passed by the window and I watched their undeniable cuteness with brooding eyes.

  Should I go to Louisiana and help Patty? Immerse myself anew in her world, even temporarily? Could my emotions handle the pain of being within touching distance yet not able to touch? I sat back and slowly rocked back and forth in my soft desk chair, soothing myself as my thoughts tussled like misbehaving youngsters. A huge part of me wanted to ignore or deny the plea, while the smaller, gentler side of me very badly needed to help her.

  Do we ever truly get over those we have loved?

  I absently pulled the headset from my head. Dew dripped from the rooftop above the window and arced in a sudden gust of wind, sparkling a brief farewell to the brilliant Virginia sunlight before merging with the shaded darkness of the sidewalk below. I took a deep breath and decided the sparkle was a good sign, an omen of full speed ahead.

  I spun away from the window and stared at the thick glass door that led into the shadowy confines of the Carter Insurance Company’s main office. I saw Macy Logan, our attractive secretary extraordinaire, hunched over a keyboard busily typing. My thoughts rambled through the few short-term relationships I had been involved in since Patty. Perhaps if one of them had stuck, had become long term, I might have gotten over Patty completely by now.

  “I still cannot believe he did that.” Tom Miles’s form suddenly filled the doorway. I knew exactly which case he was talking about. The bungee jumper. “It’s amazing what people think they can get away with…just boggles the mind,” he continued.

  I studied him. Short and balding, he was wearing his habitual crisp business suit, his face ruddy above the tight collar of his button-down Oxford shirt and red striped tie. “I know. And he really thought he could get away with it. I finally sent him over to Legal.”

  “I guess they think no one is watching.” Tom’s smile was crafty.

  I smiled. “You’d think with hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake, he’d assume we’d be checking him out. I mean, we’re not just gonna give it to him, for chrissakes.”

  “Do you think he’s gonna drag Legal into it?” He plopped down into the chair on the opposite side of my desk. He stared out the window behind me, his mind obviously whirring with thought.

  I leaned back and nodded. “Probably. He doesn’t have a leg to stand on, though.”

  “Still, it costs beyond the retainer.”

  He finally looked directly at me, and I suddenly made up my mind.

  “Listen, Tom…I was thinking about taking a little time off…”

  He leaned forward and studied my face. “It’s about time.”

  This wasn’t the response I was expecting. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve only taken sick time during the past several years, no vacation time at all. You’re long overdue.” He blinked slowly.

  I sat silently thinking a few minutes, and I realized that what he said was true. I’d been so busy trying to immerse myself in my work so I wouldn’t think about the breakup that I had given up on any life beyond work. I let out a deep breath.

  “How long were you thinking?”

  I stared down at my desk calendar and saw a pretty much empty schedule. “How’s a week sound?”

  Tom stood and smiled at me. “It sounds perfect. I’ll let Alan know. Will you clear everything with Macy?”

  I nodded and indicated the folders on my desk. “I’ll wrap these up too, before I go.”

  “Good. So what do you have planned?” He paused by the doorway on his way out.

  I shrugged. “I think I’ll head down south and visit some friends. Nothing fancy.”

  Tom nodded and moved down the hall, waving over his shoulder. “Have a good time! And if you can’t be good, just don’t get caught!”

  His laughter wafted to me as his office door slid shut.

  I took a deep breath and picked up the phone headset. It was time to get back to work. I felt a great sense of relief…and trepidation…now that the decision had been made.

  DAY ONE

  Chapter Two

  John Clyde Price was waiting for me at the little Lake Charles, Louisiana, airport when I got in at four that Sunday evening. I had changed planes twice—a long flight very early that morning from Virginia to New Orleans, then a quick hop over to Lake Charles. Unable to relax, I had tried reading during both legs of the flight but had eventually drifted into a fitful doze. I was oddly nervous about returning to the area where Patty and I had lived. Where we had loved. I wasn’t sure how I would be received, especially by Yolanda, the woman Patty had left me for.

  Patty’s brother had changed little during the four years since I’d last seen him. A tall, lanky man, he reminded me of Abraham Lincoln, even down to the untamed shock of dark hair. He was not nearly as rough in feature, though. His face actually resembled Patty’s in some small ways, and she was one of the loveliest women I had ever known. His smile was infectious, full of overlarge white teeth and shy, flirtatious charm.

  “It’s good to see you, John Clyde. It’s been a while.” I let my eyes roam across his features with true fondness. We’d shared a number of good times hanging out at Bay Sally’s Bar, fishing lines in the water, beers warming between our thighs. He’d been a good ear when Patty and I started having trouble. No judgment, just quiet comfort.

  “Denni,” he said, nodding his head in welcome. “It’s good to see you again.” I did notice that he’d grown thinner and there were dark circles around his eyes. His hair had begun to gray a little, mostly at the temples.

  “So, what’s the deal? What do you think is going on here?” As was my wont, I got right to the point.

  He sighed as he lifted my duffel into the bed of the sleek double cab pickup truck he was driving. License plates with the name of the family business, Fortune Farm, revealed that it was not his private vehicle. A good thing as the last car I’d remembered him owning had been a tiny foreign something that had barely held his own long legs much less a solid one hundred seventy pounds of insurance investigator.

  “I don’t know, Denni gal. You know Mama died in the spring. Brain rupture just took her overnight.”

  “I know. And I’m so, so sorry. You know I’m gonna miss Megs. She was like a mother to me too.”

  If I hadn’t been looking so keenly—or if my eyes hadn’t been so professionally attuned to such cues, I might have missed it. There was a sudden subtle tautening of the skin around his mouth and eyes. What had been grief, the next minute was…what? Perhaps grief still.

  “I wish y’all had let me know then. I would have liked to have come down and pay my respects,” I said quietly.

  “Well, we were all fit to be tied. I thought Patty was gonna die right along with Mama.” He looked away and I felt my heart lurch in sad empathy. “That’s when it started.”

  “What started?”

  He screwed his face into a tight frown as he headed the truck west. “First it was things disappearing from Mama’s room. Things Patty had wanted to keep, like Mama’s jewelry. Then it was the tractors. The whole fleet. Someone sugared the tanks. Cost us thousands to get them fixed.”

  I let loose a low whistle. Destructive behavior at its finest. “When was this?”

  “I guess about a month or so after Mama passed.”

  I studied the scenery as John Clyde eased the truck onto the access road that emptied onto Main Street. Lake Charles, Louisiana, had not changed much in the handful of years since I’d last been there. It was a sprawling town of hotels, restaurants and casinos. We passed through the snug little heart of downtown on our way to Route 171 south toward Brethren and I studied the people dotting the sidewalks. They looked the same as always—the natives tired and threadbare and the tourists’ faces filled with hope and a surety that they would win at the gaming tables. I saw where several long-standing mom-and-pop businesses had been ravaged by storms and also noted many more casinos than had been there four years ago.

  The historic Virginia town I lived i
n now seemed much more affluent, the residents more polished, more metropolitan. I had forgotten how unrelenting poverty and the desperation of subsistence living could age people. But Cameron Parish was a scrapper. In 1957, Hurricane Audrey had come through and brutally wiped out most of the town’s residences and outlying businesses. The people rebuilt right away, but in 2005, Hurricane Rita paid a lingering visit and laughed at what they’d accomplished. By the time Hurricane Isaac came to visit in 2008, there was little structure or spirit left in Louisiana’s most westward parish. From what John Clyde was telling me, farms were still limping along these days and more businesses were now closed than open.

  As we passed through the small downtown area, I saw some of that remaining futility in the faces of the residents. But I also saw that enduring charm that is possessed by those residing in small southern towns—a charm that isn’t often found in many, more urban, places, even certain cities in Virginia. Some people where I lived now were downright snooty. I knew these people here really would give you the shirt off their back, even if it meant their own skin was left to deal with the elements. I readily returned the warm smiles I received from curious passersby as the truck paused at a stoplight.

  “What happened next?” I reluctantly pulled my gaze from a cherubic toddler trying in vain to keep up with an older brother.

  John Clyde grasped the steering wheel with both hands, hard, until his knuckles faded to white. “Little things mostly. Then Kissy went missing.”

  “Kissy?”

  “Patty and Yolanda’s daughter.”

  “They have a daughter?” A strange feeling stirred below my breastbone.

  “Yeah, a four-year-old, adopted formally about six months ago.”

  “Oh. Patty never told me. What happened to her? Is she okay?”

  “Yes.” He nodded thoughtfully as he watched the road. “She was missing for several hours, and we had the whole farm looking for her. She turned up wandering the banks of Ruddy Bayou.”