until he’d had to change a flat tire on the drive from West Feliciana parish and then discovered Buddy had been assigned to watch a four-way. So much for his day off.
His cell phone rang.
Picou.
He sighed. “Dufrene.”
“I know very well who you are. I called, didn’t I?”
He sighed again.
“Get over here right now.”
His mother sounded winded. Panicky. He hadn’t caught it in her initial greeting but now his Spidey senses kicked in. “Why?”
“The boy has gone missing.”
“The boy? What boy?”
His mother sucked in a breath. “The director’s son. His nanny took a shower while Tawny was playing with him, but then Tawny got a call and went to another room. When she came back, he was gone. Just hurry.”
The phone clicked. She’d hung up.
Nate started the cruiser, but didn’t put the lights on. His mother had good reason to overreact to a missing child, a fact well-known to the Bayou Bridge Police Department and the Sheriff’s office. She’d called in his younger brother Darby as missing many times over the course of his childhood. This boy had probably done what most little boys do—traipsed off into the woods to explore or play a game of hide-and-seek in the many rooms of Beau Soleil. But, still, some children didn’t come home.
Just like Della.
Regret hit him hard, as it always did. Her disappearance had been partially his fault. But he didn’t want to think about that February day no matter how much it stayed with him, like Peter Pan’s shadow sewed onto his conscience.
Della. Gone. His fault.
He glanced down at the manila folder sitting in the passenger’s seat as he pulled onto the highway and headed toward his childhood home. Another detective had handed it to him when he’d left the station that morning, but he’d yet to open the file. Instead he’d allowed it to sit like a ticking bomb, afraid it would explode and crack the thin layer over the wound festering for the past twenty-four years. He refused to watch his mother crash and burn all over again. Because even though he was a big, tough St. Martin Parish detective, his mother’s tears brought him to his knees.
Never again.
His murdered sister was gone and there was little sense in digging it up again. Every other lead over the past had played out, and this new wrinkle would, too. But following up was his job—for both his family and this girl asking questions.
He shrugged off the burn between his shoulder blades and increased his speed, hugging the twisting road. He’d not been to Beau Soleil in over a week. Not since the gypsy had visited Picou. Or was it a mambo? Either way the woman had given him the creeps. For one thing she was blind, and for another, she looked like one of the witches from Macbeth.
Huckster. That’s what she was. Had his mother believing all sorts of nonsense about setting suns, righting wrongs, and prophesies about birds or some such crap. Picou’s quest for answers was ridiculous. He could tolerate the occasional trip to Baton Rouge to consult a palm reader because that incorporated a visit to her cardiologist, but bringing those sorts of people out to the house crossed the line.
The gates greeted him before he bumped down the long, winding drive faster than normal. He needed to seem as if he were in a hurry. Otherwise, he’d hear about it for the next few weeks. The Arch Angels Feast Day was coming up and he’d been hoodwinked by the parish priest into serving on the church’s committee, so there’d be no escaping Picou, who was the chairwoman of the celebration.
He rounded the corner and saw her. Not his mother. Or the actress. But the woman from the rental car he’d seen outside the Whiskey Bay gas station.
She stood calmly in the center of chaos, hair damp, brow furrowed. All around her people scurried, left, right and in circles, calling out and craning their heads in that universal motion signaling something lost.
In this case—a child.
He rolled to a halt and climbed from the car.
“Oh, Nate, thank heavens!” Picou called, drawing the attention of the people milling about. The woman who he now assumed was the freshly showered nanny caught his gaze. Her eyes widened slightly, but she didn’t move.
A well-endowed blonde tumbled toward him, and he recognized her from the pictures in the local newspaper.
“Oh, God, please help us. My baby. He’s gone!”
He placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder as much to keep her from crashing into him as to hold her up. “Okay, Mrs. Keene, take a deep breath and tell me what happened.”
The blonde burst into tears, shaking her head and swiping at the streaking mascara on her cheeks. Her thin shoulders shook and she covered her face with both hands and sobbed. The presumed nanny stepped forward and took the actress’s elbow. “Go sit down, Tawny. I’ll talk to the deputy.”
Her voice was nice. Kind of low and gravelly. It had quiet authority, probably from all the nannying she did.
Tawny nodded and allowed a pale Picou to lead her away. Nate looked hard at his own mother. She looked shaken and he felt every tremble of her hand as it stroked the actress’s back. His mother’s clouded eyes met his and he tried to convey reassurance in his nod, but as usual, he failed to comfort her.
He turned his gaze back to the nanny.
“I’m Annie Perez,” she said, stepping forward without extending a hand, as if recognizing the situation didn’t call for niceties but rather expediency. “I work for the Keenes as Spencer’s caretaker.”
People still scrambled around them. Many looked to be part of the production crew, if their sweaty T-shirts and baggy parachute shorts were any indication. He would expect the nanny to be searching desperately, but she wasn’t. Her calm struck him as peculiar.
“Lieutenant Nate Dufrene.”
“Dufrene?”
“Picou’s my mother.”
“Oh.”
“Time is of essence…”
She stiffened. “Right. Tawny took Spencer to her room to spend some time with him. She said he fell asleep while she read to him, so she stepped out to make a phone call. When she hung up, he was gone. I’ve searched the rooms on the second floor, top to bottom.”
“Closets? Bed—”
“Thoroughly,” Annie interrupted, pushing a piece of hair behind her ear. Sweat beaded her upper lip, reminding him to wipe the sweat from his own forehead. Too hot for mid-September.
“The first floor?”
“Your mother and Mr. Keene searched the bottom floor—”
“Third floor?” he interrupted.
“The
