Alligator Moon. Joanna Wayne

night. He was fine.”

      “It’s no mistake. I wouldn’t call you with this kind of news if I wasn’t certain.”

      Damn. This was John’s fault. He should have stayed sober. Should have seen that his little brother got home safe. Now… “Did he hit another car or just run off the road?”

      “Neither. It wasn’t an accident, John. Dennis ate a bullet.”

      “Murdered?”

      “Suicide.”

      No! Hell no! Him, maybe, but never Dennis. Dennis had a life. Beer to drink. Women to screw. A big move all planned.

      “I guess I should have come out there and told you myself, but it being Saturday and all, I thought I’d better catch you before you headed out into the Gulf on a fishing trip.”

      “When did you find out?”

      “A few minutes ago. Must have happened sometime during the night, but no one noticed the car over in the swamp until this morning. Hank LeBlanc and a couple of his sons found it and gave me a call. I’m here now.”

      “Where’s here?”

      “Bayou Road, a couple of miles before the turnoff to Dennis’s place.”

      “Don’t move the body until I get there.”

      “This ain’t a pretty sight, John. Why don’t you wait and see the body once it’s down at the funeral home and Dastague’s got it cleaned up?”

      “Forget Dastague. I want an autopsy and I want it done in New Orleans.”

      “No cause, John. There’s not a sign of foul play.”

      “Yeah, well I call a bullet plenty sign of foul play. And the cause for the autopsy is that I said so. I want a full investigation, Tom, not some half-assed job that won’t get beyond the ridicule stage with a grand jury.”

      “Calm down, John. I know how you felt about Dennis. Hell, we all loved him. He was good-time tonic in solid form. But he had his problems. You know that.”

      “Yeah, well you’re the one who’s got them now, Tom. Full autopsy. Full investigation. Stay put. I’m on my way over there.”

      “There’s no use. I checked—”

      “I’m on my way. Be there.”

      The jackhammer was still at work, pounding so that John stumbled as he went to the kitchen for drugs to kill the pain. He shook four extra-strength painkillers into his hand and chased them with a glass of water from the tap.

      Images flashed through his mind, like stabs of glaring light. Dennis laughing. Dennis fishing. Dennis scared as shit the time he tipped the pirogue over when they were teasing the old gator with raw chicken wings.

      Dennis shaking like an old man in detox a few hours after Ginny Lynn Flanders had died on the operating table.

      Suicide, hell! This had the stench of Dr. Norman Guilliot all over it.

      “I’M NOT SURE who I need to talk to,” Cassie explained once she got Moore’s Travel on the phone. “My mother is Mrs. Butch Havelin and my father said she books all her travel through your agency.”

      “Sure. Rhonda Havelin. You must be Cassie.”

      “Right.”

      “I’ve heard so much about you from Rhonda, I feel as if I know you. Your mother and I are members of the same church and we’ve worked on a couple of committees together. She’s very efficient and organized, keeps us all on task.”

      “That would be my mother.”

      “So, what can I do for you?”

      “I need to get in touch with Mom, but I don’t have her itinerary. Can you pull it up for me?”

      “Are you talking about her Greece trip?”

      “That’s the one.”

      “I’m afraid I can’t help you with that. She came in and picked up some pamphlets on the islands and sites of interest in and around Athens, but the friend she was going with booked the trip.”

      “I don’t suppose you know the name of the booking agency.”

      “No. Did you check with your father?”

      “I talked to him last night. He probably has the itinerary somewhere but can’t put his hands on it.”

      “I hope this isn’t an emergency situation.”

      “Nothing serious, but I would like to talk to her. Did Mom mention any specific hotels?”

      “No, only that they planned to stay in smaller, family-owned establishments so they could experience more of the authentic Greek culture.”

      “That doesn’t sound like Mom.”

      “I cautioned her to be careful with that when I saw her at church before she left, but I got the feeling that her friend had traveled the area before. It’s a very safe part of the world.”

      “Mom usually thinks anything less than a four-star hotel is roughing it.”

      “Nothing like hooking up with an old high school friend to make you adventuresome.”

      “Guess not.” But Cassie suspected it would take a lot more than that to make her mother adventuresome. She was probably sitting in some air-conditioned hotel calling for room service and reading a book while her friend did all the adventuring.

      Cassie thanked the woman for her trouble and broke the connection. Who’d have ever thought that locating her mother would be the hardest part of planning her own vacation?

      But Patsy David sounded as if she might be just what Cassie’s mother needed—bold and open to new experiences. Perhaps Cassie shouldn’t join them. It might throw her mother back into her maternal mode and spoil her fun. Cassie decided she’d give that further consideration if and when she actually got to talk to Rhonda.

      And she wasn’t giving up on that yet. She still had her ace in the hole. If her mother’s next-door neighbor didn’t know the details of the Greece trip, Cassie was certain it wouldn’t be from lack of prying.

      She retrieved Marianne Jefferies’s phone number from information and made the call. They exchanged the perfunctory hellos and Cassie got right to the point before Marianne had a chance to start her own round of questioning.

      “I’m trying to get in touch with Mom. Did she leave you a copy of her itinerary?”

      “Why? Is anything wrong?”

      “No. I’d just like to give her a call and see how her vacation’s going.”

      “You’ll have to talk to Butch then. As secretive as Rhonda was about this trip, I doubt anyone else would know how to find her.”

      “What do you mean by secretive?”

      “Well, anytime I asked her about the trip, she changed the subject. Might as well have just said it was none of my business.”

      Imagine that. “So she didn’t mention any specific plans?”

      “I got the impression they didn’t have any. I drove Rhonda to the airport when she left. She seemed really nervous that day, which made perfect sense to me. I mean, in this day and age, anything could happen to two women traveling alone.”

      A morbid thought. Cassie wasn’t going to go there, but she was starting to feel a bit uneasy. “I don’t guess you have her friend Patsy’s home number.”

      “No. I’m not even sure where the woman lives. Some little town in northern Louisiana.”

      “Minden?”

      “That sounds right.”

      “I may try to find her