Night Moves : Dream Man/After the Night Read online

  Gray in a temper was a fearsome sight, with those dark eyes turning so cold and deadly. She couldn’t imagine Ed Morgan withstanding him for even ten seconds. The notion entertained her for a brief moment, but then was pushed aside by her indignation at Faith Devlin’s gall.

  “I understand her curiosity,” Alex said, “but as I told Gray, it could be disastrous for your mother to find out.”

  “Well, I don’t understand her curiosity!” Monica cried. God, it took so little to bring it all back, the sense of loss, and of being lost, and the suffocating pain. Hatred swelled within her. She pulled her hand free, and turned away. “Gray shut up Ed Morgan, but what’s he doing about her?”

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I know you don’t agree, but when she first moved back, I was all for leaving her alone. What happened wasn’t her fault, and she deserves the right to live where she wants. That was something Noelle should have faced, and made the best of. This is different. This is deliberate, and it’s something that is her fault.”

  “Gray will take care of it,” Monica said. “He has to.”

  “I don’t know if he can.”

  “Of course he can! There are a lot of things he could do.”

  “Then let me put it another way. I don’t think he can be that drastic with Faith, considering how he feels about her. Wake up, Monica!” he admonished. “Pay attention to your brother. He’s attracted to her. Nothing about this is easy for him.”

  Monica felt the blood drain out of her face, leaving it stiff. Gray was . . . attracted to that woman? No. God couldn’t be that cruel. He wouldn’t make her live through that nightmare again.

  Unable to say anything else, she warded off Alex with an outstretched hand, unable to cope with the sympathy she could see in his eyes. Hurriedly she left his office, and it wasn’t until she reached the street that she realized she hadn’t told him she couldn’t be with him anymore.

  It would kill Mama if Gray took up with Renee Devlin’s daughter. The gossip would be so vicious, she would never be able to lift her head again. Monica gave a bitter little laugh. And to think she’d been worried what Mama would think about Michael McFane!

  Thirteen

  Mr. Pleasant’s office was located on the top floor of a two-story building. Faith climbed the stairs, hoping against hope that she would find him there, that his telephone had been out of service, that he would be all right. A malfunctioning telephone wasn’t much of a possibility, because if he hadn’t been able to call out, he would have known about it and simply gone to another phone. Surely, too, he would have noticed if there were no incoming calls. Maybe he’d taken another case, and forgotten about her.

  She doubted Francis P. Pleasant ever forgot anything.

  His office was the first door on the left. The upper half of the door was glass, but the interior blinds had been closed, preventing her from seeing inside. The day she had met him, the blinds had been open. She tried to open the door and found it locked. Not really expecting a response, she knocked, and put her ear against the glass. The room beyond was silent.

  There was a mail slot in the door. Faith pushed the little flap open, and angled her head to look inside. Her view was extremely limited, but she could see the mail, quite a lot of it, scattered across the floor.

  He wasn’t here, and the amount of his mail indicated that he hadn’t been here in several days.

  Growing more worried by the minute, Faith walked down the hall to the next door. According to the lettering on the door, she was at the law office of Houston H. Manges. She could hear the clatter of a typewriter and voices, so she opened the door and entered.

  Houston H. Manges’s environs were small and cramped, with file cabinets crammed into every available space. She was in the reception area, populated by a tiny white-haired woman and three rubber plants, one of which had reached gargantuan size. The room beyond, which she could see through the open door, was about the same size, with floor-to-ceiling books. A heavyset man lounged behind a battered desk, and he was talking to a client who sat in one of the two cracked imitation leather chairs positioned in front of the desk. All that was visible of the client was the back of his head.

  The tiny woman looked up and smiled in question, but made no move to close the door and give her employer and his client any privacy. Faith gave a mental shrug and approached.

  “I’m a client of Mr. Pleasant, next door,” she said. “I’ve been trying to reach him for several days and can’t seem to locate him. Do you happen to have any idea where he is?”

  “Why, no,” the tiny woman said. “He left about a week ago to go to this little town up close to Mississippi, I don’t remember the name. Perkins, something like that. I assumed he was still there.”

  “No, he left there the next day. He has a bad heart, and I’m worried about him.”

  “Oh, dear.” The small face took on a distressed look. “I never thought about his heart. I knew, of course. His wife, Virginia—we used to have lunch together, it was so sad when she died—told me about his trouble. It was really bad, she said. I never thought to check on him.” She reached immediately for the phone index, and flipped through it until she came to the Ps. “I’ll try his home phone. It’s unlisted, you know. He didn’t like business intruding on his private life.”

  Faith knew. She had called information, trying to get the number. It was her lack of success that had spurred her to drive down and try to find him.

  After a minute the little lady hung up the phone. “There’s no answer. Oh, dear. I am worried now. It isn’t like Francis not to let someone know where he is.”

  “I’m going to call all the hospitals,” Faith said decisively. “May I borrow your telephone?”

  “Of course, honey. We have two lines, so people will still be able to get through. If a call comes in, though, I’ll need you to hang up so I can answer it.”

  Thanking God for southern hospitality, Faith accepted the New Orleans directory and flipped to the listing of hospitals. There were more than she had expected. Starting at the top, she began dialing.

  Thirty minutes and three interruptions for incoming calls later, she hung up in defeat. Mr. Pleasant wasn’t a patient in any of the local hospitals. If he had taken ill while driving back from Prescott, he could be in a hospital somewhere else, but where?

  Or something could have happened to him. It was a possibility she didn’t want to consider, but one she had to accept. If Guy Rouillard had been murdered, and Mr. Pleasant had been asking questions that made someone uncomfortable . . . She felt sick at the thought. If anything had happened to that sweet old man, it would be her fault for involving him. It wasn’t as if she’d had anything to go on, other than Renee’s statement that Guy hadn’t been with her at all, that she hadn’t seen him since that night twelve years ago.

  Most people wouldn’t have suspected murder. Most people wouldn’t now be afraid that poor Mr. Pleasant had somehow run afoul of the same person who had killed Guy. But neither had most people been dragged out of their home in the middle of the night and thrown into the dirt; until Renee and Guy had disappeared, Faith’s life had been predictable, if a bit grim. But that night her trust in the comforting ordinariness of life had been shattered, and she had never regained that sense of security, of obliviousness to things that just didn’t happen to normal people. It was as if a curtain had been torn aside, and after that night she was acutely aware of all the dangers and what-ifs. Bad things were not only possible; in her experience, there was a damn good chance they would happen. She had held Scottie’s hand as he died, she had identified Kyle’s body in a morgue . . . Yes, bad things happened.

  “What are you going to do?” the little secretary asked, automatically accepting that Faith would do something.

  “File a missing person’s report,” Faith said, because it was the only thing she could think to do. Mr. Pleasant had disappeared as suddenly and thoroughly as Guy Rouillard had; he had been asking questions about Guy. Coincidence? Not like