Faith had had trouble absorbing everything at once, there were so many thoughts flying in her head. Jodie had obviously found their mother, but neither of them had made any effort to get in touch with Faith. Renee could have gotten her two youngest children out of foster care, but she had been content to leave them where they were. She hadn’t even asked about Scottie, Faith noticed.
Then there was the mystery of Guy Rouillard. Maybe he hadn’t left with Renee, but he had left, at least temporarily, and by his leaving had set in motion the events that had shaped her life. Puzzled and intrigued, Faith decided to find out for certain what had happened. At the age of fourteen, she had literally been thrown out into the night like a piece of trash, and she had lived with that pain ever since. She needed to know the end of the story. She wanted to close out her past, so she could get on with her future.
So here she sat, parked on the courthouse square in Prescott, swamped by memories and wasting time. It shouldn’t be very difficult to find out where Guy Rouillard had been for what was probably only that one day, that one crucial day that had totally altered her life.
Her first order of business, she supposed, was to find somewhere to stay for the night. She had flown into Baton Rouge that morning, conducted the business she had, then rented a car and driven to Prescott. It was late afternoon, and she was tired. It wouldn’t take long to find out what she wanted to know, but she didn’t want to make the drive back to Baton Rouge if she could get a motel room in Prescott.
There had been a motel twelve years ago, but it had been slightly seedy even then and might not still be there. It had been on the east side of town, on the road leading to 1-55.
She rolled down the car window and called to a woman walking down the sidewalk. “Excuse me. Is there a motel in town?”
The woman stopped, and came over to the side of the car. She was in her mid-forties and looked vaguely familiar, but Faith couldn’t place her. “Yes, there is,” the woman replied, and turned to point. “Go to the corner of the square and turn right. It’s about a mile and a half that way.”
It sounded like the same motel. Faith smiled. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” The woman smiled and nodded, and returned to the sidewalk.
Faith reversed out of the parking space and maneuvered the small rental car into the leisurely traffic. Prescott didn’t bustle now any more than it had twelve years ago. In two minutes she reached the motel. It was in the same place, but it wasn’t the same motel. This one looked new, no more than a couple of years old, and much more substantial. It was still only one story, though this one was built in a U around a center courtyard where a fountain bubbled and flowers grew. It lacked a pool, which she didn’t mind. The fountain was much more charming.
The desk clerk was a man in his fifties, and his name tag read “Reuben.” Memory stirred, and a last name surfaced to go with the first. Reuben Odell. One of his daughters had been in Faith’s class. He chatted as he took her credit card imprint, glancing curiously at the name, but nothing about “Faith D. Hardy” rang a bell in his memory. Faith wasn’t a common name, but probably he hadn’t even known her first name back then, so of course, he wouldn’t recognize it now.
“I’ll give you number twelve,” he said, taking the key from its compartment. “It’s at the back of the courtyard, farther away from the road so the traffic won’t bother you.”
“Thank you.” Faith smiled, and removed her sunglasses to sign the credit card slip. He blinked at her smile, his own expression growing fractionally warmer.
She parked the car at the rear of the courtyard, in front of number twelve. When she unlocked the door, she was pleasantly surprised. The room was larger than most motel rooms, with a love seat and coffee table close to the door, and a king-size bed beyond that. The dresser was long, with the television on one end, and a desk area on the end closest to the bathroom. The clothes rack was adequate, the vanity in the dressing area boasted two basins and was large enough for two people to get ready without continually bumping into each other. She looked into the bathroom, expecting the standard tub, but instead there was a sizeable shower stall with sliding doors. Since she never took a tub bath, she was pleased by the extra room to bathe. All in all, the little motel was a cut above the norm.
She unpacked her toiletries and the single change of clothes she’d brought, then plotted her course of action. There shouldn’t be much problem in finding out what she wanted to know, as long as no one recognized her as a Devlin. Small towns could have notoriously long memories, and the town of Prescott had belonged to the Rouillards heart and soul, as well as most of its brick.
The easiest and most anonymous way, probably, was to go to the library and look through the old newspapers. The Rouillards had constantly been in the news, so if Guy Rouillard had returned from his little jaunt and resumed business as usual, she wouldn’t have to check many editions before his name would crop up.
She checked her watch and saw that she probably wouldn’t have more than an hour to do what she’d come to do; from what she remembered about the small library, it closed about six P.M. during the summer, and in a town the size of Prescott, that wasn’t likely to change. She was hungry, but first things first; food could wait, the library wouldn’t.
It was odd how selective memory could be; she had never been to the motel when she had lived here, and had often gone to the library, whenever she’d gotten the chance, but she had remembered the motel’s location while she drew a blank on the library. She fished the small phone book out of the dresser and looked up the address, and after a moment remembered the library’s location. Grabbing her purse and keys, she went out to the car and drove back to downtown Prescott. Before, the library had been located behind the post office, but when she got there she was dismayed to find the building gone.
She looked around, and heaved a sigh of relief. A prominent sign in front of the new building next door to the post office proclaimed it the Prescott Library. The builders had disdained the sleekness of modern architecture and instead used an antebellum style, a redbrick two-story with four white columns out front, and shutters on the six-foot windows. There were plenty of parking spaces, probably more than needed, for only three cars were parked in the lot. Faith brought the total to four, parking in front and hurrying to the double doors. The sign posted on the left-hand door told her that she’d been right about the hours the library was open: nine A.M. to six P.M.
The librarian was a small, plump, chatty woman who wasn’t in the least familiar to Faith. She went up to the desk and asked where the old newspaper files were.
“Right over here,” the woman said, coming out from behind the counter. “Everything’s on microfiche now, of course. Are you looking for any particular dates? I’ll show you how the microfiches are filed, and how to work the scanner.”
“I’d appreciate that, thanks,” said Faith. “I want to start about ten years ago, but I may have to go a little further back.”
“That’s no problem. It would have been until a couple of years ago, but Mr. Rouillard insisted that everything be put on microfiche when we moved into this building. I declare, the system here was positively antiquated; it’s so much easier now.”
“Mr. Rouillard?” asked Faith, keeping her tone casual despite the way her heart jumped. So Guy had come back.
“Gray Rouillard,” said the librarian. “The family practically owns this town—the whole parish, come to that—but he’s just as nice as he can be.” She paused. “Are you from around here?”
“A long time ago,” Faith replied. “My family moved away when I was a child. I thought I’d check the old obituaries for some of my parents’ cousins. We lost track of them through the years, but I’ve started working on a family tree and got curious about what happened to them.” For a spur-of-the-moment explanation, it wasn’t bad. People trying to trace their family trees always made up the bulk of those using the microfiche machines, at least in her experience. From what she had gather
ed, listening to them talk and exchange tales of extended detective work that finally unearthed the whereabouts of Great-great-aunt Ruby on Mother’s side of the family, the quest could become addictive.
She had hit the right tone, for the librarian beamed. “Good luck, dear, I hope you find them. I’m Carlene DuBois. Call me if you need any help. We do close at six, though, and that’s less than an hour.”
“It shouldn’t take long,” said Faith, while searching her memory for a DuBois family in the parish. None came to mind, so perhaps they had moved to the area after the Devlin family had left so ignominiously.
Once she was alone, she quickly began scrolling through the files, scanning page after page of the Prescott Weekly, beginning from the date they had been escorted from the parish. She found several mentions of Gray, and though she tried to ignore them, she found that she couldn’t. Though that long-ago night had cured her of her infatuation for him, she had never been able to forget him; his image had lingered in her memory like a sore tooth, to be worried occasionally.
Helplessly giving in to the probing of that mental tongue, she scrolled back to the places where she had seen Gray’s name. The Weekly would never print anything derogatory or scandalous about the Rouillards—that was left to the Baton Rouge and New Orleans newspapers—but the normal comings and goings of the family were all duly reported to the inquiring minds that wanted to know, which was most of the parish. The first two tiny articles were mere mentions that Gray had attended such and such function. The third article was in the business section, and, stunned, Faith read it through twice before the words really sank in.
No one else would have seen anything alarming or even unusual in the sentence. “. . . Grayson Rouillard, who has taken financial control of the family enterprises, voted against the measure to . . .”
Taken control of the family enterprises. Why would he have done that? Guy would still have been in charge, for after all, everything had belonged to him. Faith glanced at the date of the newspaper. August fifth, not quite three weeks after Renee had left. What had happened?
She switched off the microfiche machine and sat back in the chair, staring at the blank screen. She had come back to Prescott only to tie off some loose ends in her life, to see that things had gone on as before. No one would have missed the Devlins; their absence would have been noted with relief, and then forgotten, but Faith had never been able to forget. She had thought that, once she had seen Prescott again, seen how no one had missed them, or even remembered them, she would be able to forget about the town in return. If she ran into Guy Rouillard, so much the better. She had never blamed Gray for what he’d done; she’d seen the pain in his face, heard it in his voice. But Guy . . . yes, she blamed him, and Renee. Even if they hadn’t run away together, Renee had walked out on her children, and Guy’s irresponsibility had caused a lot of suffering.
But Gray had taken over the family business. Instead of tying up all the old loose ends, she had found another one: Why had Gray taken charge?
She got up and went in search of Carlene DuBois. The front desk was empty, and the rest of the library appeared to be, too. “Mrs. DuBois?” she called, the sound absorbed and flattened by the rows of books. Carlene heard her, however, for there was the squeak of rubber-soled shoes on the tile.
“Right here,” said Carlene cheerfully, emerging from the back of the reference book section. “Did you find what you needed?”
“Yes, I did, thank you. I noticed something else that puzzled me, though. It was just a little article, but it said that Gray Rouillard had taken over control of the family businesses. This was twelve years ago, and it seemed strange, because Gray had to have been only in his early twenties—”
“My, yes. You must have left before the big scandal, or maybe you were too young to pay much attention to that sort of thing. We moved to town, oh, eleven years ago, and it was still a hot topic of conversation then, I can tell you.”
“What scandal?” Faith tensed, her puzzlement turning into alarm. Something wasn’t right.
“Why, when Guy Rouillard ran off with his mistress. I don’t know who she was, but everyone says she was nothing but trash. He must have absolutely lost his mind, is all I can say, to walk off from his family and fortune the way he did.”
“He never came back?” Faith couldn’t hide her shock, but Carlene saw nothing wrong with that reaction.
“No one’s seen hide nor hair of him since then. When he left, he stayed gone. Some say his wife was enough to drive any man away, but I can’t say for sure myself, because I’ve never met her. Folks say she hasn’t left the house since the day he walked out. He never even bothered to get in touch with his own children again.”
Faith was staggered. Guy Rouillard had adored his kids; regardless of his feelings for his wife, there had never been any doubt about how much he had loved Gray and Monica.
“I suppose Mrs. Rouillard divorced him?” she asked, but Carlene shook her head.
“Never has. Reckon she didn’t want him to be able to marry again, if he was so inclined. Anyway, as young as Mr. Gray was, he stepped into his father’s shoes and things carried on just as if Mr. Rouillard was still here. Probably better, from what folks say.”
“I was too young to remember much about him,” Faith lied. “I do remember that he was a sort of local hero, playing football at LSU, things like that.”
“Well, honey, let me tell you, things haven’t changed much,” Carlene said, and fanned herself with her hand. “Lordy, that man rates a ten on my scale, I can tell you. He makes my heart flutter, and me ten years older than he is and about to be a grandmother besides!” She blushed, but gave a surprisingly bawdy laugh. “It might be those bedroom eyes, or maybe it’s the hair. Or it could be that tight little butt!” She sighed dreamily. “He’s a scoundrel, all right, but who cares?”
“Does he know you’re sweet on him?” Faith teased.
“Honey, every woman in town is sweet on him, and yes, he knows it, the devil.” Carlene gave her lusty laugh again. “My husband teases me about getting his ear pierced so he can compete.”
Gray had a pierced ear? Faith found herself caught in imagination, and shook herself free. What she had learned was startling, and she needed to be alone so she could think things through.
She glanced at her watch. “It’s almost closing time, so I’d better clear out. Thanks for your help, Mrs. DuBois. It was nice meeting you.”
“You, too.” Carlene paused. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe I caught your name.”
Because it hadn’t been thrown, but Faith saw no reason not to tell her. “I’m Faith Hardy,” she said.
“Well, nice to meet you, Faith. That’s such a pretty, old-fashioned name. You don’t hear it much anymore.”
“No, I suppose you don’t.” Faith glanced at her watch again. “Good-bye. Thanks again for your help.”
“Any time.”
Faith drove back to the motel, stopping by McDonald’s for a sandwich. She didn’t particularly like fast food, but didn’t want to go to a restaurant where she might be recognized, so she made do. She ate half the sandwich and tossed the rest of it in the trash, too disturbed to have much of an appetite.
Guy Rouillard had disappeared. But if he hadn’t run away with Renee, what had happened to him?
Faith lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, trying to sort things out. Guy wouldn’t have walked away from his home, his family, his wealth, without a reason. Everyone had thought Renee was that reason, but Faith knew it wasn’t so. And even if he had simply gotten fed up with his marriage, why hadn’t he just gotten a divorce? The Rouillards were Catholic, but divorce wasn’t a problem unless he wanted to remarry. But he had never seemed to be an unhappy man; why should he be? His world had been the way he wanted it. She couldn’t think of any reason why he would have left so abruptly, without word, and never tried to contact his family.
Unless he was dead.
The possibility—no, the probability—was
stunning. Faith felt almost sick at the idea as she considered and rejected scenarios. He might have simply gone away for a couple of days and suddenly gotten sick, or maybe had an accident, but if either of those possibilities had been the case, he would have been found, identified, his family notified. That hadn’t happened. Guy Rouillard had disappeared, on the same night her mother had run away.
Dear God, had Renee killed him? Faith sat up and distractedly ran her hands through her hair. She couldn’t dismiss the thought, even though she couldn’t see her mother doing such a thing. Renee had the morals of an alley cat, but she wasn’t, never had been, a violent person.
Amos, then? Faith could better envision that. If he’d thought he could get away with it, Amos had been capable of anything. But she remembered that night well; Amos had staggered home around nine, already falling down drunk and swearing at her because Renee wasn’t at home. Both Russ and Nicky, also drunk, had come home after that. Could one of them have killed Guy Rouillard, or perhaps even both of them? But nothing had seemed out of the ordinary, and Faith would have sworn they had been as surprised as she when Renee didn’t come home. More than that, they simply hadn’t cared that their mother was sleeping with Guy; neither had Amos, for that matter.
Who else was possible? Maybe Mrs. Rouillard. Maybe Noelle had killed her husband because she was tired of his unfaithfulness, though from all reports he had been sleeping around since the beginning of their marriage, and she had never seemed to care, had even been grateful. His affair with Renee had been going on for years; why should she suddenly object to it? No, Faith doubted Noelle had cared enough even to scold him, much less go to the trouble of murder.