Then she would wake up with her heart racing and tears wetting her cheeks and pillow.
Finally, around seven o’clock, she got up and bathed and dressed and headed into the kitchen. For a second, she stared at the coffeepot in longing. But she’d sworn off coffee for the pregnancy, not wanting to have a baby who was hooked on caffeine.
She yawned. “You have no idea how much I would enjoy a cup of coffee this morning. And there might be some decaf in the freezer. But my tummy has let me know in no uncertain terms that it likes grape juice and only grape juice.” She patted her belly. “So grape juice it is, right?”
As she sat at the kitchen table and drank the juice, she looked at her phone, recalling Maddy’s warning from the night before. She wanted to blow off the Homeland Security agent who had become her friend, but she knew Maddy would bug her until she called the sheriff. If she refused, Maddy would call him herself.
“No choice but to do it,” she muttered as she got up and went into the nursery. It was the only place in or out of the house where she could get a reliable cell signal. She dialed the sheriff’s office.
“Baylor,” she said when Sheriff Baylor Nehigh answered. “It’s Sandy.”
“Well, hello. I didn’t know you were back in town,” he said. “How’re you doing? How’s the baby?”
“Fine. We’re fine,” she said. “The baby’s fine. Baylor—”
“Now how far along are you? I’m trying to remember.”
Sandy closed her eyes and prayed for patience. If she couldn’t get her question in, Baylor would be off on Tristan’s death and she’d have to listen to his theories for at least twenty minutes before she could get another word in edgewise.
“Five and a half months, Baylor. I think someone got into the house while I was gone. My laptop computer is gone.”
“Now, what? You say a computer is missing? Well, now, we can’t be responsible for that. You’d have to talk to the crime scene unit, although my guess is that oil rig captain took it when he broke in to kidnap Agent Tierney,” he said. “If it was him you’ll never get any money for it.”
“Baylor! That’s not why I’m calling. The laptop went missing while I was gone. I thought if you or the crime lab had it then I don’t need to worry that someone got into my house while I was away.”
“I’ll be glad to check on that for you, but do understand, my budget is too small to replace your laptop.”
“I’m not asking you to. I’ll buy a new one.” She paused. “You don’t want to take fingerprints or anything, do you?”
“I can send my deputy out there when he gets back. It’ll probably be after dark. He’s gone to Houma to deliver some paperwork. I need a courier, but like I said—my budget won’t handle it.”
“No, no,” Sandy said, feeling relieved. She didn’t want anyone coming into her house right now. She’d come back to be alone with her baby and try to come to peace with Tristan’s death. “I’m sure you’re right about how it happened.”
“Anything else I can do for you, Sandy?”
“No, Baylor. Thanks.”
Sandy hung up while he was telling her to take care of herself. She rinsed her glass, then headed out to walk to Boudreau’s cabin. She took a deep breath of clean morning air and yawned again. “I’m sorry about last night, bean. I couldn’t get what Maddy said out of my head.”
She wondered if talking to her unborn baby about things that upset her was bad for him. She hoped not, because talking to Tristan’s child soothed her, and according to the latest baby books, it was good to let the baby become used to the mother’s voice.
“Did you know your daddy was an undercover agent? Wait. What am I thinking? You were there when Zach told me. Naturally I had to hear it from his oldest friend, because Tristan apparently thought I didn’t need to know that little tidbit.” She heard the bitterness in her voice. She didn’t want to sound like that when she talked about Tristan. Certainly not to her baby.
With an effort, she made her voice light and soft, the way she talked when she told him a fairy tale or quoted a poem. “He was a real-life spy, I guess. He worked for Homeland Security, catching bad guys. Until one day, one of the bad guys killed him.”
She stopped talking because she had to. She was breathing hard, mostly from trying not to cry, and she’d arrived at the dock. It was a beautiful morning. The sun glared and glistened off the water. “I should have gotten up earlier and watched the sunrise,” she said wistfully. “Although without Tristan...” Her voice trailed off and she smiled sadly at the memories of sunrises and making love and being happy.
“Okay,” she said briskly. “Let’s go. I want to talk to Boudreau.”
As she turned toward the path to Boudreau’s cabin, she noticed slide marks in the mud. Stepping closer to the wooden pier, she studied the markings. Someone had pulled a boat up there since the last rain. She shook her head. It was probably Boudreau. He used the dock all the time.
“I’ve got to be careful,” she murmured. “I’m seeing terrorists and bad guys everywhere.”
The sun was already yellow and hot when she stepped out of the tangle of vines and branches into Boudreau’s front yard. Boudreau was sitting on an old, rough-hewn bench, mending a tear in a fishing net.
“Well, now, you are moving much faster this—” he said, looking up. “What the hell you doing here?” he snapped, glaring at her.
“Boudreau, it’s Sandy. Tristan’s wife.” He’d known her for years, and the last time she’d been here was on that awful night, when she’d come to tell him Tristan was missing and feared dead. But when he talked nonsense, like just now, she wasn’t sure he remembered her.
Boudreau stood, dropping the fishing net and stalking toward her, the darning needle in one hand and his knife in the other. “I ask you a question. What you doing here? You go on now. Get out of here.” He stopped, pointing the tip of the knife back the way she’d come. “Go!”
“But I need to talk to you. I want to close the dock—”
“Get out of here, Mrs. DuChaud. Get!” Boudreau shooed her as if he were shooing a chicken, with a sweeping motion of his hands. “Get!” he yelled again.
Sandy stared at him in openmouthed disbelief. This wasn’t confusion. It was hostility. Did he think Tristan’s death was her fault?
“Boudreau, please, listen to me. This is important.”
He eyed her suspiciously. “I come down to your house one day soon. We talk then. Now you get out of here and back to your house tout de suite or I’ll sic my dog on you, I guarantee.”
She didn’t know a lot about Boudreau except what Tristan had told her and he’d never mentioned the man being violent. But he had shot that oil rig captain in cold blood, so maybe the best thing to do was to leave.
“Please, come talk to me,” she called out over her shoulder as she turned and headed back down the path she’d walked up to his shack.
“You just get gone and stay gone,” she heard him say.
By the time she got to the dock she was breathing hard again, so she stopped for a few moments. She stood on the dock and looked out over the dark, greenish-gray waters of the Gulf of Mexico. And there, diving and surfacing as the sun glared off the water with such intensity it was difficult to see anything but the splashes and waves, was