Wild Man's Curse (Wilds of the Bayou #1) by Susannah Sandlin Read Free Book Online Page A

seven thirty, they reached Bayou Terrebonne, and Gentry let the boat idle a moment, looking north and south.
    “You want to go in by boat or drive down?”
    Well, that was a no-brainer. “Drive. I have a yearning for air-conditioning.”
    He throttled up and headed north. “My thoughts exactly.”
    The trip up Bayou Terrebonne to the boat launch near the fire station took no longer than ten minutes, and, after some discussion, they left the LDWF boat with Gentry’s truck and took Jena’s identical department-issued black pickup.
    She stifled a yawn as she pulled onto Montegut Road, aka Highway 55, headed south. Bayou Terrebonne hugged the road on the right. “Reckon anybody got that cabin cleaned up so she doesn’t see it the way it looked after her aunt died?”
    Gentry leaned over and turned the fan on the air-conditioning as high as it would go. “Hope so, but I doubt it. Seems like a bad idea to meet her there. Gotta say, I don’t look forward to going back in there myself.”
    It struck Jena again that Gentry seemed to have taken Eva Savoie’s murder personally. When he’d returned from his futile search for the killer that morning, his face had been downright waxen, but it wasn’t because of the brutality of the scene. He’d watched everything the sheriff’s deputies had done, without a flinch. Without any expression at all. In fact, he hadn’t made any attempt to leave until the parish guys ordered them to get out of their way, even though Jena had offered a couple of times to take him home and pick up his boat the next day.
    Then again, one didn’t often find eighty-year-old women dead of blunt-force trauma that the coroner said had been preceded by more than a dozen nonlethal stab wounds. Torture; there was nothing else to call it. The woman had been tortured.
    Stella called just before they rounded the last curve and entered Whiskey Bayou area. Jena turned down the AC fan so she could hear the phone.
    “Y’all out there yet?” Stella wanted details on the cabin; she’d pinned Jena down earlier, wanting to know about voodoo trinkets, and had been disappointed no skulls or crossed chicken bones had been in evidence. They were in evidence, of course, but it wasn’t her place to tell Stella those kinds of details. If the woman wanted to read the reports, she probably could.
    “Not yet, but almost.” Jena jammed her baseball cap back on her head. “What’s up?”
    “Deputy ain’t gonna make it out there, so Warren says y’all need to go ahead and talk to the niece, Celestine. Use your own judgment in how many details to give her. No point in upsetting her more than she already is.”
    Jena frowned as they rounded the last curve before the highway straightened out for a long run and eventually fizzled into unstable wetlands. She slowed down and began scanning left for the turnoff to the Savoie cabin. “How’s she getting out here, then? She got a rental car?”
    “I asked that very thing.” Stella tsked her disapproval. “She’s living out there, I guess. You’ll have to tell me what it looks like since she moved in.”
    Uh, that would be no. Jena had never been a gossip and didn’t plan to start now. “Almost there. We’ll report in when we leave. Gotta go now—Broussard needs help.” She ended the call before the woman could ask any more questions.
    Gentry raised an eyebrow. “And what exactly do you think I need help with?”
    “Getting me off the phone with Stella.” Jena leaned over the steering wheel and finally spotted the unpaved, rutted dirt drive onto the Savoie property.
    When Jena came to a stop in the drive and killed the engine, Gentry rolled down his window and cocked his head, closing his eyes.
    “What’s wr—”
    “Shhhhh.” He held a finger over his pursed lips, and Jena opened her senses to whatever had caught his attention. The truck wheels had made no noise on the hard-packed dirt of the drive.
    Finally a sound reached her: a voice.
    And what a voice.