Alligator Moon

Praise for

JOANNA WAYNE

“Joanna Wayne masterfully weaves a story

of dark secrets and unforgettable evil.”

—USA TODAY bestselling author Karen Young

on Alligator Moon

“Lose yourself and your heart in the sultry

Cajun setting Joanna Wayne brings to life

in Alligator Moon.”

—reader favorite Judy Christenberry

“Wayne creates compelling relationships and

intricately plotted suspense that will keep readers

guessing in this page-turning, heart-pounding read.”

—Romantic Times on Harlequin Intrigue novel

Attempted Matrimony

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the sultry world of south Louisiana. As a lifelong Louisiana resident, I’ve always loved the romance and mystery associated with the bayou country and have been fascinated with the lore of the Cajun people. That’s why when I got the idea for Alligator Moon, I knew I had to write the book. It’s more than a story of suspense and romance—it’s a journey into a world where alligators slither through murky bayou waters and passion rules the hearts and minds of the citizens.

This is John Robicheaux and Cassie Havelin’s story, but it’s much more than that. It’s also the story of how decent people can become so caught up in a diabolical lie that it destroys them. But mostly it’s a story of suspense that entangles the hero and heroine until they are forced to open old wounds and give themselves a chance to love again.

I love to hear from readers. Please visit my Web site at www.joannawayne.com. Or drop me a line at Joanna@joannawayne.com. Let me know if you’d like to receive my electronic newsletter.

Happy reading,

Alligator Moon
Joanna Wayne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JOANNA WAYNE

is a multipublished, award-winning, bestselling author known for her cutting-edge romantic suspense. She lives with her husband just outside the steamy, sultry city of New Orleans, Louisiana, near the bayou country that was the inspiration and setting for Alligator Moon. A narrow bayou runs behind her house and most afternoons you can find her on the back patio, a glass of iced tea in hand, her fingers typing away on her laptop computer, enjoying the ducks, turtles, egrets and various other wildlife that share her domain. On rare occasions an alligator has even been spotted swimming by.

Joanna has always been an avid reader and she claims that writing her novels of romantic suspense was a natural progression from reading them. Not only is the writing exciting and rewarding, but also she loves the research. In the process of gathering material for her novels, she has rounded up cattle by helicopter, gone on trips deep into humid swamps, walked deserted beaches in the moonlight, visited morgues, looked through gritty crime-scene photos and visited FBI headquarters. And those are just a few of her research adventures.

Writing is more of a passion than a job for Joanna. She loves nothing more than taking a hero and heroine from breath-stealing danger to happily-ever-after. Who could complain about a day like that?

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

DENNIS ROBICHEAUX gave the propofol thirty seconds to work, then leaned over the patient. “Can you hear me, Mrs. Flanders?”

“Is she fully under?” Angela Dubuisson asked, not looking up from the instruments she was readying for the surgeon.

“Yeah. They can’t resist my French kiss.”

“Are we still talking about patients?”

“Now, boo, you know you can’t believe all that trash they talk by Suzette’s.”

“That’s not a problem since I don’t hang out in smoky bars that smell like crawfish and grease.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“Sure I do. A bunch of drunks looking for an easy lay.”

Dennis fit the endotracheal tube down the patient’s throat, slowly, easing it past the relaxed muscles, the task almost second nature to him now.

Angela pulled the blanket over the patient. “How’s she doing?”

“All that’s left is to hook her up to Big Blue,” he said, nodding toward the anesthetic machine. Dennis finished sealing the tube so that the patient wouldn’t choke on her own saliva. “Down for the count. Where’s our surgeon and his faithful nurse?”

As if on cue, the door to the operating room swung open and Dr. Norman Guilliot strode in, his hands still dripping from the sanitizing scrub. Angela became far more animated now that the self-proclaimed king of scalpel makeovers had appeared. She handed him a towel, then helped him into his gown and gloves. Susan Dalton was a step behind the doctor, her blue eyes dancing above her surgery mask.

“Got Ms. Ginny Lynn all ready for you, Doc,” Dennis announced.

Dr. Guilliot leaned over the patient and pinched the excess skin beneath her chin, pulling it tight. “In for the works, isn’t she?”

“Eyelid, face and forehead lift.”

“Must have a sentimental attachment to the nose,” Dennis said.

“She just wants to look her best for the glory of God,” Guilliot said, mimicking the patient as he ran a finger under the delicate eye area. Ginny Lynn was the wife of the Reverend Evan Flanders, a TV evangelist who’d become a household word in the New Orleans area.

Dr. Guilliot lifted the fatty tissue above the lid, pinching and pulling it away from the eye before beginning the delicate task of marking his incision lines in blue.

Dennis monitored his machine. “Want me to make the initial incision for you, Doc, since Fellowship Freddie’s off on his minivacation?”

“No, just stick to giving your Versed cocktails to the patient. The surgery has to be a work of perfection. We can’t have any scars showing when she goes back under the bright glare of fame.”

“I doubt Frankenstein’s scars would show beneath the makeup she wears,” Susan said.

“Careful,” Dennis said. “You’re talking about the Lord’s anointed.”

“What’s the deal with Fellowship Freddie?” Susan asked. “I never see him with a woman. Does he swing the other way?”

“He’s got a girlfriend,” Dennis said. “A real looker, way too hot for him.”

“I guess you checked her out,” Guilliot said.

“Me? Mess around with a friend’s woman? You know me better than that.”

Easy chatter, the kind you didn’t get in a big city hospital. That was one of the reasons Dennis had jumped at the offer to work with Dr. Guilliot at his private clinic. Not only that, but he and the surgeon got along great. If Guilliot treated him any better, Dennis would expect to be in the will.

But the deal clincher for accepting the position had been location. The restored plantation house was practically in his backyard, and good Cajun boys like himself didn’t like straying too far from home.

Angela moved in beside the doctor as he started the procedure. She’d been his tech nurse for twenty years, had come with him sixteen years ago when Dr. Guilliot had left his position as chief of reconstructive surgery at a New Orleans hospital and established the Magnolia Plantation Restorative and Therapeutic Center.

Like any good tech nurse, Angela worked like a seamless extension of the surgeon’s arm. He reached, she was ready with forceps, scalpel, surgery scissors, lighted retractor or lap sponge.

“How are her vitals?” Dr. Guilliot asked.

“Blood pressure’s down. Ninety systolic. I’ll drop off on the gasses.” Dennis turned the knobs, making small, precise adjustments. “How’s the new Porsche?” he asked. “Had it full throttle yet?”

“Close. She’s one sweet piece of dynamics.”

“How ’bout I take her for the weekend and break her in the rest of the way for you?”

“Touch that car, and you lose an arm.”

The chatter continued, from cars to fishing and back again. They were thirty minutes into the operation when Dennis felt the first pangs of apprehension. “Pulse rate is dropping,” he said. “I’m going to inject a vial of ephedrine.”

“What’s the reading?”

“Fifty-five.”

Dennis opened the vial, injected it through the IV line and watched the monitor, confident the ephedrine would kick in and do its job. The seconds ticked away.

“How we coming?” Guilliot asked without looking up from his work.

“Pulse and pressure not responding.” Dennis opened another vial of ephedrine and injected it through the IV. “This should take care of it.”

It didn’t. The numbers continued to slide. Dennis’s hands shook as he tore open the next vial and injected the drug. Still no change. Damn. There was no explanation for this. The woman was healthy. He’d read her chart.

Susan rounded the operating table, took one look at the monitor and gasped.

“What the devil’s going on?” Guilliot demanded.

“Not looking good.”

“Then do something, Dennis. I’ve got her wide open here, and I’m not losing a patient on the table.”

Dennis hadn’t prayed in quite a while. It came naturally now, under his breath, interspersed with curses as sweat pooled under his armpits and dripped from his brow.

Guilliot kept working. “Give me a reading.”

“She’s full code.”

“Sonofabitch!”

Susan moved to Dennis’s elbow. “Stay calm. You can do it. What else do you have?”

“Calcium gluconate.” He injected the drug. Fragments of his own life flashed in front of him as if he were the one slipping away. The sound of his Puh-paw’s voice singing along to his fiddle music on Saturday nights. The smell of venison frying in the big black skillet. The way Kippie Beaudreaux’s tongue had felt the first time he’d kissed her.

The past collided with the present, all bucking around inside Dennis while the monitor continued to glare at him, daring him to defy it.

No easy chatter now. No reassurance. Just deadly silence. He turned to Guilliot. The usually imperturbable surgeon had backed away from the table, jaw clenched, looking totally stunned.

None of the glory. All of the blame. The role of the anesthetist. Dennis grabbed a vial of bretyllium.

Too little, too late.

“Oh, shit!” Angela shoved the instrument cart out of the way, jumped on the black footstool and started pumping on the patient’s chest, hand over hand.

Finally Guilliot snapped out of his paralysis and took over for Angela, pressing the patient’s heart between the sternum and the spine with quick, steady motions.

Dennis was so scared, it was all he could do to hold the long needle as he filled it with epinephrine.

Susan grabbed his arm. “Not intracardiac, Dennis. Not yet.”

“Get the hell out of the way.” Holding the needle in one hand, he grabbed the edge of the sterile drape with his other and ripped the fabric from the runners.

Guilliot stopped pumping as Dennis slid the point of the needle under the breast bone. The room felt small. Icy cold. Quiet, as if they’d quit breathing so that the patient could have their breaths.

They all watched the abnormal rhythm play across the face of the monitor, but Angela said the words out loud. “The tack.”

Dennis snatched the paddles from the crash cart and stuck them to the patient’s chest. The shock lifted her off the table, but still the monitor screen went blank.

Asystole.

Dennis administered the shock again. And again.

Finally Susan took his arm. “She’s gone, Dennis.”

“No one loses a cosmetic surgery patient on the table.” Guilliot’s voice boomed across the operating room, as if he were God issuing an eleventh commandment.

It changed nothing. Ginny Lynn Flanders was dead.

CHAPTER ONE

Six months later

CASSIE HAVELIN PIERSON stared at the sheet of paper. The divorce decree. All that was left of her marriage to Attorney Drake Pierson. She’d have expected the finality of it to be more traumatic, had thought she’d feel anger or pain or maybe even a surge of relief. Instead she felt a kind of numbness, as if the constant onslaught of emotional upheavals over the past year had anesthetized her system to the point that it was unable to respond.

She tossed the decree into a wire basket on the corner of her desk and went back to pounding keys on her computer. Almost ironic that the next word she typed was the name of her ex-husband, but he was all the news these days—him and his client’s suit against Dr. Norman Guilliot.

Leave it to Drake to snare the hottest case of the year. Acclaimed plastic surgeon to the wealthy pitted against the best-known TV evangelist in the south. The locals fed on the details like starving piranhas on fresh flesh, but then New Orleanians always loved a good scandal. So did her boss. It sold magazines, and circulation numbers sold advertising.

The Flanders case had been the hottest news item going for the past six months, even beating out the young woman who’d accused one of the city’s famous athletes of rape. The reverend was on TV every week, proclaiming the gospel according to Flanders and shedding tears over the wife he claimed had been lost to a case of malpractice by the famed Cajun surgeon. And somehow Drake had expedited the trial beyond belief to take advantage of the hype.

Cassie finished the article, hit the print key and picked up the phone on the corner of her desk to make another stab at reaching her dad in Houston. The president of the United States was probably easier to reach, but then the president didn’t draw nearly the salary Butch Havelin did as CEO of Conner-Marsh Drilling and Exploration.

She dialed the number and waited.

“Mr. Havelin’s office. May I help you?”

“It’s Cassie, Dottie. Is Dad around?”

“I’m sorry. You just missed him again. Did you try his cell phone?”

“I did and left a message there, as well.”

“I’m sure he’ll get back to you soon, but if this is an emergency I might be able to track him down.”

“No need for that, but thanks for the offer.” She hung up the phone and slid her notes on the Flanders v. Guilliot case into a manila folder.

“You’re looking glum for a Friday night,” Janie Winston said, stopping by her desk. “Bad day?”

“No worse than usual.”

“A few of us are going to Lucy’s for happy hour. Why don’t you join us? You can drink as much as you want and stagger home from there.”

“Staggering through the warehouse district on a Friday night. Boy, does that sound exciting.”

“Not only glum but sarcastic. Why do I smell a rat named Drake Pierson behind this mood? What’s he want you to give up now, the sheets off the bed he shared with you?”

“Too late. I burned those after I found he’d brought the Tulane cheerleader to the townhouse to take her testimony. Besides, Drake is old news.” She reached over, retrieved the decree and handed it to her co-worker.

“Over and done with. I’d think you’d be celebrating, not sulking. He really is lower than pond scum, you know?”

“Evan Flanders doesn’t think so.”

“Evan Flanders has visions of dollar signs dancing in his head. So, forget ’em all. Let’s go get a margarita.”

Cassie was tempted. She almost said yes, then spied the postcard propped against her pencil cup. “Actually I’m going shopping tonight.”

“Buying something suitable for a hot divorcée?”

“Could be, or at least for a relaxing vacation far away from this humidity.”

“Now that’s what I call a divorce party. When are you leaving?”

“Immediately, I hope, if the airline will let me use my flight credits for the last trip I had to cancel.”

“Does Ogre Olson know about these plans?”

“Not yet.”

“That explains the glum. No way the guy is going to let you leave with the Flanders case going to trial in just two weeks.”

“Only because he thinks the Pierson name in the byline carries some clout.”

“You’ll never hear him admit that. Clout might translate to an increase in salary.”

“No, he’ll use the usual bull. The timing couldn’t be worse for Crescent Connection. I don’t have the time blocked off on the vacation chart. I’m putting the man in a major bind, and…”

“And you’ll owe him big time,” Janie joined in as they quoted in unison the boss’s last word on everything.

“So where are you going on this impromptu vacation?”

“The Greek Islands.”

“Wow! When you play, you play first-class.”

“Come with me.”

“I would in a New York minute if I had a little more money in my vacation fund.”

“How much do you have?”

“Somewhere under five dollars. Not even enough to buy a box of assorted condoms for the travel bag.”

Cassie’s cell phone rang. “Buy something really hot,” Janie said, walking away as Cassie grabbed the phone. “I’ll spring for the condoms.”

Cassie murmured a hurried hello.

“Hi, sweetheart.”

Her dad, finally. “You are one hard man to reach.”

“Sorry about that. Damn merger’s going to drive me nuts before it’s over and done with.”

“Don’t you have a merger committee and a VP working on that?”

“Yeah, but when the going gets tough, I hit the front lines. Is anything wrong?”

“No, I just wanted to get Mom’s itinerary from you.”

“She’s not due home for almost two weeks.”

“I know, but I need to talk to her.”

“Big news?”

“I think I might join her and her friend for the last week or so of their trip.”

“That’s a great idea.”

“Any chance you can fax her itinerary to me tonight or just attach it to an e-mail if you have it on the computer?”

“I don’t think I have it anywhere. I don’t remember even seeing it.”

“You must have. Mom wouldn’t leave the country for six weeks and not tell you how to reach her.”

“I was in London when she left. I assumed she’d given it to you.”

“No.”

“Sorry, baby. All I know is what she told me. She and Patsy…Patsy somebody. Anyway their plans were to spend a few days in Athens then leisurely tour the islands.”

“Patsy David,” Cassie said, filling in the last name for him.

“That’s it. She’s an old high school buddy of your mother’s. Evidently they hooked up when Rhonda went back for her fortieth reunion.”

“Patsy must be quite persuasive to talk Mom into a six-week vacation abroad.”

“It’ll be good for her, especially with me working so much. Why don’t you give Moore’s Travel a call? It’s right here in The Woodlands. One of your mother’s friends from church works there, and Rhonda always lets her book our nonbusiness flights. I’m sure they’ll have a copy.”

“What’s the church friend’s name?”

“I’m not sure. But they’ll have the info in their computer system, so anyone can help you. Have them fax an itinerary to my office when they fax one to you.”

They talked a few minutes more, about nothing in particular. When they hung up, Cassie picked up the postcard and stared at the picture of a small Greek village and the brilliant blue sea beyond. Beautiful beaches. Ancient ruins. Picturesque windmills. Snowy white monasteries. Living, breathing Greek gods.

Goodbye, Drake. Hello, Greece.

JOHN ROBICHEAUX stepped through the open door of Suzette’s and scanned the area looking for his brother Dennis. It didn’t take long to locate him. He was seated at a back table, his hands already wrapped around a cold beer.

John maneuvered through a maze of mismatched tables and chairs, nearly tripping over a couple of young boys who were playing with their plastic hot rods on the grease-stained floor. The air was stifling and filled with the smells of fried seafood, cayenne pepper and stale cigarette smoke—enough to choke a man. Worse, the jukebox was cranking out a 70s rock song at a decibel level just below that of a freight train.

A typical Saturday evening at Suzette’s. Later the families would leave and the drinkers and partiers would take full charge, not staggering back to their homes until the wee hours of Sunday morning. John planned to be long gone by then.

He dropped into the rickety wooden chair across the table from his brother. A young waitress he’d never seen before appeared at his elbow.

“You want a beer?”

“I’ll take a Bud.”

“Draft?”

“In the bottle if you’ve got a real cold one.”

“Icy cold.”

“Bring me another while you’re at it,” Dennis said. “And keep ’em coming.”

“You looking to have a good time tonight?” she asked, staring at Dennis through long, dark lashes so thick they had no use for mascara.

“I might be,” Dennis said, giving her a once-over. “You looking to be invited to the party?”

She blushed, but smiled. “I’m just here to bring the beer.”

He and Dennis both watched her walk away, her white shorts hugging her firm little ass above great thighs.

“How would you like to have those legs wrapped around you tonight?” Dennis asked.

“Not enough to do jail time.”

“Those breasts look like they’ve been growing at least eighteen years to me. Besides, a sweet thing like that might inspire you to clean up a bit—at least use a razor once in a while. You’re starting to look like a mangy dog.”

John rubbed his chin and the spiky growth of half a week. “Hope you had a better reason for this visit than insulting me.”

“We’re brothers. We should see each other once in a while.”

“I’m easy to find.”

“When you’re not out in the Gulf. How’s the fishing business?”

“It’ll do. I’ve got a group of guys down from New York for a week starting Monday. Long as Delilah don’t come calling, we’ll be fine.”

“Supposed to be a bad year for hurricanes.”

“Don’t take but one to be bad if she hits you dead-on.”

“Yeah.”

The waitress returned with the beers. Dennis took a long, slow pull on his. “You ever miss your old life?”

“Mais non.” John drank his beer slowly, letting the cold liquid trickle down his throat. He wasn’t about to rehash the past or his mistakes. Old horror stories should not be washed up by cold beer.

“You could be rich by now,” Dennis said. “Driving a Porsche, picking up high-class babes.”

“High-class babes don’t screw any better than poor ones, sometimes not as well. Besides, one successful Robicheaux is more than Beau Pierre ever expected to see.”

Dennis cracked his knuckles, a nervous habit he’d picked up from their grandfather. “I’m thinking of leaving Beau Pierre.”

The statement was the night’s first surprise and the first clue as to what had really prompted Dennis’s call. “I thought you and Guilliot were close as two crabs in a pot.”

“Guilliot’s all right. I just think it’s time I move on. Beau Pierre’s starting to feel more and more like one of Puh-paw’s old muskrat traps.”

“You didn’t knock up some local jolie fille, huh?”

“Nothing like that.” He stretched his legs under the scarred old table. “It’s just time I move on. That’s all.”

“You didn’t feel that way last time we talked.”

“Things change.”

“They changed real fast. This doesn’t have anything to do with losing a patient on the operating table, does it?”

Dennis choked on the beer he’d just swallowed, coughed a few times into his sleeve, then slammed his almost empty bottle onto the table. “You talking about Ginny Lynn Flanders?”

“Who else?”

“That wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t nobody’s fault. She just had a bad heart condition that had never been diagnosed. Guilliot’s gonna win that lawsuit easy.”

“I just asked.”

“Well, I just answered.”

Not honestly, John figured, judging from Dennis’s reaction. But he sure as hell wasn’t in a position to tell anyone how to live his life. “When will you be making the move?”

“Soon, but keep it quiet. I haven’t told Dr. Guilliot yet, and I want him to hear it from me first.”

“Good idea. Have you told anyone else?”

“Nobody I can’t trust. You ought to think about a change, too, John. You can’t live in that old trapper’s shack and avoid life forever.”

“I’m not avoiding.” He chased the lie with a swig of beer. “Where are you planning to go?”

“I’m thinking about Los Angeles. I got a buddy out there I went to medical school with. He says the field’s wide open. Lots of job opportunities and enough sun-bronzed hotties to make me forget my Cajun bellos.”

“Might not be as good as it sounds. The rules are different once you leave the bayou country. No buddies watching your back when the gators come after you.”

“I don’t think they have a lot of gators in Los Angeles.”

“Oh, they got ’em all right. Only the gators out there wear high-priced suits and designer shoes from Italy.”

“Maybe I won’t go that far.”

But he was going. John could tell the decision had been made. He’d liked to have asked more questions, but that wasn’t the type of relationship they had. He didn’t answer questions so he forfeited the right to ask them. Still, he hated to see Dennis leave town, especially if he was being driven out.

And that was a possibility he wouldn’t put past Norman Guilliot. “It’s your call, Dennis. Just make sure you’re the one doing the calling.”

The waitress stopped by their table again. “You want another beer?”

John looked at her again, letting his gaze take it all in, from the dark, straight hair that curved around her face and fell down the back of her neck to the perky breasts and hips that flared from the narrow waist.

She was a looker, and the way she was batting those eyes at Dennis, seemed like she might have changed her mind about wanting to party.

“Make mine a whiskey,” John said. His little brother was leaving town. Reason enough to hit the hard stuff.

DENNIS KEPT both hands on the wheel as he slowed and maneuvered the sharp turn. He shouldn’t be driving at all after so many beers, but it wasn’t far to the old house he’d rented from Guilliot’s nephew. Another mile or so and he’d be home.

His mind wandered back in time. Shrimping out in the bays with Puh-paw. And on Saturday nights Muh-maw would make the big pot of gumbo. And the stories Puh-paw would tell about trapping and hunting back in the good old days before there was such a thing as licenses and limits. They’d been terrific grandparents.

John and Dennis had different mothers; it didn’t matter much since Muh-maw and Puh-paw had raised them both anyways.

Dennis didn’t remember his parents at all. He’d been only two when their father had gone to jail up in Jefferson Parish. He’d never come home. He didn’t know that much about his mother. Muh-maw hadn’t let anyone mention her name in the house, but John had told him once that she’d run off with some guy from Lafayette.

Dennis nodded, then jerked his head backward, fighting sleep. He shouldn’t have taken those two pills back at Suzette’s, but he’d had a migraine the first part of the week and the thing was threatening to come back on him.

He gunned the engine, then threw on his brakes when he saw something lying across the road in front of him. The car left the pavement, skidded along the shoulder, then careened into the swamp before it finally came to a stop.

Dennis wasn’t sure what was on the road, but it had looked a lot like a body. Could be some drunk passed out walking home from a neighbor’s. Only there weren’t any houses along this stretch of road. He loosed his seat belt and opened the door. When he stepped out, his feet sank into a good six inches of water before being sucked into the mud. His good shoes, too.

He jerked at the sound of something swishing through the water behind him. A water moccasin? A gator? He spun around. Too late.

His head exploded, but Dennis never felt the pain or the blood and bits of brain spilling over his body. Never knew when he sank to the soggy swamp now red with his blood.