The Grace Painter (The Grace Series Book 1) Read online

  She smiled and breathed in the aromatic air. The heavy rain brought a reprieve from the humidity, dropping the temperature several degrees. She prepared to go in, but then spotted the twin sedans advancing up her street. A frown registered on her brow. Crown Vics with neutral paint schemes pulled into her driveway.

  Her shoulders slumped. Two government cars stopping in front of your house can be almost as bad as having the school principal knock on your front door.

  Annie quickly fluffed the plaster dust from her caramel-colored hair and straightened her frumpy t-shirt. She hadn’t been expecting company and had done little to her appearance since climbing out of bed.

  A tall man exited the first car and double-timed it up to her gallery. She recognized her boss, Newton Laskey. Annie worked at the FBI’s Baton Rouge Resident Agency where Laskey was the Special Agent in Charge.

  “Don’t you ever answer your phone, Annie?” Laskey asked, slightly out of breath. “I’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon.”

  Annie shrugged her shoulders. “I turned my phones off. I’m on vacation, remember?”

  Laskey removed his Jack Victor suit jacket and brushed off the rain droplets. “I haven’t forgotten. But something has come up you may want to know about.”

  “Oh?”

  Before Laskey could speak, the driver of the second car joined them. “Coop, you really should stop hobnobbing with the brass. People will think you’ve become a brownnoser,” Annie quipped.

  “Ah, stow it, Crawford,” Special Agent Frank Cooper said. A 19-year veteran of the FBI, Cooper once served twelve years on a Hostage Rescue Team.

  Laskey handed Annie a newspaper. “You may have already seen this on the news, Annie. You do watch TV, don’t you?”

  Confused, Annie glanced at the headline. Her heart jumped in her chest when she read the story. A little girl had been kidnapped off the Saint Genevieve ferry. How is this possible? She wondered.

  Laskey cleared his throat. “You can read the article later. I’ll fill you in on the most pertinent details. In a nutshell, Sebastian Boudreaux made parole yesterday.”

  The egg-salad sandwich Annie ate for lunch curdled in her stomach.

  “He must have really fooled the parole board, because he’s obviously not reformed.

  Sebastian and his younger brother carjacked a SUV off the Saint Genevieve ferry shortly after they left Angola penitentiary. Turns out a little girl had been sleeping in the backseat. A search has turned up zilch. Our intel people think the brothers are hiding in the Basin somewhere,” Laskey added.

  “What happened to the parents? Were they harmed?” Annie wanted to run and hide.

  “That’s the kicker,” Laskey replied, shaking his head. “The Boudreauxs threw the mother into the Mississippi River. A barge operator spotted her thrashing around and pulled her out. She was pretty despondent as you can imagine, but gave a perfect description of Sebastian that corroborates with what the ferry’s toll operator saw. We don’t know if the Boudreauxs knew about the little girl when they stole the vehicle. But now that they have her, they’ll most likely use her as a hostage.”

  Annie gazed at the ashen sky. She wanted to scream. “So why are you here, Newt? Do you just want to ruin my vacation?”

  Laskey put his suit jacket back on, then looked at her steadily with glacier-blue eyes.

  “Isn’t it obvious? I want you to work the case. This will be the chance you’ve waited for to put your demons to rest, once and for all.”

  “What if I say no?”

  Laskey touched her arm. “No big deal. You’ll still be on vacation. I just thought I’d give you first crack at it.”

  “Is Coop my partner?”

  Laskey smiled. “You think you guys can get along?”

  “We’ll get along just fine, Newt,” Cooper said with a lecherous grin. “Crawford and I used to have a thing going. This will give us a chance to rekindle the flame.”

  “Shut-up, Cooper,” Annie snapped. Normally she enjoyed trading insults with the veteran agent. But now she didn’t feel like participating in frivolity. A child’s life depended on her. “When do we start?”

  “You better start now,” Laskey answered. “The perps have almost a 24 hour head start.” He handed her a file folder. “This file is hot off the fax machine from the National Crime Center in DC. It contains everything we know about Sebastian and Jean-Paul, from childhood to the present. Psychological profiles and reviews from Sebastian’s parole board meeting are included. There are also addresses where the Boudreauxs might try to hole up. Relatives, friends, and any past and present acquaintances fill up the list. You’ll also find search and arrest warrants inside.”

  Annie took the folder and placed it inside the newspaper. “Has anyone tried triangulating their cell phone signals?”

  “Yes, and we failed to pick up any signals. The Boudreauxs must’ve turned off their wireless phones,” Laskey said.

  “Just give me a few minutes to change and grab my gun and we’ll be off and running.”

  “Be very careful, Annie. I’m afraid you and Cooper will be operating solo most of the time. The local cops won’t help you much. They’ll be busy assisting the National Guard with the hurricane evacuation. The manhunt won’t begin in earnest until the hurricane breaks up. And that may take another day. Vera sounds nasty,” Laskey warned.

  “We’ll be fine, Newt. It’s the Boudreauxs who are in trouble,” Annie said, her voice as cold and cutting as a frozen scalpel. She left Laskey and Cooper standing there on her gallery and hurried inside. She went to her bedroom and packed a small gym bag with clothes and ammunition. She then changed into her FBI work attire and buckled a holstered Sig P-228 under her arm.

  Ten minutes later, she and Agent Cooper were on their way to the Atchafalaya Basin, her vacation already forgotten.

  Chapter 4

  Holding the palette knife in his right hand, Jon Rafter carefully scraped at a tiny paint glob. Whistling as he worked, he stepped back as far as he dared on his rickety scaffolding and appraised a striking mural covering the staircase wall.

  A bittersweet sigh escaped his grinning mouth. A few more highlights and he’d finish his most ambitious project yet. The mural depicted the parable of the Good Samaritan--perhaps his favorite childhood story.

  Rafter carefully plotted his next brushstroke. Whenever he painted he tried to transport himself into the canvas and paint from the inside out. His work became more vibrant, more lifelike when he entered a scene and blended with the subject matter.

  Without taking his eyes off the mural, he removed his clean brush and dried it on a small towel. A deep-throated woof from below interrupted his Zen moment. He looked down and frowned at his roommate, a sloppy 120-pound Newfoundland.

  “Everyone fancies themselves a critic these days,” he said to his pet dog, Samson. The animal woofed again and pushed his broad snout against the play button of a battery-operated boom-box sitting on the floor. A Frank Sinatra CD began to play. Samson sang along with an off-key howl. The dog loved Sinatra.

  Shortly after Rafter relocated to Louisiana, the Newfoundland wandered up to the house. At the time the big dog had been half-starved, his coat matted and mangy.

  He took the dog inside and slowly nursed him back to health. They made for an eclectic pair: a discredited New York cop smitten with a love for Italian Renaissance painting, and a large dog infatuated with Frank Sinatra and Hormel Chili, the latter providing him with more gas than a Sinclair station.

  To this day, Rafter believed an angel resided inside the dog’s body. Just before Samson’s arrival, he’d been suicidal. But over time the bedraggled dog lightened his overcast mood and helped change his outlook on life.

  He admittedly had little in the way of tangible evidence to authenticate Samson’s sainthood. If pressed, Rafter would argue the animal never appeared to age. Samson was over eight-years-old, but looked and behaved like a dog just out of his puppy stage.

  Rafter trained his artistic eyes
on the Good Samaritan’s donkey. He decided the donkey’s underbelly needed lightening. He started to mix his colors, but discovered a lack of titanium white on his palette. Without the versatile color, his masterpiece would go unfinished.

  Rafter descended his scaffolding and tramped into the parlor doubling as his art studio. He passed by a half-dozen easels displaying finished and unfinished paintings. They were all landscapes, mostly seaports and lonely surf-pounded beaches. Mainstream landscapes sold better than Italian Renaissance or Baroque reproductions. At least that’s what his art dealer told him.

  He made very little money selling the paintings. For the most part, they only financed his art supply needs. Harvesting crawfish and alligators provided his only real income. His physical survival also depended a great deal upon his ability to grow vegetables and catch catfish in the summer, as well as to shoot ducks and deer during the fall and winter.

  Stopping at a large storage cabinet, he jerked the twin doors open and riffled through his art supplies. Dozens of new and used brushes and knives cohabited with varnish and turpentine cans on the upper shelves, while paint tubes littered the two lower shelves.

  Rafter felt his blood pressure boil higher. He couldn’t believe his luck. So close to finishing and he didn’t have so much as a drop of titanium white in stock. He slammed shut the cabinet doors. Grabbing his truck keys off an antique end table, he opened a small coat closet under the staircase and retrieved a rain slicker. He put the slicker on. “Come on, Sam. We’re going to town. I won’t be able to sleep tonight if I can’t finish the mural.”

  The large dog shot him a disbelieving look and defiantly plopped his bulk down on a floor rug. Rafter could almost always look into Samson’s dark, deep-set eyes and determine the dog’s thoughts at any given moment. In this instance the Newfoundland didn’t care for the storm, and Rafter knew he would have to resort to bribery to prompt the dog into action.

  “I know you don’t care for the thunder and lightning, boy. But how about we stop at McDougal’s while we’re in town and pick up some chili?” Rafter smiled triumphantly when Samson scrambled to his webbed feet and trotted toward the door, his tail wagging vigorously.

  Rafter followed the dog out the front door and onto the plantation house’s expansive gallery. He still had a difficult time calling his porch a gallery, like they were commonly called in Louisiana. Learning the Deep South’s quirky vernacular took time. All the same, he did his level best to blend into the local culture. The hardest part had been to disguise his thick Manhattan accent and to replace it with a quasi-authentic southern drawl. His East Coast dialect didn’t want to go away without a fight.

  A deafening thunderclap shook the porch floor. Lightning followed the rumble moments later, stabbing the sky with strobe-like intensity. Almost at once the sky opened and rain fell like buckshot from pregnant thunderheads, causing giant mud puddles to spring up from the marshy soil.

  Rafter appraised their chances of sprinting fifty yards to the small carriage house that had been converted into a garage. “I’d say we have a fifty-fifty chance, Sam. Why don’t you go first?” His resolve to drive to town teetered a little. But he’d already made up his mind. No turning back now.

  The Newfoundland padded down the front steps without pause and loped across the waterlogged grounds toward the carriage house. Apparently kidney beans swimming in MSG gravy bolstered his courage. Rafter jogged after Samson. His Wolverine work boots made sucking sounds as he ran.

  He reached the garage and hurriedly unlocked a padlock. Inside the garage a restored 1954 Ford F-100 pickup truck hunkered in the shadows. Samson jumped into his customary spot in the step-side truck bed. “You better ride shotgun this time, Sam. It’s not a good day to be out in the open.” The dog quickly obliged and scuttled into the cab.

  Rafter started the old truck and allowed its 6-cylinder engine to warm before backing out. The truck belonged to Ms. Rose Whitcomb. Rose also owned the plantation house. Rose was a 91-year-old spinster and the great-great-granddaughter of sugar cane baron Rutherford Whitcomb.

  When he first moved into the house, Rose still lived at the home. In exchange for a cheap lease agreement, he served as caretaker, making basic repairs when needed and tending to the grounds. But not long after he moved in, advancing Alzheimer’s forced Rose to relocate to a local nursing home. He’d lived alone in the house for several years now.

  After relocking the garage door, Rafter steered the old truck down a magnolia-lined driveway. Before turning onto the road leading to town, he turned to look back at the once proud mansion. Although the home’s twenty-two room interior remained in relatively good condition, wood rot and crumbling brick weakened the exterior. At least a quarter-million dollars or more would be needed to restore its once noble facade.

  If he had the money he’d start tomorrow. He hated seeing the house this way. But its shabby exterior helped his quest to remain anonymous. If he restored the historical house to its original luster it would undoubtedly attract tourists and curiosity seekers, and someone might recognize him.

  And just who are you, anyway? He asked himself. A bad cop? A fugitive? A cowardly recluse? He’d tortured himself with these very questions on countless occasions, and still didn’t have the answer. The explanation hung in limbo in his subconscious, somewhere in a shrouded dungeon, resonating just below comprehension.

  The gravel road he and Samson traveled crested a levee system hemming in the Atchafalaya River. Rafter worked hard to dodge the gaping potholes, his task made daunting by the flash-flooding rain. The wipers on the antique Ford put up a valiant effort but couldn’t clear the glass fast enough. Fortunately their destination lay only two miles ahead.

  With a population under 900 residents, Copeland, Louisiana epitomized small town America. Its main street cut through a modest business district. A post office, hardware store, grocery store, coffee shop, and a diner specializing in deep-fried foods catered to the local’s needs.

  Rafter continued to do everything possible to blend into this quaint hamlet, but sensed he remained a mystery to the locals. Like most small towns, some residents in Copeland stuck their nose in everyone’s business, which subsequently created a delicate situation for him.

  Reaching the city limits, he steered the truck into a parking lot filled with buses. He pulled up to a low-slung, red brick building. Outside the building, workers nailed plywood sheeting over windows in preparation for the approaching hurricane.

  “You stay here, Sam. I’m just going to say hi to Rose. I’ll be back in a minute.” Rafter cracked his window just enough that the dog wouldn’t suffocate and the truck’s upholstery wouldn’t get ruined by the rain. He exited the truck and jogged up to the Grayson Manor Senior Center. Yanking open the front door, he stamped his feet on a welcome mat, then took off his rain slicker and hung it up on a coat rack.

  As the door clicked shut, a deep sadness penetrated his heart like it always did upon coming here. Seeing these forgotten men and women, all but deserted by their families depressed him.

  Bleach and urine smells wrinkled his nose as he hurried down the main hallway. The long hallway ended at an intersection of another corridor. Rose Whitcomb lived in the first room off the abutting corridor. Rafter knocked on her door and entered the small room. He found her sitting in a tattered lazy-boy recliner, wearing her customary turquoise bath robe and plush burgundy slippers. A game show played on her TV at decibels loud enough to crack leaded glass. Rafter turned the television down before his eardrums could shatter.

  Rose lifted her snow-white head to see who silenced the game show. Sunken gray eyes peered up at him. Her irritation faded fast. “Jon, I hoped you would come by today. I thought maybe the weather would scare you off.”

  Rafter felt his mouth drop open. Rose actually recognized him. Not only that, but she called him by name. For whatever reason, she usually called him Harold. He surmised that Harold was either a male nurse at the home or a love interest from her distant past.

/>   Regardless the reason, Rose appeared lucid for the first time in years. A big smile lit his face. He’d begun to believe miracles didn’t happen anymore. But today his puny faith got a much needed boost.

  “You know it would take more than a little hurricane to keep me away from you, Rose,” Rafter said gallantly.

  “I have something for you, Jon,” Rose said She reached out an arthritic hand and grabbed a file folder off her bedside table. She handed it to him. “Could you run this by the bank when you have time? Have them put it in my safe deposit box.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s my last will and testament. I’m bequeathing you the plantation house and grounds. I had it notarized years ago before I got sick. It’s all legal.”

  Rafter scanned the documents. A cursory glance told him they were legitimate. He wasn’t sure how he felt about being the beneficiary of a 175-year-old crumbling house that could fall in at any moment. “I don’t know what to say, Rose. Thank-you. This means a lot to me.”

  The benevolent woman beamed with satisfaction. “I should have told you a long time ago. I don’t know why I waited so long. It’s obvious you love the house as much as I do. You’ve been so good about dropping your rent off at the front desk, and you’ve done so much work to the interior. It must be simply magnificent with all the murals you’ve painted. And I know someday you’ll begin work on the exterior. You will, won’t you?”

  Rafter felt his cheeks redden. “Refurbishing it will cost a fortune. You know I don’t have any money, Rose.”

  Rose shook her head. “Be patient, Jon. I’ve dreamt you’ll one day be a wealthy man. Your paintings will fetch hundreds of dollars or more, and bring happiness to countless lives.” She smiled coyly. “In my dreams I’ve also seen children running around in the house. They are your children.”