Page 87 of The Cajun Doctor

“Mon Dieu! Who told you? You weren’t supposed ta know.”

Huh? Red flags went up in her head. Her family was always trying to hide important things from her. “Doan matter how I know,” she said carefully. “Daniel and Samantha need my help, and that’s that.”

“No, it’s not that that. No one needs your help. The FBI will be there, and police. Stay home and give yourself a perm or somethin’ fer your party.”

The FBI? And the police. “So, Tee-John is involved, too?” She was going to smack that boy up one side and down the other. He was her favorite nephew, and he usually understood her need to be involved.

“Of course, Tee-John is involved. He and I were the first ones ta learn about this mess.”

“I could bring over a mess of greens and a crawfish casserole. Mebbe I should bake a pie. I got blueberries big as marbles.”

“No! Samantha can do any cooking that needs done. Or Lily Beth. Unless the girl decides to pop out her baby in the middle of the chaos.”

A pregnant girl? He cain’t mean Samantha. I jist saw her on Sunday. And chaos? My favorite thing. But they’re shuttin’ me out? We’ll see about that! “I doan think I know Lily Beth. How far along do ya suppose she is?” Tante Lulu asked.

“Supposedly seven months, but she looks more than that.”

She did a mental inventory of the closet in her second bedroom where she stored all the knitted and crocheted items she made in her spare time for “just in case” situations. Yep, she recalled a little green jacket and cap she’d made a few years back. She could take that for a gift.

“Are you still there?” Luc asked.

“’Course I am. Where ya think I am? In mah bayou stream doin’ laps?”

“Don’t you dare go near that water. I don’t trust that pet gator you keep around there. We oughta call Pet Control ta relocate that beast.”

“Useless is harmless,” she said.

“Anyhow, stay home tomorrow. Rest. Don’t even think about goin’ ta Bayou Rose.”

“How could I go even if I wanted to? Ya took mah keys ta Lillian.” Lillian was the name of her vintage lavender convertible.

“Fer your own good, darlin’.”

Bull puckies! “I know, sweetie. Well, I gotta go pee.”

“Okay, I’ll pick ya up at five on Saturday. Love ya!”

“Love ya back,” she said.

Wonder where I hid that second set of car keys?

Chapter Nineteen

It always comes back to sex . . .

Samantha’s cell phone kept ringing all day. Some of the callers left voice messages, some didn’t, but she saw their caller IDs.

There were seven voice messages from Nick that went from polite to not-so-polite. Everything from, “Hey Samantha. Nick here. Just touching base. Give me a call when you can” to “You didn’t call me back. I stopped by your house, and no one was there. Where are you, darlin’?” to “I’m really getting pissed” to “This is important, dammit. Don’t push me too far, I’m warning you” to a bunch of swear words that included something about a “stupid bitch.”

Her father Bruce called, too. He was still at a conference in Los Angeles where Nick apparently had him pulled from a meeting to ask about Angus’s whereabouts. “Nick has been calling me. What’s Angus done now?” Her father was clearly beyond annoyed. “I swear, I’m done bailing that boy out of one scrape after another. I also got a call from someone named Jimmy Guenot. Do you know who that is? Florie claims he’s the head of the Dixie Mob in Southern Loo-zee-anna, but I can hardly credit that.” Florie would be Florence, Bruce’s fifth and current wife, the one who had been a superintendent of women’s prisons. She ought to know.

There were also a number of calls from the Starr Foods headquarters (Nick had probably been bugging them there, too.), the foundation office, two of her neighbors, and the rescue farm that wanted to know if she could foster two more pets . . . a pet python “that is really cute,” and a bunch of gerbils “that are no trouble at all.” Even under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have taken either of those.

Her Aunt Maire, the one with the pink obsession, said on her voice mail, “That cute ex-husband of yours stopped by. I gave him one of Larry’s old pink ties.” Larry was Maire’s long deceased husband, the one who’d given her a pink diamond engagement ring that started this whole craze more than fifty years ago. “Did you know that Nickie loves pink as much as I do?”

Um, I don’t think so. Nick would only love pink if money suddenly turned that color.

Aunt Dot, the butch lesbian, was blunt. “I kicked Nick Coltrane’s slimy ass out of my office today. What did you ever see in that loser?”