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“Philadelphia,” she said, as if the name left a bitter taste in her mouth.
A woman not only taking her son away from her, but a Yankee to boot.
“How’d they meet?”
“In college. Marc, he went to Tulane on a scholarship,” Kiki said proudly.
Luc turned his head just enough that she couldn’t see him roll his eyes.
“Have you had problems with any customers lately?” Nick asked. “Not to suggest anything improper, but times are hard. People try to make a buck any way they can, sometimes with things that don’t necessarily belong to them, yeah?”
“We don’t trade in stolen goods,” Luc said flatly.
“Have you refused anybody that’s brought stuff in recently? Somebody who might nurse a grudge?”
“No.”
His answer was too quick and too definitive. South Louisiana was a place overflowing with hot heads and quick tempers. Grudges could be held for decades, for generations, even. Tempers could flare up with the slightest provocation, the barest hint of an insult. And the Merciers had seen fit to post a sign in their front window telling the world that they could refuse to do business with anybody. With two exclamation points, no less.
Nick looked up and glanced around, spying one camera over the desk, pointed toward the door. “Is that hooked up?”
“No.”
“Marc wants us to put in a new system,” Kiki said. “He says it’s not even hard these days—”
“We got dogs on the property at night,” Luc interrupted. “Don’t nobody mess with them. That was good enough for Daddy.”
“What you talking about?” Kiki snapped. “He put that camera up back in the nineties—”
“Damn thing was busted more often than not,” Luc said. “That ain’t worked in years. We keep it for show, and that’s enough.”
“You just don’t want new ’cause it’s Marc’s idea,” Kiki grumbled, pulling her iPhone out of a pocket on her overalls. She tapped the screen and began scrolling. “You don’t never grow up.
“Here! Here,” she said, turning the phone around so Nick could see the photo she had stopped on. “This is Marc and his truck. You can see the tag.”
The photo showed Marc Mercier, tall, athletic, good-looking, posing next to his new big-boy toy with a wide grin splitting his face.Everybody loves Marc…He had that look about him, like life was easy and doors opened before him like magic. All he had to do was smile that smile.
“Can you text me that picture,s’il vous plaît?” Nick asked. He handed a business card to the mother. She immediately typed his cell number into her phone and sent the photo.
“He’s a good boy, him, my Marc,” she said. “You gonna find him for me, yeah?”
“We’ll do our best, ma’am,” Nick assured her, then turned to Luc. “Step outside with us for a moment, Mr. Mercier.”
“I got a tour group coming in ten minutes,” Luc Mercier said, squinting hard as they went out into the bright light.
He walked a few yards away from the front door of the building, stopping at the nose of a black Dodge Ram 2500 pickup. Spotless, Nick noted, freshly washed and hand-dried.
“Nice truck,” Stokes remarked, looking down the length of the pickup, his gaze dropping to the tires. “That black is a commitment.”
“Less trouble than a woman,” Mercier returned. He shook a cigarette out of a pack from the pocket of his denim shirt and hung it on his lip as he leaned back against the front quarter panel of the truck.
Out of eavesdropping range, Nick thought, glancing back to see Kiki Mercier peering out the window at them, eyes narrowed as if that might sharpen her hearing.
“Getting late in the season for swamp tours, no?” Nick asked.
Luc shrugged as he lit up. “We run as long as the weather holds and the tourists want to go out and see an alligator.”
“When I was a boy, it’d be cold by now,” Nick remarked, settling his sunglasses down on the bridge of his nose. “The gators would be digging in for the winter about this time.”
