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“Like I said, I thought he was with Luc. Anyway, Marc has a lot of friends,” she said, “and plenty of places to stay.”
“Did you call any of those friends looking for him?”
“No.” She shook her head again. “The first time Marc did this, I called everyone I could think of, looking for him. I called the area hospitals, thinking he might have had an accident. I was beside myself. I was six months pregnant at the time…And when he came home, he was angry with me for calling his friends and making a big deal out of nothing.”
A fresh sheen of tears glazed her eyes as she looked up at him. “I don’t make a big deal out of nothing anymore.”
There was a lot of pain in that statement. Hurt feelings, hurt pride. She was a young bride with a new baby. She wanted to be the most important person in her husband’s life, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Luc Mercier had said Melissa didn’t want to be there in south Louisiana, but her husband had been lured back to help his family, and the family and the place were hanging on to him. She had to feel very alone there…except for her good friend, Will Faulkner.
“I’m sorry to ask,” Nick said, “but do you think he’s seeing someone?”
“Yeah,” she said with a bitter laugh. “All his old friends from high school. I had an adult husband who was smart and ambitious, and then we moved here, and he magically turned into an eighteen-year-old boy with mommy issues and a bunch of overgrown adolescent drinking buddies. Of course, he calls thembusiness connectionsnow, and hanging out with them isnetworking.”
“That’s Marc reliving his glory days,” Will Faulkner remarked. “It’s sad when a guy thinks he topped out in high school.”
“He didn’t, though,” Melissa argued. “That’s what makes this so frustrating.”
“I understand the family has a fish camp down on Lake Aucoin,” Nick said. “Could he have gone there?”
“No. We had renters there for the weekend. They checked out late in the day yesterday.”
“So he could have gone there last night.”
“I suppose he could have, but my cleaning crew should have been there this morning. No one mentioned anything to me.”
“Is he into any kind of risky behavior?” Nick asked. “Gambling, drugs?”
She looked confused. “Drugs? Marc? No, nothing like that.”
“Is there anybody he hasn’t been getting along with?”
“You mean besides his brother? Or me?”
“The brothers don’t get along?” Nick asked, opening that door a crack.
“Luc resents him for coming back here,” she said. “Marc’s the golden boy of the family, if you didn’t already catch that from his mother.”
“But Marc and Luc, they were still going hunting together?”
“Oh, sure. Hunting and fishing transcends all. If there’s a living creature they can kill, the Mercier boys are right there for it. Don’t ask them to agree about anything else, though.”
“How has it been for him, coming back into the family business?”
“It was a mess when we got here,” she said. “His dad, Troy, had let things go for who knows how long. He’d been ill for a couple of years already. Luc doesn’t have any interest in dealing with paperwork, and Kiki had her hands full trying to take care of Troy and Noelle.”
“A lot of pressure on Marc, then, to straighten it all out, yeah?”
“Yes. I offered to help him sort out the business accounts and the tax situation, but that wasn’t well received.”
“Not well received by whom?”
“Any of them,” she said. “Mercier Salvage is Mercier business, and I’m a Mercier in name only, so…” She shrugged. “Never mind my business degree.”
“So it all fell on Marc,” Nick said. “That’s a lot of stress, yeah? His dad was dying. He’s saddled with the business problems. Familytensions. A new baby. An unhappy wife. That’s a lot. Is there any reason to think he maybe just didn’t want to deal with it anymore?”
Melissa stared at him for a moment before the realization of what he was saying fully hit her, and she gave a little start, as if she’d had an electrical shock. Her green eyes widened.
“Marc wouldn’t hurt himself!” she said, but a hint of uncertainty in her voice made it sound slightly more like a question than an answer. She glanced up at Will Faulkner as if for reassurance, then turned back to Nick. “He wouldn’t. That’s ridiculous! Why would you even suggest that?”
