Perhaps Shelby had made some kind of public statement against poachers or places like Mosquito Mouton's. It would be like Shelby to get on a soapbox and publicly antagonize people she thought of as unsavory. Her views would be met with widespread approval among the upstanding members of the community, something that would appeal enormously to her ego.
Shelby had always required a great deal of attention and praise, and had been willing to go to whatever length she needed to get those things. It wouldn't have been beyond her to pick on a man as dangerous as Lucky Doucet. She would have considered the potential for self-aggrandizement long before giving a thought to the potential for trouble.
Serena wondered if her sister had any idea she'd made an enemy of a man who carried a hunting knife the size of a scimitar.
They moved on up the bayou, the silence of the swamp as heavy and oppressive as the heat. The denser the vegetation became, the more overwhelming the stillness. It played on Serena's nerves, tightening them so that something as innocent as the «quock» of heron set them humming.
The deeper they penetrated into the wilderness, the less it looked like man had ever intruded upon it. The most conspicuous sign of human habitation Serena saw was the occasional slip of colored plastic ribbon tied to a branch to mark the location of a crawfish trap.
Lucky pulled up beside one of these-a red ribbon tied to the branch of a willow sapling-and set about emptying the dip net set in the shallow water beneath it. The thin mesh was brimming with red crawfish. He raided four nets along the same bank, emptying their contents into the onion sacks he had stored in the bow of the pirogue, going about his task as if Serena were nothing more than an annoying piece of cargo he had to step around. She watched him with interest, not daring to ask if the traps he was harvesting were his.
«Are we nearly there?» she asked as Lucky once again began to pole the pirogue north, then east.
«Nearly. You'll know when we're just about onto Gifford's.»
«I doubt it. It's been years since I've been out here.»
«You'll know,» he said assuredly.
«How?»
«By the gunshots.»
Serena made a face. «That's ridiculous. Old Lawrence said something about people getting shot at too. I know my grandfather can be cantankerous, but shooting at people? That's absurd. Why would he shoot at people?»
«To scare them off.»
«And why would he want to scare people off?»
«So they'll leave him alone.»
Serena shook her head impatiently. «I don't understand any of this. In the first place, it's not like Giff to desert the plantation for so long a time, not even during crawfish season.»
«He's got his reasons,» Lucky said enigmatically.
Serena gave him a long, searching look. She didn't like the idea of this man knowing more about her family's concerns than she did. It made her feel like the outsider. It also threw a glaring spotlight on her deficiencies as a granddaughter. She didn't come home often enough, didn't keep up with the local news, didn't call as often as she should. The list of venial sins went on, adding to her feelings of guilt. Still, she couldn't keep herself from asking the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.
«And just what do you think those reasons are, Mr. Doucet?» she queried, looking up at him.
His face remained impassive. «Ask Gifford, if you want to know. I don't get involved in other people's lives.»
«How convenient for you. You have no one to worry about, no one to answer to except yourself.»
«That's right, sugar.»
«Then what are you doing bringing me out here when you would clearly rather have come alone?»
Lucky scowled at her, his black brows pulling together like twin thunderheads above his eyes. When he spoke his voice was soft and silky with warning. «Don' you go tryin' to get inside my head, Dr. Sheridan.»
Serena rolled her eyes. «God forbid. I'm sure I'd rather fall into a snake pit.»
One and the same thing, cherie, Lucky said to himself, but he refrained from speaking that thought, knowing it was the kind of statement a psychologist would pounce on. He was managing just fine. If everyone would just butt the hell out of his life, he would be great.
«How come you don' know Gifford's reasons for comin' out here?» he asked, going on the offensive. «Don' you ever talk to your grandpapa on the telephone? Mebbe you don' care what goes on down here. Mebbe you don' care about this place or Chanson du Terre, eh?»
«What kind of question is that?» Serena bristled, rising to the bait like a bass to a fly. «Of course I care about Chanson du Terre. It's my family home.»
Lucky shrugged. «I don't see you livin' there, sugar.»
«Where I live is none of your concern.»
«That's right. Just like it's none of my concern if someone wants to come in and flatten the place with bulldozers. It's not my family what's lived and worked on that land two-hundred-some years.»
Serena stared up at him, feeling as if she'd been hit in the chest with a hammer. «What do you mean, flatten the place? What are you talking about?»
«Chanson du Terre, angel. Your sister wants to sell it to Tristar Chemicals.»
«That's absurd!» she exclaimed, laughing at the sheer lunacy of the statement. «Shelby wouldn't want to sell Chanson du Terre any more than Scarlett O'Hara would put Tara on the market! You obviously don't know my sister. It would never happen. Never.»
She went on chuckling at the idea, shaking her head, trying to ignore the terrible certainty in Lucky s eyes as he stared down at her. The look was meant to assure her of the fact that he knew many things she didn't have a clue about. A part of her rejected the notion outright, but another part of her churned with a sudden strange apprehension.
At any rate, there was no time to question or argue the issue, because as they rounded a bend in the bayou there came the sudden deafening explosion of a shotgun-firing at them.
CHAPTER 5
SERENA HAD NO TROUBLE MANAGING A SCREAM THIS time. She shrieked, dropping to her knees on the floor of the pirogue and covering her head with her arms as buckshot hit the bayou in front of them, spewing muddy water and bits of shredded lily pad everywhere.
Her first thought was that they were being set upon by one of the honest men Lucky had been poaching from. Perhaps even the rightful owner of the crawfish squirming in the onion sacks two feet from her nose. She expected to hear another volley of shots and wondered if Lucky had a gun tucked away someplace to defend them with. But the initial boom faded away. In the ensuing silence, she lifted her head a few inches and peeked out between her fingers.
Gifford stood on the bank, legs spread, the smoking gun cradled loosely in his big hands. He was a tall, well-built man who didn't look anywhere near his age except for his thick head of snow-white hair, one lock of which insisted on tumbling rakishly across his broad forehead. With his square shoulders and trim waist, he still looked fit enough to wrestle a bear and win. His bold features were set in a characteristically fierce expression-bushy white brows lowered, square chin jutting forward aggressively. His nose was large and permanently red from years spent in the fields under the relentless southern sun.
«Goddammit, Lucky!» he bellowed, his voice a booming baritone that rivaled the shotgun for volume. «I thought you were that bastard Burke!»
«Naw,» Lucky called back calmly, poling the boat forward as if getting shot at didn't affect him in the least. «You might wanna shoot me anyway, though, when you see what I brought you.»
Serena rose up on her knees, snapping her head around to give him the evil eye before turning back toward her grandfather. She pushed her hair out of her eyes with one hand, hanging on to the side of the pirogue with the other to steady herself. Conflicting emotions shoved together in her chest like a logjam as she looked at the man who had essentially raised her. With adrenaline still pumping through her veins and the sound of the shotgun blast still ringing in her ears, anger took precedence for the moment.