Plunder: A Faye Longchamp Mystery #7 (Faye Longchamp Series) by Mary Anna Evans Page A

sensed that every movement, for Didi, consisted of shifting from one pose to the next.
“Half of this boat is mine, and I’ll get it when Mother dies,” she said, “not to mention half the oil stock Daddy bought while he worked in the oil patch. The other half will go to Justine.”
“You weren’t listening, baby girl,” Tebo said. “This man’s holding something that he says is Justine’s will. A will ain’t all that interesting when the woman that wrote it is still alive. Is she? Is Justine still alive? What have you done with her? Goddamn punk.”
The so-called punk’s head jerked back and he moved to take a step forward, but Joe was standing in front of him. Joe spread his hands in a “we’re all friends here” kind of way, and asked blandly, “What’s your name? And tell us again…what’s your business here?”
“My name is Steve Daigle. I was Justine’s husband until the cancer got her last week. I came to tell her family she was gone, and I came to put my name on what’s rightfully coming to me. Half of this boat is mine. And everything else that was Justine’s is mine, too.” He waved the papers yet again.
Joe looked Steve up and down. Was he Amande’s father?
Maybe. Amande’s dark skin tone certainly stood out in her lily-white family. Joe couldn’t tell exactly what Steve’s ancestry was, but it clearly didn’t all come from northern Europe. Other than his mid-dark skin, he didn’t look much like Amande, but yeah. He could be her father.
Didi’s pose had failed her. She’d pulled the cocked hip into a more normal position and was standing, hunchbacked with her arms hugged across her small breasts. The short-shorts revealed trembling legs. Just when Joe realized that those legs might fail her, they did. Tebo, who was standing right behind her, did nothing. Joe’s hands shot out of their own accord and caught her under the arms. He lowered her gently to the deck.
The stranger could have taken this opportunity to slug Joe while his hands were full of woman, but he didn’t. Joe took this as a good sign.
“Justine’s dead?” Didi melted into tears. Miranda and Tebo stood by, curiously unmoved.
“Was there a funeral?” Didi demanded. “She died last week? You should’ve told us then.”
“That’s what I come to do.”
“No. You come to wave those papers around.” Tebo said, watching Justine’s widower through squinted eyes. When he saw that Steve was sufficiently distracted by the weeping woman on the deck, Tebo took the opportunity to snatch the paperwork right out of his hand.
Tebo looked the first page over, then the second, then the third and last. “The will’s just one page. You brought three copies.”
“You know lawyers. Everything in triplicate.”
“It don’t say anything except that you get everything she owned.” Tebo handed two of the sheets back to Steve, pointedly folding up one copy and sticking it in the pocket of his t-shirt.
“That’s all it needs to say, dumbass…everything goes to me. She was my wife and she left me everything she had.”
Didi, who was working herself into a state of hysteria and who was doing a good job of it, suddenly wailed, “Amande! We’re going to have to tell Amande her mother’s dead!”
Miranda looked down on her daughter with eyes that seemed to have retreated to another world. Tebo just looked uncomfortable.
“Mother?” Steve looked from face to uncommunicative face. “Who’s Amande? And whattaya mean when you say ‘her mother’s dead’?”
Tebo pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and lit one. “What do people usually mean when they say ‘mother’ where you come from? Idiot. Amande is Justine’s daughter. How long did you say you two were married? She never mentioned her own daughter?”
“Eight years. And no. She didn’t. She didn’t mention anybody named Tebo or Didi, neither. Just somebody named Hebert that she said was a wonderful brother and a sweet man.”
“She damn sure didn’t