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and its contents. There’s an old pickup truck. Some land. Again, I’m not the one to assess that, however, and you’ll have to talk to someone else about what your aunt owned, and any encumbrances on her property.”
    She might suddenly be a Terrebonne Parish landowner? Ceelie almost laughed at the irony. But land meant she had a place to go and regroup, didn’t it? Selling it to a developer for fishing camps—the Louisiana term for a rustic waterfront spot for weekend anglers—could bring in enough money for her to return to Nashville or even go on to Los Angeles or New York or Chicago.
    In the meantime, she could stay in the cabin, although for the life of her she couldn’t remember if it had plumbing. “Is the house habitable?”
    The deputy’s pause spoke volumes. “It’s, uh, rustic. And what the killer didn’t mess up, the forensics team did. You’ll want to stay somewhere else.”
    Yeah, well, she had nowhere else to stay, and cleaning up a mess would keep her from drowning in self-pity.
    Then she remembered something. “Wait—what about Eva’s husband, LeRoy? I realize he’s gone, and I doubt he’s still alive since he was older than my aunt. He ran out on her about twenty years ago. But he had a son or a nephew or something.” What was that boy’s name who’d spent part of one summer out there when she was a kid?
    The crackle of turning pages sounded through the phone. “No, I’m pretty sure . . . Wait.” More page-turning. “Yep, here we go. Some of the older folks mentioned a man named LeRoy Breaux who used to live with Ms. Savoie, but your great-aunt was never married to him, so even if he has survivors they’d have no claim on her estate unless there’s a will somewhere—again, you’ll need to talk to probate.”
    Tante Eva and Nonc LeRoy weren’t married? That gave a whole new meaning to shacked up , given what she recalled about that cabin. It beat sleeping under a Nashville overpass, however.
    “I’ll be there by Monday.”

CHAPTER 4
    LDWF Agent Jena Sinclair tugged at the collar of her department-issued shirt, long sleeves cuffed at the wrist despite the suffocating heat of the bayou even at seven in the morning.
    It was her favorite time of day out here on the water, as the things of the night fell silent and the creatures of the day awakened. The humidity was thick and viscous, but the oppressive heat hadn’t caught up with it yet. The waters stirred with splashes and croaks, and the slight breeze caused the heavy Spanish moss dripping from the trees to sway like the skirt of a dancing woman. Birds competed to see which species could out-call the other. The smell of wild things and the ever-present odor of DEET blended with the scents of mud and lilies.
    Even after a long, hard night of work, the bayou made Jena feel alive.
    The long sleeves had been her choice—they were the only surefire protection against the mosquitoes. As bad as the parasitic monsters were in the daytime, they were worse at dusk and at dawn. Just her luck that she seemed especially tasty to them, judging by the number of bites she collected during evening shifts.
    “Don’t you get bit?” She scratched at a welt on her neck and glared at her partner. If he’d been gnawed on during the all-nighter they’d just spent cruising in the waters off Bayou Terrebonne, he hadn’t let on. Of course, they’d been too busy to think about it until now.
    “Guess I’m just not as sweet as you, Red.”
    “Obviously.” Jena pulled at her collar again and slapped the green LDWF baseball cap on her head backward, matching her partner’s. Gentry Broussard was too damned cool ever to admit he was as miserable as she was. “And stop calling me Red.”
    Gentry shrugged. “Dye your hair. Or I could call you Sally.”
    “What the heck is that supposed to mean?”
    “You know that old song, ‘Long Tall Sally’?”
    Great. Lieutenant Doucet already called her Stringbean half the time. Lanky redheads were