Plantation Shudders (13 page)

She grabbed a handful of shrimp and popped them into her mouth. Bo laughed. “Glad to see I gave you back your appetite. But we’re supposed to be sharing those.” He reached for a shrimp and she playfully pulled the bowl toward her. As they tussled over it, they didn’t see Ru approach the table.

“Well, look at you two.”

Maggie and Bo let go of the bowl. Ru’s appearance had ruined both their appetites. “Cavorting with the enemy,” Ru said, shaking his head. “Nice, Coz.”

“It’s consorting, not cavorting,” Maggie shot back before Bo could respond. “And he’s not. He’s just being polite and keeping me company because I was here alone.”

“Never could hold on to a boyfriend, could ya, Magnolia?”

“Hey, that’s enough, Rufus.” Bo stood up, towering over his cousin by a good head. “My personal life is none of your business.”

“Relax, I was just kidding around,” Ru said. “But you know what is my business, Bo? Your job, which won’t be yours much longer if you keep company with the Crozats. It’s not exactly the way to repay me, is it now?”

Bo’s face reflected his fury, and Maggie was afraid that he might strike Rufus. “We were talking business,” she said, trying to cover. “I was telling him something important about the murder.”

Rufus and Bo both stared at her, Ru with skepticism, Bo with confusion. Maggie froze. She didn’t dare say anything about Gran’ to the police chief to make his dream of jailing a family member come true. She wracked her brain, and then remembered something. “Footsteps. The night before Mrs. Clabber died, I went into the woods by the bayou to paint and I heard footsteps. They spooked me so much that I just grabbed everything and ran back to the house.”

“You’re just remembering this now?” Ru’s tone oozed distrust.

“I know I should have remembered sooner, but with all the craziness going on, I didn’t put it together that it happened the night before she died. That’s what Bo and I were just talking about.”

“Funny how a couple of turns around the dance floor jogged your memory.” Ru turned to Bo. “Check it out in the morning. And it better not be bull or you’ll be reloading whatever you unloaded from your pickup truck and looking at Pelican in your rearview mirror.” Having delivered this ultimatum, Ru headed back to Vanessa.

“I’m not lying,” Maggie insisted to Bo. “I did hear footsteps and they did scare me.”

“I believe you.” Bo looked toward Ru, his expression grim. “But it’ll be a whole lot better if we find something to prove that.”

“I have a newfound respect for your job,” Maggie said late the next morning as she and Bo crawled through the forest thicket trying to find any clue that would prove someone had been in the woods the night she’d come to paint. It was one of the summer’s steamiest days, and bits of leaves and twigs had found a home in her hair, which tended to expand with humidity.

“Yup, it’s a lot of grunt work,” Bo said as he scanned the ground and examined the branches of trees to see if any fiber from a shirt or pant leg might have gotten caught. He’d left his blazer in the car and stripped down to his T-shirt, which clung to his cut, sweat-soaked body. It was a good look for him. But then, thought Maggie, pretty much anything seemed to be a good look for Bo. And for a moment, she felt her body go weak.

Bo noticed Maggie falter and reached out to her, but she brushed him off. “You know, once when I was walking through Central Park in New York, some detectives stopped me and showed me a picture and asked if I knew the girl,” she said, trying to defuse the moment with mindless chatter. “They were canvassing everyone. Turned out she was killed by her boyfriend. But I remember thinking, wow, those detectives have to do that all day, how sad and bor-
ahhhh
!”

She suddenly lost her balance and tumbled into a hole that had been clumsily covered with a canopy of twigs and leaves. Bo raced over, reached down, and pulled her out. “Are you okay?”

Bo gently examined her, and still stunned by the fall, she let him. “Ow,” she said. “That fall really hurt. I feel like every bone in my body got a shake.”

“You’re banged up, but I don’t see any serious damage. More like you were in a fender bender than a big wreck.”

“What the hell?” Maggie rubbed her head where it ached from colliding with a wall of the hole. “What is that? I mean, I know what it is, but what is it doing here?”

Bo kneeled at the edge of the hole and examined it closely. “This is recent. Any guess why someone would be digging on your property?”

“Yes. It used to happen sometimes when I was growing up, but not since I’ve been home, so I forgot about it. The other night Gran’ was telling stories, and one of them was the legend about pirates burying treasure in our woods. It sometimes gets people to thinking they should go on a treasure hunt. I did it
a few times myself with friends when I was a kid. I bet one of our guests has been doing some prospecting.”

“Any guess who?”

“No. I haven’t seen any shovels or metal detectors when I’ve cleaned, but I haven’t been looking for any. I’ll look tomorrow when I clean again. They might be keeping them in their car, so I’ll peek into those too.”

Maggie stood up. She felt stiff and sore. “Do you think this could have anything to do with Beverly’s murder?”

“Maybe. If someone actually found something and Bev caught them. She could have been killed to keep her quiet.”

“Which once again rules out Gran’. She was born and raised here. No way she’d search for buried treasure unless she had a sudden attack of the seniles.” Maggie checked her phone. “I need to go. I’m due at Doucet for my shift in an hour, and I need to shower first.” She took a step and felt aches in a variety of body parts.

“You should find someone to cover for you for a few days. That was a bad fall. They’d understand.”

“Yeah, but my bank account wouldn’t. I’ll be fine. Walk it off. Isn’t that what sports types say?”

Bo laughed. “Yeah, the ‘sports types’ do say that, Miss Artist. Speaking of which, I do want to get Xander together with you to paint. Maybe next time I have him.”

“I’d like that. And let me know if you find anything. I’ll do the same.”

Maggie headed out of the woods, trying to disguise the pain from her bumps and bruises. She knew Bo would have
jumped to help her, but for a reason she couldn’t define, she didn’t want to display any weakness. It was her way of protecting herself, but from what, she wasn’t sure.

*

Doucet was packed with tourists getting in some last-minute plantation oohing and aahing before summer ended, and Maggie led four full tours before getting a break. By the time she sat down to rest and eat a yogurt, she was exhausted. The lack of answers for the minimysteries surrounding the bigger mystery of Beverly/Francine’s death was also getting to the artist. What was the big news B/F planned on throwing in Gran’s face? What exactly were the Georgia boys up to? And who was digging holes in the family property? Was it somehow related to the Georgia boys’ scheme? Was it a different guest? Maybe it wasn’t a guest at all. She groaned and dropped her head into her hands.

“Well, somebody looks like the last dog at the pound.”

Maggie looked up to see Gaynell, who flashed a sympathetic smile and then took a seat next to her. “It’s just . . . stuff,” Maggie said with a shrug.

“Wanna talk about it?”

“You know what, right now I’d actually like to take a break from talking or thinking about it.”

“You got it.”

“Thank you. Hey, I never told you how good you were last night.”

“Thanks. We’re working on a set we can submit for JazzFest. Playing there would be the dream of all dreams.”

“Well, if I can help in any way, let me know.” The two women ate lunch in companionable silence, and Maggie enjoyed letting her mind wander aimlessly for a change. It landed on a moment with Bo from the night before. “Gaynell, do you happen to know the lyrics to the song ‘Ring of Fire’? At least some of them? All I know is the ‘down, down, down’ part.”

“Sure,” Gaynell said. She began singing the plaintive tune in her rich alto. Gaynell filled each note with emotion, bringing to life the song’s pathos and longing. Maggie, who had a sweet voice of her own, joined in, and the two women harmonized on the chorus. As they wrapped up, a couple of Asian tourists applauded and snapped their picture with smart phones. Maggie and Gaynell laughed.

“Looks like I got myself a backup singer,” Gaynell teased.

“Yeah, right. If you only do one song.”

“It’s a good one, though. Hot. Super sexy.”

“Yes. It really is.”

“June Carter cowrote the song about how she was falling in love with Johnny Cash, even though I think they were both married to other people.” Gaynell raised an eyebrow. “Anything you wanna tell me, Maggie?”

“No, relax, it’s nothing like that. Marriages aren’t the only thing that can make liking someone complicated.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“Not that I like someone,” Maggie backtracked.

“Right.” Gaynell stood up and picked a piece of lettuce off of her antebellum ball gown. “I gotta go take a tour group. If you need to talk, I’m around.”

“Thanks.”

By the time Maggie’s shift was over, the injuries from her fall, though minor, caught up with her, and she couldn’t wait to get home. The shotgun was empty, so Maggie drew a bath and soaked while listening to a download of vintage the Mamas & the Papas. Feeling much better, she threw on jean shorts and a tomato-red cotton halter top. She noticed the bag of art supplies for Xander on the floor of her closet and had an idea. Rather than wait for their lesson to happen, Maggie would get them to Xander so he could do some art experimenting on his own. She’d drop them off at the police station for Bo later on. But first she needed to check in at the main house to see if she could be of any help.

Maggie found Gran’ relaxing in the office chaise longue, ubiquitous iPad on her lap. Gopher snored at her feet. “I tell you, there are some funny if wildly inappropriate videos on YouTube,” Gran’ said. “If you’re looking for your parents, they’re both napping. Ninette needs her rest and Tug is worn out from picking up your cleaning shift.”

“I feel bad about that.”

“Don’t, that man needs the exercise. He’s got a gumbo pot for a stomach. So, I heard you did get in a visit to Yvonne yesterday.”

“Yes, and that woman is one huge gossip.”

“Don’t begrudge a lonely old lady a bit of entertainment.” Gran’ put down her iPad and looked Maggie in the eye. “You do know that I had nothing to do with Francine’s passing?”

“I know, Gran’.”

“Good. I swear, even in death, that tart is causing me trouble. Making me a murder suspect. The nerve of that woman.”

Maggie tsk-tsk’d with her grandmother, but something disturbed her. She’d never heard Gran’ call anyone such a harsh name before. Protestations to the contrary, Francine/Beverly still got to her.

Gran’ yawned and got up. “I’m going to take a bit of a lie-down too.” She vigorously shook her head. “I think I have a case of tinnitus. I keep hearing a humming sound.”

“I hear it too.” Maggie looked around the room and saw the source of the problem. “It’s the paper shredder. Someone left it on.”

“Oh my, that was me. Cutie Debbie wanted to shred something earlier, so I turned it on for her. I forgot to turn it off. Oh well, blame A-G-E syndrome.”

Gran’ and her iPad left for their nap, and Maggie turned off the paper shredder. She stared at it a moment. “Hmm. Is it weird that a retiree on vacation would need to shred a document, Goph? Or am I being paranoid?”

Gopher looked up at her, saw she was treat-free, and went back to napping and snoring. She decided to trust her suspicious instincts and opened the shredder. It was a rarely used, decrepit machine that, luckily for her, chunked the pages rather than shredded them. Having studied collage and mixed media at art school, she had no trouble reassembling Debbie’s document. Maggie found herself reading a meticulously laid-out business plan for co-opting the
nonprofit Cajun Cuties, booting Jan from the presidency, and turning the group into a profit-making venture that Debbie would eventually take public for a generous financial profit.

It appeared that Dim Debbie wasn’t so dim after all.

Maggie figured that she had just enough time before dinner prep to drop off Xander’s art supplies and deliver the latest guest bombshell to Bo. But first, she applied some lipstick and just enough eye shadow to bring out the orange in her eyes that Bo had commented on. She then drove to the Pelican PD, where she found Artie Belloise working the front desk, as well as a large fried crab po’boy.

“Hey, Maggie. Anything to eat in there?” He eyed her bag hopefully. “I could use some sides with my sammy.”

“Sorry, just art stuff for Bo’s kid.”

“Oh.” Artie didn’t try hiding his disappointment. “I’ll get it to him.”

“Actually, I need to talk to Bo, so can you let him know I’m here?”

“He ain’t around right now.”

“Oh.” It was Maggie’s turn to be disappointed. “Well, let him know I came by and have some information.”

“Will do.” In pretty much any other jurisdiction in America, a law enforcement official would have found this message intriguing enough to pepper Maggie with questions. But Maggie could put money on Artie’s lack of interest in anything but his po’boy.

She got back in her car and headed toward Crozat. Her cell rang, and she put in her earbud to answer it. The caller was Tug.

“Hey, Dad. What’s up?”

“I’m at the hospital with your mother.”

“
What?
” Maggie, her heart racing, pulled over and parked near the Pelican town square. She was too distracted by Tug’s news to drive.

“Nothing to panic about. She’s been having night sweats and wasn’t feeling well this afternoon. We could tell she had a fever, so I brought her here. I didn’t want to take any chances.”

“No, of course not.”

“The doctors want to keep her at least overnight and run some tests in the morning. It’s probably nothing.”

Or,
Maggie thought,
it’s a very bad something.
But she kept her attitude upbeat with Tug. “I’m sure you’re right, Dad. I want to see her, though. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“All right, sweetie.” Tug’s voice cracked the tiniest bit. “I love you, bebe.”

“I love you too, Daddy.”

They ended the call. Maggie sat in the Falcon for a moment and then got out. She needed air. She walked to the bandstand in the middle of the square, leaned against the opening, then slid down to the top step.

When Maggie was going through her brutal breakup with Chris and thought she’d never find love, she’d seen a therapist, who discouraged her from “catastrophic thinking.”

“Stop going to worst-possible outcome scenarios,” the therapist told her. “It’s a waste of time and energy because things rarely get that bad.”

Now, as an unsolved murder haunted her family’s home and livelihood and her mother faced a potential health crisis, Maggie was tempted to call the therapist and yell that she wanted her money back. Instead, she sat on the steps of the bandstand, overwhelmed with emotions—sadness, frustration, anger at herself for allowing her life to get messed up in such a big way. Then she dropped her face into her hands and began to cry.

“It’s okay. Everything’s gonna be all right.”

A hand rested gently on her shoulder. She lifted her puffy, wet face to see Bo. He sat down next to her on the bandstand steps, keeping his hand on her shoulder. “Thanks for the art supplies. Xander’ll love them.”

“How did you find me?”

“Uh, excuse me, it’s my job to track people down,” Bo said, faking indignation. “I saw your car and looked left.” Bo grinned and she couldn’t help grinning back through her tears. She wiped them away, smearing her carefully applied eye makeup. “What’s going on?” Bo asked.

Maggie looked at him. He only had a few years on her, yet he seemed so much wiser and more mature. “Bo . . . was there a moment when it hit you that you had to grow up and be an adult?”

“That’s an easy one for me. It was the moment Xander was born. But you need to stop beating yourself up about where you are and give yourself some credit. You’re working two jobs, helping your parents, getting your art going. You
are
an adult, Maggie.”

“I feel like I’ve regressed. Like I’m more of an adult-in-training these days.”

“Whatever you want to call it, it’s something to be proud of.”

Bo turned Maggie’s head toward him so she could see how sincerely he meant those words. And she saw something she’d never seen in the eyes of any man she’d ever been involved with: kindness.

Their faces were close enough to inhale each other’s warm breath. Then instinctively, both pulled away. “I got a message from Artie that you wanted to talk to me,” Bo said, making his voice brusque and businesslike.

“Yes, right.” She shook off the moment and filled him in on Debbie’s secret machinations to oust Jan and turn Cajun Cuties into a moneymaker.

“Interesting,” Bo said. “Gives us a new suspect. If Beverly Clabber found out what Debbie was up to, it’s a possible motive for murder. What if Clabber felt she needed to tell Jan that one of her Cuties was planning a coup d’état? It would have destroyed everything for Debbie.”

“Exactly.”

“I’m gonna go do a background check on this Debbie Stern. Rufus is off today, so he’s not around to stonewall me. I’ll let you know what I come up with.”

Maggie and Bo exchanged a little more information and perfunctory good-byes, each choosing to deny the heat between them.

“Hope your mom’s okay,” Bo said as he started toward his car.

“Thanks,” she responded. “I’m heading over to the hospital to check on her.”

She forced herself to concentrate on the road as she drove to Francis Xavier Medical Center, the closest hospital to Pelican. Rush hour was just beginning, and cars darted in and out of lanes without warning as they battled the growing clog. Maggie swore to herself that if she ever got a vanity license plate, it would read, “UZ SGNL.”

She parked and went into the hospital, where a receptionist directed her to Ninette’s room. Maggie gave the door a gentle knock.

“Mom?”

“Come on in, chère.”

Maggie walked into the typically antiseptic hospital room, where Ninette lay on a bed that had been raised for her comfort. Tug sat in a chair next to her, holding his wife’s hand. Maggie had never seen her mother look more pale or frail. She kissed her father and then sat on the edge of the bed.

“Mama.” She reached down and hugged Ninette, hiding her face so the tears slipping down her cheeks wouldn’t show.

“My sweet baby.” Ninette patted the bed, and Maggie crawled in next to her. “This is just like when you were little.”

“I know. I’d use any excuse to get into bed with you and Dad. A storm, a bad dream. Which is what this feels like right now.”

“Everyone is overreacting. This is just some little thing.”

Tug squeezed Ninette’s hand. “I’m sure it is, but we could do with some medical facts to back that up.” He awkwardly rose to his feet. “I’m stiff from all this sitting. I need to stretch my legs. I’m gonna take a lap around the floor. Be back in a few.”

He left, and the women rested in each other’s arms. “I know I’ve been going back and forth about whether or not I should have come home,” Maggie said. “But I’m beyond glad I’m here right now.”

“Me, too.” Ninette stroked her daughter’s hair.

“Oh, Mom, I’m so sorry.”

Ninette looked at her daughter. “For what?”

“For everything. For leaving. For being so conflicted about coming back. For being who I am—and never fitting in here.”

“You’ve always fit in, honey,” Ninette said. “You just never wanted to. I think you were afraid that would make you the same as everyone else here, and you wanted to be different. But you can be who you are and we’ll all still love you.”

Maggie pulled her mother closer. “You’re amazing. I love you so, so much.”

“I love you more.”

“Impossible.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Uh-huh.”

It was a game they’d played since Maggie was a toddler. Ninette usually let her win. Tonight, Maggie gave her mother the victory.

Tug returned to the room. “I need to get back to the house and tend to our guests. Why don’t you stay with Mom?”

“I think you should stay with her, Dad.” Maggie slid out of her mother’s arms and stood up. “I’ll take care of every else.”

“You sure?” Tug asked. He looked nervous. “There’s cooking involved.”

“I can handle it. I promise I won’t poison our guests.” Maggie gasped and put her hand over her mouth. “I can’t believe I just said that.”

Tug managed a half-smile. “Don’t worry about it. Just stick to that promise.”

*

After getting her dad’s assurances that he’d text her with updates about Ninette’s condition, Maggie raced home. She was one of those people who, raised by a great cook, preferred to compliment the chef rather than prepare anything herself. If there were health risks associated with microwave use, she was destined to be Patient Zero. But now she had to feed a houseful of people, none of whom was expecting a nuked Lean Cuisine.

She parked and ran into the shotgun, where she knew Gran’ had a few boxes of jambalaya rice. Maggie grabbed them and planned an ad hoc meal in her head as she rushed to the kitchen in the main house. She stopped in the doorway and gawked at the sight before her.

Gran’, a butcher’s apron over her taupe silk blouse and slacks, was tossing shrimp into a large sauté pan while Alice Ryker chopped celery. The girl’s brothers stood next to Gran’ holding measuring spoons and spices. “Two bay leaves and a teaspoon of thyme,” Gran’ ordered. The boy measured and tossed in the spices. “Well done. Now I need the celery.” Alice
walked over and tossed celery into the pan; it sizzled as it hit butter melting in the pan.

Gran’ dumped a bowl of tomatoes into the concoction on the stove. “Hello, chère,” she called to Maggie.

“Uh . . . you cook?”

“Of course. Children, cover your ears.” The Ryker kids did so. “Back in the day, there was a saying: if you want to get a man, you need to be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen, and a bad girl in the bedroom. Nowadays, I’d take a fist to anyone who said this, but it did motivate me to pick up a few recipes. Why don’t you throw together a salad and heat up some dinner rolls while I finish making my Shrimp Creole?”

“Can we uncover our ears?” Sam asked.

“Yes, my apologies, I forgot all about that.”

Maggie put together a salad, impressing herself when she jazzed it up with dried cranberries and chopped pecans. Ninette had left a bowl of dough to rise, and she pinched off balls to turn into rolls.

“Your mama’s going to be fine,” Gran’ told her as they worked. “I got a real strong sense of it.”

“I hope you’re right,” Maggie said. “I’m not getting a thing from my sense.” She pulled a tray of browned dinner rolls out of the oven, took a picture of them, and sent it to Ninette with the text, “#Success!” Anything to distract her mother from the unspoken fear that they all shared.

The meal that night was a group effort. The Rykers and Butlers served the appetizers that went with the drinks Kyle mixed at the bar. The Georgia boys provided music that was more suited to an electronic dance party than a sedate lodging
like Crozat, but at least it was upbeat. Cuties Jan, Angela, and Suzy set the table and took charge of the dessert Lia brought over. The only guest not pitching in was Cutie Debbie, who seemed so believably semicatatonic that Maggie wouldn’t be surprised if Bo unearthed some acting lessons in the woman’s background.

Maggie looked around the table as everyone dined and chatted. The night felt more akin to a family gathering than a hostess tending to her guests. She had trouble believing that one of these lovely people might be a killer. It would be like finding out that the fun cousin who taught you how to make armpit farts was leading a double life as a violent criminal.

After dinner, she thanked everyone for their help and then shooed Gran’ off to bed, taking on cleanup duties herself. She was finding it therapeutic and would have added cleaning to her Crozat duties if she didn’t know how much the Shexnayders needed the job. She finished loading the dishwasher and turned it on. Her phone pinged and vibrated with a text, and she eagerly read the message from Tug: “Mom sleeping well. Fingers crossed.”

Her emotions vacillated from disappointment that the text wasn’t from Bo to relief that her dad seemed optimistic. She sent him heart and fingers-crossed emoticons and then pocketed her phone and headed toward the back door through what the family called the Event Wall Hall of Fame. Every event held at Crozat since its inception as a B and B was commemorated with a framed photo on this wall. Aside from decorating a dull area few guests ever saw, the pictures served as visual reminders of highlights from one successful event that the family could
use for another. In this way, the wall served as a large scrapbook of party-planning ideas.

As she walked past them, Maggie realized that she’d missed dusting the tops of the frames. She went back to the kitchen, grabbed a rag, wet it, and returned to the hall. Cynic that she was, she wondered how many of the couples were divorced by now as she dusted a handful of wedding portraits. Her eye landed on one of the older photos, taken about ten years prior. The groom, smiling and elegant in a morning coat, looked familiar. She struggled to place him. Then it hit her, and the realization of who he was made her gasp.

The groom in the photo was Kyle Bruner.