Crazy Like a Fox

by Anne Stuart

  They had reached the spacious second-floor landing and were heading toward the back of the house, when a noise above them drew Margaret’s gaze. A man was descending; a muscular, otherwise nondescript man of middle years, with a tough face. He didn’t glance at the three women as he made his way down the stairs, but just as he passed by, his jacket coat flapped open, exposing a large service revolver tucked into his belt.

  “Who’s that?” Carrie asked, fascinated.

  Mrs. McKinley didn’t bother to look as she fitted a key in the door at the end of the hallway, then pushed it open. “That’s just Georges, honey,” she said. “One of the hired men. They don’t talk to us.”

  “I thought Gertrude said you were the only help,” Margaret remarked.

  Mrs. McKinley’s eyes met hers. “I’m the only household help. That’s not counting the ones who watch out for Mr. Peter.”

  “What . . .?”

  But Mrs. McKinley had moved into the elegant room and was pushing aside the curtains that darkened the space. A veranda ran along the side of the house with an entrance into the room, and the woman opened the French doors, letting the cool, damp breeze flood the stuffy room.

  “Your daughter’s in the front bedroom. Ms. Lisette’s in the middle,” she said, scanning the room with a professional eye. “If you need anything just ask.”

  “Couldn’t we share a room? Or at least have adjoining rooms?” Margaret quickly asked, reading the stricken expression on Carrie’s face.

  Mrs. McKinley shook her head. “Ms. Lisette’s room is the biggest and best in the house, and there’s no way she’d move. Even if she only uses it a few weeks a year. Your daughter will be just fine—you shouldn’t coddle young ones. Makes them fearful. She’ll be across the hall from Mrs. Delacroix. Both your rooms open onto the veranda, so you’ll hear Carrie if she calls.”

  “That sounds fine,” Margaret said briskly, determined to have Carrie share the huge tester bed rather than be left alone to the tender mercies of Gertrude or any of the other intimidating members of this Southern Gothic household. “Let’s go get you settled in, darling, and then we can take a little nap. We’ve been driving since early this morning.”

  That wasn’t strictly true, but Mrs. McKinley wouldn’t know it. Margaret had used her last twenty dollars to fill the gas tank of the Escort somewhere in the middle of Texas. There had been no money for a motel, and Margaret had been determined not to sleep another night in the car. So she’d driven through the long dark hours, across the flat expanse of Texas into Louisiana, up into the winding bayou country.

  Now she was so tired she could barely move. At least Carrie was charmed by her remarkably pretty room, happy to explore, and when Margaret headed back down the hallway

  Mrs. McKinley kept pace with her as she outlined the rules of the house.

  “Dinner is promptly as seven every night. You are to present yourself in the salon at six for sherry and conversation. You will also join Mrs. Delacroix for tea at three-thirty in the afternoon. Your daughter may accompany you, but she must be on her best behavior or she will have to eat in the kitchen. You are responsible for cleaning your own room and that of your daughter, as well as your own bathroom. In general, you may wander where you like, but be aware that this is bayou country—we have sinkholes and quicksand and alligators. Most importantly, though, you are never to go up to the third floor. It’s filled with storage and some of the flooring needs to be replaced. Welcome to Maison Delacroix.”

  For a moment Margaret wondered if the cool, graceful woman was being sarcastic, but before she could decide, Mrs. McKinley disappeared. Margaret’s head was pounding, and she knew she should go back and try to talk Carrie into abandoning her dream bedroom, but she just couldn’t. Instead she headed back for her own room and collapsed on the big bed. Just as her eyes were closing, she heard a thump up above and remembered the man with the gun, coming down the stairs as if he belonged. And Mrs. McKinley’s offhand words—“the ones who watch out for Mr. Peter.”

  For a moment Margaret struggled out of the mists of sleep. The image those words conjured up was not reassuring, and a good mother would have gotten up and checked on her child, refused to leave her alone in a house where someone needed to be watched out for. But Carrie was revealing in having her very own room, complete with four-poster bed, and Margaret was simply too tired to fight that battle. She would have to trust in a not particularly merciful fate to look out for her daughter for the next few hours. For the time being, with a dead Escort and two dollars and forty-three cents in her wallet, the two of them weren’t going anywhere. For now she had no choice but to stop fighting.

  PETER ANDREW Delacroix stared through the fancy grillwork that blocked the third-floor windows of Maison Delacroix, curling his hands into fists. He’d been watching when that decrepit little car had lurched up the weed-choked driveway, watching as the two people had climbed out. He couldn’t tell from that angle if the little one was a boy or a girl, but he’d had a good view of the woman. Tall, with flame-bright red hair and a defiant tilt to her shoulders, she’d looked as if she was prepared to do battle.

  She would need to be prepared if she was going to tangle with Grandmère. Very few young women could run up against the old lady and come away unscathed, and this one was probably no different. Yet for some reason he couldn’t help but think that this time Grandmère might have met her match.

  He moved away from the grillwork, his sharp green eyes looking around the room. It was a nice enough room. Spacious, carved out of the unused attics at Maison Delacroix, with a kitchenette and bathroom on one end, a bedroom on the other and a huge, open space that held his computer, his exercise equipment, television and stereo, and many books. A man should be happy in a thousand square feet of space that was his alone. His, and whoever they were hiring to guard him at the moment.

  Moving across the thick carpet that had been put down not so much for his comfort but to silence his pacing footsteps for the people below, he threw himself down on the couch. He could feel a relapse coming on, he told himself. He would talk to Wendell or Doc about it. He had to get out of there. Every now and then things built up to a fever pitch, so that if he didn’t escape he’d start banging his head against the grillwork that was more functional than decorative. The grillwork that kept Peter Delacroix a prisoner in his grandmother’s attic.

  A willing prisoner, he reminded himself, running his hands through his long hair. With the cooperation of his beloved grandmère, the state of Louisiana, Shady Oaks Sanitarium and his lawyer, he was now enjoying his second year of house arrest. But they didn’t call it arrest if the prisoner was crazy, did they? What did they term it? Occupational therapy?

  He picked up the book lying beside him on the sectional and hurled it at the wall. He’d gotten himself into this mess; it was up to him to get himself out.

  But right now escape seemed as unlikely a possibility as the sun setting in the east, unless a miracle happened, and Peter Delacroix no longer believed in miracles.

  Chapter Two

  FOUR HOURS LATER Margaret wasn’t feeling much better. Her nap had been haunted by unpleasant dreams—men with guns, mysterious thumps overhead and a man named Peter who had to be watched. She wished she could remember what Dexter had said about his cousins, his family. It hadn’t been much. Dexter had been far too interested in the roll of the dice, the turn of a card, to waste time on conversations with his wife and daughter.

  It was his gambling that had led them to their final, desperate predicament. His death in a car accident, one that just might have been arranged by his creditors, had left Margaret and Carrie destitute and frightened. She’d sent a telegram to Maison Delacroix more out of duty than the feeling that anyone would actually care, and the response hadn’t been encouraging. Gertrude’s invitation and offer of shelter hadn’t been warmly made—it had been tantamount to an order, and Margaret, f
inally free of a man she had come to hate, wasn’t about to take any more orders.

  Until she’d had no choice. She still wasn’t certain she’d made the right decision, but there had been no other choice. She’d gotten only partway through her graduate studies when the money had run out, and Margaret had learned that Dexter couldn’t be trusted with their infant daughter while Margaret went to classes. She could type, with more speed than accuracy, but bringing a child along on job interviews didn’t exactly impress prospective employers, and their resources had dwindled into nothingness, ending with them being locked out of their fifth-rate apartment in Tucson.

  She should be reveling in the comfort and safety of Maison Delacroix. Someone was actually cooking for her, her bedroom was larger than the entire Tucson apartment and Carrie, with the adaptability of the young, seemed charmed with the entire place. If only Margaret could get rid of her positively Gothic sense of foreboding.

  She dressed for dinner, or at least as close as she could come to it with her limited wardrobe. She owned one dress, a depressing black number she’d worn to Dexter’s funeral, every single job interview and whenever all her jeans and T-shirts needed washing. It made her look even taller, even skinnier, and her unfortunate shade of hair even brighter, but it would have to do.

  “You look nice, Ma,” Carrie said, surveying her critically. Carrie didn’t own a dress, and if she did, she’d probably refuse to wear it. She was now at a point of rejecting all traces of femininity and preferred to be called by anything other than her name.

  “Thanks, kid. So do you.” She smoothed back Carrie’s short-cropped red hair and looked into those unmistakable Delacroix eyes. She’d never known where that piercing shade of brown had come from, until she’d met Gertrude hours earlier. That family resemblance made her feel a little more comfortable in her captivity. “Baby, we don’t have to stay here too long. Just long enough for me to get a job and earn a little money. Enough to give us a head start.”

  “I like it here,” Carrie said. “Better than Arizona. Can’t we just stay here for a while? I was getting tired of moving around all the time.”

  Margaret sighed. “So was I, sweetheart. So did I.”

  “THERE YOU ARE, Margaret.” Gertrude greeted her from her throne like perch in the middle of the salon. “Your cousins were wondering where you were.”

  Not my cousins, Margaret thought, but she plastered an amiable smile on her face. She was going to be pleasant and conciliatory if it killed her. “I’m sorry. I overslept.”

  “Don’t let Grandmère intimidate you,” a soft, slow, Southern voice assured her.

  Margaret turned, matching the face and body with the voice. Cousin Wendell, she guessed. It couldn’t be Peter—no one was watching this man. Before she could say anything he enveloped her in an embrace, kissing her lightly on her parted lips. “Welcome to Louisiana, Cousin. And welcome to Maison Delacroix.”

  “Stop flirting,” a pretty, dark-haired woman said. “Give her a chance to meet you before you start pawing.”

  “Children!” A faint, reproving voice issued from a faded gray lady on the other side of the sofa. “No squabbling in front of company.”

  “Margaret’s not company,” the man said, smiling down at her. “She’s family. Kissing cousins.”

  Margaret took a hasty step backward in case he was about to repeat his salute, but he merely kept hold of her hand. “Allow me to make the introductions, Margaret. I’m Wendell Delacroix, Dexter’s cousin. That sharp-tongued brunette is my sister, Lisette, and heaven only knows what her current last name is. My mother’s beside her on the couch—she’d be your Aunt Eustacia, and Uncle Remy’s over by the bar.” He looked down at Carrie’s skeptical expression as she stood as close to her mother as she possibly could. “And this must be your adorable daughter, Carrie.”

  Carrie could tell a con job a mile away, Margaret thought with a mixture of fondness and exasperation. “No, I’m not,” Carrie said flatly. “Call me ‘Sam.’”

  “We certainly won’t,” Gertrude announced. “Your name is Carrie, and that’s what you’ll be referred to in my presence. And in this family, young lady, we dress for dinner.”

  “I don’t own a dress.”

  “I don’t own a dress, Grandmère,” Gertrude corrected. “We’ll have to do something about that.”

  “I don’t wear dresses.” Carrie’s piquant little face had a mutinous look.

  “Then you may eat in the kitchen with Mrs. McKinley.”

  At that Carrie’s face lit up. “It’s a deal,” she agreed cheerfully.

  It was past time for Margaret to intervene. She’d resigned herself to a certain amount of interference once she’d acceded to Gertrude’s summons, but there were limits. “Where’s Cousin Peter?” she inquired innocently.

  A dead silence filled the room. Aunt Eustacia, a pale woman of indeterminate age, lowered her eyes; Uncle Remy, a well-dressed, florid-faced gentleman in his sixties, poured himself another drink and stared into it as if seeking the answers to life’s eternal mysteries, and even Wendell flushed. He was a very attractive man, Margaret thought absently, though a bit too much like his late-cousin Dexter. He was tall, with wavy blond hair, a well-defined brow and nose, and cheerful blue eyes. She would need to watch herself very carefully—wavy blond hair still might have the ability to addle her brains.

  “Cousin Peter doesn’t usually join us for dinner,” Gertrude announced repressively.

  “Thank God,” Lisette murmured, lighting a cigarette and blowing a thin stream of smoke in her mother’s direction. “This company is jolly enough.” She rose and crossed the room to Margaret with a graceful glide accentuated by the designer silk dress that was clearly made for her well-curved body. “Watch out for Southern gentleman, Cousin Margaret. You should have learned your lesson with dear Dexter. Keep away from my brother, and most particularly keep away from Cousin Peter. He’s a lady-killer.”

  “Lisette!” Wendell’s voice was a shocked hiss. “You’ve had too much to drink.”

  “I certainly have,” she acknowledged cheerfully, waving her cigarette a bit wildly. “And so has Uncle Remy. What else can you do in the armpit of the South? It’s a wonder everyone hasn’t gone crazy by now.”

  “Watch your tongue, Lisette,” Gertrude warned, her quiet voice deadly. “Or you may eat in the kitchen as well.”

  “It might be preferable to this charming bunch,” she announced with a sweeping gesture that sprinkled ashes all over Margaret’s black dress.

  By this time Uncle Remy had lumbered gracefully from the bar, two drinks in hand. He presented one to Margaret with a courtly flourish. “Drink up, Cousin Margaret,” he said in his gently slurred voice. “It’s the only way to survive an evening en famille at Maison Delacroix.”

  “This is boring,” Carrie declared, having correctly picked up the unpleasant atmosphere. “I’m going to the kitchen. See you later, Ma.”

  “See you later, kid,” Margaret said faintly, wishing she could follow her daughter’s sturdy little figure. She took a sip of her drink, then bit back a choking cough. Remy Delacroix had poured her a tall glass of straight whiskey.

  “She’s delightful,” Wendell said fondly. “So unspoiled.”

  “So fresh,” Lisette muttered, wandering over to the window.

  “Give it up, Lisette,” Wendell told her sharply. “Can’t we have a pleasant meal for once?”

  “I don’t think so.” The soft, whispery voice floating up from the self-effacing Eustacia had the effect of capturing everyone’s attention. “He’s coming.”

  No one in the room, with the exception of a bewildered Margaret, had to ask what she meant. Lisette, with a short, sibilant curse, stubbed out her cigarette. Wendell moved swiftly to turn off the radio that Margaret hadn’t even heard, and Gertrude sighed a long-suffering sigh, belied by the gleam in her
dark eyes.

  “He must have heard you were here, my dear,” Remy said sweetly. “Better drink up. You’re going to need it.”

  “We’re not going to have one of his awful policemen at dinner, are we?” Lisette demanded plaintively. “They slurp their soup.”

  “There are worse things in this life than being underbred,” Wendell intoned.

  “Name one,” Lisette retorted.

  “Your nasty tongue, Cousin.”

  A new voice had entered the fray, and the assembled Delacroix and Jaffreys turned in silence to face the newcomer. Margaret followed suit, more with curiosity than with dread, to see what the mysterious Peter Delacroix looked like.

  He was without a keeper, standing alone in the drawing room doorway, and indeed, he didn’t look as though he needed a burly policeman to keep him in line. He was tall like the other Delacroix and Jaffrey cousins, but slighter, wirier than either Wendell or Dexter. His hair was darker, a deep chestnut, and his eyes were neither the bright blue of Wendell’s nor the piercing brown of his grandmother’s. She couldn’t quite tell their color from that distance, but she presumed they were a nondescript hazel. What they lacked in color they more than made up for in glittering intelligence.

  He had a narrow face, high cheekbones and a wide mouth that was curved in a cynical smile as he greeted the clearly unwelcoming members of his family. There was no denying that the man was freaking gorgeous, with an oddly muffled intensity that made her uneasy. If he needed a keeper it was probably to keep away the hordes of women who wanted to throw themselves at his feet. Next to Peter, Wendell’s blond attractions paled into insignificance, and Dexter’s charms were completely forgettable.

  “How lovely that you decided to come down, dear Peter,” Gertrude said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “It might have been nice if you’d informed me instead of your Aunt Eustacia.”