by Ellen Byron
There was a light knock at the door, and Denise Randall popped her head in. “Hi, sorry to bother y’all. I’m here to pick up Allie and needed to use the little girl’s room.”
“Of course,” Constance said, pointing. “It’s that way. Oh, but Denise, I’m glad you’re here. I have some good news for you.” Constance beckoned to Denise, who darted over. Maggie made a show of stepping away to give them privacy, but kept an ear on the conversation. “I know Gerard was threatening to sue your husband over those bad investments. You don’t have to worry about that anymore. My late husband had a healthy insurance policy, so I won’t be acting on his threats … although I’m sure he would have eventually gotten over his anger if he’d lived.” Constance seemed to throw the last line in as an afterthought.
Denise impulsively took Constance’s hands and squeezed them. “Oh, Mrs. Damboise, thank you so much. You have no idea what a relief this is. I’ll tell Mike right away. Believe me, he learned his lesson. No more day trading for him, especially with other people’s money. He’ll be finding a new hobby.” Denise released Constance. “So sorry. I got overexcited. Anyway, thanks again.”
Denise continued her journey to the restroom as Constance took a regal walk out of the warehouse. And Maggie added another name to the list of murder suspects—the man who lost Gerard Damboise a bundle of money, Mike Randall.
Chapter 13
Maggie texted Bo the news about Mike Randall’s financial clash with Gerard. She noticed Mo standing outside her car, on her phone; it seemed like the perfect opportunity to do a little digging into the skin queen’s relationship with Gerard. After some debate, she landed on a course of action that would involve yet another bold lie, and approached Mo.
“You’re still here,” Mo said. “Lucky gal. Veevay texted us reps they’re coming out with a new brightening mask made with all-natural ingredients, and you’re the first to know before I tweet the news to my followers. In fact, if you preorder, I’ll give you a twenty-five-percent discount as my first customer for the cream.”
“About that…” Maggie hesitated for dramatic effect. “When we met, I felt like I’d seen you before. I was trying to remember where—Junie’s? The Park ’n’ Shop? And then it hit me. I was outside Petit Plastic Surgery one day, trying to decide if I should get some information on a laser facial. And I saw you go into their office.”
Mo stiffened. “It wasn’t me.”
“It was you, Mo.”
“You can’t say that for sure.”
“Yes, I can. Because…” Maggie hesitated for real, trapped by Mo’s challenge. Then it hit her. “I recognized your walk. It’s very distinctive.” She held her breath, waiting for Mo’s response.
The woman’s confidence sagged. “I’ve been told that before. I blame it on the dang six-inch heels I always wear. I love ’em to death, but if I don’t take tiny steps, I’m like to tip over.”
Maggie hid her relief that the tack she took had worked. She affected an attitude of uncertainty. “The thing is I’m concerned about the Veevay products now. If their star saleswoman is getting procedures, it makes me wonder how effective they really are.”
Mo crossed her arms in front of her chest and pursed her lips. She radiated a cold anger. “How much do you want?”
“What?” Maggie was thrown by Mo’s sudden shift in demeanor.
“To keep your mouth shut. How much?”
“Absolutely nothing, Mo. I shelled out a lot of money for Veevay products, and if they’re some kind of scam, I deserve to know that, and so do your other customers.” Maggie’s forceful response was true, if convenient. She did want to know if she’d plunked down money on a useless product.
Mo’s affect shifted yet again. She clapped a hand in front of her mouth in horror. “Oh, Maggie, I am so, so sorry. I don’t know where that came from. Well, I do. Someone else learned about my little secret and decided to keep it in his back pocket in case he ever needed to—well, I’ll say it—blackmail me.”
Maggie’s instincts told her who “he” was, but they also warned her not to press Mo into naming names. “How did this person find out about Dr. Petit?”
“The mailman delivered a bill to the wrong house. Unfortunately, it was the really wrong house. But trust me, Veevay products are terrific. There are a lot of younger Veevay reps nipping at my heels. I’ve already lost a few customers to them, and I can’t afford to lose any more. We’re our own best sales tools, so to survive in this business, I need to age backwards. And short of magic, that takes the occasional visit to Dr. Petit.”
“I understand, and I do sympathize with you. But you can’t lie to your customers.”
“I don’t. Think about my party. I never made any claims about people having my skin. It was all about health and pampering and enhancing what the good Lord gave each of us.”
“I do remember you saying that at the party. But don’t put yourself in a position where you could be blackmailed. It’s dangerous.” And may have gotten Gerard Damboise killed, Maggie added to herself.
“I promise. Thank you, chére. To show my appreciation for your kindness and honesty, that first jar of brightening mask is on me. Notice I said ‘first.’ Because after you try it, you’ll be back for more, I guar-an-tee.”
Mo gave Maggie a rib-crushing hug, then got into her car and drove off with a wave. Maggie watched her go. She sat on the Park ’n’ Shop steps to think for a moment, then texted Bo a brief recap of her conversation with the businesswoman. Mo lived around the corner from the Damboises. Finding Mo’s errant bill among their own letters probably wasn’t the first time the Damboises got someone else’s mail. But for Gerard, it might have been the last. She just hoped it wasn’t Mo who stamped him “Return to Sender.”
* * *
It was still dark by the time Maggie got home, winter having brought nightfall early. The air was damp, but warm enough to have the car windows rolled down. As Maggie pulled into the parking area behind the manor house, she was surprised to hear the sound of a power saw coming from the Crozats’ flood-damaged garage. She parked and walked over to the building, where she found Jayden sawing two-by-fours under the glare of a jerry-rigged floodlight. He turned off the saw when he noticed her. “Isn’t it quittin’ time?” she asked the vet.
Jayden shook his head. “Y’all have been so generous with your hospitality, but I keep getting pulled away to other jobs. It’s not fair to you, so I figure as long as you don’t have guests who wouldn’t take kindly to my noise, I’ll put in a couple of hours at night out here and make some progress.”
“Thank you. I wish I could convince you to take a room in the garconniére while we’re light on guests.”
“I’m fine with the tent. I was a foster kid. Lived in a lot of group homes, so I’m happy for some privacy.”
“No family?”
Jayden swept sawdust off the two-by-four he’d cut. “Oh, I have family. Chret and all the other men I served with.”
Maggie was about to dig for more details about Jayden’s life when she and Jayden were both distracted by the rumble of a truck. Maggie stuck her head out the door and saw a HomeNHearth delivery truck. The truck’s brakes whined as it came to a stop in front of the garage. The driver cut the engine and jumped out of the truck cab. It was Denise’s husband, Mike Randall. “Hey there,” he greeted her with a wink. Maggie forced herself not to recoil. “I got a big ol’ order of drywall here. Your pops around to sign for it?”
“I can do that.” Because I’m a functional adult and not some helpless ninny like you’re subtly implying, Maggie refrained from saying. Mike handed her a tablet, and she signed for the order with her index finger.
“Where do you want it?”
“There.” Maggie gestured inside the garage.
“Alrighty.”
Mike began to unload the drywall. Jayden stepped outside. “I can give you a hand.”
“I’ll take it.”
Mike and Jayden began emptying the truck of its cargo, and Ma
ggie saw an opportunity to delve into the deliveryman’s relationship with the Damboises. “It’s awful about Gerard Damboise, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, tough break,” was his rather casual response.
“It must be hard, with the two of you being friends and all.”
“Whoa,” Jayden said as Mike lost his grip on a stack of drywall. The two men managed to regain control of the stack before it fell to the ground.
“Where’d you get that idea about me and Damboise?” Mike said. “I barely knew the guy.”
Maggie affected the attitude of the flake Mike mistook her for. “I don’t know. It was off something I heard Constance Damboise tell Denise.”
“What’d she tell her?”
The man’s confrontational attitude was starting to make Maggie nervous. “Might be best if you ask Denise.”
“I’ll be doing that.”
Mike dropped his end of the last drywall stack, which landed with a large thud. He strode back to his truck, jumped into the cab, fired up the engine, punched the accelerator, and barreled off. Maggie and Jayden watched him go. “Weird,” Jayden said.
“You, my friend, are the master of understatement.”
There was a sudden shout from the manor house, then a string of epithets. “Oh no,” Maggie said. “That’s my dad.”
Maggie and Jayden raced toward the manor house, leaping up the back steps and slamming the door behind them. As they ran into the kitchen, Gopher and foster dog Jolie scooted past them and disappeared down the hall. An anguished Tug paced back and forth in the middle of the room, cradling his cast iron pot.
“Dad,” Maggie said, “What is going on?”
“Someone put my black pot on the footstool,” Tug said. He pointed to a small stool that stood barely a foot off the ground. “I came in to do some fiddling with my recipe and found Gopher and Jolie with their faces in the pot, licking away. You know what that means, don’t you? I have to wash it. All those years and years of seasoning. Gone. Just gone.”
“Uh, Dad…” Maggie, about to delivery very bad news, grimaced. “I don’t think washing is the answer.”
“You’re right. It would be too destructive. I’ll get a rag and give it a good, hearty wipe.”
“No.” Maggie, perilously close to losing her patience, reminded herself of her father’s almost anthropomorphic attachment to the pot. “If two dogs licked it—”
“And they were going to town on that baby, let me tell you. That’s some good seasoning right there.”
Maggie inhaled a deep breath through her nose, slowly exhaled, and then spoke. “Dad, I love you dearly. I’d say more than you love your pot, but I’m not sure that’s possible. Anyway, if both dogs ‘went to town’ on the old thing, there’s really only one way to go. I think you have to … throw it away.”
Tug winced. He sat on the stool, the pot in his lap. “I know.” His voice was husky. “I couldn’t bring myself to say it.”
“Sir, I’m deeply sorry for your loss,” Jayden said. “I’ll be going back to work now. But if you need anything, please let me know.”
Jayden escaped from the kitchen, leaving Maggie with her mourning father. She knelt next to Tug. “This pot’s been in the family for generations,” he said. “Nobody could tell you how old it is. It’s like losing a member of the family. I blame Mike Randall. I know he was here. He snuck in and moved my pot to knock me out of the gumbo competition.”
“He was here to deliver drywall. The man is sketchy, to be sure, and I wouldn’t dismiss him as a suspect in Gerard Damboise’s murder. But I do think he’s innocent of murdering your black pot.” Maggie put an arm around her father’s shoulder. “If it’s easier on you, I can … dispose of the pot.”
Tug hugged the pot tighter. “No one’s ‘disposing’ of anything. He’s getting the send-off he deserves. Right after I track down Mike Randall and clock him.” He stood up and stomped out of the room, clutching the pot in his arms.
“So, it’s a ‘he’ now,” Maggie said to Gopher, who’d wandered back into the kitchen and was sniffing the floor for snacks. “That is a whole new level of crazy.”
Maggie heard someone coming into the house through the back door. A moment later, the scent of fresh-baked bread wafted in, followed by Ninette carrying a bag of groceries and a baguette in a long brown bag. “I stopped at Fais Dough Dough to pick up some fresh bread to go with the millionth pot of gumbo your father’s making tonight.”
“No gumbo tonight, Mom.” Maggie relayed the sad saga of Tug’s pot.
Ninette gasped. “Oh no! It’s all my fault. Dad moved everything around, and I spent an hour trying to get my kitchen back in order. I must have put the pot on the stool and forgotten about it.”
“You better let him know you’re the culprit before he does some serious damage to an innocent man.”
“I will. After I put away these groceries.”
“Mother. No stalling.”
“Fine,” Ninette grumbled. Maggie took the groceries from her mother, and Ninette slowly shuffled off to meet her fate.
Maggie put away the groceries and took a container of leftover shrimp étouffée out of the refrigerator. She checked to make sure her mother, the “microwave police,” wasn’t on her way back into the kitchen, and then heated up a bowl of étouffée. She placed it on a tray, with a big hunk of the baguette, and made her way to Gran’ in the Rose Room.
Grand-mère, clad in a dusty rose silk nightgown, sat propped up in bed by several down pillows. Her face lit up when she saw Maggie. “I could easily get used to being so spoiled.” Gran’ put down the mystery she was reading and accepted the tray. “What was all the commotion about?”
Maggie filled Gran’ in on the sad saga of the black pot. “Hmm,” Gran’ said. “I’d call that a Freudian move on your sweet mother’s part. It is sad about the pot. It’s been in the family for who knows how long. Your grand-pére used to drive me as crazy with his gumbo prep as your dad drives your mama. I’m sure the same can be said of generations of Crozat women. Now, fill me in on the pageant and investigation into Gerard’s death. Any suspects?”
“Many.” Maggie sat down next to her grand-mère. “In addition to your garden variety of contestants and momtestants, there’s the almost-merry widow, of course. Mo Heedle is in the mix because Gerard threatened to expose her visits to a plastic surgeon. Robbie Metz’s wife appears to be a kleptomaniac, so you have to wonder if Gerard knew about that and used it to his advantage somehow. Denise hated Gerard because her husband, Mike Randall, did some failed day trading with the old man’s money, and Gerard was demanding to be reimbursed for the losses. But lucky for Mike, her husband’s death cleared the way for Constance to forgive the debt. And then there’s Gin Bertrand, who, I’m sorry to say, has a record.”
“Lee did say she’s a bit of a hot mess, but he didn’t give me the specifics.”
“I haven’t looked into the other momtestants. But so far, of the ones I know, only perfect Pauline Tremblay and her oh-so-perfect family seem to have had a neutral relationship with the late, unlamented Gerard Damboise.”
“You know the old cliché, chére. Ninety-nine percent of American families are dysfunctional, and the other one percent is lying about it. Maybe the Tremblays’ lives are a little too perfect.”
“Good point, Gran. It’s time I got to know Pauline Tremblay a little better.”
Chapter 14
First thing in the morning, Maggie texted Lia for permission to use Grove Hall’s remodel as an excuse to pay Pauline a visit. She filled a to-go cup with coffee and left the cottage for her car. When she reached the convertible, she found a copy of the Pelican Penny Clipper had landed on the car’s hood. She picked it up and saw the front-page story trumpeted an upcoming exhibit on the orphan train at the St. Pierre Parish Historical Society. Maggie almost did a spit take when she read a quote from Constance Damboise: “It was my husband’s dying wish.”
She made the short drive into Pelican’s quaint village center and
stopped at Lia’s bakery, Fais Dough Dough, to pick up an “appreciation” present from client Lia for her decorator, Pauline. She was surprised to find criminal defense lawyer Quentin MacIlhoney behind the counter. He was dressed in what, for the hugely successful lawyer, passed as casual wear: perfectly pressed slacks, bespoke button-down shirt, and a bright yellow cashmere pullover sweater. A brand-new Rolex watch sparkled on one wrist, a computer watch on the other. “Hi, Quentin—didn’t expect to see you here. Business slow at the office?”
“My partners forced me to take a day off,” he said, retrieving her box of pastries from a cooler. “Since Vanessa’s helping Lia out by managing Bon Bon, I thought I’d give Kyle a break and man the Fais Dough Dough counter for the day.”
“Hey there, Maggie,” Vanessa, ex-fiancé of Rufus Durand and future wife of Quentin, called to her. Maggie craned her neck and saw Van waving to her from the open doorway between Fais Dough Dough and its sister store, Bon Bon Sweets. “That’s just Quentin’s excuse. My mama has been living with us since her trailer took on water during the flood, and truth be told, Quenty would rather do pretty much anything besides hang around the house with her.”
Quentin threw up his hands. “Busted.”
Maggie gave him a sympathetic smile. Vanessa’s mother, Tookie Fleer, ran airboat swamp tours for tourists. A tiny woman whose peppery personality belied her size, she was so tough that rumor had it her hobby was wrestling alligators. “But,” Quentin continued, “I could use a great excuse to work late at the office. We got ourselves the mystery flood victim and the late Gerard Damboise. I need you to solve one of these murders and deliver me a client.”
“That’s Pelican PD’s job, not mine.”
“Oh ye of the stellar track record, don’t be coy. My sources tell me the death of John Doe was due to a well-placed bullet.”
“I didn’t know that was common knowledge.”
“It’s not. Remember, I am an uncommon man.”
