Arsenic and Old Cake

by Jacklyn Brady

  “Because of the robbery and what happened to Tyrone? Why did you owe her anything for that? You weren’t there, were you?”

  The old woman’s head shot up, and her eyes turned hard and black again. “No, I wasn’t, but I knew about it and I didn’t try to stop them.”

  “So you all felt guilty about Willie taking the fall for Tyrone’s murder, but not guilty enough to tell the truth? And to ease the guilt you vowed to make sure Hyacinth didn’t suffer.”

  “They aren’t going to like you knowing about that,” Lula Belle warned.

  Something uncomfortable danced across my nerve endings “Who?” I asked. “Who isn’t going to like it?”

  But I’d crossed the line. Lula Belle was finished talking. She grabbed the door with both hands and gave it a shove that was surprisingly strong for a woman her age.

  “Tell me who you’re talking about.” I tried to stop her, but I was too late. The door banged shut, leaving me alone in the hall surrounded by other closed doors that might have been concealing anything . . . including a killer.

  Twenty-seven

  Hyacinth was in the dining room clearing away dinner dishes when I returned to the central part of the inn. She moved slowly, her heavy arms jiggling as she worked. Her breathing sounded labored, and she looked angry—or maybe she was just worried. After all, her carefully ordered world did seem to be crumbling around her.

  I spent a moment wondering just what kind of life it had been. Her husband had gone to prison for murder, leaving her dependent upon the people who’d helped put him there. When she tried to come forward with the truth, he’d betrayed her by telling the police she was lying. His cohorts had all lived here, paying her way, but the work she did at the inn more than earned whatever they shelled out in monthly rent. And then there was Primrose. I couldn’t tell if she helped or hindered Hyacinth’s efforts.

  Had any of that pushed Hyacinth over the edge? Had living with constant reminders of her husband’s mistake been too much for her? It probably would have been for me.

  I knocked lightly on the doorframe, and Hyacinth’s head jerked up. She scowled when she saw me standing there, but she tried to hide it. “Mrs. Broussard. You’re up late. What can I do for you?”

  It was barely nine o’clock. Hardly the witching hour. “I’d like to talk with you if you have a minute.”

  “Oh? What about?”

  I nodded toward the annex and tried to keep my voice sounding friendly and unthreatening. “I was just talking with Lula Belle. She told me what happened to your husband.”

  Hyacinth’s attempt at friendliness vanished in a blink. “That’s none of your business.”

  “I realize that,” I said, “but if there’s a chance that it had any connection to Dontae’s death, I think you need to tell the police about what happened back then.”

  Hyacinth looked away with a huff. “The police don’t want to hear what I have to say. They’ll believe what they want to.”

  I could understand why she felt that way, and I decided not to push her. “It must have been difficult for you, being left alone with a child to raise. Is Tamarra’s mother still around? Is she any help to you now?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  I moved a little closer. “Nothing, really. But I’m curious by nature and I was brought up to care about other people. Your story intrigues me.”

  Her eyes flickered to my face briefly. “Maybe you should have been brought up to keep your nose out of other peoples’ business.”

  I laughed softly. “Believe me, my aunt tried hard to teach me that lesson. I just never did get it. I know what it’s like to lose someone, Hyacinth. My parents died when I was just a kid and I went to live with my aunt and uncle. I was grateful to have them and I love them with all my heart, but I still struggled with issues of not really belonging. So when I hear about Willie leaving you on your own, with only the people who helped send him to prison as your support system, I can’t help but wonder how you and your daughter coped.”

  She studied me in silence for a moment, and then seemed to thaw a bit. “We just did. We got up every day and put one foot in front of the other. What else you gonna do? I couldn’t afford to have a meltdown. Had to keep going for Pearl.”

  “That’s your daughter?”

  She nodded. “She died about five years back. Breast cancer. Before she got sick, she helped out here from time to time.” She dashed a tear away with the back of her hand. “I miss her, but you can’t let yourself get stuck in the bad moments or they’ll eat you alive.”

  I smiled gently. “That sounds like something my aunt Yolanda would say.” We both fell silent for a moment and I was optimistic enough to think we’d bonded enough to change the subject. “I’m curious about Lula Belle’s relationship with your sister. Can you tell me why they dislike each other so much?”

  Apparently, I was wrong. Hyacinth shook her head before I even finished asking. “I cannot. It’s none of your damn business.”

  No beating around the bush for her. “Look, I know I’m overstepping, but it’s possible that someone in this house murdered Dontae. Doesn’t it bother you to think there could be a killer living here with you?”

  She lifted her chin and stared me down. “So you’re just worried about me, is that what you want me to believe?”

  When she said it in that tone of voice, it did sound a bit far-fetched but I refused to let her intimidate me. “You and the others who are innocent.”

  “Well, since I don’t know who did it, I can’t help much, now can I?” She reached across the table for a couple of glasses. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have things to do.”

  I might not get another chance to talk with her, so I stepped between her and the kitchen door. “You couldn’t have been happy to see Monroe Magee walk through your door last week. I know the others blame him for what happened to your husband. Do you?”

  Hyacinth froze for a fraction of a second. “Apparently Lula Belle was in the mood to talk.”

  I didn’t want to throw anyone under the bus, so I said, “It wasn’t only Lula Belle. I pieced the story together from bits and pieces I’ve picked up. I’m right, though, aren’t I? They all blame Monroe. Do you?”

  Hyacinth stacked some plates and sighed heavily. “Monroe was an idiot then, and he’s a damn fool now. But do I blame him for Willie going to jail? No, I do not. Willie did what he did on his own. Nobody forced him.”

  “It didn’t make you angry that they let him take the fall for what they all did together?”

  “All of my friends going to jail together wouldn’t have made life better for me or for Pearl,” she said.

  Her answer surprised me, mostly because she seemed sincere. “So you don’t want Monroe dead?”

  “Why would I want that? One death won’t make up for another. Now leave me alone. Please.”

  If she was innocent of murder, I didn’t want to hurt her by stirring up the past, but I couldn’t just give up and walk away when I was so close to getting answers for Old Dog Leg.

  “I’ve been really curious about Monroe. Do you have any idea where he went after he left here the other night?”

  “How would I know?” She brushed crumbs from the table into her hand and dumped them onto the top plate in her stack.

  “He took your van. Aren’t you anxious to get it back?”

  “Of course I am, but the police are looking for him. When they find him, they’ll find my van.” She dusted her hands together to get rid of the remaining crumbs, then planted her fists on her ample hips. “If I remember right, Monroe had a brother. I don’t know if he’s still alive, but if he is, maybe that’s where Monroe has gone.”

  It would have been a perfect opportunity to come clean, but I let it slide by. “Did you give the police Monroe’s credit card number? Maybe they can track him with that.”

  She coughed up a laugh. “Credit card? Monroe? Baby, he paid cash. Everybody around here pays cash, ’cept for folks like you.”

 
She lifted the plates and started around me toward the kitchen, so I called out another question before I had time to think it through. “You must have been furious when Primrose told you that Lula Belle was sleeping with your husband.”

  Hyacinth turned back toward me wearing a look of utter disgust. “Lula Belle and Willie? Are you sick?”

  “That’s what Lula Belle told me,” I said.

  To my surprise, Hyacinth threw back her head and laughed. “Sounds to me like somebody’s been jerking your chain. Of course Lula Belle ain’t never slept with Willie.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because, boo, she’s Willie’s sister.”

  His sister? The image of Lula Belle’s toothless mouth open wide with laughter flashed through my head. She’d played me like a fiddle, and I felt like a fool. If she’d lied about that, what else had she lied about?

  Hyacinth disappeared into the kitchen, and I climbed the stairs to the honeymoon suite where I pulled on my pajamas and rolled into bed. But I couldn’t fall asleep. I kept running over the pastor’s story and wondering how the murder of a security guard in the 1970s had led to the murder of one of the men responsible for it forty years later.

  Sometime around midnight, Gabriel crept into the room, trying hard not to disturb me. He reeked of stale cigarette smoke and whiskey, with a faint note of his aftershave underneath. He’d been working for more than twelve hours, and headed straight for the shower. I assumed he was exhausted so instead of waiting up to tell him what I’d learned while he was at the Duke, I curled onto my side and let him sleep.

  I woke up with sunshine in my face, still curled on my side but now wrapped in blankets and an arm and a leg that wasn’t mine. After the initial shock of finding someone cuddled up beside me, I caught his scent, clean and purely male, and slowly relaxed under the protective barrier he created around me. I didn’t often let myself think about everything I’d lost when Philippe and I separated, but this morning I had to admit just how much I’d missed waking up next to someone.

  Yesterday had been a rough day, and as soon as I checked the time I realized that we’d slept past breakfast service. We still had a couple of hours until we had to check out, so I tried to move around quietly so Gabriel could sleep. Despite my best efforts, he stirred awake not long after I did. We dressed quickly and I filled him in on what I’d learned the night before while he packed a few things he’d pulled out of his suitcase and I did my hair and makeup. I told him what I knew about Hyacinth and Willie and about the robbery-slash-murder at Letterman Industries. I told him that Pastor Rod wanted to come clean about the past, but that Tamarra was afraid that the police would investigate her grandmother and the others if the truth came out.

  I was just about to tell him about Lula Belle and Willie when he came to the bathroom door and met my eyes in the mirror. “I thought you said you weren’t going to talk to anyone last night.”

  “I wasn’t planning on it,” I said. “But then I saw Cleveland in the parlor and I just couldn’t turn around and walk away.”

  “So you lied to me?”

  I turned quickly, completely forgetting that I was holding a mascara wand near my eye. The mascara brushed my cheek, leaving a wet gloppy trail. I turned back to assess the damage and found a long smear of Black Quartz running from the corner of my eye to my ear, but at least I hadn’t stabbed myself in the eyeball. “It wasn’t a lie,” I said as I began cleaning off the smear. “It was a change of plans. You would have done the same thing in my place.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Of course you would. Look at all the great information I got! We know where Monroe went when he left here forty years ago. We know about Tyrone and how he died. We know more about how Lula Belle fits into the picture now . . .”

  “And we know that you could have been hurt—or worse.” He leaned against the doorjamb, his face drawn into a deep scowl. “Okay, so fate or whatever gave you the opportunity to talk to Cleveland. I’ll give you that. But you went looking for the others.”

  “But—”

  “No, Rita. You actively pursued the others. You purposely went looking for possible murderers. Alone. Without backup.”

  He sounded angry, which shocked me. I tried again to explain. “But I—”

  “You said you’d call. What happened to that promise?”

  I couldn’t look at him, so I focused on scrubbing a particularly stubborn mascara spot off my cheek. “I promised I’d call if I ran into trouble. Which I didn’t. So . . . no call.” The spot wouldn’t budge, so I tossed the cloth aside in frustration. “Why am I under interrogation? I didn’t kill anyone.”

  Gabriel’s reflection folded its arms across its chest. “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t. I’m fine. Nothing happened.”

  “Well, then, you’re lucky. Because even if nobody here poisoned Dontae—which I don’t believe for a minute—they’re all clearly off their rockers. Something could have happened to you.”

  “But it didn’t,” I said again.

  “But it could have.” He grabbed me by the shoulders and looked me in the eye. “The thought of something happening to you makes me crazy.”

  I tried to laugh, but the look on his face and the way his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed his emotion, did something I wasn’t expecting. “Gabriel, I—”

  I wanted to reassure him. I wanted to promise him that I’d never do anything truly reckless. And most of all I wanted to say that I cared about him, too. But the words caught in my throat, and all I could do was look up at him in silence.

  He shook his head as if disappointed and let go of me. Turning away, he snatched up his bag from the bed and paused at the door just long enough to say, “You make it damn hard to care about you, you know that, don’t you?”

  And then he was gone.

  Twenty-eight

  I can’t say that Gabriel gave me the silent treatment after that, but our conversation as we packed up that morning left a lot to be desired. We carried our suitcases to the car and checked out, all with a minimum of small talk. After saying a quick good-bye we drove away from the Love Nest separately, all of which left me feeling edgy and frustrated.

  As I crossed town to pick up the cake for Bernice’s barbecue, I found myself wishing one minute that Gabriel and I had had more time to settle things between us, and then thanking my lucky stars for the chance to gather my thoughts before I had to see him again. I wondered if I’d overreacted to his concern for me, and then argued with myself for doing so. My uncle Nestor has always been protective of me. Add in four male cousins, all overloaded with machismo, and I’d scarcely had room to breathe when I was a teenager.

  Which is why I get so prickly when someone tries to protect me now. It doesn’t matter who’s doing it, or why. But in trying to set boundaries I could live with, I’d hurt Gabriel. I didn’t like feeling responsible for the look in his eyes when he’d walked away from me.

  In spite of my mood Bernice’s barbecue turned out to be not as bad as I’d feared. The weather cooperated, giving us a day bright with sunshine and only a few harmless clouds overhead. The humidity was in the tolerable range, helped by the fact that Bernice had set a table in the shade of a picturesque live oak.

  Her nephew Bennie was a deft hand on the grill, turning out a beer-can chicken that was surprisingly moist and flavorful, along with hot dogs for the kids. Emily, his wife, shucked ears of tender sweet corn and made coleslaw that was both creamy and tangy, with just the right amount of crunch. Despite the dull opinion of them I’d formed from afar, in truth Bennie was actually amusing company, and Emily extremely well-read. The children were every bit as poorly behaved up close as they seemed from a distance, but Bernice had plenty to keep them busy, so even they weren’t intolerable.

  I stuffed myself on Bernice’s potato salad, which was almost as good as Aunt Yolanda’s. I’m something of a potato salad snob, and Aunt Yolanda’s recipe is the gold standard by which
I judge all others.

  The potato must be cut into small, bite-sized pieces. The eggs diced, not sliced. Onion, definitely. Celery, a must. Pickles and pickle juice are expressly forbidden. My preferred dressing is half whipped salad dressing, half sour cream, lightly seasoned with salt, pepper, and dry mustard. And, of course, paprika sprinkled across the top, preferably sweet Hungarian.

  I could taste vinegar and dill in Bernice’s dressing, but she’d used paprika liberally and hadn’t broken my personal no-pickle rule, so I could forgive her a few small deviations.

  The cake had turned out perfectly; sweet, but not overpoweringly so. The raspberry filling and light chocolate buttercream between the layers held up beautifully, and the white chocolate buttercream on top looked as cool and fresh as it had the day before. I’d finished decorating it with a small cluster of fresh raspberries and matching piping around the edges of the cake, which added color. Several people asked for seconds, which is music to any chef’s ear.

  It was almost three when Miss Frankie finally looked at her watch and announced that it was time for us to head over to the cemetery. We spent a few minutes saying good-bye, then Miss Frankie and I loaded her car with the jars of flowers she’d so painstakingly prepared the day before and set off. She drove. I watched the world go by and hoped that we’d get through the visit to Philippe’s grave with a minimum of emotion. We’d made it through Miss Frankie’s birthday, and we’d hobbled through the holidays. But this was the first Memorial Day since his death, and I’d already learned that the firsts were the hardest after someone dies.

  It’s the same after a divorce, really. The first birthday alone, the first Christmas, the first New Year’s Eve—they can blow your recovery out of the water. Old memories tend to creep in uninvited, and the twinges they bring are sharp and painful. Philippe’s birthday was coming up in June, and then it would be July, the month he died and we could begin the job of limping through the second year without him. I just prayed it would eventually get easier for Miss Frankie.