Fatal Cajun Festival

by Ellen Byron

  GET HOME NOW!

  Chapter 2

  Maggie arrived home to find Crozat packed with trucks, buses, and lookie-loo cars. She drove to the back of the plantation, parked by the shotgun cottage she shared with her grandmother, and hurried to join her parents at the front of the house.

  “Where are we going to put all of those?” she asked, scanning the phalanx of vehicles.

  “The trucks are heading over to the festival grounds at the airfield,” Tug said. “We don’t have to worry about them.”

  “Just the busloads of guests,” Ninette said. “I never did get a final head count from Tammy’s people. I hope I don’t run out of food.”

  Gran sauntered up to the others, holding a champagne flute. Maggie gestured to Gran’s glass. “Still celebrating?”

  “It’s Louisiana, chère. When do we not celebrate?” Gran checked out the growing crowd of onlookers. A group of young girls huddled together, pointing to the buses with excitement and whispering to each other. “What’s the proper word to describe that group of young women? A gaggle of girls?”

  The door of the first bus opened, generating squeals and jumping up and down from the cluster of teens. “A giggle,” Maggie said. “I think you’d call it a giggle of girls.”

  Gran raised her glass to toast Maggie. “Nicely done. I like it.”

  A young woman who wasn’t Tammy Barker stepped out of the bus. She was in her midtwenties, with olive skin and black hair cut in a severe but fashionable hairstyle. She wore a man’s white dress shirt, artfully ripped jeans, and open-toed ankle booties. She was followed by a man in his fifties, bald, lean, and exuding authority. Yet there was something odd about his body. After a moment, Maggie’s artist’s eye homed in on what it was: his torso was unusually long while his legs were short. He’d be hard to shop for, she thought.

  There was a pause that Maggie could swear had been choreographed. The waiting fans held their collective breath. And finally, Sing It star Tammy Barker appeared in the bus doorway. Pelican’s most famous daughter was waiflike slim, with a thick thatch of chestnut-brown hair that hung long and shiny to the middle of her back. She was taller than she appeared in photographs, a few inches above Maggie’s five-foot-four-inch height. Then Maggie saw that the singer was wearing the kind of giant platform shoes actors had worn in Ancient Greece. Without them, Tammy Barker might not have cleared five feet.

  Tammy came down the bus stairs, and Maggie couldn’t help being impressed by how gracefully she moved in the giant shoes. Her fans would have swarmed the singing star had her handlers not formed a human barricade. “Make a line,” the bald man barked, and they did so.

  The man stepped away, and Ninette gave her husband a nudge. “Go talk to him; he looks important.”

  “Right,” Tug said, nonplussed. He walked toward the man and held out his hand. “Hey there. Tug Crozat. Welcome to our home.”

  The man took his hand and shook it. “Pony Pickner. I’m Tammy’s manager.” He pointed to the woman in the open-toed booties managing the crowd. “And that’s Sara Salinas, her assistant.”

  The introductions were interrupted by a loud screech of “Tammy, baby cousin!” A doughy woman a few years older than Tammy barreled toward the singer, followed by a man about the same age with dark, lazy good looks. Sara looked ready to tackle the charging woman, but Tammy threw her hands in the air and screeched, “Gigi! Narcisse!” The three engaged in a round of hugs. Tammy’s fans pressed forward. Gigi motioned for them to step back. “Go on now, shoo.”

  Sara’s eye’s narrowed. “That’s my job. I’m her assistant.”

  Gigi threw back her shoulders. “I’m her cousin. And president of her fan club.”

  Pony stepped between the women and pushed them away from Tammy. “I’m her manager and I outrank both of you.” If he noticed the dirty looks coming from Gigi and Sara, they didn’t appear to bother him. “Our star needs to rest now,” Pony said. He waved off the buses and trucks, and the convoy lumbered down the driveway toward the River Road.

  “Where’s everyone going?” Ninette asked, confused.

  “To Belle Vista,” Sara said. “Pony, me, and Tammy are the only ones staying here.” She didn’t look too happy about the arrangement.

  “But … there are only three of you. And you booked the whole place.” Ninette was even more confused.

  “S.O.P.” Pony said.

  “S-O what now?” Ninette said.

  “Standard operating procedure,” Tug whispered to his wife. He looked a touch self-satisfied that he knew this.

  “It prevents fans from booking rooms in the same hotel and causing problems,” Sara explained.

  “Yeah, they can get poco loco.” Gigi twirled her fingers in the universal sign for crazy. “Believe me, as her fan club president, I would know.”

  Sara glared at her.

  Tammy approached the Crozats. Her fans, sensing they were being dismissed, melted away. “Hi, I’m Tammy,” she said with a warm smile. “I grew up in a trailer along Back Road 41. Until I got the platinum ticket to go to Hollywood for Sing It, I spent my whole life going by your place and wondering what it was like inside. I dreamed of staying here one day. And now I get to. Thanks for making my dream come true.”

  There was a moment of silence as the Crozats took this in. Then Gran held up her champagne glass in a toast. “Nicely done.”

  “Mother,” Tug admonished her.

  “Well, it was.”

  Ninette regained her wits. “We’re honored that you’ve chosen to stay with us, Tammy, and will do whatever we can to make your stay everything you dreamed of. Tug will get your bags, and our daughter Maggie and I will show you to your rooms. We thought we’d put you in the Rose Room. It’s our very best room and it’s inside the manor house.”

  “That sounds so nice, but would you mind if I stayed in the garçonnière? It always looked so cute to me, like a dollhouse. And that way I won’t drive y’all out of your home with my vocal exercises.”

  “The garçonnière it is,” Ninette said, her tone polite.

  Tammy clapped her hands, delighted. “Thank you so much. I forgot how nice civilians can be.” She turned to her manager. “Pony, I asked Narcisse here to be my bodyguard while I’m in Pelican. My regular guy is guarding some Oscar winner on a press tour and can’t meet us until New Orleans.” She directed the last comment at show-biz neophytes Maggie, Ninette, and Gran with a sigh that said, the trials and tribulations of being famous.

  “Whoa,” Pony said. His lips formed a grim line. “He hasn’t been vetted.”

  “He’s family. That’s all the vetting I need.”

  Narcisse flashed a smug smile at Pony. “Can’t argue with that, can ya?”

  Tammy’s manager gave him a cold stare. “Can and will. I wouldn’t get too attached to the job.”

  “Why don’t we settle y’all in?” Ninette said, eager to break the tension. She motioned to Maggie and Gran, and the three headed toward the garçonnière. Sara extricated Tammy from a few autograph-seeking stragglers, and they followed the Crozat women, Gigi and Narcisse on their tail. Pony stayed behind, holding a phone to his ear while directing Tug on how to separate the massive amounts of luggage extricated from the bowels of the bus. The manager radiated a dismissive attitude, which Maggie found annoying.

  Gran tapped her granddaughter on the shoulder. “What do you think of our illustrious guest?” she whispered.

  “She’s okay, I guess. A little taken with herself.”

  “You sound skeptical.”

  Maggie didn’t respond, reluctant to share that she was predisposed to dislike Tammy. The group reached the garçonnière. In centuries past, it had housed boys once they became teens, separating their raging hormones from the plantation’s susceptible young ladies. The Crozats had turned it into a lovely, if small, lodging, with a living room downstairs and bedroom upstairs.

  Tammy gasped. She clapped her hands to her mouth, then dropped them. “It’s as beautiful as I dreamed it wou
ld be,” she said in a quiet voice. “I can’t believe I finally get to stay here.”

  She impulsively hugged Ninette, and Maggie was forced to consider the possibility that fame had changed Tammy in a good way.

  * * *

  The superstar and her entourage declined dinner and holed up in their rooms, much to Ninette’s relief. Maggie joined her mother in the manor house kitchen and helped prep for their guests’ myriad of breakfast food demands. She chopped vegetables, cut up fruit, and thumbed through the family’s cookbook to find at least one recipe that would make everyone happy. After a half hour, she admitted defeat and gave up the search. Maggie placed the food she’d prepared for the morning in the refrigerator, then took off her apron and hung it on a hook by the back door. Ninette checked out her daughter’s outfit of black boots, black miniskirt, and tight white T-shirt. “You look rather rock ’n’ roll. Trying to impress our music industry guests?”

  “To be honest, I was out of clean clothes. But I guess I don’t mind coming across as something more than a back-country bumpkin.”

  “Good luck with that Pony fellow. He wrote us off the minute he saw us.”

  “I noticed.” Maggie checked the time on her phone. “Oooh, gotta go. We’re all meeting up at Junie’s. Gaynell and the Gator Girls are running through the set they’re doing at the festival.”

  She took off for Junie’s Oyster Bar and Dance Hall, Pelican’s favorite hangout. Maggie parked in the picturesque village center, where banners welcoming visitors to Cajun Country Live! hung from the decorative iron balconies of the centuries-old buildings that ringed the town square. Bayou Beurre, its banks green and lush with spring flora, lay beyond it.

  Maggie stepped inside Junie’s, a hangout brimming with charming if faded elegance. An ornate bar, carved by craftsmen in the late 1870s, ran the length of one wall, topped with a gilded mirror. Above it rested a mounted alligator who had once been the constant companion of the original owner, Junie. Her son JJ had inherited the bar along with his mother’s closetful of colorful caftans. The place, which always smelled like a combination of booze, Cajun food, and mildew, was humming with activity. Locals mixed with tourists who’d arrived early for the festival.

  JJ, clad in a caftan patterned with alligators playing saxophones, blew Maggie a kiss, which she returned. She glanced around the crowded room and saw Bo, who waved her over to a large table he and their friends had staked out. The group included Rufus Durand, who was Bo’s cousin and town police chief. Next to him sat his girlfriend, dance studio owner Sandy Sechrest. Across from them was Vanessa Fleer, Rufus’s former fiancée, and sixty-something defense attorney Quentin MacIlhoney, Vanessa’s current fiancé. Relationships in Pelican were nothing if not complicated.

  “Maggie, you made it.” This came from Gaynell, who was on stage tuning her guitar. She jumped down from the stage and gave her friend a hug. “It’s gonna be a fun night. We’re doing a bunch of traditional Cajun—”

  Gaynell stopped midsentence. Maggie followed her gaze to the front of the restaurant. Tammy Barker had just entered. The singer was flanked by Sara, Gigi, Narcisse, and several hipsters Maggie assumed were musicians based on their multiple tattoos, piercings, and man buns, a look she despised. She gripped Gaynell’s hand. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

  Gaynell took a deep, shuddering breath. “I know.” She hopped back on stage and grabbed the mic. “Hey, y’all, settle down now.” The crowd quieted. “Welcome to Junie’s. As a lot of you know, we’re Gaynell and the Gator Girls. Tonight we’re doing the set we’ll be playing at the festival, which’ll also be our audition for Jazz Fest.”

  “Woo-hoo, go Gaynell and the Gator Girls!” Maggie’s shout-out earned whoops from her own table and beyond.

  Gaynell smiled. “Thank you. But first, there’s someone special here. Someone who’s super talented and has done our little town proud. Tammy, come on up.”

  Tammy hesitated. A wave of recognition swept through the crowd. Murmurs of “Is that Tammy Barker?” turned into “OMG, that’s Tammy Barker!” followed by applause, then cheers. Narcisse, Tammy’s newly minted security guard, waved his arms around in an unnecessary display of power. Gaynell reached out to Tammy, who took her hand, deftly negotiated the stage stairs, and came to the mic.

  “How does she walk in those shoes?” Sandy, the dancer, wondered.

  “I don’t know, but I want me a pair,” Vanessa responded, her eyes on Tammy’s spiky gold heels.

  Tammy addressed the diners. “Hey there, Pelican. It’s good to be home.” The crowd roared their approval of this sentiment. “I just wanna say … sometimes you have to leave a place to know how much it means to you. You look back and realize you didn’t appreciate how wonderful it was. And how good and kind the people were. I’m sorry about that.”

  Tammy aimed the last two lines at Gaynell, who smiled and gave a slight nod. Gaynell spoke into the mic. “Who wants to hear the winner of Sing It do some singing?”

  The loud affirmative response made the restaurant walls vibrate. It morphed into a chant of “Sing it, sing it, sing it …” Tammy and Gaynell huddled for a moment, and then Tammy said, “All right, y’all asked for it. I’m going with a classic.” Gaynell strapped on her guitar, nodded to her band, then strummed the familiar chords of Hank Williams’s “Jambalaya.”

  “Goodbye, Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh …”

  Maggie knew nothing about music, but she couldn’t deny Tammy’s voice was spectacular—powerful and crystal clear. The country star threw in a couple of note runs more appropriate to some pop diva’s top-forty rendition of the tune, but she finished the song to a standing ovation. Tammy motioned for the crowd to sit down. “Thank you. But I’m just a singer. Y’all wanna hear a real musician?” She hugged Gaynell and handed her the mic. “Give it up for Gaynell Bourgeois!”

  The crowd did as instructed. Tammy left the stage and settled at a table whose occupants had been evicted by Narcisse. Gaynell launched into a rousing rendition of the classic Cajun tune “Allons à Lafayette.” She followed this with a song of her own composition that brought people out of their seats and onto Junie’s dance floor, where they laughed and twirled as they two-stepped. Gaynell sang in a voice that was unique yet as powerful as Tammy’s pipes, and deftly segued between guitar, fiddle, and the single-row diatonic accordion many Cajun musicians preferred to the multiple-row piano accordions found in zydeco bands. The Gator Girls finished the song with a flourish. The response was deafening, louder than for Tammy. But the Sing It winner was the first to jump to her feet, cheering. Bo leaned over to Maggie. “Whatever happened in the past, she seems to be over it now.”

  Maggie frowned. She’d spent the entire number surreptitiously watching the country singer, and the ugly expressions she’d witnessed confirmed what she’d feared.

  Tammy Barker, contest winner and superstar, was still jealous of Gaynell.

  Chapter 3

  “Why would Tammy be jealous of Gaynell?” Bo asked when Maggie shared her suspicions with him.

  It was a good question, one that gave Maggie a fitful night’s sleep as she searched for the answer. True, Gaynell was younger, but only by a couple of years. Could that make such a big difference, even in age-averse Hollywood? Was it a competition based on musical ability? Gaynell played a range of instruments and Maggie didn’t know what Tammy’s gifts were beyond singing. Still, it was hard to imagine the platinum-selling country diva resenting Gaynell’s skill with a frottoir, the washboard featured in Cajun and zydeco bands. Was it over some high school heartthrob? Given that Tammy probably had her pick of Hollywood hunks, that seemed the most unlikely possibility. Maybe it was simply a case of something Maggie once read in a magazine article: no matter how old you get, you never really leave high school.

  In the morning, Maggie padded into the living room of the shotgun cottage to find Grand-mère, dressed in beige slacks and a white silk top, surrounded by an assortment of boxes. “Morning. What’s all this?”

 
Gran held up a photo album with a faded cover. “The festival committee insists on doing a poster honoring my contributions to the community, so I’m digging up some pictures for them. While I was at it, I decided to do a death cleaning.”

  Maggie gaped at her grandmother. “A death what now?”

  “Döstädning. It’s the Swedish tradition of paring down your belongings when you’re in the home stretch of your lifetime so that they aren’t a burden to the loved ones you leave behind.”

  Maggie made a face. “Oooh-kay. But can we please call it something else?”

  Gran shook her head. “No, we cannot. I admire the Swedes’ honesty. Death cleaning they call it, and death cleaning it shall be.” Gran held up an odd-looking metal apparatus. “Should we keep this?”

  “What is it?”

  “An egg beater.” Gran turned the eggbeater’s handle. “And your response makes the answer a no.”

  Maggie left her grandmother to her disturbing sorting and retreated to the bathroom for a shower. She then fed Gopher, the family’s adopted basset hound, and Jolie, their Chihuahua mix. Maggie had rescued Jolie from the home of a murderer. She’d also saved Jolie’s cat bestie, Brooke, as well as both animals’ puppies and kittens, from near starvation when she discovered them in the woods behind Crozat plantation. Maggie found wonderful homes for the pups and kitties, while Jolie and Brooke had become much-loved additions to the Crozat family.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” she warned Gopher. The basset, whose stomach was a bottomless pit, was eyeing the almost-full bowl of picky eater Jolie. “No double helpings for you, mister. You’re dancing real close to the edge of diet kibble as it is.” Gopher gave an annoyed bark but backed away from the bowl.

  Maggie put on jeans and a Cajun Country Live! T-shirt featuring the logo she’d designed of an accordion and fiddle inside a triangle whose three sides spelled out the name of the festival. Then she headed over to the manor house kitchen. The room smelled like butter, baked bread, and for some odd reason, broiled steak. The trestle table was covered with plates, while multiple pots simmered on the stove. It was only seven thirty in the morning, but Ninette already looked exhausted. Maggie took in the scene. “This is for three guests?”