As we neared the pond, we met Odeo, the groundskeeper, coming our way.
He touched the bill of his cap, nodded, and smiled his big, toothy grin. "Evening, y'all."
Before I could reply, Quincy stopped him. "Just the man I been looking for. You wouldn't mind giving me a run-through of what you keep on the grounds for weed control, bugs, stuff like that."
Odeo frowned but said, "Sure, boss, you da law. Whatever you want, I want. Just follow me." He stepped back and motioned for me to go ahead of him. "Miss Melanie."
I led the two men to the boathouse, where Odeo used his key to unlock the door.
* * *
Once we were inside, Quincy asked Odeo to show him all kinds of weird things: paint thinner, weed spray, ant and roach killer, rat poison, all manner of lovely things.
He seemed to have the most interest in a five-gallon bucket of insecticide granules. Odeo set it up on a workbench, and Quincy pulled a sheet of paper from his shirt pocket.
When he looked at me, he said, "Tox results," and showed me the paper. "This is what we're after, Mel," he said. "This here." He pointed at it, and I instantly saw why he didn't try to pronounce it. The word was about a foot and a half long, with bunches of consonants strung together and an amazing number of x's, y's, and z's to be in one word.
"And this here looks like a winner." He shone his penlight on the label wrapped around the bucket, specifically on the ingredients. And although I wouldn't have thought it possible, that same long word was reproduced there. "Looks like maybe we found the source of the dressing our killer used on dem clams." He laughed.
I personally didn't see the humor in it.
Odeo pried off the lid and handed a pair of garden gloves to Quincy, who slipped them on and dipped his hand inside the bucket. He came up with a fistful of small white granules. The odor from the bucket was strong enough to make my eyes and nose sting. I stood back some. "Is that it?" I asked. "Is that what killed her?"
Quincy tipped his head and did a little shuffle, extending his hand to display the granules. "If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck…"
"…and smells like a duck," I added, wrinkling my nose.
"And don't forget quacks like a duck…" Odeo added.
Quincy and I looked at him. "Quacks?" we said together.
Odeo shrugged. "I just thought…never y'all mind."
Quincy got back to it. "So now I'm thinking what we need to do is figure out when our good man Fabrizio had a chance to make his way out to this here shed and dip into the bucket for a small sample to spice up dem clams special for Missus Elway."
My hackles rose. "Fabrizio? Are you still singing that old song? Fabrizio didn't—couldn't kill Mrs. Elway. Why are you stuck in that rut? Look somewhere else for a killer, why don't you?"
He narrowed his eyes. "You forgetting your pal had the opportunity? You forgetting he had the motive? And are you forgetting he had the money?"
I threw up my hands. "He was framed."
"Show me evidence he was framed, and I'll sing you a new tune, Mel." Not only was he singing the same song, he kept repeating the chorus. "I'm looking for a killer, Mel. A cold-blooded sort of person who planned it all out and went through with it. This ain't no crime of passion. It's hard-core, premeditated murder, and whether you want to admit it or not, so far everything points to Fabrizio Banini. Like I said, if it looks like a duck…"
"Quack, quack," Odeo said.
I burst into tears and ran out.
Behind me, Odeo said, "What d'ya think she's got against ducks, anyway?"
CHAPTER TWELVE
I was so frustrated, I hardly slept at all that night. Quincy was like a mean li'l ol' bulldog with a big ol' bone, and he wasn't about to let it go. It was almost like he had it in for Fabrizio. I knew Fabrizio didn't take that money, and he certainly hadn't murdered Cecile Elway. That just didn't make any sense at all, but it was beginning to look like it was f'sure up to me to prove it.
I woke up extra early Friday morning to clear skies and a bright sun. Both bode well for Harry and Jack's first annual Mansion at Mystic Isle Crawfish Boil to be held that night.
I had two tats lined up for the morning and had been recruited to help with arrangements for the Crawfish Boil later, which left me a couple of hours free in the middle of the day to find and interview the next person on my list. A sense of urgency moved me forward. I had a very bad feeling if I couldn't get to the bottom of this mystery sooner than later, Fabrizio would pay, and the check he'd have to write would be huge.
The next person I wanted to speak with was Rosalyn, Theodore Elway's daughter and Cecile's stepdaughter, who, according to Penny the Psychic, had a steaming hatred brewing to a boil for her recently deceased stepmother.
It took me a good while to find Rosalyn Elway Whitlock. But finally there she was, playing solitaire with a deck of house cards in the deepest, darkest corner of the small alcove, just off the Presto-Change-o Room. While the bar and food service areas were buzzing with late lunchers, the game room was all but abandoned. Stella by Starlight, the resort's astrologer, was at one of the tables casting a chart. Across from her, a stern-looking woman sat impatiently tapping her fingernails on the tabletop. The customer's white hair was cut in a precise, Prince Valiant pageboy. Everything about her was exact and contained, from her buttoned-up Oxford-style shirt to her sensible, lace-up walking shoes. Virgo, if I ever saw one. As I walked past their table, Stella, still graceful and lovely at seventy-two, looked up and smiled, pushing errant locks of curly, silver hair from her face.
They were the only two people in the room except Rosalyn. She looked down at the cards, her eyes flitting from one stack to the next and back as she rubbed the bridge of her nose and shook her head, clenching then unclenching her fists. I honestly felt sorry for her. The poor thing was wound up tighter than her permed hair. If you opened the dictionary to uptight, I was pretty sure Rosalyn's picture would be there. Cancer, definitely a July baby.
I stopped by her table. When she looked up, I fully expected her to shatter into a thousand pieces—she appeared to be that stressed.
"Yes?" she said. "What is it?"
I sighed and looked at her cards. "You can move that four of hearts off." I pointed.
She looked back up at me. "You're the young woman who was at the séance."
I nodded. "I don't suppose you'd have time to talk to me?"
She snorted. It was odd and unattractive in such a prim-and-proper person. "Time? I'm not exactly in high demand here." She laid the cards on the table and lifted her hand toward the chair across from her. "What can I do for you?"
"I was wondering about your relationship to your stepmother. Did the two of you, er, get along all right?"
"Get along? I supposed that depends on your definition of the term." She folded her hands in front of her. "My father never really got over my mother's passing. Cecile looked a good deal like her, you know. He was smitten from the first time he saw her." Her smile was rueful. "He never had a chance, really."
I didn't speak, thinking it might slow her down or stop her.
She took a deep breath and began to draw circles on the tabletop with her index finger. "He couldn't deny her anything, and therein lay the problem. Cecile came from trashy people who somehow managed to weasel their way into the better social circles. She liked to pretend she wasn't trash, but she couldn't fool me. She was going through the family fortune like there was an endless supply. Father was worried. He confided in me he planned to have a talk with her. I could tell it weighed on him. And then she took up with that charlatan caterpillar person." She leaned forward onto her elbows and lowered her voice. "She swore they weren't sleeping together before my father passed, but well, you know."
"So, you feel like your daddy passed away before his time because she broke his heart?"
She pressed her lips together, hard, bringing out little vertical lines over her upper lip—the ones women get from pursing their lips in disapproval all the time.
She nodded, just once, decisively. "Cecile was not a woman of substance."
I sat back in my chair and just looked at her. Even in the low lighting, the hate that shone in her eyes was pretty scary.
"She acted as if our money was her money, the witch."
"Oh," I said. "Billy sort of gave me the impression Cecile was pretty generous in doling out funds."
"Generous?" She laughed, but it sounded more like a bark. "Maybe to Billy. You know all that boy has to do is smile, and women just fall down at his feet. Even Cecile."
"So she was more tightfisted when it came to you?"
Again, that curt bob of her head. "And it wasn't even her money. I don't know what Father was thinking leaving that squanderer in control of his estate." She huffed, stood, and swept some of the cards off the table. I fully expected smoke to start pouring out her ears. "It was humiliating to have to crawl on my hands and knees and grovel just to get what little I needed to maintain my lifestyle." She threw her hands in the air. "I mean, my God, you'd have thought I was the one tossing money around like it was confetti, not her. I mean, caterpillars? Really?"
Made sense to me. What also made sense was how someone who held so much resentment toward another person might be motivated to put insecticide in her séance snacks.
She'd begun to pace back and forth by the table. Pretty stirred up. More passion than I would have given her credit for. "I confronted her with it, you know. Just hours before the séance. 'Cecile,' I said. 'You have no right to make such a grant to that man and his ugly little creatures.'"
"Terrence? You mean Terrence, right?"
She didn't act as if she'd heard me. "And when she laughed and suggested I was only angry because she had a man in her bed and I didn't—I slapped her. I did. Right across the face. So hard she stumbled and nearly fell. Do you blame me?"
Couldn't say as I did, if it was even true. I couldn't picture Rosalyn lifting a hand to anyone. But then, insinuating someone's a dried up old hag no man would ever even look at is enough to get any woman riled—even mousey Rosalyn.
"Rosalyn?"
She stopped and looked down at me.
"Were you aware your stepmother came here with a large amount of cash?"
"We all were, after she was killed, that is. Deputy Boudreaux said something about a huge sum of cash being missing."
"And you didn't know about it before then?"
She shook her head. "No." Some of the steam seemed to have left her, and she began to look around, a little at a loss. "Maybe I should—"
"One more thing," I said. "Penny told me you believe Cecile might have died by…otherworldly means."
She looked amused. "Penny said that?"
I nodded.
"Penny the Psychic?"
I shrugged, feeling foolish. Who in their right mind would actually believe the ghost of her deceased father would reach out from beyond the grave and toss a little insecticide into a dozen clams on the half shell?
"She's right. I do think that."
Okay then. Guess that answered that.
She narrowed her eyes—I could hardly wait to hear what she had to say next. "And that's not all. I believe the ghost of my wicked, wicked step-mother has come back to haunt me."
"You do?"
Her eyes got this troubled, faraway look in them. "I hear her at night, taunting me, berating me, just the way she used to. Once when I woke up, I thought I even saw her in the corner of my room. That's why I came out here to sit. Whenever I'm in that room, I can't help but feel as if someone's watching me. It's creepy."
I thought of the portrait of Alphonse Villars with the shifty eyes that was still sitting in the closet of my room.
Creepy? She was right. It was. And it even made me wonder if Theodore and Cecile Elway were roaming the halls of The Mansion at Mystic Isle.
* * *
The grounds behind The Mansion sloped up to the edge of the property, beyond which lay a wooded area and more swampland.
Odeo and his staff kept the lawn lush and green year round. The setup for the Crawfish Boil had been going on for three days. There were two outdoor kitchens with a multitude of boiling pots on either side of the tables and chairs, and a bandstand in between. The contingency in case of rain was to set up tents closer in to the main building, but the weatherman had promised clear skies until tomorrow, so it looked like the guests would be peeling their crawfish and shoveling in corn on the cob, hush puppies, and boiled potatoes under a starry sky.
Valentine's cousin Ernest had rounded up a couple of his buddies, and they all brought in their two-day catch, which weighed in upward of seven hundred pounds of squirming crawfish, all climbing over each other in a futile attempt to make a break for it before they got their butts tossed in the boil seasoned with Valentine's spicy crawfish boil seasoning.
Valentine would take command of one of the outdoor kitchens, her sous chef the other.
At seven that night the C'est la Vie Boys would show up and swing us all into some lively fais-do-do Zydeco music. It promised to be a huge success. I just wished Fabrizio could be here with Mr. Villars to share the fun.
* * *
Cat and I were just sitting down to dig in when I looked up and saw Cap'n Jack wandering around looking a little lost.
I got up, went to him, and hooked him by the arm. "Come and sit with us."
He hesitated. "I should probably sit with some of the guests."
"Oh, no, cher," I teased, doing my best Quincy Boudreaux imitation. "Dem Yankees, dey won't be teaching you how to eat crawdaddies."
Jack smiled, his eyes glimmering. "It drives me crazy when you speak French," he said, catching me by surprise as he fell in step with me. "Guess I better come with you for a proper lesson."
We sat him down, put a bib on him, and signaled a waiter, who brought three trays loaded up with crawfish, potatoes, corn, and hush puppies.
He picked up one of the little red suckers, twisting it and turning it around to have a really good look. "Looks like a puny lobster," he said.
I nodded agreement, picked up a nice, fat juicy one, and elbowed him. "And this is how it goes. First you pull the tail straight then push it in to break loose the meat." I did it. "Pull it back out all the way, and there you go." I popped it in my mouth and sucked off the meat.
He had watched me closely then picked one up and looked at it dubiously before repeating what I'd done. He chewed, swallowed, then turned and smiled. "Oh. My. God. These rock." He wiped his mouth and picked up another.
And so it went. He must have gone through about thirty or so of Valentine's spicy crawfish. He even sampled all the dips on the lazy Susan in the middle of the table—bar-b-que, sriracha, white vinegar, lemon, seasoned melted butter. And he said he liked them all.
He drank beer and ate corn on the cob like a kid, row after row. If he were a woman, you'd have said he let his hair down. He talked and laughed and told me Big Apple stories. And I loved it. Every minute.
After a bit, he turned and looked at me, laying his hand on top of mine. I jerked at the contact. It was like a buzz of current ran between us. "Will you walk with me?" he asked.
Hell, yeah.
I stood, and he sort of steered me away from the crowd. The music faded into the background. We stopped under a big old weeping willow. He used his hand to brush off one of the elaborate wrought iron benches then motioned me to sit.
He sat beside me.
"Melanie," he began then stopped. "I don't really know where to begin."
This didn't sound like the usual shoptalk. I held my breath.
"I've been here a couple of months now. Things are going pretty well. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried at first. That situation in New York had me plenty scared I'd never work in the industry again. But Mr. Villars, Harry, came to my rescue. I guess you could say he pulled me out of the swamp and set me on solid ground."
He stopped again and took hold of my hand. I could barely breathe. I knew what he was going to say, something a
bout how much he liked me but how he didn't dare risk his job by getting involved. It made me sad.
"Harry sat down with me earlier to go over a few of the details for tonight's party." He waved his free hand back in the direction of the shindig, which was going full blast now. "I took a chance and spoke to him about…us. You and me. And how I was feeling about you, about wanting to get to know you better. We talked about how if the boss took advantage of his position with female staff members, it could be harassment, and how I didn't want to be inappropriate with an employee. He said…"
Ohmigod. Here it came. He was going to break my heart into a million pieces.
He slid into a fair imitation of Harry, although it sounded more like a Tennessee drawl than New Orleans-style English. "'You know, Jack, I took a shine to you the minute we met. And part of the reason I hired you, besides your fabulous resume and manly good looks, is that you aren't Fabrizio's type. Harassment? Inappropriate? Why, Jack, you don't have an inappropriate bone in your body, son. And Miss Hamilton, why I can tell she's a real Southern lady. I'd be honored to have a part in bringing you two lovely people together.'"
I blinked, trying awfully hard to figure out what the man had just told me.
"So." He stood and pulled me to him, body to body. He leaned down, his breath warm against my ear. "What do you say, Miss Hamilton? Want to be my girl?"
I looked up into his eyes, like dark pools with just a glimmer of moonlight in them. "Why, Mr. Stockton, are you courting me?"
"You bet your grits I am."
He leaned down, his lips so close to mine a small movement would cause our mouths to collide in what I knew would be a crash of cymbals and thunder of tympani.
A small smile curved his lips, like he knew a secret. I caught my breath as he inched closer then jerked back at—
"Ah, so here y'all are."
Deputy Quincy Boudreaux strolled up. If I had a gun, I'd have shot him dead.
"Hope I didn't interrupt nothin'."
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