We all fell back into the jobs we’d filled last night with Miss Frankie and Bernice clearing the table, Aunt Margaret putting away, me scraping dishes and stacking, and Bitty and Tallulah washing and drying. It didn’t take long to exhaust the basic topics of conversation not covered during dinner. We generally agreed that the weather had been delightful and the food delicious. Aunt Margaret caught Bernice up on a few items of family gossip—who had what health issues, who was getting married, and who had been divorced.
After a while Tallulah told everyone that T-Rex was talking about selling fresh boiled peanuts, which made all of them a bit giddy with excitement. Personally, I didn’t understand what the fuss was all about. I’m told that boiled peanuts are an acquired taste. It’s one I had not yet managed to develop.
I’d been listening politely, offering comments or agreeable noises when appropriate, but the subject of T-Rex and his general store gave me an opening I couldn’t resist.
“Speaking of T-Rex’s store,” I said as I scraped bones into a paper bag, “I ran into that sheriff’s deputy when I stopped there to get the Old Bay Seasoning. She seems nice.”
Aunt Margaret and Bitty agreed wholeheartedly, but Tallulah’s endorsement lacked enthusiasm. I didn’t know if she had some reason for withholding her stamp of approval, or if that was just her personality. I suspected the latter.
“I also saw one of the women who was out searching for Eskil last night. Adele something?”
“That would be Adele Pattiere,” Aunt Margaret said. “She’s a sweet thing, isn’t she?”
That wouldn’t have been the word I’d have used to describe her, but I agreed that she was and fell silent while I scraped another plate so I wouldn’t seem unduly nosy. “I thanked her for taking part in the search. Maybe I’m wrong, but she seemed upset about something.”
“Adele was?” Concern formed shadows on Bitty’s face. “Did she say why?”
“Not to me,” I said, and rinsed the plate under the tap. “I could’ve sworn I saw her talking to a young man last night who seemed angry with her. I thought maybe it was a family issue, but she said I must’ve been mistaken. So then I thought maybe she was upset about Silas Laroche. Was she a friend of his?”
Tallulah snorted. “Adele and Silas? Friends? She’s not that stupid.”
Aunt Margaret sent her daughter a warning look. “It’s not right to speak ill of the dead.” For my benefit, she explained, “Silas wasn’t very popular around here, I’m afraid. He rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.”
“I’ve been getting that impression,” I said. “I have to admit I’m curious about why nobody liked him.”
Miss Frankie stopped working and sidled closer.
Bernice looked almost breathless with anticipation. “Why does everyone think Eskil killed him? What was going on with the two of them?”
That was a little more direct than I’d intended to get, but Bernice was family, so she could get away with more than I could.
Tallulah looked at me pointedly, but she answered Bernice. “Eskil didn’t kill him. I don’t know why everybody thinks he did.”
“But there was bad blood between them,” Miss Frankie pointed out.
“There was bad blood between Silas and everybody else,” Bitty said. “Not just Eskil.”
“So people think Eskil did it because Silas’s body was found here?” I asked. “Is that the only reason?”
Tallulah turned away sharply. “I’m not going to air my family’s dirty laundry in front of the whole world.”
“Rita and Miss Frankie aren’t the whole world,” Bernice said. “They’re friends of mine and they’re only trying to help.”
Tallulah sent Bernice a withering glance. “You had no right to bring all these strangers here. This is a family matter.”
Bernice shoved the salt and pepper shakers into a cupboard, closed the door with a bang, and rounded on her cousin. “It’s a police matter, Tallulah, and it could easily become a court matter. I know you don’t want your privacy invaded, but you’d be smart to convince Eskil to start talking. Because this is mild compared to what will happen if he’s arrested.”
Whoa! Bernice!
Tallulah opened the cupboard and made a show of moving the salt and pepper to their proper places. “Fine. Then if you ask me, it was that boy of his that killed Silas. How do you suppose Kale feels knowing his daddy lived just a few miles away but didn’t care to see him? Or maybe it was Nettie. What kind of woman stays married to a man like Silas for twenty years after he deserts her?”
Bitty let out a dreamy sigh. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe she loved him?”
“Love? Silas?” Tallulah laughed. “Nettie’s got a better head on her shoulders than to get all dewy-eyed over a man. There’s something in it for her, you mark my words.”
Bitty looked astonished. “I think you’ve lost your mind. Nettie’s . . . well, she’s . . .” She took a deep breath and sighed heavily. “Nettie’s a regular member of the Thursday night ladies’ Bible study group, which you’d know if you ever bothered to go.”
Tallulah pushed air between her teeth. “You’re too trusting, Bitty. You always have been. You think just because somebody shows up at church twice a week, they can do no wrong.”
Bitty looked so wounded, I decided to step in, but Miss Frankie beat me to it. Just as well. I consider myself a nice person, but Miss Frankie has Southern comfort down to a science.
Bitty sniffled and Miss Frankie patted and made soothing noises. Bernice and Tallulah shared a weary look. And I still had no idea how Adele Pattiere felt about Silas Laroche’s death.
“We shouldn’t be talking about any of this,” Tallulah muttered. “Eskil wouldn’t like it.”
Aunt Margaret slapped her hand on the table with a whack! that stunned everybody in the room into silence. “I appreciate how you feel, girls. I truly do. But your brother’s in trouble and we’ve got to help him.” She sank down at the table and looked straight into my eyes. “Frances Mae tells me you’re good at solving puzzles like this one. Is that true?”
I wiped my hands on a towel and joined her. “I don’t know if I’m good at it, but I’ve had a little luck in the past. Do you know something that might help clear Eskil of suspicion?”
“I know he didn’t run out of gas in the swamp last night,” she grumbled. “That boat of his started right up this morning. And I know he and Silas have been at each other’s throats for years. If you promise you’ll try to help him, I’ll tell you what I think.”
Tallulah gaped at her mother in shock. Bitty wrung her hands and skittered from the room. Miss Frankie and Bernice raced to the table with a speed and agility I didn’t know either of them possessed.
“It’s all about his daddy’s still,” Aunt Margaret said when we were settled.
Bernice clasped her hands together. “Lord have mercy. I told you about that still, didn’t I, Rita?”
Aunt Margaret smiled sadly. “You remember hearing the stories, Bernice. Running that still was a family business. My husband got it from his daddy. His daddy got it from Cooch’s granddaddy, and so on back four or five generations. By rights, it all should’ve gone to Bernice’s daddy, but he was in Korea when their daddy got sick, so Cooch got it. He made a good living at it for a while. And then one day he up and disappeared. He was still a young man. Didn’t anybody think he was going to go so soon, least of all Cooch himself. Trouble is, he took the location of that still and the family recipe with him. After that, the girls had it rough, but Eskil . . . well, he got hit the hardest. And he blamed it all on Silas Laroche.”
Fifteen
“Let me see if I have this straight,” Sullivan said as we drove home later that night. Fog had rolled in from the water, creating an eerie backdrop for the Impala’s headlights. I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of us. “Coolidge Percifield, otherwise known
as Uncle Cooch, ran a still somewhere out there in the swamp. He made good money off it—hence the big house for Aunt Margaret.”
I leaned forward as far as my seat belt would let me, looking out for other cars and wildlife. “Exactly. But could that possibly be true? I thought stills went out with the repeal of prohibition.”
Sullivan shook his head. “Nope. Making moonshine is still a thriving business. A multimillion-dollar industry. It’s legal in a couple of places, but there’s mostly a big underground network.”
“I guess you learn something every day.”
Sullivan chuckled. “True enough. You said that nobody but Cooch knew the still’s location or the family recipe, right?”
“That’s what Aunt Margaret said. Apparently, both things were part of the family legacy. The location was passed down once a generation from father to son. That went on for a hundred years or so until Cooch disappeared without having a chance to pass the information down to Eskil. He took the location of the still and the recipe with him.”
“And Eskil thinks Silas Laroche had something to do with his father’s disappearance,” Sullivan finished for me.
“Yes. According to Aunt Margaret, Eskil has always suspected Silas of doing something to Cooch. It may be true that a gator got him, but Eskil believes that Silas set up the meeting.” I shuddered at the thought.
“Even if that were true, it happened fifteen years ago,” Sullivan mused. “Why would Eskil suddenly go off the deep end and whack Silas over the head with a toilet tank lid after all this time?”
That image made me shudder again. “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. The other thing that’s bothering me is why would someone kill Silas at his own house but then carry his body all the way to Aunt Margaret’s house to dump it? I mean, look at the country out here. Why not just throw his body behind some trees? Nobody would ever find it.”
“I’d say that the killer wanted everybody to know that Silas was dead. He or she probably also wanted to make Eskil look guilty.”
“Well, they accomplished that,” I said. We drove out of the dense patch of fog and I relaxed back in my seat. “You don’t think he is guilty, do you?”
“He’d have to be pretty stupid to kill the guy and dump him in his mother’s ditch. Eskil might be a character, but he’s not stupid.”
“I wonder who else wanted Silas out of the way,” I mused.
“Junior wasn’t exactly torn up over his brother’s death,” Sullivan reminded me.
“No, but Adele Pattiere sure was.”
“That’s speculation on your part. She could have been upset over something else, like her argument with the mystery kid.”
“It’s not speculation, it’s woman’s intuition,” I corrected. “Totally different. You didn’t see her face when I mentioned Silas.”
Sullivan grinned and accelerated slightly. “Just so you know, neither intuition nor speculation is admissible in court. Eskil told me that nobody had much to do with Silas. He poached other people’s lines, fished property where other people had paid to lease the rights, and pretty much pissed everybody off. If Adele had been friendly with him, nobody would’ve had anything to do with her again.”
We rounded a curve and drove into another heavy patch of fog. Sullivan didn’t seem worried about his inability to see, which made me worry even more. Tensing, I leaned up to help him watch the road. “The sheriff’s deputy, Georgie, told me that Silas was still married. He’s been living off on his own for twenty years, but his wife and son apparently live right there in Baie Rebelle.”
“Is that right? Strange that Junior never mentioned that. And I thought we were getting along so well.”
“I don’t think Junior was a fan, but cheer up. You won the hearts of all the women in Bernice’s family. Even Eskil warmed up to you. But Junior? Not so much. Try not to let it hurt your feelings.”
“I’m devastated.”
“I can see that,” I said with a grin. “Apparently Junior has been taking care of his brother’s family all this time. He didn’t tell us about that either. I wonder why.”
“I wonder why the wife never filed for divorce.”
“Nettie,” I said. “That’s her name. Tallulah thinks she stayed because there was something in it for her. But maybe it’s as simple as not being able to afford to go to court.”
Sullivan flicked his gaze at me. “Maybe. And maybe Tallulah’s right. Maybe she had a reason for staying married to him.”
“Well, if she did, it wasn’t because of his money. Remember, Junior told us their father cut Silas out of his will.”
“Are you sure Junior was telling us the truth?”
Interesting question. “You’re not?”
“I don’t know. It’s an intriguing situation for sure.”
He didn’t know the half of it. I hadn’t even told him about Eskil’s visit to New Orleans or Mambo Odessa’s warnings. I didn’t like keeping secrets from him, but I’d broken my promise to Bernice once—technically twice if you counted the conversation I’d had with Eskil by the grill—and I was reluctant to do it again. Unless I knew that Eskil’s ghostly visit had a bearing on Silas’s murder or he desperately needed the alibi, her secret was safe with me. Besides, Sullivan would want to know why I hadn’t told him about Bernice’s scare before, and that wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have just then. As for Mambo Odessa, I didn’t see any reason to mention her at all for the same reason.
I was suddenly tired of talking about Silas Laroche and his messed-up life. We’d missed out on our quiet dinner together and I wanted to make up for lost time. “We didn’t get the evening we had planned,” I said. “I’m sorry I dragged you into that.”
Sullivan grinned. “It wasn’t so bad.”
“You only say that because you had all the women making eyes at you,” I teased. “Even Tallulah has a little crush on you.”
“Little? I got her to smile. Twice. And you call that little?”
“I could have gotten her to smile,” I protested. “If I’d broken a leg or something.”
Sullivan laughed and took his eyes off the road just long enough to turn my insides to mush. I defy any woman to remain unaffected by those eyes. “We’re going to do this again real soon,” he said. “And by this, I don’t mean hanging out with my new girlfriend. I mean dinner, alone with you, someplace nice.”
Poor Tallulah. She never really had a chance.
* * *
Monday morning, I carried coffee upstairs to Zydeco’s conference room so I could get ready for our weekly staff meeting. Driving to Baie Rebelle with Sullivan the night before hadn’t exactly been the romantic evening I’d been hoping for, but it had been eventful and I was looking forward to that rain check.
I had high hopes that having a day off had given the staff a chance to cool down. I didn’t want to confront Edie again, wasn’t in the mood to argue with Ox about Evangeline Delahunt and the contract for the Belle Lune Ball, or for that matter with anybody about anything. I just wanted the day to go smoothly. I didn’t think that was too much to ask.
The staff gathered, and while things weren’t exactly cheerful, we got through the meeting with a minimum of snarky comments and dirty looks. Ox asked about my pretend meeting the day before, and I pretended that it had been rescheduled. I could tell he didn’t believe me, but he didn’t push the issue, for which I was grateful. The staff and I went over the designs for a couple of wedding cakes and came up with a game plan for making sixteen dozen cupcakes for a private school Halloween party the following week. Everyone walked away with their work assignments and nobody tried to kill anyone else, which I counted as a win.
I carried my notes downstairs, pausing when I reached the first-floor landing. Edie wasn’t back at her desk yet, which wasn’t that unusual, but the strange sounds coming from the end of the hall were. Leaving my notepad on Edie’
s desk, I followed the noise to the employee break room, where I found Edie mopping her tear-streaked face with a napkin.
I tried not to stare. I was always uncomfortable when Edie cried. Or when anyone else did, for that matter. Even after eight months of Edie’s pregnancy, I never knew quite what to say when she fell apart.
She hiccupped softly and wadded the napkin in her hand. And then she looked at me as if she expected me to do something.
I gave a little finger wave. “Hey.”
Sniff.
“Is everything okay?” I know it was a ridiculous question. The answer was painfully obvious.
She gave me the requisite answer for a woman in emotional distress: “Yeah. I’m fine.”
I didn’t want her to think I’d come looking for her, so I went to the fridge and pulled out a can of Diet Pepsi. Leaning against the counter, I popped it open and took a drink. “I think the staff meeting went well, don’t you?”
“Yeah. It was great.”
“Oh, good.” I sat down at the table with her. “Because I thought maybe the tears meant that something was wrong.”
She blew her nose loudly and a sob shook her body. “They hate me, don’t they?”
I recognized the signs of a pity party. I’ve thrown a few for myself over the years. I wasn’t clear on the details of Edie’s, since I thought the staff had been remarkably civil that morning, but letting her get bogged down in negative emotion wouldn’t help any of us.
“No,” I said firmly. “They’re still a little upset about that surprise trial run to the hospital on Friday, but they don’t hate you. An apology would go a long way to making things better, you know.”
She tossed one tissue and pulled a fresh one from her pocket. “You still don’t get it, do you? If Isabeau had done what I did, they would have thought it was cute. Because it was me, they’re all pissed off.”
I didn’t completely agree with her, but I didn’t disagree either. Isabeau had people skills that Edie hadn’t yet mastered. Not that Edie was working on them. But I didn’t know how to say that without making her feel worse.
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