He grunted at the fern instead of speaking.
“I mean it. As a matter of fact, I’m putting on a fashion show there tomorrow night and I could sure use some help. We’ll need lots and lots of flowers. Are you interested in some freelance work?”
“Maybe. What ya got in mind?”
“Several tall vases for the stage and something special for the wings. Definitely a boutonniere for Ambrose.” Which reminded me. If he didn’t reappear at the mansion soon, I’d have to call him at his shop and explain about the show tomorrow night.
“I can do dat. Mixed flowers, or ya want sometin’ special?”
“Your snapdragons are gorgeous. I don’t want you to take any from the plantation, but do you have a garden back home?”
“Ya, a big one. Let me tink on it.”
I mentally calculated the number of arrangements we’d need for the show. “It’ll probably take two four-foot vases for the front and maybe a couple of five-footers for the wings. And Ambrose likes delphiniums.”
“What kinda budget ya got?”
I clucked my tongue. “Now don’t go crazy. This is for a church, after all. The last time we did this, we spent two-hundred and fifty dollars on the large arrangements.”
“Sounds good. Wot ya up ta now?”
“I’ve been looking around the plantation. Trying to see as much as I can before Ambrose gets back. I can’t stop thinking about what happened here yesterday.”
“Ain’t dat da truth.”
“I feel so bad for Mrs. Solomon. She and I know the same people back in Bleu Bayou. I can only imagine what’s she’s going through.”
“Her child be sainted now, is wot we say.”
I blinked. “What an interesting way to put it. No matter how you say it, she must be devastated. I wish I could do something for her.”
Something had occurred to me while I was in the restaurant, but I’d have to phrase it carefully for Darryl to say yes. “There is one other thing I could use help with. Is there any way I could see the room where Trinity stayed? I keep thinking the investigators came and went so quickly. What if they missed something? What if they overlooked something important?”
Darryl shook his head. “Dey’s give me a key ta da rooms. But dat’s not for me ta decide.”
“Nobody’s talking about what happened here this weekend. The only way we’re going to find answers is to pull together.” I didn’t back away, though Darryl stared at me as if I’d asked him for his bank-account password instead of a room key. “We could wait for Officer LaPorte, but we’re running out of time. Or we can look around on our own. Maybe they missed something in her room. They might have.”
“Dat’s breakin’ da law, Miz DuBois. Deys don’t want us in dere.”
“Of course they don’t want us in there. But nothing else has worked so far. The killer could be halfway to Baton Rouge with all the evidence by the time the Riversbend Police Department gets its act together. Honestly.”
Darryl paused. His decision could go either way.
“All right,” he finally said. “I can get ya in dere. But dat’s it. Dat’s as far as dat goes.”
“Fair enough. You show me her room and give me the key, and I’ll never tell another soul how I got in. I’ll even stand in the doorway so I don’t make footprints. But sometimes things get overlooked and there might be evidence begging to be discovered. Begging, I tell you.”
He didn’t look convinced, but he straightened anyway and walked to the stairs. He moved like someone half his age, and I rushed behind to keep up, especially when he took the stairs two at a time.
As soon as he reached the landing, Darryl turned and pulled something from his pocket. “Here ya go.” He furtively offered it to me. “Room two-one-five. Do wot ya’s got ta do and den get out.”
I clutched the key. “Of course. Thank you.” The second floor was as deserted as the first had been, but I quickly ducked around him and tiptoed down the hall.
The door to room 215 stopped me cold, but I managed to turn the key in the lock and watch a shadow sweep across the carpet as it opened.
The outline of heavy furniture appeared. A divan, the same type as the one in my room, sat next to the window, and a bookshelf ran across the far wall. An enormous four-poster bed piled high with throw pillows held center stage.
My heavenly days. Trinity couldn’t have slept in her room Friday night because the pillows formed a perfect triangle on the bed. I knew from my studies at Vanderbilt first responders wouldn’t touch anything at a crime scene unless it was critical to the investigation, and they certainly wouldn’t make up a bed.
Trinity must have spent Friday night somewhere else. But where? Not in her fiancé’s room. According to Beatrice, Sterling didn’t know Trinity’s whereabouts when she disappeared before the hat competition.
I kept my promise to Darryl and stayed in the doorway. It was dark and still, and I gradually noticed something else: a strange smell. Like the Cutex fingernail-polish remover I kept on my vanity back home. Which meant an investigator must have used a fuming wand to scan objects, like an alarm clock on the nightstand.
Lance told me about those things when we combed the restroom downstairs. He said the same smelly superglue people used to repair kitchen chairs and smashed pottery and whatnot would also build up ridges on a fingerprint so it could be photographed. While I couldn’t pretend to understand the science behind it, the whole idea amazed me.
Lance seemed wistful when he talked about the wands. The Riversbend Police Department couldn’t afford them at five thousand apiece, so they drove their evidence to a bigger county. He hoped to get one during the next budget cycle, if I recalled correctly.
So why did the Riversbend Police Department suddenly have a fuming wand? The smell made my eyes begin to water. Either the officers ranked this investigation as a number-one priority and coughed up the money somehow, or someone else was bankrolling it.
I wiped away a tear sliding down my cheek. Except for the strange smell, the bedroom was ordinary enough. Messy, but ordinary. Shirts trailed half on and half off their hangers in the closet, a pair of shorts puddled on the ground, and a paperback fanned open on the divan.
Someone had confiscated the wedding dress. In fact, the room didn’t seem to belong to a bride. No jewelry or box for fancy shoes or lace garter. But maybe they gave those things to Trinity’s stepmother once they’d been fumed for evidence.
I wiped another tear and pulled the door closed. Heaven only knew it’d take a proper search warrant to do more, and I’d seen and smelled enough. I pocketed the room key and made a mental note to return it to Darryl as soon as I could.
By the time I swept down the hall, my stomach was growling like a vacuum cleaner set to high. Enough was enough. It was time to dry my eyes and find something to eat.
I headed for the stairs. There was only one problem: I desperately needed a Kleenex, but the bathroom downstairs still gave me the heebie-jeebies. Since my room was only one flight up, it’d make more sense to go there first.
I climbed the steps to the third floor. My eyes still watered from the chemicals, and I almost tripped on the landing and landed face-first on the carpet.
This hall was empty too. Only a few people had chosen to remain at the plantation, and most of them had nothing to do with the wedding. Heaven only knew whether the hotel even told them about the weekend’s grisly events.
I steadied my hand against the wall for balance. The hall was wide and not nearly as intimidating as the night before, when the ghostly figure trailed past like a puff of smoke. In fact, I felt a little foolish now as I walked along the carpet.
Halfway down, I paused. Someone had left a package by my door. I rubbed my eyes and glanced at it again. Was it a package, or something else? It seemed more green than brown, and it stood about a foot tall.
Of course. That sweet, sweet Ambrose. He’d ordered a flower arrangement to cheer me up since he had to leave and return to Bleu Bayou.
&nbs
p; I should have expected as much. He always put my happiness above his own, often when I least expected it. Like the time I held a grand opening for Crowning Glory on a summer day with unusually stormy weather.
How I struggled to make it the best grand opening ever. I spent six months beforehand ironing out the details. I ordered five hundred business cards and five hundred glossy postcards to mail to banquet halls, wedding planners, and photographers all up and down the Great River Road.
When the printer returned the postcards—awash in beatific brides and frothy veils—I addressed each one by hand, since mailing labels seemed too impersonal. Then I bought rolls and rolls of stamps and dropped the cards into the mailbox two weeks before the big event.
That same day, I began to bake. Trays and trays of pralines, macaroons, and anything else that wouldn’t stain lace. Even though I planned to exhibit my wares up high on shelves, I knew one or two would make the rounds through the shop as guests passed them back and forth.
With a week to go, I broke out the Borax. I mopped the floor two times, wiped every surface, whether it needed it or not, and cleaned both the inside and outside of the front window.
Ambrose arrived for the grand opening an hour early. He even vacuumed the rug, my protests notwithstanding, and Windexed the glass again for good measure. By then, sheets of rain had fallen and his collar was soaked through, but he didn’t care.
I threw open the front door at the stroke of ten. When no one arrived that first hour, I started to make excuses. It was too wet, it was too early, they’d come at lunch.
Ambrose tried to distract me with games of gin rummy and crazy eights. He even let me win when he could have played the eight in his hand.
Time dragged on and on, and still the store resembled a church on New Year’s Eve. Ambrose finally laid down his cards and mumbled something about getting us lunch. Soon after he left, the front door swung open and I assumed he’d forgotten his keys. But in trotted a wedding planner, who bemoaned the weather and her busy schedule and blah, blah, blah. She even whipped out her cell and called a client on my behalf.
On her heels came a photographer. And then a group of caterers. Before long, so many people stood shoulder to shoulder in the store no one could see the shelves. But it didn’t matter. All anyone wanted was a business card, along with a praline or two.
When the trickle swelled to a throng, the truth dawned on me. Ambrose must have called in every favor that anyone in town owed him.
He finally got back to the store an hour later. I glimpsed him through the window, as he stood on the sidewalk. When a guest left the store they passed him my business card and he handed over some cash. It looked like a drug deal in broad daylight, with the pusher selling cardstock instead of cocaine. Every transaction was the same: card, then cash; card, then cash.
It went on all afternoon. Ambrose finally elbowed his way into the store twenty minutes before closing time.
“Where have you been, Bo?”
I remembered the look on his face. He casually leaned against the counter, as if he’d never left. “Nowhere special. Tried to get us some Chinese, but then a client called. Oh, well. Looks like your opening was a smash.”
Two could play at his game. “I know. It’s been crazy. I talked to people and passed out business cards all afternoon. Guess that postcard I mailed out worked, huh?”
“It was a nice postcard,” he said.
I tried to be angry, but couldn’t. “You didn’t have to pay all those people off. But I’m glad you did.”
Over the next few weeks, I tried to figure out how he came up with the money to bribe my guests. He ate ramen noodles for a month afterward and never once complained. And now this. Fresh flowers delivered right to my doorstep.
I stepped closer to my hotel-room door. The flower arrangement was more wide than tall, and it spread in front of the kick plate. My eyes had stopped watering, and I paused some twelve feet from the door. The colors were a jumble of greens, golds, and tans. But no cut flower I knew, even a fresh one, shimmered quite like that.
Plus, the arrangement seemed jagged, much too jagged for a professional bouquet. I crept a foot or two closer. Was that a feather sticking out from the top? It was a feather, although that didn’t make much sense.
I froze. My eyesight had cleared. It wasn’t an arrangement of blooms and bulbs, leaves and stems. It was fabric, poking out from a greasy paper grocery sack. It had been left on the ground where I’d be sure to find it.
I forced myself to walk the last few feet to the door. I bent to pluck the feather from the sack. It was a quill, of all things. A pheasant quill, with barbs ripped out at random spots. A quill like the one used in Ivy’s Victorian hat.
My fingers released the feather, and it twirled to the floor. Whoever destroyed Ivy’s hat must have been angry, because the cuts were jagged, unplanned. They must have found the hat on the front porch, where I’d forgotten it once Lance arrived.
Why would someone destroy her beautiful hat like that? Even smashed, the hat was exquisite and obviously expensive. Now it sat in a ripped grocery sack, a jumble of tulle, ribbon, and felt, topped with a bedraggled pheasant quill.
It was a message, obviously. Someone wanted to frighten me. I’d been holding my breath for the past few moments, which I slowly exhaled. If that was the person’s goal, they’d accomplished their mission.
I backed away from the hideous pile, then turned and ran down the hall to the stairs. I almost smashed into the front door before I remembered to open it, and then I stumbled out onto the porch.
What to do now? Ambrose was down the road in Bleu Bayou, and I’d apparently spooked Charles with my questions. Even Cat said she wanted to close up her kitchen for the day once she ate my omelet.
My eyes swept the grounds. The parking lot was empty, except for a lone car next to the registration cottage. It was a Louisiana State Police car, covered with mud. Dirt was smeared across the windshield, grime spread across the side panels, and the whitewall tires were black. Which could mean only one thing: Lance LaPorte was back. He never could take care of his toys, even when we were little. He always was as reckless as a tornado.
Yes, Lance LaPorte must be close by. I could tell him about the chilling discovery by my hotel-room door.
I gazed over the front lawn as I descended the stairs. A dark form stood amid the green grass and wispy willows. Lance stood in the small graveyard beside the mansion, which Beatrice had mentioned during our tour. The cemetery held the remains of Mr. and Mrs. Andrews and most of their children.
There was no telling why Lance was in the graveyard, with no one for company but a bunch of headstones. Every once in a while he shifted, and the blue of his uniform blurred for an instant.
Thank goodness he was still at the mansion. I skirted the perimeter, the sound of willow wisps rubbing in the breeze following me. Lance didn’t know I was there, and I was about to call out to him, when something else moved. Hidden behind Lance was another man, only this one wore coveralls and carried a pair of mud-caked garden clippers.
Darryl stood by Lance beneath a canopy of willow branches. In the Andrews family graveyard, no less.
The meeting piqued my curiosity. Any thoughts of interrupting Lance to tell him about my discovery gradually faded away.
The conversation seemed cordial enough. Lance spoke loudly, probably due to Darryl’s age, while Darryl responded by methodically rubbing the garden clippers against the sleeve of his coveralls.
Nothing stood between me and them but an expanse of wide-open lawn. Since it wouldn’t be polite to interrupt the conversation at this point, I hightailed it back up the steps and walked out on the balcony of the restaurant. I stood above them now, looking down on two dark forms in the deserted cemetery.
I shouldn’t eavesdrop. Since Ambrose wasn’t there to whisper no in my ear, I soon caved and ducked behind a fat column.
Luckily, Lance continued to raise his voice and it boomed in the quiet. I grabbed a nearby chai
r and scooted it behind the column, since I had no way of knowing how long they’d been speaking or how long it’d last. Then I settled in, which might not have been the morally right thing to do, but I felt God would forgive me, even if the two gentlemen below might not. There would be time enough to tell Lance about my chilling “gift” once the men finished their conversation.
“You’re saying you never met him,” Lance said. “Not once?”
I peeked around the pilaster. Lance withdrew his notebook.
“Hard ta say. Lots of dem folks come ’round dis weekend. Strangers, dey were.” Luckily, Darryl had raised his voice to match Lance’s.
“Surely you’d remember him, though.”
“Lots of folks come ’round. Can’t remember dem all, can I?”
Lance scribbled something on the page before looking up again. “Think hard, Mr. Tibodeaux. Maybe you ran into him before the wedding. You must have spoken to him at one time or another.”
Were they talking about Sterling Brice, the dead girl’s fiancé? Why would Lance care whether Darryl had spoken to him? That seemed like a stretch, even though I couldn’t read Lance’s mind.
“Ya be askin’ de wrong person,” Darryl said. “Ya gots lots of people ’round here who don’ like de Solomons. Ask some of dem. Pardonnez-moi.”
“Just a minute.”
I peeked around the column again. Lance had closed the notebook and now grasped Darryl’s shoulder. Everything stilled at that point, from the shuffling willows to a few cicadas in the bushes and even the dull roar of traffic on the highway.
“You’re officially telling me you’ve never met Herbert Solomon or his daughter, Trinity?” Lance’s posture was rigid. “Think carefully, Mr. Tibodeaux, before you answer.”
“Dat’s what I’m sayin’.” Darryl roughly shrugged out from under the officer’s grasp.
I must have been hearing things. Or maybe it was Darryl who didn’t understand the question. Of course he knew Herbert Solomon. He’d worked for the man, for goodness’ sake. And Mr. Solomon had confided to him that the family would be cremating Trinity’s body.
Murder at Morningside Page 10
