I jumped up from the fog and could hear Stan giving the story of the confederate soldiers lost to the great Civil War. He was minutes from unleashing the tourists on the graveyard to search for the fallen soldiers.
I bent back down into the fog, and Jori pointed to Josephine and said, “You want to do what they’re doing?”
“Ugh,” I said.
“What?” he asked. If he was going to kiss me like that, I would have preferred he just kiss me like that, but Jori always stammered about kissing me and when he did I just didn’t want it.
I ignored him and crawled towards Josephine. Unable to see her I brushed some fog and found her in an even further state of undress, down to her bloomers. The soldier was missing his coat his palms were working their way across her naked chest, giving me far more of a show than I had bargained for.
“Hey, people are coming. Get your clothes on,” I whispered.
Josephine turned her face away from the boy and the crimson she had swiped over her lips had been slathered all over her face, but her cheeks were so flushed her skin nearly matched the shade.
She giggled and said, “She’s right. Get off.”
He smiled and said, “Okay,” gyrating into her hip and smiling at her.
She pushed him off and held her breasts in her hands as she got to her knees, searching through the fog.
“Help me find my corset, Fanchon,” she whispered.
The boy fastened his coat and got on his knees behind her. He touched his fingertips to her naked back and then worked them around her chest sliding her hands out of the way. “Let me hold those for you,” he said, sliding his lips down to her neck. He ran his tongue over her shoulder before he took a nip of her neck and sucked so hard I was annoyed by the noise from five feet away. She gasped and moved her hand behind his head to grab a tuft of his hair and push his teeth even further into her.
“Good gracious,” I said padding past them. I was annoyed for two major reasons, one that they weren’t at all worried about being caught naked in a field and secondly that there was no chance I would be caught half-naked in a field.
Just a few steps away from them I finally found her corset, when I whipped the fog away from it I saw the oil lantern from the upstairs bedroom next to it. I used the corset to fan away more smoke in search of the cameo to no avail. I grabbed the lantern, and saw that the glass globe was broken. I heard Stan shout in the distance, “Let the hunt begin!”
I scurried on my knees back to Josephine who was intertwined yet again in a face to face make-out session with her soldier. I threw her corset at her back then jumped to my feet and darted towards the edge of the field, and hid behind a tree. I could still hear the distant smacking sounds of her and her soldier as they both took turns kissing and saying, “You go first.” The lanterns from the ghost hunters were drawing closer to the field where the boys were supposed to be hiding. I finally looked out from behind the tree and said, “Josephine, you go first.”
She kissed him one more time, and I could have gagged at how long she stared at him afterwards. She ran over to me and when I got a glimpse of her in the moonlight I could see her hair and dress in complete disarray. I straightened her out while she stared off in the distance.
“I swear, Josephine,” I said sternly. And she repeated what I said only in a breathless dreamy tone. “Oh, I swear, Fanchon.”
When she finally popped out of her dreamy state and looked at me I showed her the broken lamp. “This was out here. We need to go get a flashlight and see if we can find the cameo. It might be out here.”
“Why are you so worried about that?” she said.
“Because Stan said he’s going to call the police on you if that’s not returned by midnight.”
Her face changed, and she looked to me, wiping the extra lipstick from her chin. “Why didn’t you tell me that?” she asked.
“I did tell you that.”
“No, you told me he was going to hold me responsible. You never said he was calling the police.”
“Well, I know you didn’t do it,” I said. “I’ll tell them about the lady in black.”
She rolled her eyes, grabbed the lamp and stomped towards the house.
I followed behind her trying to keep up as she darted past the shop and the vendor pavilion. She moved straight on to the house.
She whipped open the doors and stomped in. The only people left in the house were the cleaners mopping the floors and moving out the bar tables. She didn’t look at them as she walked through the foyer. She threw down the velvet rope and bounded up the steps. She flicked on the lights in the Lavender Room, so named for the garish color on the walls. The room was furnished with a lush four poster bed, a fainting couch, wash basin, dresser and two small night tables. Josephine set the lamp back on the night table where it came from and looked around the room.
“It would be easy enough for somebody to get up here,” she said. “We just walked by and nobody stopped us. But I would think somebody would have seen a woman in black.”
“I saw her,” I offered but she didn’t respond. She walked over to the display case where the cameo was kept, along with the other jewelry and saw a faded spot in the red velvet where the necklace used to hang.
“There’s a chance it didn’t even go missing tonight. It’s just the first time he looked,” I said.
She let out a sigh. “No, it was there yesterday.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes and said, “Because I was trying it on yesterday and Stan caught me and I’m guessing that’s why he thinks I took it.”
“Why were you trying it on?” I asked.
“I try on everything in this house from time to time,” she said. “There is a whole mess of clothes in Ms. Stewart’s closet and bonnets and a pair of sapphire earrings in a drawer in the nanny’s room, and I have tried them all on at one point or another. She’s dead so I’m sure she wouldn’t mind that I was putting her stuff to good use.”
“Sapphire earrings,” I said and ran down the hall to the nanny’s room, flicked on the lights and pulled out every drawer in the dresser. Josephine came up behind me looked over my shoulder and said, “Well look at that. Those are gone too.”
“Shoot,” I said looking at Josephine. “Now my prints are all over this drawer. And yours are all over the jewelry case.”
“Sho’ nuff look like thieves don’t we?” she said. “What do we do now?”
Then I remembered that I had a clear view of the stairs from the piano. “Mr. Talbot might have seen somebody. I could see the steps from the piano.”
Josephine agreed and we bounded down the stairs back to the main floor. We went to the piano room first and found all of the music gone and the piano closed.
“Where does he go after he plays?” she asked.
“If the music is gone he probably left,” I said. Josephine wasted no time and darted for the door and then out to the parking lot. She ran up and down the cars yelling, “Mr. Talbot.”
When I caught up to her and looked at her face she looked panicked.
“I don’t think we have to worry that much, Josephine. It’s just going to be Stan’s word against yours, and you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“There is things I’m not prepared to explain tonight,” she said and I stopped in my tracks. She ran ahead of me shouting for Mr. Talbot then looked back. “Why are you looking all kicked dog on me, Fanchon?”
“Because you aren’t telling me something.” I said. “When we were talking to Adalaide you said bad stuff has happened to you, and now you are all worried about the police. What don’t I know about you, Josephine? I thought I was your best friend.”
She loosened her stance and walked back towards me. Headlights shined behind her, blinding me. She scurried over to the side of the road to let the car pass and when she did I could see it was Mr. Talbot. He drove right past me, but I yelled after him and jumped up in the air waving my hands.
I thought he di
dn’t see me, but then he suddenly braked and I ran to catch up to him.
“Mr. Talbot.” I said breathless.
“You did a great job tonight,” he said. “You should be really proud. I know you are ready for your college audition now. You are going to wow them, Fanchon.”
I thanked him for the kind words and he handed me an envelope filled with cash. He told me it was an extra tip he got after the performance. He said a well-dressed woman sought him out after my performance and told him to make sure I knew I was appreciated.
“I tried to find you to give it to you, but nobody knew where you went after you saw the psychic.” I knew he was telling the truth about not being able to find me. He wouldn’t think to look for me in the middle of a cemetery trying to get Josephine to put her clothes back on.
Josephine ran up behind me and breathlessly shouted, “Did he see anybody?”
A look of confusion crossed his face and I asked, “Did you see anybody go upstairs while you were at the piano? Stan said that a cameo was stolen from the Lavender Room, and I saw a woman in a black dress up there, but nobody else did. I thought maybe with your view from the piano you might have seen who it was.”
He took a moment to think. “A woman in a black dress? I didn’t see anybody like that. I did see a man and a woman walk down the stairs just before you came, but nobody was wearing a black dress.”
“What did they look like?” I asked.
“Well, I think I had seen the man around before. He was wearing a staff tuxedo. He was tall with light hair. I didn’t get a good look at the woman, but I think she was smallish and she was wearing a dark shawl with violet flowers on it and jeans. Maybe if she had the shawl wrapped around her it looked like a dress. I thought it was odd that she was wearing jeans, as most people were dressed up tonight.”
A woman wearing jeans, I thought back to whom I had seen wearing jeans. Nobody in the house and nobody in the vendor pavilion. Then I remembered the gift shop. Angie was wearing jeans.
“Anything else?”
“Sorry, Fanchon. That’s all I saw.”
I thanked him again, and he drove away.
I looked to Josephine and said, “I think he saw Angie from the gift shop up there. He said she had a black shawl wrapped around her. Maybe that looked like a black dress.”
Josephine agreed and we walked back to the main property and to the gift shop. The lights in the store were still on. When we entered, the bell rang, announcing our presence. There was nobody in the main room, so we walked past the racks of trinkets and post cards to the back counter. After a few moments Angie emerged from the back with a forced smile, which turned into a real smile when she saw us.
“Oh, you girls don’t mind if I grab my dinner while we chat?” she said. We shook our heads and she walked into the back room and came out with a Styrofoam container filled with Jambalaya. I saw the black shawl Mr. Talbot mentioned hanging on the back of the office chair.
“What y’all need?” she asked.
I started, “We were just wondering if you saw anything strange on the second floor of the main house when you went up to the Lavender Room. Like was there anybody else up there and was anything missing?”
She sat her food down and stopped chewing. She kept quiet for a few moments then finally said, “No, I don’t recall going upstairs today at all.”
I motioned for Josephine to come closer to me so she could see the shawl on the chair in the back room.
When she came to my side and saw the shawl she gave me a knowing look. Angie turned around, looked into the room then jumped up and closed the door.
“I’m not supposed to leave the office open,” she said curtly. “And I wasn’t at the main house today.”
“We aren’t here to accuse you,” Josephine said. “Listen, Stan thinks somebody stole the cameo from the display in the Lavender Room. He thinks it was me, and I’m just trying to clear my name. Fanchon found the oil lamp from the bedroom, broken down in the graveyard.”
“You found it in the graveyard? Shoot,” she said. “What did you do with it?”
Josephine pointed towards the house. “I put it back on the table in the bedroom.”
“Dang it,” she said, and ran past the two of us to look out the window.
“Are they still doing the ghost hunt?”
“I don’t know,” Josephine said. “Why?”
“Oh shoot, I didn’t know anybody saw me go up there. You girls have to help me out. I broke the lamp from the display case in the front window this morning, and I knew there was a matching lamp up in the bedroom, so I threw the broken one out in the field and ran up to the bedroom to grab the good one. I broke a vase last week and Stan said if I got careless one more time I’d be fired. You know there isn’t any place to work round here, so I really need this job.”
“Well, how’s he going to know the lamp in the bedroom is the one from the shop?”
“I forgot to take the price tag off the bottom of it. I realized it after I put this one in the case and it wasn’t tagged. I made one up for it and was planning to go back to the field after the hunt, take the tag off and get outta Dodge.”
Josephine walked over to the window and saw Stan standing near the pavilion talking with a group of guests.
“Can one of you girls run up and get the tag off of that lamp for me, please? Or my goose is cooked.”
Josephine said, “We’ll get that sticker off for you, but if you have the cameo you need to tell me. I gotta clear my name.”
“No sir, no how,” Angie said. “I did not touch another single thing in that room. I went in, got the lamp and got out.”
“Did you light the lamp or stand by the window?” I asked.
“No, but now you mention it, it was warm when I picked it up. I thought that was rather an odd thing.”
“Did you see a man go up there, a tall one with blonde hair?” I asked.
“Sorry, no ma’am.”
We thanked her, and then Josephine and I walked slowly back towards the house and when I looked over at her I found her chewing her lip.
“What’s the matter with you?” I asked.
She let out a long sigh and said, “It’s time I tell you something.”
She pulled my hand taking me towards the old slave’s quarters. The small white clapboard buildings were empty and unlit. The slave quarters were not among the party stops planned for the night. She pulled me into one of the small buildings, the rustic door squeaking closed behind us.
We walked into the dark and saw only the portions of the room illuminated by moonlight.
“What is it, Josephine?” I asked.
She searched the dark corners of the room, and when she was sure we were alone she talked. “I didn’t steal that necklace, Fanchon, but I’m no saint and if people go looking too far into my life they might come out with some nasty surprises.”
“I’ve never known you to be in any sort of trouble, unless you count man troubles. In that case you have had a few.”
“It all starts with man troubles with me,” she said. “Do you recollect that fire that nearly destroyed the Vallencourt manor last year?” she asked. I told her I did. “I got a little out of hand with a man I shouldn’t have at the Vallencourt party, namely Mr. Vallencourt.”
I made a disapproving noise and she said, “I know, I know. Well, we danced a few turns, and then he whispered in my ear to go to the upstairs sitting room and find myself a glass of brandy and a cigar. He told me right where to go. He told me where to find the cigars and the drinks. I went up, helped myself to everything. Brandy in the side table, cigars hidden in a globe by the window, small silver lighter sittin’ right next to those cigars. I lit up a stogie and was too fool stupid to think anything of the odd set up. I made myself comfortable and looked at the near empty room, thinking rich people sure do have a lot when they got big rooms full of nothin’. There wasn’t but a couch and a table in that room. I lay back on the lounger and shortly thereafter smelled a horrid
smoke that made my nose curl. I thought it was the cigar so I put it out in the fireplace and left. I went back to the party and danced with near every man in the room. Until smoke alarms went off, sending us all running out into the night. We were all herded into the garden, to wait until the police cleared the house. Up until then we all thought things were still just fine, maybe this was a part of the party, or a joke. The staff at the party handed out flashlights and left us to run through the maze in the garden. I ran through with a group of boys from school. We found these stone demon statues hidden all through the maze, gargoyles they call them. We ran from statue to statue, making our way through the maze and just having a good ol’ time.”
“So how would that get you into trouble?” I asked.
“Well you see, people got together afterwards and the police were lining everybody up for questioning. I learned that room I was in burned up. People were saying there was quite a bit of valuables in that room, like old paintings, and a valuable rug. The truth of the matter is Fanchon, I know there wasn’t a single paintin’ in that room and I planned to make it known when Mr. Vallencourt stopped me and told me he wanted a private audience. He pulled me aside and told me I better think hard about what I say to the police, because they found some curious items outside the house. He said they found that the fire started with a brandy soaked rug. And one of the firemen had just happened upon a little silver lighter, right next to a bottle of brandy in the woods behind the house, both covered in prints. Well, I told him that was a bunch of bull. I had no reason to burn down that house. And he said, ‘Twenty thousand dollars is a pretty good reason. That’s how much money was missing from my upstairs safe. It’s hidden inside a globe up on the second floor and I sure hope the box inside the globe survives the fire so they can look in it for evidence.’”
“Oh, Josephine. What a mess. Why would he frame you like that?”
“Beau said he thinks I was targeted because I’m such a flirt. Men remember where they saw me, women have a low opinion of me and with so many sets of eyes on me it would be easy for somebody to remember they saw me go upstairs. I am just the perfect fool for such a scheme.”
Midnight Saints: Saints Mystery Series Hallwen Short Story Page 3
