CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Cat had to hurry back to the House of Cards for a scheduled tarot card reading. Since it was technically still my day off, I had an afternoon project in mind that had nothing to do with body art.
After what Nancy had said about her brothers always—and she'd reiterated always—being together, I felt as though I needed to get into Harry's house, to be where the killing had actually taken place.
If Percy had lied about not breaking into Harry's place with Elroy, if Percy and Elroy had fought and then Percy had killed Elroy, I needed to know, and I needed to know now. For the sake of Harry Villars. Percy Villars had put himself close to Harry, Harry my friend, and I had no intention of standing by and letting anything happen to my sweet employer, his resort, or the jobs of all my friends.
Before I did anything else in relation to Elroy's murder, I wanted to eliminate Percy from my list of suspects and make sure Harry wasn't in imminent danger being around him. It was hard to imagine that someone could have—how had Quincy put it?—"bludgeoned to death" his twin, his other half, but anything was possible when a lot of money was involved.
Because the discovery of Elroy's body had been such a shock and had rendered me so stunned, I'd not paid a lot of attention to my surroundings. I wanted a chance to look at the crime scene again anyway. Toward that end, I called Fabrizio and asked him to meet me at the employee's side entrance of the main building.
"Of course, m'dear," Fabrizio said, sounding a little out of breath. "I'm just finishing here at the gym. I've been engaged by the documentary film crew to enact a séance tonight on behalf of the Powells, dredging up the buccaneer Lafitte. Decided to hit the gym to be in prime shape for the performance. They'll be filming, and you know how this old thespian does love a juicy role. I'm just ready to step into the shower. Might you be amenable to waiting, oh, say fifteen or twenty minutes?"
"Yes," I said, "I might at that," not voicing the thought that I could definitely wait if I detoured through the main kitchen to see what Chef Valentine Cantrell had on the stove.
Sunday's heavy meal at The Mansion at Mystic Isle was always an old-fashioned dinner served in the main dining room between twelve thirty and two thirty in the afternoon in the Southern Sunday-after-church tradition. Sunday evening supper was more casual, and I could smell the red beans and ham hocks, the chicken pot pies, and shrimp gumbo she'd be serving later before I was anywhere near the kitchen.
Valentine Cantrell was, in the minds of most denizens of Louisiana, the female counterpart to Emeril Lagasse. She knew Southern food better than she knew her own face in the mirror. The woman could cook, which was how I found her then, standing in front of the enormous stove over the gumbo pot, talking to one of the kitchen workers.
She turned around as I walked through the door into the enormous stainless steel-clad kitchen. "Well, would you lookee what the cat done dragged in." She moved over and reached around me, hugging but careful not to touch me with her hands. "It's good to see you. Did you come to see your girl, Valentine, or did you come to eat?"
"Bit of both?" I said, raising my eyebrows in question.
She laughed, a hearty, full sound that started somewhere in Valentine's core and worked its way out. "More of one than the other, I'm thinking," she said. "What's your pleasure, Miss Melanie?" Before I could open my mouth, she went on. "Gotta be the red beans. Right? And a dab o' rice?"
I grinned.
"I knew it," she said, laughing again. "You're just an open book, child."
I sat at one of the long tables in the enormous kitchen and chowed down on the iconic Louisiana dish made even more mouthwatering by Valentine's secret herbs and spices—Colonel Sanders had nothing on Chef Valentine Cantrell—as she brought me up to date on what was happening with her and her adorable, brilliant son, Benjy. After what had happened at Christmastime, I was so glad to see things were back to normal with them.
After a while, she switched subjects. "I been hearing talk goin' round that some long lost wannabe relatives of Mr. Villars turned up, and one of 'em got hisself killed over at la petite maison. I'm willing to lay money you know something 'bout that."
I took a long, deep drink of sweet tea before wiping my mouth and sitting back. "Thanks for feeding me, Valentine. Delish as usual." I sighed. "So, yes, the rumor mill is just about as accurate as it can get. I spoke to Quincy Boudreaux earlier today, and the cause of death's got the sheriff's office investigating this mess as a homicide."
She'd sat down across from me, nursing a cup of what smelled like chicory and coffee. After listening with some intensity, she nodded slowly when I finished, her golden eyes knowing and sad, her full lips pinched. "The minute I heard there was some crazy kind o' papers round here what belonged to that scoundrel Lafitte, I knew it would bring us nothing but bad luck and trouble." She paused before wrapping both hands around her coffee cup and leaning toward me to reinforce her statement. "I want you to watch yourself, sweet child. I've seen how you get yourself all caught up in these terrible things. And while God knows you're good at coming up with answers, when something like this happens, seems like there's always at least one someone who doesn't appreciate you asking the questions."
Her melodic voice had taken on a low and ominous tone, and I had to shake off a shiver. "I'm worried all this"—I waved my hand toward the frosted glass window where the blurry forms of thrill seekers and treasure hunters could be seen wandering the grounds—"commotion and press is bad for Mystic Isle."
She patted my hand. "You're a good girl, and I love you for it. Just take care."
I always do. I looked up at the big clock. It was time to meet Fabrizio. I thanked Valentine for the grub and the empathy and left the kitchen.
I'd only just sat at one of the patio dining sets on the covered terrace by the employee lounge and side entrance when Fabrizio came outside to join me.
The Sunday afternoon sunshine angled under the terrace overhang. Dark clouds looked to be building up over the cypress trees further out in the bayou, and the warm, humid day just might be turning cooler if the promise of rain came to fruition. But for now the temp in the low eighties along with the total lack of any breeze made for a stifling atmosphere on the employee terrace.
Fabrizio sat quietly with me, fanning himself with a copy of Where Y'At, the issue from several months earlier with The Mansion on the cover. "My boy's been quite pensive since Deputy Boudreaux delivered the shocking assessment," he said in answer to my question as to how Harry had taken the news that the sheriff was proceeding with a homicide investigation. "This whole matter has him quite disturbed."
"I get it," I said. "The murder is why I asked you to meet me. Before the police get to crawling all over the house again, I was hoping you could give me a key so I could have another look at the place on my own."
"Key?" He looked at me. "To la petite maison?"
I nodded.
"Oh," he said thoughtfully. "I imagine that might well be arranged." He reached into the pocket of his lightweight sweat pants and pulled out a key ring. "I even imagine you might persuade a certain older friend to go along and do a bit of sleuthing with you."
I couldn't help smiling. "But I thought a certain older friend had a séance to perform."
"Oh, yes, he does. But it isn't for several hours yet."
I stared at him. "Are you sure you want to go back there? I don't imagine they've, uh, cleaned the place up yet—since they're still investigating and all."
"Oh. You don't imagine the, uh, remains are still there?"
"Oh God, no," I said quickly. "But there will definitely be signs in some spots—maybe even quite a lot of signs—of the murder."
At that, Fabrizio's can-do attitude seemed to flag, but only a little. "I don't want you to face that terrible abode on your own. One never knows what danger might lurk at a scene of such violence." He stood and tugged down the sleeves of his T-shirt before thrusting back his thin shoulders in a military stance. "Here I stand, m'lady, your champion.
At the ready to do battle on your behalf."
I took hold of his hand and patted it. "Well," I said. "I don't think it will come to that."
His posture sagged. "Oh, thank God."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Fabrizio and I hoofed it over to the employee parking lot where we hopped into his beat-up 1976 Volkswagen Beetle, the one he'd bought to drive to Louisiana several years ago. After immigrating to the US from England and landing in New York full of hope for a renewed career in theater across the pond, a career that never materialized, Fabrizio had answered an internet ad for "a distinguished actor capable of a convincing portrayal of a spirit medium."
The drive had taken Fabrizio over two weeks because he'd had to stop at several places along the route to hustle up work to pay for gas and repairs to the ancient VW. But it got him here, and when he'd finally made it to Mystic Isle near the lush Barataria Preserve in southeastern Louisiana near the Mississippi Delta, home to—guess who—Jean Lafitte, he'd found a newly renovated Southern plantation being repurposed as a unique resort dedicated to magic and the paranormal. Oh, and he'd also found the love of his life, none other than Harry Villars, his sweet and gentle yet funny and eccentric soul mate.
As we made our way over to la petite maison, the little VW Bug coughed and wheezed and bunny hopped until the engine warmed up. I'd quit asking Fabrizio why he didn't trade the poor thing off for something more dependable, maybe something that came off the line in this century, because it was just obvious he held a certain fondness for it. The car was so old, it was getting hard to tell what color it was. I thought maybe cream colored but couldn't be sure because of the thick patina.
Fabrizio pulled the car into the freestanding garage behind the house. While there was still crime scene tape on the front door, there was none across the French doors into the master bedroom at the side of the house, so Fabrizio unlocked those doors, and we went in.
The bedroom shutters were closed, making the room dark for threeish in the afternoon, even for October when the sun set a bit earlier than the month before. It was also eerily quiet. The whole house was tomb quiet, the silence broken only by the ticking of Harry's grandfather clock in the parlor. It made the sound of Fabrizio's whisper jarring. "I've never done this sort of thing before. If you don't mind, I'll follow your lead."
I didn't admit to him that I wasn't exactly the expert he seemed to think but just nodded as he fell into step behind me.
Either the room had been tossed, or Harry and Fabrizio weren't the neat freaks I'd figured them to be.
"Well, bloody hell," Fabrizio muttered from behind me.
I turned around to catch him picking up clothing that had been left in a pile on the floor.
"No." I said in a soft voice. "Don't touch anything, Fabrizio. They'll know we were here if you do too much housekeeping."
He stared at the pajama top he held in his hand before letting it drop back to the floor. "Sorry."
"No problem," I said. "Instead of tidying up, why don't you look for anything unusual or out of place, something that doesn't belong."
He tightened his lips and squinted in a decidedly Dirty Harry sort of way and nodded before doing an about-face and beginning what looked to be an all-out effort at scrutinizing the room.
I went the opposite direction he did, and we came back together at the door to the hallway.
"Anything?" I asked.
"I've just now noticed that the stand for the bog roll's gone missing."
"The what?"
"Right," he said. "Let me just translate that. In the loo there was a rather large antique wrought iron stand that held the roll of bathroom paper. It's no longer there."
Remembering what Quincy had said about Elroy having been hit with something heavy, I asked. "Do you think it could have been the murder weapon?"
Fabrizio shuddered visibly. "I don't know. I suppose."
"How terrible," I said.
He gulped and nodded.
I tried to shake it off. "Okay, moving on."
Our search of the house was methodical, slow, room to room. In the kitchen Fabrizio turned up a receipt from the resort gift shop he thought didn't belong to either him or Harry. "Anything we would get from the resort gift shop would go on an account. There wouldn't be an individual receipt."
We carefully tucked it into his wallet and then went on to the parlor where…
"What the heck is that?" Something small lying on the floor near the leg of the gorgeous leather sofa had caught my eye. I bent low to have a look at it then picked it up. "Huh," I said, turning it over in my hand before holding it up closer to my eyes.
It was a tie tack or lapel pin or something like that in an antique bronze metal. The letters S P L A C were stacked up against each other to form a curved shape. At one end of the pin was a smooth round shape with (what looked like) eyes etched into it.
Fabrizio had come up behind me and was peering over my shoulder.
"Something you recognize?" I asked.
"Not at all." It came without a second's hesitation. "What is it?"
I turned it over to show him the back. "A pin. There's something familiar about it, but I can't place it."
He scratched his head. "I can honestly say with a hundred percent confidence I've never seen that before."
"Do you think it might be Harry's or—"
Before he could answer, the sound of more than one vehicle pulling up outside the house interrupted me.
Fabrizio went to stand beside the front window and peered between the slats of the shutters. "Bloody marvelous, it's the sheriffs."
My heart leapt as a shot of pure adrenalin rushed through me. "Oh crap, Fabrizio. We gotta get outta here. It's against the law in this parish to cross a police line, and Quincy'll haul us off to the hoosegow f'sure."
He shook his head slowly, still peering out the window. "Nothing of the sort, m'dear. He's your friend."
"Like that matters to Quincy Boudreaux?" I was already moving back toward the bedroom. "He will. He's done it before. That's one man who doesn't like the general population messing around in his investigations. Now come on. Let's get out of here."
We hustled down the hall to the bedroom as quickly and quietly as possible, and I was just closing the French door behind me when I heard the front door open and several voices echo down the hall.
A finger to my lips, I indicated the lock. Fabrizio turned the key in it, and we headed back out to the garage and the antique Beetle. The garage sat far enough away from the house that we were able to back out of it, pull around to the back of it, and make our way back to the main resort without any of the deputies who'd arrived with Quincy being aware of our little recon mission.
It wasn't until we were well on our way back along the service road that I thought about the pin from the parlor. I opened my hand to have a closer look at it.
Fabrizio noticed me staring at it. "Are you going to share that and the receipt with the constables?"
I gaped at him. "You're kidding, right?"
"Oh," he seemed confounded at that. "I wasn't. No."
"If Quincy finds out I lifted what could turn out to be evidence from his crime scene, he'll have me drawn and quartered."
"Oh." Fabrizio cocked an eyebrow, his voice full of irony. "Are you sure? Drawn and quartered? That sounds just a touch severe."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
On the way back to the main building I received a text message from Cat.
Nancy Villars jumped at a free tarot reading and hustled right over to the House of Cards. Man, is she intense. Meet me in the main salon for a glass of wine. You're gonna love it.
So I thanked Fabrizio for going sleuthing with me and asked him to drop me off at the front entrance and also to please keep me posted on what he learned from checking up on the receipt he'd found at the house. From the veranda I went straight in and made the right turn into the main salon. Tired and stressed from such a bizarre day, I totally felt the funeral dirge ringing out as I crossed t
he entry seemed pretty darn appropriate.
The main salon was one of my favorite places in the resort. When the main building had been constructed for the Villars back in the 1700s, the huge front room had been designed to host parties the like of the barbecue at Twelve Oaks in Gone with the Wind. I'd never seen The Mansion before Harry restored it, but from what I'd heard, it was sad—the floor covered in ratty 50s-style turquoise and pink patterned carpet, with sheer, floor-length pink drapes at all the windows, left over from the Eisenhower years.
But the restoration had brought the salon floor back to its original hardwood, polished to a high sheen. It was covered here and there with lovely circular rugs where antebellum loveseats and high-backed chairs set off conversation areas. A bar in the gently curved pre-Civil War style sat centered at the back of the room. At four in the afternoon, the tinkling of "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" from Tatiana at the baby grand by the windows barely floated above the low buzz of conversation. Tiny café tables clustered in small groups around the bar. Cat had commandeered one of them.
I made my way straight to the bar and ordered a glass of pinot grigio then carried it to the table. Cat looked up from her wine glass as I sat down.
"You look frazzled," she said. "Long day?"
I nodded and took a sip of the cool, fruity wine, snatched a Kalamata olive off the small plate of cheese, crostini, and cold cuts in the middle of the table.
Cat's gentle, welcoming smile, the chilled wine, and the soft music washed over me, and the stress of the day left like someone had pulled a thread, and my taut nerves had been unstrung.
"Yes," I said. "Long day." It had been, between my frenetic impersonation of Sue Grafton's intrepid PI, Kinsey Millhone, running here, there, and everywhere poking around in other people's business, and dealing with my nemesis, Sydney Baxter. And it wasn't over yet. I just needed a temporary escape to a place where I didn't have to worry about murderers or man-stealers.
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