"May I cut in?"
We turned to Jack's mother standing beside us. She looked just like a flapper from the Roaring Twenties. Lavender pageboy wig with a sparkly headband that matched the shimmering, multilayered fringed dress, even a foot-long shiny black cigarette holder with some kind of fake cigarette with a glowing orange LED bulb at the end. She looked really good for a woman in her late fifties or early sixties.
"Mom," Jack said, obviously surprised. "I didn't know you were coming tonight. I would have come to your room and escorted you."
She waved a hand at him and laughed. "Oh, don't even worry about it, son. I wanted to surprise you with my flashy costume. Are you surprised?" Who was this woman, and what had she done with Jack's mother?
Jack nodded.
"So, what about it?" Mrs. Stockton asked. "May I cut in?"
"Oh," I said, still standing there with my mouth open like a bass. "Of course."
I stepped back away from Jack so Mrs. Stockton could move in for the dance, but to my complete surprise, and by the look on his face, Jack's as well, she took hold of my hand, put her other one on my waist, and began to lead me away.
I looked around in a bit of a panic. What the So You Think You Can Dance was going on? Oh well, may as well go with it.
"You look amazing, Mrs. Stockton," I said.
"Oh." She preened. "Thanks. You do too." But her raised eyebrows said otherwise.
"I wore this to help out my friend." I felt the need to explain.
"I understand." It was a simple answer, and once again not the one I had expected from the woman who I'd overheard say to her son, "That girl isn't now and never will be good enough for you."
But I closed my mouth and bit my tongue, liking this woman so much better than the earlier version. I decided not to question it and possibly jinx things.
"Hmm. Oh, look at that," Mrs. Stockton said.
I looked as Mrs. Stockton, leading almost as well as Jack, spun me around so I could see the odd-looking couple across the dance floor.
It was Lurch, a perfect Frankenstein's monster, electrodes and all. Normally over seven feet tall to begin with, the man had added at least another six inches with the monster boots. The person he was dancing with was dressed as—"Oh my goodness, that's a rougarou!" At least from what I could tell, that's what the costume was—an ill-fitting head-to-toe bodysuit partially covered in shaggy brown fur as mangy-looking as Chewbacca the Wookie, four big old paws with fake talons, a head shaped somewhat like a wolf 's with a big enough opening between the jaws for the person's face to be fully exposed. The Cajun legend of the rougarou was the equivalent of the boogeyman in other parts of the country. It had been handed down for generations and told many times to warn children they'd better behave. Pretty darn mean if you'd asked me. Why would anyone tell a kid if they didn't do what was expected of them, a big ol' hairy swamp monster would come and get them?
"For the love of Francis Marion," I said, probably louder than I meant to. "Who'd want to dress up like a rougarou?"
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Mrs. Stockton craned her neck for a better view of the bizarrely costumed person who was practically being carried around the dance floor by Lurch. "From what I can see, Sydney Baxter is who. That young woman is just not quite right in the head if you ask me."
This time I couldn't keep it in. "But, Mrs. Stockton—"
"Oh, please, call me Mom."
Mom? Really? "No disrespect, but I thought Sydney Baxter was your idea of perfect daughter-in-law material."
She stopped dancing—I was actually glad, although the woman was pretty light on her feet.
"Perhaps at one time she was, but the tarot cards predict that in the future a blonde with curly hair will send me off to a horrible home for old women that smells like cafeteria food and diapers."
Oh, Cat. I was at a loss for words at Cat's ingenuity, audacity, and fierce loyalty.
"The cards have also foretold how a woman with hair the color of a Gulf sunrise will one day give me beautiful grandchildren and will be kind and loving to me when I'm very, very old and bring me to her home to live. And she will care for me with her own two hands." She sniffed, and I was stunned to see how emotional she was. "That's the woman I need to support."
I thought again, Oh, Cat.
Sydney spotted us and headed our way, leaving Lurch standing alone. He waved at her back as she walked away from him.
"Adele!" Sydney exclaimed, reaching out to hug Jack's mother but finding only empty space as the older woman dodged her.
"What is that you're wearing, Sydney?" Jack's mother asked.
"Can you believe this?" Sydney began. "I had the cutest little pirate wench outfit all picked out, but when I went to the costume store, it had mysteriously disappeared. And they didn't have anything left but this…this…I don't even know what this is!"
"It's the rougarou," I offered lamely.
"The what?" She practically spit it at me. "Well, whatever, I absolutely hate it, but I had to come. I need to spend as much time with Jack as possible."
"No, you don't."
It was Jack, who'd come up behind us. He went on. "What you need to do is leave Mystic Isle. Go home."
Sydney's face, under the rougarou's open jaw with something that looked like fake rubber gore hanging off the fangs, broke into a confused frown. "Oh, Jack, you don't mean that. I've been looking for you all night." Sydney's eyes traveled over him from the top of his dreadlocks wig to the toes of his tall boots. "And all I have to say is Rowrr."
Jack flushed, and his eyes went to his mother's face, but Mrs. Stockton only glared at Sydney.
"Sydney, you need to go back to Florida. For everyone's sake, I should have insisted sooner," Jack said. "But I couldn't until now. You need to go home. I'm with Mel, and if I'm lucky, she'll let me continue to be with her for a long, long time."
Emotion nearly choked me. Finally. I wanted to grab his face and kiss it all over. There it was, his declaration in front of the universe—as well as his mother and Sydney—that I was the one, his one and only.
Sydney lifted her rougarou paws and looked at them. Her expression was one of total disbelief. "So you really did mean it? You really do want to be with her instead of me?"
Jack lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it. I could feel the warmth of his lips through the thin fabric of the costume's gloves.
"Do you finally understand?" Jack said.
"Adele?" Sydney looked to Jack's mom for support.
"You heard him." Mrs. Stockton shook her head and lifted her chin, looking down her nose at the poor girl in the weird outfit that was really more like a teed off German Shepherd than a horrible swamp creature who kept bayou children up at night.
"But, Adele, I thought you wanted me to come here to… You said I should… You paid for my ticket. I don't understand."
Adele sighed. "I didn't understand either." She looked at me. "But I do now."
"Well, what am I supposed to do now? Especially since I have this ridiculous JAS tattoo?" Sydney's face looked like a sad emoji with a downturned mouth.
I didn't have an answer for her, and apparently neither did Jack.
But Adele "Mom" Stockton seemed to know exactly what Sydney should do. "Well, Sydney, if I were you I'd be heading to the hardware store back home and asking that nice divorced man who works there, you know, James Sanderson, what his middle name is."
I felt a pang of sympathy for Sydney—more than a pang. Yes, she'd been mean to me. Yes, she'd tried to steal my man. But I couldn't help it. What was happening to her at that moment was sad and humiliating. I couldn't even look her in the eye.
"Well, fiddlesticks." Sydney stamped her paw, tossed her rougarou head, and stalked away, but stopped in the middle of the room and let out a shriek that any rougarou would have been proud of.
"Poor thing," I said.
"Poor thing?" It was Jack and his mother in a duet.
"I can't help it. I feel sorry for her."
&n
bsp; Jack dropped a kiss on the back of my neck and goose bumps sambaed around where his lips had been. "Cat's right about you, you know," he said. "You're a real softy—a lovable one."
Lurch, having lost his other partner, clumped over and asked Mrs. Stockton to dance. She twittered, put her small hand in his enormous one, and went off with him just as Nancy Villars, costumed as Little Bo Peep, walked up to us.
"This is quite an event," she said. She eyed Jack. "Don't you look dangerous."
He grinned. "Thank you. I think."
"Have you seen my brother?" she asked.
"Not for a while," I said, debating whether to tell her about his making a run for the border, so to speak, earlier in the day.
"No one's seen him. I couldn't even find him to go with me to the sheriff's inquiry this afternoon. I'm a little worried."
It was totally understandable considering his bizarre behavior.
Jack said, "Isn't that him?"
Percy stood framed in the open double doors. He looked around until he saw us with Nancy and started in our direction. He wasn't wearing a costume, but he did look somehow different. He'd tamed down his unruly hair. Instead of the chinos and golf shirts from the last couple of days, he wore an expensive-looking button-front long-sleeved shirt in a slate grey that looked as if it had been dyed to match his tie and the great-looking slacks that fell in straight lines to the grey Oxfords that carried him across the room. As he drew closer, it began to appear he'd drawn on a moustache.
"Oh, no," Nancy said as he stopped beside her. "Why would you do this?"
Percy lifted his chin somewhat defiantly. "In tribute."
"Well, that's just sick," Nancy said.
"You wouldn't understand," Percy said to his sister.
He looked at me, but before I could ask him why the heck he'd taken off running like Forest Gump, he turned on his heel and walked away.
"Guess he didn't want to come in costume tonight," Jack said.
Nancy sounded disgusted. "Oh, he's in costume all right." She pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. "He came as Elroy."
"He came as his deceased twin brother?" Jack said. "Well that's just about the craziest thing I've ever heard of."
I had to agree. "It sure is."
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Jack took my hand as we crossed back to where Fabrizio was just returning Cat, who was wobbling like a Weeble, to our table after their dance.
Harry and Fabrizio had both donned top hats and tails for the party. They carried walking sticks and wore spats and boutonnieres. Harry was clear across the big room talking to a group of guests. Fabrizio looked like Fred Astaire, and seeing him with yellow and red roly-poly Cat made me smile.
He tipped the top hat to Jack and me. "Good evening."
"You look great," I said.
"Thank you." Another tip of the hat. "How goes the investigation? Harry and I were wondering if further discovery had been made since this afternoon's query by Deputy Boudreaux."
"Chief Deputy Boudreaux," Cat interjected softly, but no one except me seemed to be listening.
"Yes," Jack said. "I was sort of wondering that myself."
"Well," I began telling them about my conversation with Roger Goodwin and what he'd said about the Montana rancher dying and how people thought the Powells might have had something to do with it. "But the rancher's wife killed that idea when she fessed up to the fact he'd had a heart attack."
Fabrizio said, "Well, I see what you're saying about their past homicidal history, but that doesn't explain what Theresa Powell was doing at la petite maison."
Jack said, "What?"
Fabrizio and I took turns relaying how we'd found the receipt and what we'd learned about it.
When we finished, Jack said, "You're right, Fabrizio. What the heck was she doing there, especially when you and Harry hadn't been there for over a week?"
As if on cue, Theresa Powell strolled languidly by in her Cleopatra costume.
"Hmm," Cat said. "Walk like an Egyptian much?"
I watched as Theresa passed. Then I turned to Fabrizio. "We could always ask her."
Fabrizio and I walked over to where Theresa stood talking to Roger Goodwin, who looked like a prohibition-era gangster.
"Hello," Roger said. "Lovin' my tattoo."
"That's good," I said then, "Mrs. Powell."
The look on her face was almost comical as she tried to place the butterball standing in front of her, but she must have finally worked it out. "Oh, hello." And to Fabrizio. "Mr. Fabrizio, how dapper."
Fabrizio tipped his hat. He seemed to like doing it. "It's just Fabrizio, and thank you."
Wanting to catch her by surprise, I sort of blurted out, "We're wondering if you can explain what you would have been doing at the house where Elroy Villars was murdered."
My sneaky ploy must have worked because her face went blank, and she began to blink her eyes rapidly. "What?"
I didn't repeat it.
In an even, conversational voice, Fabrizio said, "I don't know if you're aware I reside in that dwelling with Mr. Harry Villars. Due to the abhorrent nature of living there until the proper restorations could take place after that unfortunate incident—"
"Abhor…what?" Theresa asked.
And I offered, "The ick factor."
Fabrizio went on. "—we have not yet returned to the residence except for brief periods. During one such visit, I came across a cash receipt in the kitchen area. It was from the gift shop here in the main building. Queries led us to you, and to ask the question again: What were you doing inside the house?"
By the furrow of concentration between her brows, Theresa had been listening closely. Fabrizio always seemed to have that effect on folks. His verbiage was formally structured and full of high-dollar words, and most people paid close attention. It was one of the reasons he was excellent as the resort's medium—so good in fact, guests who booked séances with him more often than not poo-pooed the disclaimer Harry's legal team had put together regarding the validity of the resort's entertainers.
When Fabrizio finished, Theresa answered right away. "Easy one. Archie and I have let it be known we're here to find the lost letter of Jean Lafitte. When we heard it had been hidden at that location, we went there to hunt around for it. I must have lost the receipt then. But before you even ask, that was after the homicide took place, not before, and certainly not during."
Theresa stopped talking and brushed aside the long black bangs on the Cleopatra wig. Looking back and forth between the two of us, she seemed to be waiting for our response or further questions.
I had no way of knowing what Fabrizio was thinking just then, but it had taken me aback that she'd answered so quickly and seemingly so frankly by admitting she and Archie had snuck over to la petite maison.
"Is there anything else?" she asked, looking me right in the eye.
I shook my head mutely and was the one who looked away first. Yep, girl, you might be sleuthy, but you aren't much on confrontation.
"Well," she said when we didn't ask anything else, "Archie's waiting. If you'll excuse me?"
I nodded and waggled my fingers in a little bye-bye while Fabrizio doffed the top hat and swept it before him in an elegant bow.
The three of us, Fabrizio, Roger Goodwin, and I, watched her slink away, the silky skirt of her long tunic swirling around her ankles.
"She's quite something, isn't she?" Roger said.
Fabrizio and I both turned and looked at him. Neither of us said anything.
"I'm being summoned," Fabrizio said. My gaze followed his. From across the room, Harry waved at him. "Ta-ta then," he said, this time leaving the topper firmly on his head.
I turned back to Mr. Hollywood, taking a moment to size up the pinstripe suit, white tie, black shirt, and smart black fedora. "Gangster?" I asked.
"Al Capone," he said, first running a finger down the left side of his face where it looked like he'd created a couple of scars by pinching the
skin together with Super Glue. "What do you think?"
"Looks like old Scarface to me," I said. "How's the filming coming along?"
"Not bad," he said. "Pretty good in fact."
"Do you still think this one will be your stepping stone to bigger and better things?"
"You bet I do," he said. "One way or another, the missing letter of pardon of Jean Lafitte will facilitate my comeback." He looked out across the room at the dancing couples, the conversation and laughter taking place at the tables. "Yessir, one way or another."
"One way or another what?" I asked.
Roger looked at me. "Well, uh, it's what the documentary is all about now. Isn't it?" He seemed to suddenly remember something. "Say, I haven't heard back from Harry yet. Has he said anything to you about whether he intends to let us film in the secret passages?"
Mr. Hollywood sure was stuck on those not-so-secret corridors.
"You know, Mr. Goodwin, there's nothing all that interesting about the back passages. Just dark hallways. Their original purpose in the old building was for the plantation servants to move around without disrupting the master and his family. The newer ones come in handy for similar purposes. Housekeeping and room service use them. Both the permanent cast, like me, as well as guest entertainers use them for performance purposes. I don't understand why you think that area would make such interesting shooting locations?"
"What if the letter's there? What if I can—we can find the letter in there somewhere? That would be, as you said, interesting. Wouldn't it?"
I shrugged. "I would have thought the footage of me coming out from under the house possibly holding this fabulous document that your film is all about would have been key for you, but when I crawled out,"—I shuddered, remembering the spidery, musty, muddy crawl space—"your cameras were turned off. That surprised me."
He shrugged.
"Almost as if you knew the document wouldn't be there to begin with," I said more to myself than to him.
He shrugged again. "Well, as it turned out, it wasn't there after all, so we didn't miss the great reveal. But who knows? It might be hidden in the secret passages. I may still find it."
Mystic Mischief Page 16
