Murder in the Bayou Boneyard

by Ellen Byron

  Maggie suddenly remembered the Pelican Penny Clipper and its lurid story casting suspicion on her family. She searched the room with her eyes and was relieved to there wasn’t a copy of the paper lying around. It didn’t seem like the MacDowells had been alerted to the Crozats’ status as suspects, although there was no preventing them from coming to that conclusion on their own. The faster she and Gran extracted information from Doug, the better.

  Gran, who Maggie guessed was thinking the same thing, had already helped herself to a seat. “Magnolia, dear, put the goodies away in the fridge.” Doug sat down opposite the octogenarian. “Can we heat you up a plate, Doug?”

  “No thanks. I don’t have much of an appetite right now.”

  “Of course you don’t. I imagine that’s true of the twins, too. Although their relationship with your wife seemed, I don’t know … a bit contentious.”

  Doug snorted. “Pretty much every relationship with those two is contentious. They’ve been giving me grief ever since me and their mom broke up, which was ten years ago by now. Never mind that she’s remarried and happy as a pig in you-know-what.” His lower lip quivered. “Susie and I had that. I was happy as a fat little piggy. But I didn’t deserve her. She was too good for me. I did some things I feel real bad about now.”

  Doug began to blubber. Gran helplessly patted his leg. “There, there. Let it out.”

  Maggie found a beer in the refrigerator. She twisted off the bottle top and brought it over to Doug. “Here.” Grateful, the widower took the bottle and chugged its contents. “I think being here makes it harder on you. In Pelican, I mean, not in the studio,” she added hastily. “Once you get back to Toronto, you’ll be able to start the healing process.”

  “Oh, we’re not going back.”

  This revelation took Maggie by surprise. “You’re not?”

  “Nope. This was Susannah’s ancestral home.”

  “Technically, that would be Acadia,” Maggie felt compelled to say. “In Canada. Your homeland.”

  “This is where Susie’s heart and soul were.” Doug made an expansive gesture with his arms.

  “My goodness, after only living here several weeks?” Gran said. “That’s quite a commitment.”

  “Yes,” Doug said, taking her brittle comment at face value. His lower lip quivered again. “We’re getting Susie’s ashes back tomorrow. We’re going to scatter them here. On her land.”

  At a loss for words, Maggie simply responded, “Huh.”

  Gran took the lead. “What a lovely gesture. I’m sure she’d appreciate it. Have you thought what you’ll do with the land after you’ve … immortalized her?”

  “No. We’re each other’s beneficiaries, so I’ll have to figure that out at some point. Might be best to keep the ashes in one place. Do a memorial garden or something.”

  “Another lovely gesture.” Gran stood up. “If you need anything, do let us know. Maggie?”

  Gran took her granddaughter’s arm and gently pulled her out the door. “Close your mouth, chère—you’ll swallow flies. Or worse, mosquitoes. I wouldn’t put it past those critters to bite from the inside.”

  “I couldn’t stand hearing him say her land,” Maggie said, tromping through the woods with large, angry steps.

  “Was her land. Now it’s his. Which gives him motive. Although I have to say, I found Doug’s grief sincere. I could be wrong.”

  “No,” Maggie said. “My instinct says he’s genuinely devastated. But I’m guessing mostly about being left to handle his obnoxious children without Susannah as a buffer.”

  “Maybe Susannah really did fall in love with the area,” Gran mused. “She wouldn’t be the first person to find Cajun Country irresistible.”

  “No.” Maggie gave her head a vehement shake. “There’s more to it than that. I know it. Susannah was an operator. I’d even call her a grifter. She was one of those people who could fake sincerity so well people believed it. Even me.” Maggie kicked a branch blocking her path out of the way.

  The two women reached the cottage. “We’re done for the evening,” Gran said to her granddaughter, “so get a good night’s rest, chère. You need it.”

  “Sleep isn’t my friend these days.”

  Gran eyed her granddaughter with concern. “Yes, and it’s starting to show.”

  “Ouch,” Maggie said with asperity. “Thanks for that.”

  “I mean in terms of your anxiety level and the physical toll it’s taking on you. You’re too thin, your eyes are shadowed, and you’re all-around jittery. Do whatever it is young people do these days to relax. Well, whatever’s legal in this state.” Gran put her arms around Maggie and held her in a tight hug. “I don’t want you wheeled down the wedding aisle on a gurney.”

  Maggie did her best to follow her grandmother’s advice. Before going to bed, she contorted herself into a few yoga positions and did deep-breathing exercises. Once under the covers, she tried lulling herself to sleep with meditation. But a list of potential murder suspects replaced images of flowering fields and waterfalls, and Maggie gave up trying to turn off her brain. Instead, she ran through the list, beginning with bereaved widower Doug MacDowell. Killers have been known to grieve for their victims, she mused, and he was Susannah’s beneficiary. This train of thought led Maggie to wonder if the twins were in Susannah’s will. Considering their fractious relationship, she assumed not. But the removal of their stepmother from the pictured offered the aggravating duo a chance to further whatever slim bond they might have with their father. I wonder if they’re in his will.

  Walter Breem, Dupois Plantation’s loner caretaker, was up next on Maggie’s list of suspects. She resented Zeke Griffith’s lack of interest in the strange man. Breem certainly had opportunity. But did he have means and motive?

  Maggie checked the clock on her wicker nightstand. Its digital display read two AM. She fluffed her pillow and rolled onto her right side toward the bedroom wall, grateful that her days in the narrow twin bed were numbered. She and Bo had ordered a luxe king-size mattress for their matrimonial bed. Then again, my bed here is probably twice the size of what you get in prison, she thought glumly. Restless, Maggie rolled onto her left side, facing the bedroom window. There have to be more suspects. She revisited the possibility that Susannah had made an enemy out of one of her clients. Patria, the gullible young actress in Quentin’s play, had readily admitted to a psychic reading. Maggie knew performers were generally an insecure lot, which made them susceptible to the hocus-pocus of someone like Susannah. Maybe one of Patria’s castmates received a reading he or she didn’t like and decided to punish the messenger.

  Tomorrow I’ll put Gran to work finding out if the twins benefit in any way from Susannah’s death. Pelican PD can take a closer look at Walter Breem. And I’ll poke around the play’s cast to see if anyone besides Patria availed themselves of Susannah’s psychic “powers.”

  A plan in place, Maggie finally began to relax. She was about to doze off when she noticed a flash of light coming from the manor house. Or was I dreaming? she wondered. She threw off her bed’s vintage quilt, padded to the window, and peered across the graveled parking lot.

  It was no dream. Nor was it a ghost. Someone was in Crozat Plantation’s attic … at two o’clock in the morning.

  Chapter 11

  The light went out a moment after she spotted it, but Maggie wasn’t taking any chances. She threw on clothes and raced over to the manor house, heading up the back stairs with light footsteps so she didn’t disturb the B and B guests. She almost collided with her father, who was coming down the stairs. He wore slippers and a bathrobe over his pajamas. “You saw the light too?” she asked.

  “No,” Tug said. “The Beckers, that young couple from New Orleans, woke me. They’re staying in the Damask Room and heard footsteps above them in the attic. Freaked them out. They were about ready to jump in their car and head back to the city. I convinced them it was just this old place creaking.”

  “It wasn’t.”

/>   “You and I know that, but let’s not mention it to our guests. We got enough trouble going on right now as it is.” Tug motioned for Maggie to follow him. “Walk quiet. I told the Beckers I might be poking around for a minute or two, but I don’t want to set them off again.”

  A sign reading Employees Only hung from a rope, blocking access to Crozat’s attic. The two tiptoed upstairs to the attic door. As Tug opened it, the knob came off in his hand. “This wasn’t much protection to begin with, but someone loosened it.” He used his flashlight to point out loose screws in the doorknob plate.

  Tug and Maggie walked up the handful of steps into the attic. He let his flashlight circle the room. Maggie had spent enough time riffling through the century and a half’s accumulation of Crozat personal belongings to recognize that someone else had also been pawing through it. Furniture had been rearranged. A trunk lid was thrown open. “Do you know if anything’s missing?”

  Tug shook his head. “Not offhand. I’ll have to check in the morning. Nothing more we can do tonight. Except for this.” He used his flashlight to indicate a Victorian mahogany davenport writing desk. “We’ll use the old desk to block off the attic door. Help me carry it.”

  Maggie took one end of the desk and Tug the other. Solid and beautifully made, it was also heavy. The two managed to carry it out of the attic without making noise. They closed the door and placed the desk in front of it. “If anyone tries to move this, we’ll be sure to hear it,” Maggie said. “I’ll call Pelican PD first thing and have them send someone over.”

  “I want you here with me,” Tug said. “We can go over the place together with the police and see if we can find footprints or other clues about who was up there.”

  “It has to be a guest, right? Someone who has access to the house.”

  Tug looked embarrassed. “To be honest, I’ve gotten a little lazy about keys over the years. If guests forget to turn them in, I don’t hound them about mailing them back. I just make new ones.”

  “So what you’re saying is, there are a whole lotta keys to this place floating around and pretty much anyone in the universe could be our intruder.”

  “Pretty much,” Tug said sheepishly.

  Bemused, Maggie shook her head. “I’m thinking it’s time to research the cost of programmable key cards.” She ran a hand over the writing desk’s smooth finish. “One upside to tonight. I found my perfect desk for the apartment.”

  Tug used the back of his hand to wipe sweat from his neck. “Nothing else to be done now, chère. Go back to bed. Something tells me tomorrow’s gonna be a busy day.”

  To Maggie’s surprise, given the evening’s concerning events, she had no trouble falling asleep. She didn’t wake up until eight the next morning, when she was greeted by the aroma of coffee and baked goods wafting through the air. Sleepy-eyed, she stumbled out of bed and into the kitchen. She found Bo, not Gran, brewing coffee and setting out an assortment of fresh pastries. Instead of his detective attire, he was clad in jeans and one of the T-shirts Maggie had designed for Pelican’s Cajun Country Live! festival. “You’re the most welcome sight ever,” Maggie said. She threw her arms around him, and they kissed.

  “I’m looking forward to future morning greetings like that,” he said with a sexy grin.

  Maggie picked up a croissant and tore it in half. The delicious breakfast treat was still warm, and laden with an aromatic almond filling. “With all that’s been going on since Susannah was killed, I didn’t know when I’d see you next.”

  Bo poured them each a cup of coffee and sat down at the café table. “I took the week off. Said I needed to be with my kid to do all the Halloween stuff, like buying candy and baking cupcakes for school.”

  Maggie threw her beau a skeptical look. “You’re baking cupcakes?”

  “Someone is,” he said with a wink. “And that someone is whoever’s doing the baking this week at Fais Dough Dough.”

  “Aside from the fact that the sight of you makes my heart go pitty-pat, we had an incident here last night.”

  Bo’s expression grew serious. “Talk to me.”

  Maggie’s cell rang. She checked the number. “Tell you in a minute. It’s Kaity at Belle Vista.” Maggie answered the call. “Hey, Kaity. What’s up?”

  “Sorry to call this early.” Kaity sounded tense, a contrast to her usual boundless supply of upbeat energy. “Have y’all had any rougarou sightings last night or this morning?”

  “No. I haven’t seen any since poor Susannah passed away in that strange costume. Have you had one?”

  “Yeah, and it almost gave one of our guests a heart attack. She was gonna check out, but I bribed her into staying with a free massage.”

  “No rougarous, ghosts, or vampires here, but we did have a prowler in our attic last night.” Bo raised his eyebrows. Maggie mouthed to him, “I’ll explain.”

  “I thought maybe the lady was seeing things,” Kaity said, “but she described it pretty clear. Whether it was real or in her mind, it’s bad for business.”

  “True dat. I’ll keep an eye out over here and let you know if we have any sightings. As long as I’ve got you on the phone, any chance you could share your massage therapist? Mo Heedles is taking over our spa. She’s looking for a full-time masseuse, but we could use someone part-time until then.”

  “I wish I could help y’all out, but our masseuse has been booked solid since your gal got offed. It’s like they say, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

  “Yikes,” Maggie said. “Not sure that’s the best analogy for the situation, but I get what you mean.” She ended the call.

  “You were saying about a prowler,” Bo prompted.

  “Right. Let’s move on from murder and monster sightings to that.” Maggie shared the previous evening’s mystery with him. “I don’t know if someone was trying to scare us or steal something.”

  “As soon as you’re done with breakfast, we’ll have a look.”

  “Okay.” Maggie took a bite of her pastry. “I’m eating slowly. This feels so nice and normal compared to everything else that’s going on. I don’t want it to end.”

  “It’s gonna be our forever, chère,” Bo said.

  “If I don’t end up in the hoosegow, the big house. If they don’t send me up the river. When I lived in New York, I found out what that meant. Sing Sing prison is up the river from the city. In Westchester County. On the Hudson River. Probably the prettiest setting for any prison in America. Except for Alcatraz. What a view of San Francisco!”

  “You’re stalling.”

  “I know.” Maggie willed herself not to cry but couldn’t contain the quiver of her lower lip.

  Bo reached across the table. He took Maggie’s hands in his. “You going to prison will happen over my dead body.”

  “Please don’t say that. Given what’s happened around here, that expression is literal, not figurative.”

  “Stop worrying.” Bo leaned forward and gave Maggie a gentle kiss on her lips. “I’ve got your back, and so does the entire Pelican police force. Trust me, as much as everyone likes you and the rest of your family, they resent Ville Blanc PD a hundred times more. So that’s a whole lotta motivation for our local boys in blue.”

  “I know Ville Blanc’s got a job to do, but does it have to come with so much attitude?”

  “It doesn’t, but unfortunately, it does.” Bo let go of Maggie’s hands and tapped a text on his cell phone. “Since technically I’m off today, I’m gonna get one of our boys over here ASAP to take a look at your attic.” Bo’s phone pinged. “Artie Belloise’s on his way.”

  Maggie couldn’t help laughing. Belloise, a self-proclaimed chowhound, never passed up the chance for an investigation at Crozat, knowing it always came with snacks or even a meal from Maggie’s mother. “Of course he is. I’ll tell Mom to put out a spread.”

  “Knowing Artie, he’ll probably put on the cruiser siren to get here fast, so we better head over or there’ll be more eating than investigating on A
rtie’s part.”

  Maggie and Bo managed to beat Artie to the manor house, which the police officer didn’t look happy about when he showed up fifteen minutes later, siren blaring as predicted. “I smell Mama Crozat’s fine seafood gumbo, so let’s get the show on the road here. Durand, my friend, I hear you’re on vacay this week, so I’m gonna pretend you’re not even here.”

  Tug and Maggie led the officers to the attic. With Bo and Artie’s help, they pushed aside the antique writing desk. “I had a locksmith come by to change the lock on the door,” Tug said, “but it turns out we need a whole new door. I’m ordering it today, but it won’t be here for at least a week.” He handed them each a dust mask. “Best to wear these if we’re gonna be up there for any length of time.”

  The four donned the masks and entered the attic. Artie circled the space with a torch flashlight. He used it to point toward footprints in the attic floor’s dust. “Those either of yours?” he asked Maggie and Tug. Both shook their heads.

  “Too big for mine, too small for my dad,” Maggie said. “Can I borrow that?” She took Artie’s flashlight and shone it on two sets of footprints closer to where the four stood. “Those are ours.”

  She handed the flashlight back to Artie, who circled the room with it a second time. “Notice anything missing?”

  “There’s so much stuff up here, it’s hard to tell.” Tug held up a brass candlestick. “I’m pretty sure we had two of these. Other one might be around here, might be lost. Or might be stolen.”

  “Given that extra set of footprints, I’d go with stolen.” Artie turned to Bo. “In your off-duty opinion, Detective?”

  “Agreed, Officer.” Bo addressed Maggie and Tug. “Keep an eye out for a guest who seems flusher than they were before. And whoever’s doing housekeeping should look out for something that either suddenly appears or doesn’t seem to go with the guest’s belongings.”