“What a relief!” She joined me on the wall, our shoulders nearly touching.
“You can say that again.” The words sparked a memory, and I instantly turned toward her. “That reminds me…I overheard something this morning, out in the hall.”
Lance noticed us talking, but he kept one arm locked on Lorelei, and the other on Jamie.
“Really?” she said. “I thought I heard a noise out there. I figured someone was pacing the hall, and when I found you out there, I assumed it was you.”
“Nope. I heard you arguing with someone, so I stopped by your door.”
“Sounds to me like you were eavesdropping.” Her tone was more teasing than angry, hallelujah. “I don’t care about that. But what did you hear?”
“You said you had gotten rid of someone, and it sounded like you were bragging about it.”
At that point, she actually laughed. It sounded dry and hoarse, but it was a laugh, nonetheless. “You know what you overheard, right?”
Yep, she was definitely laughing at me, although I had no idea why.
“I thought maybe you were confessing to the murder,” I said. “Maybe talking to your accomplice.”
“Ha!” That brought another bark of laughter, and even Lance looked taken aback by it.
“What’s going on over there?” he asked.
“I was telling Electra here about a conversation I overheard. I actually thought she was going to confess to the murder. Only she sounds the least bit contrite about it.”
“That’s because I was running lines for a play.” She must’ve decided it was time to come clean, because she quickly sobered up. “It’s that new play I was telling you about. The one my agent wanted me to audition for in New York City.”
“But I thought the audition was today.”
She had mentioned something about taking the late flight so she wouldn’t miss it.
“It was today,” she said. “But it turned out the producers couldn’t make it, either, so it got rescheduled to tomorrow. I was practicing in my room. That’s what you overheard.”
“A play?” Although perfectly plausible, I still felt confused. “Do you always run lines by yourself?”
“No, not normally, but I didn’t have anyone else to read them with. I wasn’t about to wake someone up and ask them to do me a favor.”
“Ah ha.” Looking back, the explanation made perfect sense. “Well, now I feel foolish.”
“Don’t,” she said. “You were just worried about finding the right person. The person who killed my stepbrother. How can I be mad about that?”
“You can’t,” Lance agreed. “Until this morning, several people qualified as suspects in the case.”
“It looks like you don’t have to worry about it anymore.” She indicated Lorelei and Jamie with a sweep of her hand. “Looks like you figured it out. So, thank you. I feel a lot better about leaving town now that we know who killed Wesley.”
At that moment, a siren sounded in the distance. The sound drew closer and closer until it was joined by the crunch of tires on the pebbly drive.
“Well, I guess I’d better go,” Electra said. “Thanks again. For everything.”
With that, she disappeared, and she was replaced by four uniformed police officers, who rushed into the room. Two of them surrounded Jamie. He’d closed his eyes earlier, and it was hard to know whether he was sleeping now, or praying. My guess was a little of both, because the officers had to practically carry him from the sunroom.
Lorelei was a different story. She stood ramrod straight, and then she walked stiff-legged out of the sunroom. There was no telling what was going through her head, and, to be honest, I didn’t care.
As soon as the officers muscled Lorelei from the room, Lance turned to face me. “You okay?”
“I feel great, actually. I feel sorry for Wesley’s parents—Lorelei’s, too—but it feels good to finally get at the truth.”
He nodded. “That’s how I always feel at the end of a case. It’s like a breath of fresh air when the lid comes off the secrets. Do you want to come down to the station with me?”
“I’d like to, but I can’t.” I quickly scanned the room for a clock, which I found hanging by one of the windows. The hands stood at twelve and nine, which meant several hours had passed since Beatrice’s phone call. Even though we didn’t open the studio until noon on Sundays during the wedding season, there was no telling how many clients had pestered her by now.
“I need to get back to my studio,” I explained. “Sounds like Beatrice has her hands full. You know, we’re right in the middle of the wedding season, so it’s all hands on deck.”
“I understand. Thanks again for all your help this weekend.”
“Call me later, okay? Let me know what happens during the interviews. I have a feeling Lorelei’s going to crack, too. She can’t keep quiet for too much longer.”
“I hope you’re right.” He checked the time as well. “I’d better hustle if I want to seal off the bedrooms upstairs and then get to the station. There’s no telling what the suspects left behind here.”
His words automatically piqued my curiosity. “You mean you’re going to search their bedrooms? Hmmm. Maybe I can spare a few minutes.”
Truth be told, I enjoyed watching Lance comb through a suspect’s room. It was like watching a choreographer piece together a dramatic new dance. One step would lead to the next, and then all the steps would culminate in one knockout finish.
“You can tag along.” He smiled broadly. “Like they say in Texas, it won’t be your first rodeo.”
Chapter 21
Lance and I moved to the exit, but we didn’t get very far. Standing just outside the door was Violet, and she seemed much calmer than before. She even gave me a shy smile as she approached.
“I was hoping to talk to you.”
“We’re in hurry.” Lance barely slowed his pace. “Can it wait?”
“I meant Miss DuBois, actually.”
I pulled up short. “You know, anything you say to me, you can say to Detective LaPorte here. He’s the police officer, not me.”
My, that feels good. Usually, Lance had to talk people into letting me join a conversation, but now I had a chance to repay the favor.
“Okay, then,” she said. “If you insist.”
“I do. We’re a team.”
“Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” She nervously toyed with a thread that dangled from the sleeve of her blouse. “I’m afraid I owe you both an apology.”
“An apology?”
“Yes. I didn’t help either one of you very much. In fact, I might’ve gotten in the way. But you need to understand something. If I lost my husband and my son, it would just kill me. I didn’t want Foster to get any more tangled up in this mess than he already was.”
“What made you think you were going to lose Mr. Carmichael?” While I didn’t understand it, she sincerely believed every word, because worry etched her face.
“My husband loaned a lot of money to Wesley over the years. Even when he found out about the gambling. I thought if you knew that, Foster might get in trouble, too.”
“But it’s not illegal to loan someone money,” Lance said.
“No, but it’s not right when that person has an addiction, like Wesley did. I thought you’d charge Foster for it.”
“I don’t think that’s possible.” I shot a quick glance at Lance, who confirmed my suspicion with a nod. “No one’s going to charge your husband with anything.”
“That’s so good to know. My husband never did things like that before. He used to make better decisions. Wonderful decisions. But ever since he started drinking again, everything changed.”
I bit my tongue, because I’d suspected as much. No one reeked of alcohol at eleven in the morning unless he had a serious problem with it.
“You’ve had a lot to deal with, Mrs. Carmichael.” I spoke gently, since this woman obviously had been through a lot. “Are you going to be okay?”
She nodded. “I think so. My daughter invited me to come stay with her in New York City for a while. Just until things calm down.”
“That’s probably a good idea.” While I didn’t know enough about the Carmichaels’ marriage to offer any input, it seemed Violet needed to get away for a while. And Electra seemed to have enough chutzpah for both of them. She could take care of her mother now, instead of the other way around.
“Well, I guess that’s all,” Violet said. Already her thoughts seemed a million miles away. “Thank you for everything.”
She turned and slowly retreated down the hall, her footsteps as halting as her speech had been.
“Well, that was interesting.” I waited for her to disappear before I spoke.
“I’ll say. It obviously made her feel better to get that off her chest.”
“I don’t know why she confided in me.” I threw him another look. “Somehow, people can’t stop themselves from telling me their secrets. It must be my kind face.”
“Sure, that’s it. You and your kind face.” He threw me a playful punch. “Well, as long as you haul that kind face of yours upstairs to help me out, I won’t disagree.”
Before I could reply, he headed for the stairs, so I joined him. We climbed the steps in tandem, since the wide planks offered more than enough room to comfortably navigate the staircase.
Every other houseguest had disappeared by now, and every bedroom door on the hall was open. First up was Buck’s room, with its empty closet and massive writing desk. Next came the room I used, although it looked like no one had spent much time there. Other than the sheets, which I bunched and swirled during my restless night, nothing else looked used.
I wished I could have spent more time in the beautiful room, because an antique bookcase held a week’s worth of paperbacks, and an enormous picture window offered ample reading light. The perfect place to unwind after a hectic weekend, like the one we’d just gone through.
I forced myself to continue walking. After a moment, I made it to Jamie’s room, which sat at the very end of the hall. Like before, the drawers of the dresser were all askew, and fat pillows tumbled from the bed to the floor.
I understood why Nelle had called this the “blue room,” though, because heavy velvet curtains as blue as the sky lined the windows, with porcelain tiebacks that pulled the fabric away from the glass.
The room held several pieces of heavy furniture, including the four-poster bed, a captain’s chair, and an antique writing desk, which was wedged under a large window. The desktop lay bare, except for a few pieces of writing paper. I meandered over to the papers and gazed at the first one on the stack. It looked like an ordinary grocery list, with most of the items crossed out. Alongside everyday items like deodorant and mouthwash, someone had written “apple” and “matches” to end the list.
“Say, Lance?”
He stopped whatever he was doing and crossed the room to the desk. “Yeah?”
“What do you think of this?” I pointed at the list, which someone had written in both blue and black ink.
“Looks to me like Mr. Lee picked up a few things before he got here.” Lance reached behind his back and withdrew a pair of latex gloves from his pocket. Ever the Boy Scout, he seemed to stash everything inside those pockets but the kitchen sink. “I’ll take this down to the lab and have it dusted for fingerprints.”
“Just a second.” I lightly stilled his hand. “I understand why he’d want matches. He couldn’t very well offer Wesley one of his doctored cigarettes without also offering him a match. But why would he need an apple?”
Lance didn’t hesitate. “People put loose tobacco on a slice of apple to keep it from drying out. My grandfather used to do that. Jamie probably knew it’d take him some time to grind up the poison, and he didn’t want the cigarette to fall apart when he was done. That’s my guess, anyway.”
“No wonder you’re a detective. I never would’ve thought of that.”
Lance deftly scooped up the list and placed it in the bag. “That guy really knew what he was doing.”
“Or maybe Lorelei did. She might’ve been the one to prepare the poison, for all we know.”
“You’re right. See, now you’re thinking like a detective: look at all the possibilities. Don’t sell yourself short, Missy.”
I chuckled. “Thanks, but I think I’ll stick to making hats. Your job sounds interesting, but I could never do what you do. I don’t have the heart to chase down criminals, or the stomach for it.”
“That’s only one part of the job. Anyway, I’m going to head into the bathroom next. He might’ve left something in there by accident.”
While Lance left to scope out the bathroom, I studied the sheet of paper that remained on the desk. Unlike the shopping list, it hadn’t been used. I began to turn away, when the sun suddenly popped out from behind a cloud and bathed the desktop in sunlight.
Why, the other sheet wasn’t blank at all! Tiny indentations formed words where someone had written something on a sheet placed over this one. Did Jamie write another note, and not realize his handwriting would appear on the bottom sheet, too?
Since Lance was busy searching the bathroom, I bent lower to examine the paper. It was short—only a sentence long—but succinct:
One seed = .1 milligram. Fatal at 10 milligrams.
Gracious light! It was the recipe for making thorn apple lethal! The author knew exactly how many seeds would kill Wesley. But who? Was Jamie telling the truth when he said he only wanted to make Wesley sick, or did he mean to kill him all along? Did Lorelei join him in this room, and was it her handwriting on the bottom sheet?
“Lance!”
Once more, something rustled as Lance dashed out of the bathroom and into the bedroom.
“What’s up?”
I silently pointed to the piece of paper. But just when he was about to examine it, a cloud moved across the sky and darkened the bedroom.
“I don’t see anything,” he said.
“Wait a minute. You will.”
We both waited for the cloud to pass, and when it did, warm sunlight once more bathed the desk in light.
“Huh,” he said. “What do you know.”
“The sun happened to hit it just right. Someone wrote the directions for making thorn apple toxic. Apparently, the killer needed at least a hundred seeds.”
Out came another plastic bag from Lance’s pocket.
“How deep are those pockets?” I couldn’t help but smile, since his khakis reminded me of all the times I’d watched clowns perform at Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Invariably, a portly clown would pull a menagerie of items from his pants, including a plastic bouquet of flowers and a full bottle of seltzer water. Somehow, the pockets never seemed to empty.
“Don’t worry about my pockets. I’ve learned what I need—and what I don’t—over the years. These bags can hold evidence, or work as a glove, or even carry liquids. Leave me and my pants out of this.”
“Okay. No need to be defensive. Can’t a girl be curious?”
He ignored that last remark. “It looks like we’re done here.” He stashed the evidence bag away. “I need to head over to the station and have a little chat with our suspects.”
“I’d love to join you, but if I don’t go back to my studio now, I have a sneaking suspicion my assistant will lock herself in the bathroom. You know, to escape the thundering hordes of brides.”
“I get it. Thanks again for helping me out. I’ll call you later.”
“But not too late, okay?” I yawned loudly, the exhaustion hitting me full-force. “I’m planning to hit the hay as soon as I can. What could possibly happen now?”
Chapter 22
A few minutes later, I pulled away from Honeycutt Hall and drove down the road to Bleu Bayou. Nothing accompanied me but a giant cup of Community Coffee and the latest Harry Connick, Jr., CD.
The noon sun hung directly overhead, and heat seeped through the windshield. I turned the AC to high as I studied the landscape. The first thing I came across was a petroleum plant, with the requisite smokestack that belched white steam into the sky, like a chimney on a locomotive.
Next up was a sugarcane field, with plants that reached about five feet high. Those stalks would double in height by the time fall rolled around and farmers harvested them, but today they barely reached my chin.
Thank goodness for Harry and his energetic crooning, because my head grew heavy as I cruised into the parking lot of the Factory, which was a former hot-sauce plant turned shopping center.
Once upon a time, the building in front of me provided the entire country with hot sauce, and remnants of its former life remained. A glass atrium placed between two of the wings used to hold manufacturing equipment, while the interior artwork came from produce crates that shipped chili peppers and whatnot. Even the rain barrels in the parking lot had a purpose, since they had held ingredients like cayenne pepper and salt.
I pulled up in front of my shop, relieved to find the parking lot half-empty. Other than my Volkswagen, Ringo, the only other cars I spied were Beatrice’s bubblegum-pink Ford and a few white delivery vans. She’d sounded so frantic earlier, but maybe this was the lull between storms.
I threw open the car door and stepped onto the asphalt. Although it had to be ninety degrees outside, the heat was the least of my worries. I hadn’t peered into a mirror all morning, and I could only imagine how frightful I looked. Usually, my shoulder-length hair cooperated, thanks to the help of a straightening iron, but all I’d had this morning was a plastic comb and some tap water to tame it. Neglect plus humidity would equal some crazy curls, and one brushed my cheek as I ambled over to the store’s French doors.
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