by Ellen Byron
“Is that part of the show?” Esme asked, confused.
“No, chère,” Maggie said, fighting to keep her composure. “I’m afraid the show is over.”
Chapter 7
A woman screamed. And kept screaming. Maggie looked over at the group representing Chanson’s restaurant. The screams were coming from Becca.
“Help!” Trick yelled. Kate lay prostrate on the ground. “She fainted,” Trick called to the crowd. “I need a doctor.”
“I’m a nurse,” a woman called back to him. She ran over and ministered to Kate while Luis clutched the hysterical Becca and tried to calm her down. Scooter stared straight ahead, muttering to himself, his body vibrating. Dyer scribbled on a notepad. The dock below filled with law enforcement officials shouting to each other. A plume of black smoke rose from Phillippe Chanson’s speedboat, which smoldered under the spray of a fireboat. Fortuitously, two had been on hand to monitor the fireworks barge. One focused on the chef’s boat while the other trained its efforts on the fiery trash barge. As if the scene weren’t surreal enough, another round of rockets from the fireworks barge shot into the sky and exploded into a colorful display.
“Yay, more fireworks,” Esme said, clapping her hands together.
“Cool,” agreed Xander.
Maggie, anxious to get the children away from the traumatic scene as quickly as possible, marveled at their ability to compartmentalize. “Those were so big, I’m sure they’re the finale. Right, Vanessa?”
“Oh, definitely,” Vanessa agreed, instantly picking up the hint. “Time to go, everyone! Chop, chop.”
She took Esme’s hand and followed Maggie, who had Xander in tow, down the levee’s slope. “Oh my lord,” Vanessa said to Maggie under her breath. “This is terrible.”
“I know.”
“Do you think that chef is …?”
She couldn’t finish the question. Esme tugged on Vanessa’s hand. “Can we get treats at your candy store?”
“I’m sorry, sweetie, it’s closed for the night.”
“We’ve got lots of treats at our house,” Maggie said, grabbing on to the much-needed distraction. “Come on, let’s get there before the ice cream melts.”
“Ice cream’s in the freezer,” Xander said, perplexed. “Can’t melt.”
“It’s just an expression, cher.”
Maggie took Esme from Vanessa, mouthing Thank you. She pressed the alarm button on her set of Bo’s car keys, then followed the sound until she found where he’d parked the SUV. She packed the children into the car, then checked her phone. There were texts and missed calls from Bo. Maggie called him. “Sorry I didn’t get in touch sooner. I just saw your messages. It was too noisy to hear my phone on the levee and then … stuff happened.”
“You’ve got the kids with you?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“They okay?”
Maggie glanced at the back seat, where Esme and Xander were chatting and showing each other pictures on their phones. “Seem to be.”
“Take my car home. I’ll get a ride in one of the patrol cars. No idea when I’ll be there.”
“I figured.” Maggie had a million questions for her husband, but they weren’t the kind you asked in front of children and she knew he didn’t have the time to answer them. “I love you.”
“Love you too.”
Maggie hurried the children home. While they were devouring Ninette’s Sugar High Pie topped with ice cream, she called Esme’s parents and Xander’s mom Whitney. All were understanding and thanked her for looking after the kids, much to her relief. She shuttled the children to Xander’s room, where they did “once, twice, three, shoot” to see who took the top bunk. “Yay me!” Esme crowed when she won.
Maggie tucked in Xander and Esme and retreated, closing the door behind her. Gopher lumbered down the hall with Jolie scampering behind him. The dogs assumed a prone position in front of the bedroom door as if to guard the children. Maggie collapsed on the living room couch, unable to move. She hadn’t liked Phillippe Chanson. It was obvious to her that under the veneer of casual charm lay a ruthless shark, a man who had no compunction about poaching recipes and patrons. But that didn’t make his probable demise any less awful—especially for those he’d left behind. I better let Mom and Dad know, she thought. She checked the time: midnight. Her parents had turned in hours ago. Still, it wouldn’t be the first time they got a middle-of-the-night call about a guest emergency.
She pulled her cell phone from her jeans back pocket and speed-dialed her father. He picked up on the last ring. “What’s wrong?” he asked in a groggy voice.
“There was an accident.” Maggie recounted the boat disaster. “Kate, Becca, Dyer, and Trick will be coming back here and in a state. Becca was hysterical. Kate fainted.”
“I’ll rouse your mama. We’ll get coffee and snacks going. And booze.”
“That’ll probably go first.”
Tug signed off. Maggie forced herself off the couch and into the kitchen, where she reheated a half cup of leftover coffee in the microwave. She took a sip, made a face, and downed the rest. She needed fortification.
Xander’s bedroom door opened. He stuck his head out, then padded from the room in his bare feet. Without his wire-rim eyeglasses and clothed in Star Wars pajamas, he looked small and vulnerable. “Can’t sleep?” Maggie asked. He shook his head. “Want some warm milk?” He nodded.
Maggie pulled a container of milk from the refrigerator and heated up a cup of it. She brought it to the couch, where Xander joined her. He took the cup and sipped. “The man,” he said. “On the boat. Is he okay?”
“I don’t know. I hope so.”
Xander took another sip of milk. “I think he died. Do you?”
Maggie replayed the scene post-accident in her head. The boat had caught fire. While she knew first responders would have done everything in their power to save the victim, the atmosphere had quickly given the impression that it was more of a recovery than a rescue effort. She thought about how to answer her stepson’s loaded question.
Xander had Asperger’s syndrome. Ever since meeting him, she’d navigated their relationship with care, respectful of his boundaries. Like so many with the condition, he was extraordinarily bright. He had finally come out on the other side of a long struggle with social interaction, but Maggie was careful not to push him past his comfort zone. She debated whether to dodge the question or be honest with him.
“Tell me the truth,” the boy said, as if reading her mind.
“I think,” Maggie said, “he died.” She saw his cup was empty and took it from him, placing it on the coffee table. “Would you like a hug?”
Xander nodded, and she wrapped her arms around him. He put his head on her chest. “Can we have cake and ice cream for breakfast?”
Maggie couldn’t help a small laugh. “Yes,” she said with affection. “But just this once.”
After Maggie returned Xander to his room, she called on Grand-mère to babysit so she could help her parents handle the Chanson guests in the aftermath of the tragedy. “It’s a good thing my A-G-E syndrome precludes a full night’s sleep,” Gran said as she settled into the room’s comfortable club chair. She rested her slippered feet on the chair’s matching leather ottoman.
Maggie covered her grandmother’s lap with an afghan crocheted in Mardi Gras colors of purple, green, and gold. “If you need anything, text me.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine.” She held up a stack of decorating magazines, then brought them down. Her tone was serious. “Unlike those poor restaurant people.”
Maggie threw on a hoodie and left her home for the manor house, using her phone as a flashlight to guide her in the darkness. The only sound in the still night came from the crunch of crushed oyster shells and decomposed granite under her feet as she trod the path linking the two locations. She found her parents in the dining room, where they’d already laid out a spread of comfort food and beverages. They heard a car drive into the B and B parking
area, followed by a second car. “I’ll check on them,” Maggie said.
She pushed open the back door and left for the parking area, where she saw Trick helping a distraught Becca out of his BMW sedan. Dyer had already exited his economy rental car. He stood next to it, a lost look on his face. Maggie went to Trick. “Can I do anything? We set up food and coffee in the dining room for you. And drinks.”
“Thanks,” Trick said, “but I’m going to get Becca inside and then go to the hospital.”
“Phillippe?” Maggie asked, hoping against hope.
“No. Kate’s there. She’s in shock. They took her to be checked out.” Trick cleared his throat, but when he spoke, his voice was husky. “Phillippe’s gone.”
Trick helped Becca, who seemed almost catatonic, toward her room in the overseer’s cottage. “I’ll take a drink,” Dyer said.
“Great,” Maggie said, feeling guilty. She’d forgotten he was there.
She led the writer into the house, where Tug poured a healthy measure of bourbon for each of them.
“I needed this.” Dyer knocked back his drink and held out his glass. Tug poured him a second round.
“Trick said Phillippe is gone.” Maggie drained her own glass. “Was that a guess or fact?”
“Fact. We didn’t leave until the Coast Guard showed up and verified it. It was a piece of luck those fireboats were there. They extinguished Chanson’s boat as quickly as they could. But when we left, that trash barge was still burning big-time.” Dyer finished his second drink and looked longingly at the bottle of bourbon. “Any chance I can buy that bottle from you?”
Tug handed it to him. “It’s yours. On the house.”
“Thanks.” Dyer took the bottle and held it up, a rueful expression on his face. “The stereotypical image of a washed-up alcoholic writer is complete.” He lowered the bottle. “I’m actually not an alcoholic. At least I wasn’t until tonight.” He shuffled off to the garçonnière. Ninette glanced at the late-night repast she’d laid out. “I guess I’ll put all this away.”
Maggie heard another car pull into the parking area. “Don’t yet. That might be Bo.”
A car door slammed. There was a murmur of male voices, and then the car drove off. A few moments later the back door opened and slammed shut. Bo came into the dining room. He went to his wife, kissed her, then said to his father-in-law, “Drink, please.”
Tug left for a minute, then returned from the parlor bar with a fresh bottle of bourbon. “Good thing I buy these by the case.”
“Are you hungry?” Maggie asked.
“Oh yeah. Disasters tend to work me up an appetite.”
Maggie fixed him a plate of food, Tug poured him a drink, and the four sat down at the dining room table. Maggie was dying to ask Bo a million questions, but she made herself wait until he’d taken at least a few bites of food.
“Thanks for letting me eat a little something before hitting me with the questions, chère,” he said to her with a slight grin.
“You know me too well.”
Ninette passed Bo a breadbasket. He pulled out a thick hunk of baguette and used it to wipe his plate clean of remoulade sauce. “They were getting the barge fire under control when I left, but it may have created a problem for the parish. There’s concern it affected the structural integrity of the bridge. We closed it off, and the state’s department of engineers will inspect it first thing in the morning.”
Maggie grimaced. “Oh boy. If they close that bridge, anyone who’s got to commute west from here is in big trouble. Which would be me.”
“The good news, if I can call it that, is that Chanson’s boat didn’t sink. The Coast Guard took possession of it. They’ll be taking the lead on figuring out what caused the accident.”
Once again, the word accident triggered a frisson of doubt in Maggie. Stop it, she scolded herself. JJ’s right, I’m becoming way too suspicious. “Did you see any of what happened?”
“Unfortunately, no. By the time I got to the levee, the crash had happened.”
“Little Earlie may have recorded it on his phone. A lot of people probably did, but he’s all about getting stuff he can share on social media, so he may have zoomed in on the action.”
“Thanks, cher. I’ll look into it.” He held up his plate to Ninette. “Ma’am, may I trouble you for seconds?”
Ninette favored her son-in-law with a warm smile. “The only trouble would be if you didn’t want seconds. That would surely pain me.”
While her mother filled Bo’s plate, Maggie filled him in on Xander’s reaction to the accident. “He asked me to be honest with him, so I was. I hope that’s okay.”
“Absolutely,” Bo said. “If he asked for honesty, that’s what he needed. I know you handled it in the best possible way.”
“I told Esme’s parents and Whitney to watch out for any delayed reaction from the kids, like nightmares.”
Bo nodded. “Good idea. We’ll do the same. The thing about kids their age is that they’re resilient. Still, we’ll keep a close eye on Xander.”
Maggie mulled over what she’d witnessed from the levee. “When I borrowed Little E’s phone to see what was going on, it looked to me like Phillippe was having some trouble with the boat. I thought the throttle might be stuck. But he seemed to get that under control. Then something else distracted him. Right before he crashed.”
“Huh.” Bo took this in. “I’ll alert the Coast Guard. If they can identify what distracted Chanson, we might be able to figure out what caused this disaster.”
Chapter 8
The next day, there was a collective heart sinking on both sides of the river when the engineers confirmed that the bridge had sustained structural damage from the fire and would be closed until further notice—further notice being ominous words in Louisiana. They could mean two days, two weeks—or two months. In any scenario, the bridge being out of commission meant hours-long commutes for locals. But there was cause for cheer on day two. A state senator who lived west of Baton Rouge and hated his new commute called in the favors he needed to bring a ferry back to the parish. Ferry service had once been the main form of transportation across the Mississippi. New bridges and a fatal ferry accident in the mid-1970s had doomed it to only a few locations. Longtime residents welcomed the ferry’s return with nostalgia, and it offered the younger generation a chance to see for themselves what all the fuss was about.
In a less positive development, the death of celebrity chef Phillippe Chanson brought unwanted national attention to Pelican. After Little Earlie shared his zoomed-in video of the accident with the police, he made good money selling it to multiple outlets and positioning himself as the local journalist of note. Maggie was amused when an annoyed Penny Clipper reader interrupted the publisher while he was pontificating for yet another news station to complain that Little E had printed the wrong date on a Laundromat coupon.
Reporters descending on Pelican to cover the story hit up Crozat for lodging, but out of deference to their guests, the B and B hung up a NO VACANCY sign. “Thank you for that,” Kate Chanson said to Maggie, who was helping the restaurateur wheel a suitcase to her car for a trip to New Orleans, where the funeral and second line honoring Phillippe Chanson would be held. “I confirmed with your father to hold our rooms. We’ll all be back in a couple of days.”
“Are you planning to reopen the restaurant?” Thinking of JJ, Maggie selfishly hoped the answer was no.
“Oh, of course. But with Phillippe … gone … we have to recalibrate.”
They reached the parking area. “I thought we’d take my car and leave yours here,” Trick said.
“I’m happy not to drive,” Kate said.
Trick took Kate’s suitcase and hefted it into the trunk of his car, then put a proprietary hand around her waist and led her to the passenger side of the car. He and Kate had been inseparable since the accident, with Trick officially moving into Kate’s suite. Dyer, who was desperate for an outlet to share all the gossip he’d collected but couldn
’t use about his subject, told Maggie that Trick and Phillippe’s friendship went back to the low-rent Manhattan restaurant where they’d both first worked. Phillippe met Kate through Trick, who dated her until he was sidelined by Chanson’s charisma and sex appeal. After the Chansons divorced, Trick wasted no time making a move on Phillippe’s ex-wife. “How did Phillippe feel about that?” Maggie asked.
“Chanson didn’t care. His first love was his restaurants. Many have tried, but no woman has ever successfully competed with them. If anything, I think he was relieved Trick and Kate hooked up. He needed them both to maintain his success. They each bring something different to the table. Kate has mad design and marketing skills. And Trick is way more than a mixologist. His instincts on what to say yes or no to—location, theme, menu choices—balanced Phillippe’s more off-the-wall ideas.”
Trick and Kate drove off, and Maggie returned to her apartment to work from home. Detouring around the closed Sunshine Bridge added an exhausting two hours to her back-and-forth from Doucet. She planned on giving the ferry a try but assumed there would be a logjam of commuters the first few days it was operational. Today, she chose to take advantage of an online archive of Doucette’s historical items that local high school students had built as a computer science project. Maggie scrolled through the archive, creating a list of what she needed for a couple of future exhibits. She planned to retrieve the items from storage, evaluate their condition, and outsource restoration to the appropriate specialists. But for this, Doucet needed money, which was why seven PM found her in the Crozat parlor for the first official meeting of the Doucet Plantation gala committee.
The committee comprised Maggie’s friends and family. She and Ione were the committee cochairs; Vanessa would oversee invitations and party decor; Lia and Ninette took on food and beverages; Gaynell and Sandy, entertainment. Gran had volunteered to helm the event’s silent auction, which was a coup, because it was impossible to imagine anyone saying no to the Pelican doyenne when she dunned them for donations.