EQMM, August 2012

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Greta took a long step back, wanting no part of whatever animal was hiding just out of sight.

  “It's your storehouse.”

  Cyncy tossed her hair.

  “It's the Foundation's storehouse. All part of the historic...”

  “Please ... help...”

  It was a man's voice wavering with pain. Cyncy and Greta rushed inside and found an old man huddled on the floor, his body in a fetal curve. His yellow short-sleeved shirt was covered with grime, and a large splotch of something dark and wet was spreading across his chest.

  Cyncy punched 911 on her BlackBerry.

  The man's gaze was fixed on a spot far away. Finally he looked at Cyncy and whispered, “No. Not you.” He rolled his head in Greta's direction. “Her.”

  Greta bent closer.

  The old man reached for her sleeve but missed. His hand fell to the floor and he seemed to lose the strength to lift it again.

  “The Civil War was wrong. Do you understand? It was all wrong.”

  Sirens were getting closer. Greta tried to comfort the man but he was agitated and muttering about the Civil War in an ever-weakening voice.

  Without warning, he gasped as if being smothered and his head dropped to one side. Greta fell to her knees and touched his wrist. It was too late to help him.

  Emergency personnel crammed into the storeroom. Cyncy and Greta were herded outside and asked to provide their names and contact information to a sheriff's deputy.

  Duncan was standing near a Lee County ambulance.

  “Are you ladies all right? I called Mr. Swanson. He'll be here shortly.”

  “There's an old gentleman.” Greta wrinkled her brow. “He's hurt and he's mumbling about the Civil War.”

  “It must be Mr. Newberry. He's writing a book. The Bellefontaines were legendary for smuggling slaves to the coast, and helping the Union troops.”

  Duncan replied.

  He turned to Cyncy. “I hope he'll be okay.”

  But it was Greta who shook her head.

  A rumpled man came from behind the storehouse, his paunch bouncing as he tried to hurry.

  He stopped to talk to a sheriff's deputy, who waved him to a man in a light gray linen suit. They spoke briefly, and then the disheveled man walked directly to Cyncy, continually mopping his brow along the way.

  “Miss Cyncy, I apologize for this inconvenience. I've been assured that this, ah, disturbance will be cleared away momentarily. Please let me escort you to the main house.”

  Greta followed silently. In what universe was a man's death merely an inconvenience?

  Swanson led them through a well-designed garden to high, wide French doors, an impressive side entrance to the three-story building. Greta automatically began to plan wedding bouquets and table centerpieces made of hibiscus and gardenias.

  The first room they entered had red velvet ropes and gold stanchions cordoning off ornately carved Victorian furniture and enormous, gilt-framed family portraits. Cyncy answered Greta's unasked question. “Public tours, three days a week.”

  As they made their way through the library, the morning room, and several sitting rooms, they heard a high, imperious voice hammering questions:

  “Mrs. Garcia, what on earth is going on here? Where is Swanson? Where is my goddaughter? Will someone please expel those vehicles from our grounds, and why is lunch not being served on time?”

  Swanson opened one final floor-to-ceiling door and, after the storehouse, this scene was almost comical.

  A woman with a tangle of gray hair piled high on her head was waving a pink parasol in ever widening circles.

  Two men, younger than she, although far from young, were attempting to settle her, while a drab, stick-thin woman cowered in a corner of the foyer. A curly-haired woman wearing a long white chef's apron, hands raised in supplication, was trying to explain that there was some sort of accident.

  The doyenne was having none of it.

  “We do not have accidents at Fontaine House. We run an orderly Foundation.” She might have gone on forever if she hadn't spied Cyncy in the open doorway. She lowered the parasol and opened her arms wide.

  "Cher."

  Cyncy slipped into the old woman's arms.

  "Na-nan sha, why you boude? Anger does not suit you. Greta, come and meet my na-nan sha, godmother dear, whom you may call Douveline. And here is her nephew, my dear Uncle Laddie.”

  The taller of the two middle-aged men bowed slightly and caught up Greta's hand for a gallant kiss. “I am ever grateful to have been named Ladislas, as its diminutive makes me sound like a young blade. Welcome, my dear.” And his glance told Greta he was willing to behave as a young blade, and a randy one at that.

  Cyncy swung Greta away from Laddie. “This is my cousin Clement,” She presented the stocky, balding man dressed in white slacks and a dark green golf shirt, “and his sister, Blanche.”

  The woman in the corner took half a step forward and wriggled her fingers at Greta.

  “Mrs. Garcia, I have missed your peppermint tea.” Cyncy turned to Swanson. “Please have the tea served with lunch in the breakfast room. Oh, and get the latest details from the storehouse.”

  Swanson and Mrs. Garcia withdrew in silence.

  The breakfast room was large enough to serve as a formal dining room in all but the grandest of mansions. A gleaming mahogany table, with more than two dozen chairs along its sides, dominated the room. Directly in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, a small table was set for six. The chair arrangement struck Greta as odd—one chair at each end and four lined along one side of the table facing the windows. Then she glanced outside and caught her breath.

  The well-tended lawn and garden ended at a sandy riverbank. Sailboats and powerboats meandered the mile-wide Caloosahatchee River. Birds alternately soared and dove to water's edge. Greta imagined she could see fish popping to the surface.

  Laddie noticed Greta's delight. “Louisiana Cajuns settled on the west Florida barrier islands in the seventeen nineties, living amid pirates and the Calusa Indians. A few Bellefontaines paddled their pirogues into the mouth of the Caloosahatchee, eventually creating inland settlements. Fontaine House, one of the earliest, survives to this day.”

  Clement smiled. “Laddie is mellowing. He used to describe our ancestors paddling tiny pirogue canoes across the Gulf of Mexico from the Bayou directly to Fontaine House.”

  Douveline interjected, “After we finish this delightful étouffée, we will leave for the island and the young ladies can get settled in the guesthouse.”

  Greta looked at Cyncy.

  “I thought we were staying here.”

  “Don't be silly.” Douveline dismissed the very idea. “No Bellefontaine has lived in Fontaine House since the end of Prohibition. Cyncy should have considered a roaring twenties theme for the wedding—call it a Rum Runners Ball. In those days, the rum came straight from Havana.

  “With all this clamor on the grounds we'll depart for the island immediately after lunch. What is it, Swanson?” The impatience in her voice was palpable.

  “It's the sheriff's office. They wish to speak with Miss Cyncy and her associate.”

  “Can't you tell them to come to the island in the morning?” Douveline heaved her shoulders with a dramatic sigh. “Oh, I suppose not. Show them in.”

  Greta remembered the man in the gray linen suit. An officer dressed in Lee County tan and green trailed a few steps behind him.

  “Sorry to intrude, ma'am.” He inclined his head in a sign of respect as he addressed Douveline. “I'm Detective Casitoa. This is Deputy Woods. We need to ask a few questions of the ladies who had the misfortune to discover Mr. Newberry.”

  Douveline nodded. “Swanson, please escort Miss Cyncy and Miss Greta to the small sitting room, along with these officers.”

  She threw a piercing look at Detective Casitoa. “We are leaving for the island in fifteen minutes. I expect your questions will have been answered by then.”

  “That should be adequ
ate, ma'am.”

  Greta and Cyncy reaffirmed that they had gotten off a plane from New York less than an hour before they found the body and that neither of them had ever met Silas Newberry.

  Cyncy asked the cause of the accident and both women were stunned by the detective's reply. “Not an accident. Mr. Newberry was stabbed.”

  He had no further questions, and when he opened the door, Swanson was standing in wait, ready to escort Cyncy and Greta to rejoin the family.

  Douveline was anxious to get under way. “I hope that was not too distressing for you, cher. Are you ready to leave? Blanche will ride with you and Greta. We're taking the Bellefontaine III back to the island.”

  Blanche's shoulders slumped. She obviously didn't want to ride with her cousin, but she acquiesced to Douveline's directive.

  Settled in the back of the Mercedes with Duncan once again behind the wheel, the two cousins seemed to have little to say to each other, so Greta asked Blanche about life on North Captiva Island. The question threw a flash of animation into Blanche's face.

  “I love the island. There are no cars, no supermarkets, no noisy nightspots, just a few gift shops and some nice restaurants. Paradise! Each July we go to Martha's Vineyard for three months, but I find the Vineyard commonplace compared to North Captiva.”

  “Does your brother enjoy living on an island as well?”

  “Oh, Clement.” Blanche dismissed him with a backhand wave. “He and Laddie are so involved in Bellefontaine family this and Bellefontaine family that. Honor. Genealogy. History. I doubt either of them takes the time to appreciate the glories of living in so natural an environment.”

  “A natural environment,” Cyncy mimicked, “that includes a ‘residents only’ airstrip, and where walking is so déclassé that every household owns a dozen golf carts to get from here to there.”

  Cyncy's barb was enough to push Blanche back into silence.

  Douveline, Laddie, and Clement were already settled in the salon of the Bellefontaine III, a fifty-foot Meridian 441 power craft, when the younger women joined them.

  Laddie stood at once and offered refreshments to all three, although his eyes never left Greta, who was discomforted by his intense gaze.

  She took a glass of sweet tea and hoped to move Laddie's thoughts to more acceptable territory by asking about the Bellefontaine Foundation's work.

  “Our common great-great-grandfather, Felix Bellefontaine, who made a fortune in skins and salt, created the Foundation. Clement and I sit on the board. Douveline, of course, is Emeritus. We maintain copious research material about southwest Florida history, botany, and zoology. The entire property is a haven for underprivileged youngsters who learn tennis, equestrian skills, and, especially, swimming. You'd be appalled at the number of Floridians who can't swim.”

  Clement interrupted. “As an aside, the house itself is so beautifully maintained that the board allows it to be rented for weddings and other festivities. The fees have supplemented the endowment to the point that Fontaine House will thrive long after we're gone.”

  “Except for my na-nan sha,” Cyncy chimed in. “She will go on forever.”

  Douveline nodded in acknowledgement that this was ever so true.

  Laddie grabbed the conversation back from Clement.

  “During the Civil War, Florida seceded from the Union. The Bellefontaines risked their lives and their fortunes to support the Union cause. Florida's blockade-runners were supplying salt and provisions to the Confederate Army. But not on our watch; not on our river.”

  As he uttered the last sentence, Laddie puffed out his chest and lifted his head. Greta thought he lacked only plumage to be a full-fledged peacock.

  Cyncy said, “Duncan told us that the man who was murdered in the storehouse was researching Fontaine House during the Civil War.”

  “Murdered? In our storehouse?” Douveline's voice rose an octave with each syllable. “Impossible.”

  Blanche seemed to disappear within herself, while Laddie and Clement both rushed to reassure Douveline that, obviously, a mistake had been made. Surely Mr. Newberry died of natural causes.

  When it docked, the Bellefontaine III towered over the small flotilla of motorboats and sailboats tied to the family pier. Douveline, still shaken by the unwanted news about the death of Mr. Newberry, leaned heavily on Clement's arm as she led her entourage up the pathway to a super-sized bungalow, surrounded by broad-leaf banana palms and sea grasses.

  A pall hung over the gathering. Both Douveline and Blanche had supper brought to their rooms. Cyncy and Greta ate shrimp gumbo on a patio overlooking the soft ripples of the Gulf of Mexico with Clement and Laddie, who both inquired about “plans for the upcoming nuptials.” As soon as dessert was over, the four went their separate ways.

  On the guesthouse lanai, Cyncy threw herself onto a brightly striped chaise lounge. “What is wrong with them all? I've never seen Douveline so glum. Right now we should be gathered around the piano while she plays and sings old tunes. After her second brandy, the tunes get a little bawdy and everyone has a roaring good time.

  “Dinner in her room suits Blanche, not Douveline. All over the death of a stranger?”

  “You're being so dense. He was a stranger to us, but not to your family. If he was researching the history of Fontaine House, I'm sure your relatives knew him quite well. You know the pride they take in the Bellefontaine name. Fontaine House is a large part of the family legacy, even I can see that.”

  “Mark my words, in this family, the surrounding publicity is far more an anathema than the actual murder.”

  * * * *

  After breakfast, a subdued buffet without Douveline or Blanche, Cyncy and Greta boarded a motorboat captained by a wizened graybeard named Isaiah. They sat starboard and watched the herons and egrets circle and then dive to find their breakfast swimming just below the water's surface.

  Duncan was waiting on the pier. As they settled into the Mercedes, Greta asked for the latest information concerning the murder.

  “I'm sure I couldn't say. The staff was questioned incessantly as to their whereabouts yesterday morning. The storehouse is locked and under armed guard.”

  Cyncy pouted. “How can we examine the antiques in the storehouse if the police have it under lock and key?”

  Greta replied. “We have so many other things to do. Let's begin with the menu and flowers. The storehouse will reopen long before we're finished.”

  Cyncy's BlackBerry rang as soon as they settled in the kitchen with Mrs. Garcia. She walked to a quiet corner and held an animated conversation, after which she excused herself.

  “A British firm has initiated a hostile takeover of a small company in which several Bellefontaine corporations have an interest. I'm going to Swanson's office to organize a teleconference. Since Le Grand Dérangement, the Bellefontaines have learned never to let the Brits get away with anything.” She flashed a broad smile to show she was at least partly joking, and was gone.

  Greta and Mrs. Garcia were in deep conversation about menus and china when the chef unexpectedly stood up and opened a cabinet just above her desk.

  “In all the confusion yesterday, I forgot about this.” She handed Greta a slim leather-bound book with tattered pages, held together by a green ribbon.

  Greta looked at the title, “Recipes,” worn now, but originally tooled in gold. She turned to the flyleaf. “Property of Josiane Bellefontaine 1863.”

  “Original family recipes. This is fabulous.”

  “Yesterday, poor Mr. Newberry came to the kitchen, even though earlier I asked that he stay out of our way. He said he'd found a book about food, and since it's an heirloom, I should keep it safe. I tucked it in the cabinet, planning to look through the recipes. After what happened, I forgot about it until just now.”

  “May I borrow it so Cyncy and I can look through it tonight? If we find any recipes to the bride's liking, I'll check with you to see how practical they would be for serving large crowds. Where did I put my purse?”<
br />
  Clement came through the doorway. “Well, at least I found one of you! Where is my sprightly cousin? Out in the stables? Always one of her favorite haunts. Well, let's round her up. I've come to take you both to lunch.”

  “Actually, Cyncy is in Mr. Swanson's office on a teleconference. I expect she'll be a few minutes longer.” Greta unconsciously slipped the old recipe book into her jacket pocket.

  Cyncy appeared silently behind Clement. “Not so. The Brits are vanquished, at least temporarily. This kitchen is such an echo chamber. Did I hear a luncheon invitation?”

  “You did, indeed. I've discovered a small but excellent barbeque pit in Cape Coral and am dying to show it off. Of course we must never tell Douveline. She would be appalled at the thought of Bellefontaines eating with their fingers.”

  * * * *

  The restaurant was an indoor/outdoor shack with lime green walls and a sandy floor filled with tables and chairs of the mix-and-match variety. Clement turned out to be an entertaining host, telling stories of sailing the Gulf from Florida to Louisiana while still a teenager.

  “I've written a book called The Bellefontaine Heritage. It includes my personal exploits but focuses on the history of our illustrious family over the past two hundred years. I emphasize our role in the Civil War, as that is when our honor shines the brightest. The book is scheduled for release this spring. I've already arranged for distribution to libraries, colleges, and genealogy centers throughout the United States and Canada.”

  “Then I guess you worked with Mr. Newberry. Wasn't he a writer?”

  “Cher, he was hardly a writer, more of a researcher and not a very thorough one at that,” Clement harrumphed. “He was trying to find information about a relative, a Union soldier, killed in Florida during the Civil War. For some reason, Newberry fixed on Fontaine House. Neither Swanson nor I could convince him that the residents of Fontaine House supported the Union and would never harm a Union soldier. Still, Newberry was stubborn, poor chap. Excuse me, my phone.”

  As he stood and answered the phone, he stumbled and grabbed onto Greta's chair to steady himself, and walked outside to take his call.