Mystic Mayhem

by Sally J. Smith

  I couldn't help it. "You think it was the clams that killed her, Quincy?"

  He shrugged. "Well, she dead, ain't she?"

  "But you don't think Valentine had anything to do with it…?"

  He smiled. "Course not. Look at dat woman—why, she a pillar of virtue, that one."

  Valentine gave him a look, and then her face broke into a smile that beamed all the way to the state line. "Aw, boy." She waved her hand at him. "You try that sugar on someone who might be fool enough to lap it up."

  He cocked his head and grinned. "And besides, Chef Cantrell, what motive could you possibly have to number one, serve bad clams, or number two, to kill off Miz Elway? I mean, you never even met her. Ain't dat right?"

  He watched as Valentine smiled, sat back down at the table, and lifted her coffee mug.

  "So, Chef," he went on, "who came to you asking for dem clams in the first place?"

  Valentine's mouth drew into a hard line, and she shook her head.

  Law of the bayou, I guessed. Don't ever rat anybody out. I knew who sent for the clams. Anyone who'd been in the dining room Saturday night knew who sent for the clams. Cecile Elway originated the request, but it would have been Fabrizio who went to Valentine to make sure they were available the next night for the séance.

  "Come on now, Miss Valentine," Quincy cajoled. "You know you goin' tell me. Just get it done."

  She shook her head. I'd never seen her look so grim.

  Quincy leaned forward. "It was him, yes? The Great Fabrizio? He come to you asking for clams on the half shell. Right?"

  She didn't move, not even a tick.

  "You tell me now. It was him?"

  Valentine looked at him a long minute, her tawny eyes sad. She drew in a breath and held it. The movement of her head was barely perceptible. By the look on her face, I knew she hated being put on the spot, but still, she nodded. "Fabrizio, yes. But he weren't the only one interested in dem clams."

  Quincy leaned in and waited as she continued. "That other woman, the one who look like she need a man to relax her some?"

  I hid a smile behind my hand. "Would that be Rosalyn Whitlock, Cecile's stepdaughter?"

  "Yeah, dat one. Whitlock. She was down here before the séance asking 'bout the clams. Say she wanted to make sure everything was all set so she could talk to her daddy."

  Quincy's eyes lit up. It was as if Valentine had given him a gift. "So," he spoke slowly. "The daughter, she was in here beforehand? And I ain't supposin' she was anywhere near dem clams, now was she?"

  Valentine thought about it then. "Well, now you speak of it…"

  All the intensity went out of Quincy. He patted her hand and sat back.

  I had to give it to him. The Quincy Boudreaux I knew was always like a young pup just panting along after Catalina. I never had seen him on the job before. He was sly, that boy, and slick as honey on a warm biscuit.

  With only a couple of questions, he'd pretty much already eliminated a murder suspect—but then, none of us ever really considered Valentine Cantrell, master chef and role model to every other chef south of Nashville, would be the one to either serve bad clams or taint them with something so vile as poison.

  * * *

  While Cat and Jack waited in the game room, Quincy and I went back to the main salon, where they wrapped up preliminary questioning of the six of us who were in the séance room at the time Cecile Elway died.

  No one in the family knew of a history of heart disease. In fact, no one seemed to know anything except for the stepdaughter, Rosalyn Elway Whitlock, who was bound and determined it was the ghost of her father, Theodore Elway, who came back from the gates of hell and struck down his wife. "It was Daddy. I know it. I felt his presence." Her voice reminded me of an out-of-tune concertina.

  She cast a meaningful look at Penny Devere, Mrs. Elway's resident psychic, who sat with her at one of the café tables where wine and cocktails were served during happy hour. Penny nodded gravely at Rosalyn's declaration, and Rosalyn took one of Penny's plump hands into her own.

  Penny only said, "I've heard of it happening before. The hand of death can reach across the void."

  I was on one of the antebellum-style love seats beside Fabrizio. We looked at each other and both rolled our eyes. I leaned over and whispered, "Please tell me you're not suddenly a legitimate medium…"

  He gave a nearly imperceptible shake of his head.

  "…who can summon expired heirs to the Pennsylvania steel industry, who then kill their wives before they bug out to the great beyond again."

  Fabrizio turned his mouth to my ear and whispered back. "No, my dear, I'm no more a legitimate medium than you, unless you've been holding out on me."

  I couldn't help it. Inappropriate as it was, I giggled.

  Quincy shot me a look, and I swear I felt like I was back in second grade caught with a mouthful of bubble gum.

  "Well," Quincy said, "I see we're all getting pretty tired tonight. So I'm going to let you go to your rooms. But I'm going to insist you remain here at The Mansion until I get my head around this case real good and proper, because right now I got an itch that we'll be learning Miz Elway didn't succumb to natural causes, and that someone, maybe even one of you, had a hand in sending her to that big fais-do-do in da sky."

  Everyone, including me, let out a big sigh.

  "Big what?" Billy's annoying voice was the first to break the silence in the room.

  "Fais-do-do," Quincy said, smiling. "It's a big ol' party, and I just know we're all hoping your gran'mama up dere is having a high old time."

  * * *

  Cat and I headed back to our same room. Another night in the Louisiana swamp. I called our neighbor Monsieur Beauregard Taylor at Thibadeaux's Bar in the French Quarter, where he tended bar five nights a week.

  When he answered, I said, "Beauregard, I have to stay over at The Mansion another night. Will you feed Satchmo and take a couple of minutes to rub his ears?"

  "You know I will, chère," he said.

  His low, sexy voice carried me back about a year ago when he and I had dated—if that was what you could call it. My definition of "dating" didn't quite match his, the objective of which seemed to be bringing home as many prospects as possible. I prefer my relationships one-on-one—you know, one gal and one guy. Beauregard was a big and beautiful Creole man who could put a woman flat on her back with just one look—not that those dreamy, seductive gazes worked with me. I grew up in this town surrounded by slow-talking men with smooth ways and that velvet Southern drawl, and they didn't affect me the way they did Yankee girls. Maybe that was part of the problem. Maybe my immunity to his enticing ways was the reason we just never really got anything going. I hadn't been interested in anyone since Beau, and I never really had much time for dating in college either. Those boys weren't interested in learning anything about me except what color my undies were anyway. I guess you could say the right man just hadn't moseyed my way yet.

  Cat came out of the steamy bathroom in her nightshirt and plopped down on one of the beds. With her hair wet and her face scrubbed clean, she was the all-American girl next door every all-American boy next door dreamed about.

  "You get hold of Beauregard?" she asked.

  "I did." I picked up my makeup kit, a clean pair of undies, and my nightshirt and headed for the shower myself. "He'll have old Satchmo purring like crazy. By the time we make it back home, that cat will think we're newcomers to the neighborhood."

  The shower was divine. I really needed it. I hadn't even known Cecile Elway, but I couldn't stop wondering about her, about all the things she'd never get to do, all the Christmases and birthdays she was going to miss. I felt pretty bad about the whole darn thing.

  Cat was propped up on two pillows, messing with her cell phone when I returned to the room, threw back the covers, and crawled into bed.

  "What do you think?" I asked her.

  "About what happened?"

  "Yeah, that. I mean, I can't believe any of those peo
ple would be able to actuallyyou knowmurder Mrs. Elway."

  Cat looked across at me from her bed and shrugged. "I dunno," she said, "but it doesn't seem likely. You were there—what do you think?"

  I switched off the bedside lamp.

  It was quiet in the room. The clock on the nightstand ticked so loudly you would have thought it'd be detonating any second. The bathroom pipes shuddered. The sounds of the bayou seeped in through the window—the guttural croaking of a hundred frogs, the grating chirp of crickets scissoring their legs together. A nearby owl hooted mournfully—if he were warning us of imminent death, as was widely believed in the bayou, the fool was too late.

  "I dunno either."

  Across the room, an old portrait of grim Alphonse Villars was lit by a direct beam of moonlight from the window on the opposite wall.

  It wasn't a flattering portrait of Harry's great-great-grandfather to begin with, and the way the moon shone on it was fairly spooky.

  "Cat?"

  "Mmm?" She sounded drowsy.

  "You believe in ghosts?"

  She didn't answer right away then, "I do."

  "Do you believe like Penny Devere said, they can reach across the void and do harm?"

  Again, she said, "I do."

  "Do you think maybe Cecile's stepdaughter Rosalyn might be right? Maybe the ghost of Theodore Elway did her in?"

  "Nah," we said in unison.

  "No way." I tried to laugh, but it was forced.

  I lay still in the darkness, staring at the disturbing painting of the old man and wondering if there was indeed a world unseen where those who'd left this one dwelt, planning their revenge against those of us they perceived had done them ill. I shuddered at the thought. Grandmama Ida believed in those things. And while my mama went to all kinds of trouble to discourage her, my grandmama still went about the business of keeping bad things away from her and those she loved.

  Her house, where I spent most of my childhood days while my mother managed Ruby's Famous Bourbon Chicken in the Holy Cross neighborhood, was loaded with candles, amulets, sacks of herbs, and other talismans to ward off evil—even haint blue paint to keep enthusiastic haints out of the place. I took these things in stride. And although I knew all about them, I wasn't particularly superstitious and never put much store in tales of things that go bump in the night.

  But tonight? Well, that was something else.

  I turned my head slightly, and I swore I saw Alphonse's eyes turn with it. No way. I blinked hard then looked again, lifting my chin to stare down my nose. Even that angle supported the fact the old fart in the portrait was watching me.

  "Cat? That picture's got me spooked."

  "Spooked?" She rose up on one elbow and fixed her eyes on it. "Don't look at it." She plumped her pillow, pulled the sheet up, and rolled over.

  "I can't help it. I think it's watching me." I pulled one of my pillows out from under my head and covered my face with it, but just like a six-year-old, I lifted one corner to peek out.

  Yep. Still staring. I sighed, got up, took my robe off the foot of the bed, and hung it over the painting.

  Better. Much better. I lay back down and went straight to sleep.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mardi Gras colors—purple, green, and gold. A delicate fairy with dragonfly wings and a dress made of ivy leaves had fully materialized on my client's right shoulder about the time Deputy Quincy sashayed into the parlor.

  "Hoo-wee." He whistled, leaning over for a look at the tattoo. "Would you look at dat?"

  I finished up and wiped the work down with alcohol then handed my customer a mirror to check out the finished work.

  She paid me, left a really nice tip, threw on a jacket over her tube top, and left.

  "We got the word on them clams," Quincy said. "Just like I thought. They was poisoned. That poor old gal, she never had no chance."

  I spread my hands out in front of me. "You don't think I had anything to do with it, do you?"

  He shook his head. "No, chère. Not you."

  I kept my eyes on him while slipping off my latex gloves. "Poisoned? F'sure?" It was terrible news for the hotel, for Jack—someone being murdered during a séance, one of the most often booked services at The Mansion, and on Jack's watch.

  "My friend up at the lab, she still working on it. Going to be telling me what kind of poison real soon now, but in the meantime, chère, you hear anything, you let me know." He turned to leave, but stopped. "You seen Cat?"

  "She's working. Said she had a full day."

  He nodded. "You catch up to her, you maybe please tell her I'm free for lunch. I hear Valentine's whipped up some shrimp po'boys." He shook his gorgeous head. "She cooks like an angel, dat woman."

  He walked off whistling. I surely liked Quincy. He made me smile. I figured that was one of the things Cat liked about him too.

  After Quincy left, it was as if my parlor had a revolving door. First Cat came around to tell me that Quincy stopped by to see her and that she was joining him for lunch, and then almost word for word, she repeated what Quincy said about the clams.

  Next it was Jack's turn. He brought me a regular coffee, and we sat down together while he told me that Quincy stopped by to see him too. Then again, almost word for word, he repeated what Quincy said about the clams poisoning Cecile Elway.

  I listened politely, and by the time he was done speaking, between him and Cat, I knew backward and forward every word that came out of Quincy Boudreaux's mouth, in addition to those I'd heard from Q. After a while Jack began to talk about his job.

  "Terrible thing, this death. The deputy thinks it's homicide." He paused. "Not that it's about me at all, but I'm nervous how this will look to my employer. It can't bode well for my job security."

  "This is the deep South, Jack," I said. "Folks down here aren't quick to jump to conclusions, and I can't believe anyone would think this was your fault anyway."

  He shrugged then. "Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, I need to watch my p's and q's, and part of that has to do with you."

  "Me?"

  He nodded. "As much as I'd like to see you away from work, get to know you better…"

  My heart started to pound so hard, I was pretty sure he could hear it.

  "…I don't dare. I'm your boss. Our seeing each other could lead to all sorts of issues."

  Oh. Was this his way of letting me down easy? Or was this his way of saying he was hot for me?

  I was confused.

  Jack got up and walked over to where I kept my portfolio of designs to inspire tattoo customers.

  He absent-mindedly thumbed through it. "You know you're really good, Mel. You ever do any real painting?"

  He didn't look up when he spoke, and I had the feeling my designs weren't really what he had on his mind.

  "Yes," I said. "I do. I paint N'awlins street scenes and the like. People seem to appreciate my stuff. Sometimes I sell one or two."

  He did look up then. "Really? Good for you. Maybe someday you'll leave this place and make a name for yourself as an artist."

  "Well now, for the time being, I'm just glad for the chance to make a little extra for the cause."

  He came back and sat down again. "I heard you're part of a movement restoring some of the hardest hit neighborhoods destroyed by Katrina."

  "Yes," I said softly and took the opportunity to inspect the backs of my hands. I don't like talking much about that. Makes me look like I think I'm a saint or something. Saintly, I'm not.

  "That's generous of you," he said. "You seem like a really, really good person to me."

  "Nah, you go on. I'm just like anyone in N'awlins who sees a job needs doing and rolls up her sleeves."

  "There're people like that in New York too. We saw a lot of them after 9/11," he said. "Good people. Men and women."

  Women. I took a deep breath. "Good-looker like you, I bet you knew a lot of women up in the city."

  "Maybe," he said. "Yes." He looked right at me, and my stomach clenched, but I couldn'
t look away. "But none like you, Mel. Not a single one like you."

  * * *

  My last appointment for the day left at two forty-five. Seeing as how I was stuck at The Mansion in spite of my personal preference, Jack okayed a swim in the gorgeous Olympic indoor pool at the resort, a remnant of the Gatsby glory days of the 1920s. Cerulean tiles with gold swirls were inlaid throughout. It was a masterpiece. The water reflected the blue and gold, and the effect was that of a magical lagoon.

  I lifted my head on lap thirty and was startled by Fabrizio, standing on the edge.

  "Hey." I stopped and looked up at him, treading water.

  "Hello, my dear, excellent stroke."

  He looked tired. His long face sagged with worry or fatigue or both. I didn't remember ever seeing him that way before.

  I swam to the edge where he hunkered down, wobbling a little as he did so.

  "What's up, Fabrizio?"

  He shook his head. "There isn't much out there for an old thespian with bad knees."

  Odd way to start a conversation. "Hmm," I said. "Guess it's a good thing you have this gig then."

  He shook his head sadly and sighed as if the weight of the world rode on his bony shoulders. "Yes, I suppose. Lucky to have this," he paused and added a flourish to the word, "gig and lucky to have Harry. Especially to have Harry. I don't know what a genteel man like that sees in an old broken-down performer such as I. I never thought someone like Harry would want someone like me."

  I reached out and touched his hand, being careful not to sling water all over him. "What is it, Fabrizio? I've never seen you like this."

  He sighed. "I suppose I'm just a bit emotional, what with all that's happened. Feeling a little at loose ends, as they say. I so wanted to succeed with the Elway woman. It meant a great deal to me."