Cake on a Hot Tin Roof

by Jacklyn Brady

  “I’ve been talking to a couple of my employees, Sparkle and Dwight. They had some interesting things to say about the night Big Daddy Boudreaux was killed.”

  “Sparkle,” Uncle Nestor said. “She’s the one with the dark hair, am I right?”

  “That’s right. And Dwight’s a friend from pastry school.”

  “The dirty one,” Uncle Nestor said.

  I was impressed that he’d made an effort to put names with faces. Resuming my seat, I put my feet up to take some of the pressure off the waistband of my jeans, which had suddenly become too tight. “He’s not dirty. He’s just…cleanliness challenged. And he’s very talented.”

  Aunt Yolanda smiled indulgently. “He seems like a very nice young man.”

  “He is,” I agreed. “But that’s not what I want to talk about.” I made eye contact with Uncle Nestor and said, “I know why you fought with Big Daddy. You might as well tell the police. If I found out, they will, too.”

  He looked back at me with an expression of supreme innocence. “What makes you think I haven’t already told them?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the fact that Sullivan told me you hadn’t.”

  “And you believe him over me?”

  “He has no reason to lie about it,” I said without blinking. “So what’s up, Tío? Why are you still refusing to talk about it?”

  Uncle Nestor made a noise like a low growl and turned his attention to my feet on the chair. “Why are your feet on the furniture? Didn’t we teach you better than that?”

  “My house, my rules.” I grinned broadly as I repeated the phrase I’d heard too often as a kid. He was trying to distract me and I wasn’t going to let him get away with it. “Now, answer my question.”

  He scowled up at me and blinked a couple of times. “What question?”

  “The one about why you’re still refusing to talk about the fight you had with Big Daddy the night he died.”

  Blink. Blink…Blink.

  Aunt Yolanda shot me a warning glance. “I don’t think we should talk about that just now.”

  “Well, I do,” I said as gently as I could. “Staying silent isn’t helping him, Tía.” I turned back to Uncle Nestor. “If you’re trying to protect Aunt Yolanda, she’s not as delicate as you might think. She can handle whatever you have to say.”

  Blink, blink.

  I sat up and put my feet on the floor, but only because I was too agitated to sit still. “How about I start then? Big Daddy made some disgusting comments about Aunt Yolanda and about me. You heard them. Maybe he even said them right to you. It made you angry and you blasted him in the face. How am I doing so far?”

  Aunt Yolanda looked from Uncle Nestor to me and back again. “What comments?”

  Blink.

  “You got into that fight because of me?”

  Blink, blink.

  “Look,” I said, hanging on to what little patience I had left, “I understand that you’re kind of freaked out after your heart attack—which is another thing we need to talk about, by the way. And I understand that you’re worried about me, which you don’t have to be. And I can understand losing your temper, especially if you were drinking.”

  Aunt Yolanda rounded on him, eyes flashing with anger. “You were drinking?”

  Uncle Nestor shot me a look, and his wife a smile, clearly intended to placate her. “I wasn’t drinking, sweetheart. I promised I wouldn’t.”

  “I just meant that I could almost understand what he did if he had been under the influence,” I assured her. “But I don’t understand starting a fight with one of Miss Frankie’s guests if you were stone-cold sober. And not just a fight. You hit him twice while I was standing there, and you went after him again later. And somebody heard you threaten to kill him.”

  His eyes flashed to mine, and for the first time I thought he actually looked worried.

  “That’s right,” I said, pressing my advantage. “Have I got your attention now?”

  He sat ramrod straight, his chin held high, his dark eyes narrowed in disapproval. “I was raised to respect women, and that means that there are some subjects a man won’t discuss in front of them.”

  Aunt Yolanda made a noise with her tongue. “What did that stupid man say that you think I can’t handle?”

  Blink.

  He was good, but I wasn’t buying it. “If that’s the case, why aren’t you talking to the police? Sullivan’s not a woman. You could tell him what happened.”

  Uncle Nestor’s gaze flicked to mine quickly. “Didn’t I teach you to respect your elders?”

  “Didn’t your mother teach you to tell the truth? Come on, Tío. What’s really going on?”

  He stood, and for a moment I thought he was going to leave the room. To my surprise, he took a couple of steps, then turned back to face us both. “It was that wife of his,” he said after a lengthy pause. His haughtiness had evaporated and he looked downright miserable. “I don’t know what was going on between the two of them, but she…” He slid an unhappy look at Aunt Yolanda. “She kissed me.”

  My mouth fell open and it was my turn to stare. Blink, blink, blink. “She what?”

  “I didn’t know who she was at the time,” he said as if that explained everything.

  Aunt Yolanda got to her feet, walked across the kitchen, and slapped him across the face. Hard. I was still trying to process what he’d just said, and I waited for her to laugh, to smile, to give some indication that she found the whole thing amusing.

  She muttered something under her breath and swept up the stairs before I could wrap my mind around what was happening. When she’d disappeared, I turned my startled gaze back to my uncle and whispered, “What was that?”

  Uncle Nestor looked unhappier than I’d ever seen him. “I didn’t want her to know. It wasn’t anything. It didn’t mean anything.”

  “Well, of course not. Susannah kissed you, not the other way around. Right?”

  He nodded, but he didn’t exactly look at me, and that gave me a bad feeling inside. “What’s going on, Tío? What don’t I know?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I jumped out of my chair so fast it rocked back on two legs before slamming onto all four again. “Aunt Yolanda just slapped you. She’s royally pissed. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that something’s wrong here.”

  “We’ll work it out,” he said, his voice barely audible.

  “Work what out? What’s there to work out?”

  “It’s nothing,” he said. He turned away, grabbed his jacket from the back of a chair, and disappeared out the front door, leaving me gaping after him.

  I had no idea what was going on between them. I’d never seen them like that, not with each other and not with anyone else. But there was one thing I knew for sure—it most definitely wasn’t “nothing.”

  Twenty-eight

  Miss Frankie sailed into Zydeco Wednesday morning wearing a tan linen suit, serviceable pumps, and a wide-brimmed hat that looked as if it belonged at the Kentucky Derby. Her nail color had been changed to match, and her hair had been teased and sprayed, artistically arranged around the hat. She looked sensational.

  I looked noticeably less spectacular in a plain navy dress and a pair of low heels, hair pinned up haphazardly, and a whiff of makeup and lip gloss. I hadn’t slept well after my conversation with Uncle Nestor and Aunt Yolanda the night before. I was so tired, my eyes felt gritty, and I ached all the way to my bones. I didn’t want anyone to ask me why, so I kept a smile on my face and tried to act as if my most pressing concern was how much modeling chocolate we’d need for the next month.

  I’m not sure I actually fooled anybody, but at least the members of my staff pretended not to notice. Miss Frankie went along just until we drove out of the parking lot. “What’s wrong, sugar? You look like something the cat dragged home.”

  I rolled a look of mock annoyance in her direction. “Thanks. Nothing like a sincere compliment to start the day off rig
ht.”

  She waved a hand in the air and weaved between two slower-moving cars. “You know what I mean. You want to talk about it?”

  She knew me too well. I hesitated over how much to tell her about Uncle Nestor’s encounter with the third Mrs. Big Daddy, but reasoned that the more she knew, the more she could help me. “I found out last night that Susannah Boudreaux kissed Uncle Nestor at the party.”

  Miss Frankie looked away from traffic for a split second. “I see.”

  “She kissed him,” I said, wanting to be very clear on that point. “He didn’t even know who she was. At least not at the time. He found out later, of course.”

  “Did he happen to mention why she kissed him?”

  I shook my head. “We…uh…we didn’t get that far.”

  Miss Frankie seemed to understand the rest without being told. It’s one of the things I love about her. She took one hand off the wheel and covered one of mine in a comforting gesture. “Well, I’m sure it was nothing.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Nothing.”

  “Your uncle is very much in love with your aunt,” Miss Frankie said. “It’s obvious to everyone.”

  “Except maybe to her,” I mumbled.

  She darted in and out of traffic again, taking chances I never would have taken. When she put on her turn signal, I planted my feet to keep my balance as we sailed around the corner. “I take it Yolanda wasn’t pleased by the news?”

  “That’s an understatement. They’re not even speaking this morning.”

  “Well, I know it’s hard on you to see them at odds, but I wouldn’t worry. They’ve been together a long time. I’m sure they’ve weathered storms before, and they’ll get through this one, too.”

  I put on a brave face and offered up a smile, but it felt as fragile as spun sugar. “I’m sure you’re right.” There was nothing else either of us could say about that, so I changed the subject and told her about my conversation with Dwight the night before. “If Big Daddy was so protective of Judd,” I said when I’d finished, “why would he threaten to send him to rehab the night he died? Tough love?”

  Miss Frankie let up on the gas a little and shook her head. “That doesn’t sound like Bradley. He believed in handling such things privately, and he always thought that Judd would come around if he had the support of his family.”

  “I think he was a little misguided on that score,” I said. “And anyway, I hear he did threaten Judd with rehab, and told him that he’d helped for the very last time.”

  “That’s odd,” Miss Frankie said, and our speed dropped a little more. We drove in silence while she tried to process the idea of Big Daddy and Judd at each other’s throats. “Whatever it was Judd got himself into,” she said after a while, “it must have been big. Bradley wouldn’t have threatened him that way if it wasn’t.”

  That’s exactly what I was thinking. Neither of us said it, but I knew we were both wondering the same thing: Was the trouble Judd got himself into big enough to kill over?

  Reporters were camped outside the church, trying to capture the faces of the mourners who’d gathered to say a last farewell to Big Daddy. Luckily, they had no real interest in Miss Frankie and me. We sailed past the cameras and into the cool, dark foyer of the church, where friends were gathered, greeting one another with the appropriate amount of somberness.

  Miss Frankie hugged and kissed her way toward the sanctuary, and within minutes, I was following her down the center aisle toward a pew near the front. Flowers filled the room with a scent I’d prefer never to smell again—that odd mix of mums, carnations, and roses that always brings back memories of my parents’ funeral. I’d have preferred a seat in the back, but I wasn’t going to argue with her.

  Bernice Dudley had saved us a seat directly behind the single row that had been reserved for family. We barely had time to agree what a tragedy Big Daddy’s death was before the organist began playing and the side doors opened.

  We all stood while the pallbearers, none of whom I recognized, carried Big Daddy in for his last public appearance. It seemed that Judd should be one of them, but he shuffled behind the coffin with a black-veiled Susannah on his arm.

  The look on his face made my heart twist. I knew how it felt to be alone in the world. It’s a feeling I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

  Mellie came in next with two boys and a young girl, who I assumed were her children from her marriage to Big Daddy. When they were settled, the pastor rose to the pulpit and began the service.

  I wish I could say that I figured out who killed Big Daddy while I sat there, but the truth is that it was an entirely unremarkable funeral service. A couple of Musterion members spoke about all the good things Big Daddy had done for the krewe, making it sound as if he’d almost single-handedly planned and executed a fund-raiser last month for the krewe’s favorite charity and gushing over how much money he’d raised on their behalf. One longtime employee told us all about Big Daddy’s generosity toward the people who worked for him, and another related the story of how Big Daddy had given him a second chance after a brush with the law.

  Trying not to be obvious about it, I looked around for the other people on my list of suspects. I spotted Violet a couple of rows back, mostly hidden behind the handkerchief she was using to mop up the tears. I didn’t see Percy in the very back row until the service was over and I stood to leave.

  The family was ushered out behind Big Daddy, and the rest of us followed slowly. Miss Frankie stopped just outside the doors to speak to an old friend but I slipped away, hoping to find Judd and offer a word of condolence before he left for the cemetery.

  I circled around the church toward the side entrance, where the hearse was parked. Apparently, I turned too soon because I found myself in a little garden area between two wings of the E-shaped church. I was trying to decide whether it would be quicker to cut through the inside or go around the outside when I heard voices. One of them belonged to a woman, the other to a man. The choked sobs in the woman’s voice made me instinctively slip behind a flowering shrub so I wouldn’t intrude on her grief.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, hiccupping slightly. “It’s just that I don’t know what I’m going to do now. He was my whole world.”

  After hearing that, I just had to peek around the bush to see who she was. I was a little surprised to see Violet and the dark-haired man in horn-rimmed glasses, whom I recognized from the party with Susannah. I hadn’t noticed him inside during the service, but here he was, acting all best-friend-forever-like with Violet.

  He gave her a there-there pat on the shoulder, but he seemed almost distracted as he did. “Well, you weren’t his world. But I guess you finally figured that out.”

  That was harsh. Even if I did agree with him.

  She wiped a fresh batch of tears from her cheeks and sighed. “I know what you thought of him, Tyson. But he wasn’t a bad man. He was just…busy. Preoccupied. Important.”

  “In his own mind,” Tyson muttered. When she gave him a look of hurt mixed with horror, he relented slightly. “You’re going to be okay, Violet. She doesn’t hate you. I’ll talk to her and make sure she lets you stay on.”

  She? They had to be talking about Susannah. Interesting.

  Violet choked out a disbelieving laugh. “She’s not going to want me around, Tyson.”

  “What I know,” he said, “is that you worry too much. Let me take care of it.”

  Definitely Susannah. I was sure of it. But who was this guy and why did he think he could influence Susannah’s decisions? And what was his connection to Violet?

  Their voices dropped and the noise of car doors slamming and engines starting drowned out whatever they said next, but eventually Tyson reached for the door handle. “Are you okay now? They’re going to be wondering where we are.”

  “Not we,” Violet said with a tremulous smile. She let out a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of her soul. “She’d be happy if I fell off the face of the earth.”

  Tyson clenched hi
s jaw. “Don’t be so melodramatic, Violet.”

  But Violet couldn’t help herself. She blew her nose and lifted her chin, but shudders, the residue of her bout with tears, shook her shoulders. “She’s got it all now, doesn’t she?”

  Tyson pulled open the door and waved her inside. “That’s the part you never understood, kid. She always did.”

  The family limousines were gone by the time I got to the parking lot, and Miss Frankie was waiting for me wearing a worried frown. “Gracious, sugar, you gave me a start. One minute you were there with me, and the next you were gone. Wherever did you go?”

  “I was hoping to say a few words to Judd,” I told her. “I didn’t make it.”

  I told her about the conversation I’d overheard between Tyson and Violet. “Who is he anyway? Do you know him?”

  She thought for a minute before shaking her head. “I can’t say. Not anyone I know. He’s probably an employee at one of Big Daddy’s auto dealerships.”

  That made sense. But no matter who he was, the conversation had convinced me of one thing. Violet might have had a strong motive for killing Big Daddy, but I believed that her motive to keep him alive was even stronger.

  Twenty-nine

  Uncle Nestor and Aunt Yolanda were asleep when I got home that night and barely speaking when I left for work on Thursday morning. When they did speak to each other, I almost wished they hadn’t. The sharpness in their voices reminded me of the way Philippe and I had spoken to each other before we separated. It saddened me.

  I tried to hold on to Miss Frankie’s assurance that my aunt and uncle had weathered other storms and come out together on the other side, but the knowledge that Philippe and I hadn’t made it, as so many couples didn’t, frightened me. I’d seen Uncle Nestor and Aunt Yolanda at odds with each other over the years, but I’d never seen them like this.

  Thankfully I hit the ground running when I got to Zydeco, leaving me little time to think about family issues or the murder. Since we had only one more weekend until Mardi Gras, everyone gathered in the large room upstairs for our second production meeting of the week. We ran through the schedule, parceling out the work that needed to be done and haggling good-naturedly over who got to do what. I tried to rotate people in and out of the production line, giving everyone an equal chance to work on other orders.