"At my boyfriend's bank," I hurried to add. Then I shot him a pleading look. If Delta found out I'd burgled a bank, I could kiss this case arrivederci.
He opened his mouth to speak, but my phone began to ring.
I answered before he could say a word. "Hello?"
"Franki," Nonna began, "we need-a to talk."
Surrounded by the enemy, I thought. "Just a minute, Nonna."
I looked at Officer Quincy. "It's my grandmother—a family emergency," I said, which was never a lie where my nonna was concerned. "Can I take this in the hall?"
"Don't you contaminate that crime scene, you hear?" he growled. "You stay just outside that door."
I gave him a blank stare before escaping into the hallway, careful to shield my eyes from Scarlett's body. "Okay, Nonna." I sighed. "I'm at work, so please make this quick."
"Your mamma told-a me that-a your new-a case is at a piantagione."
"Plantation," I corrected. "And yes, I'm there now. Working."
"Is it a big-a place?"
I nodded in greeting at a crime scene investigator as he passed by with a camera. "It's three stories, maybe forty thousand square feet. Why?"
"The Internet-a say it's-a fifty-five-a thousand."
I leaned against the door in shock. The last time I was home, my nonna couldn't turn on a TV, much less surf the net. "You know how to use a computer?"
"I'm-a chock-a full of surprises," she replied, dead-pan.
Don't I know it. I heard the clicking of the crime scene investigator's camera behind me, and then something clicked in my head. "So, why are you looking up information on Oleander Place?"
"It's-a really interesting," she said with no enthusiasm whatsoever. "We don't have-a no plantations in Sicilia."
The only things my nonna had ever expressed an interest in were ragù, babies, and my marital prospects, so now I knew she was up to something. But I decided to play dumb. "Sicily might not have plantations, but it does have noble palaces that are older and far more luxurious, like the one you took me to in Palermo when I was little."
"You mean-a Palazzo Ajutamicristo?"
The palazzo was named after a sixteenth-century baron whose surname meant Help me Christ, which is exactly what I was thinking in that moment. "That's the one."
"It's-a too far away."
Here we go, I thought. "Too far away for what?"
"I'm-a thinking about-a having a festa."
I clenched my teeth and started to respond, but the door behind me opened without warning, and I had to grab the doorjamb to keep from falling flat on my rear end. Officer Quincy escorted Delta out, scowling over his shoulder at me as they descended the stairs. "What kind of party would that be?"
"Eh, for the famiglia."
Chandra popped her head into the hallway.
I turned my back to her. I wasn't equipped to deal with the medium and the meddler at the same time. "Nonna, you and I both know that this is for me and Bradley. But since we're not engaged, drop the party plan, and pronto."
"Maybe if-a he knows you can-a get a discount on the plantation, he'll ask-a you to marry him."
I laughed incredulously. "Why? Because I'm frugal?"
"Sì. It's a fine-a quality in a woman."
I closed my eyes and ground out, "I'm not going to book the plantation for my engagement party. Not now, not ever."
"Why-a not?" she asked in a perplexed tone. "Now that there's-a been a murder, you can get a real-a deal-a."
I felt my whole body tense. I didn't dare tell her that there'd been two murders, otherwise she'd want me to reserve the plantation for my wedding reception too.
"Your grandmother's right, you know," Chandra whispered from behind me. "After today, you could rent this place for a song."
I turned and pushed Chandra by the forehead back into the children's room and pulled the door closed. "Nonna, I'm only going to tell you this once. Stop trying to marry me off to Bradley because we're not getting married." I should've stopped there, but my anger got the best of me. "We're just going to live in sin."
She let out a combined gasp-gag—the kind of sound you'd expect from an elderly Sicilian woman who believes that her only granddaughter has just been possessed by the devil.
"Ciao ciao," I intoned and closed the call.
I leaned the back of my head against the door. A wedding-planning call from my nonna was the last thing I'd needed today. Not only were Bradley and I not getting married, we weren't going to live together either. And after he'd found me in the bank security room, I was pretty sure we weren't going to be doing anymore sinning. But I couldn't think about that now. I had another murder to solve, and this one was personal.
Chandra knocked on the other side of the door.
"Come out," I called.
She pulled open the door. "I think they forgot about us. And if I don't feed Lou dinner soon, he's likely to pass out."
And if I don't let Napoleon out soon, he's likely to p—. "Um, I'll find the detective in charge and ask if we're free to go."
Her saucer-sized eyes grew to the size of plates. "And leave me alone in here?"
"This place is crawling with cops," I said, putting my hand on my hip. "The killer won't come after anyone now."
Chandra folded her hands in front of her mouth. "It's not the killer I'm afraid of."
"Ghosts are afraid of cops too," I said as I patted her on the shoulder and pushed her back into the room. "I know because they never show up at crime scenes."
"If you say so," she said uncertainly.
"I do." I closed the door and hurried downstairs. As I made my way outside, I put in a call to Adam to find out whether he had an alibi for that morning, but I got his voice mail. I hung up and headed for the command post, which had been set up in one of the cabins in the slave quarters. When I approached the doorway, Troy stepped out, looking pale and slightly dazed. "How are you holding up?"
"It's rough," he began, running his hand through his hair, "but I'll deal."
I nodded. "Listen, have you seen Detective Sims?"
Troy shoved his hands into his pockets. "You just missed him. The district attorney and the medical examiner pulled up a few minutes ago, so he went to meet them."
I would kill to be a fly on the wall during that conversation, I thought. "Do you have a minute?"
"Sure." He gestured toward the doorway. "Let's sit inside."
I entered the cabin and sat at the crude wooden table. "I wanted to ask you about crinoline."
He looked surprised. "You mean, the historical significance?"
I crossed my arms on the table. "That and whether you think it has a connection to the murders."
Troy furrowed his brow and stared at the table. "I guess it's possible. Crinoline has certainly been controversial among historians, so I suppose it could evoke some sort of emotion in the killer."
I leaned forward, intrigued. "How so?"
"Well, according to feminist historiography, the crinoline dress functioned as a female prison, which turned women of the Victorian era into quote 'exquisite slaves,'" he said, making quotation marks with his fingers.
"That's ironic considering the plantation context," I remarked.
"Right, but the opposing view maintains that women who wore crinoline weren't slaves at all. They were actually asserting their independence."
I blinked. "How does wearing a huge dress qualify as asserting your independence?"
He smiled. "That's the point. The dresses were so big that they emphasized women's presence in the patriarchal society. Women were no longer content to be wallflowers. Instead, they were literally filling rooms with their crinoline dresses, and in the process they were violating social norms by taking center stage."
I thought about how Scarlett O'Hara's dresses had been considered scandalous in Gone with the Wind and how she'd used her clothing to flout social expectations to get what she wanted—and then I made a mental note to get myself a poofy dress. "So, women derived power from w
earing crinoline."
"And narcissistic pleasure," he added. "But of course, the feminists say that it's inappropriate to speak of female pleasure since men used the dresses to domestically enslave women."
I glanced out the window and saw the detective and two men entering the house. "There's Detective Sims. Sorry to run, but I need to ask him something."
"No problem," he said, rising to his feet.
I sprinted across the lawn to the house and crept up the stairs with the stealth of a ninja, er, nonna. Silence had never been my thing.
Before stepping onto the landing, I peeked through the railing and saw Detective Sims flanked by a man in a three-piece suit, who I presumed to be the district attorney, and the medical examiner. They were looking up at the noose around Scarlett's neck, so I seized the moment to slip into the children's room unobserved.
"Well?" Chandra huffed, hands on hips. "Can we go, or what?"
"Shhh!" I waved my arms to quiet her and then peered around the doorjamb.
Detective Sims turned to the medical examiner. "Any chance poisoning could be at work here?"
"The discoloration and swelling is consistent with hanging," the medical examiner replied, pointing to Scarlett's face. "I'll have to run a Mass spec. to tell whether any poison was involved."
"Can you hear anything?" Chandra whisper-shouted into my ear.
I glowered at her, and she took a step backwards.
"The previous victim died from oleander poisoning, right?" the D.A. asked.
"That's what we thought initially," Detective Sims replied. "But this morning there was a toxicology hit for belladonna."
Belladonna? I thought, stunned. Was this what the spirit had meant when she'd said not to trust the oleander flowers? The hair stood up on my arms, and I glanced back at Chandra. Maybe she was better at this psychic stuff than I'd thought.
The D.A. stroked his chin. "Was it ingested or injected?"
The medical examiner put his hands on his hips. "Probably ingested. There were no needle marks on the body, but there was no food in her stomach, either."
"Adding eavesdropping to your criminal repertoire, Miss Amato?" Officer Quincy snarled.
I leapt at least a foot in the air and then acted like I was just doing a combined ballet-yoga stretch. "Actually, I was waiting to ask Detective Sims if we could leave."
He removed his glasses and rubbed his forehead. "This is a complicated and dangerous case that's best left to police professionals."
"I think he's right," Chandra said softly.
I allowed myself a moment to fantasize about beating her with the bed roller, and then I said, "I used to be a police officer, so I can handle this case just fine."
He narrowed his watery blue eyes. "I want you to listen and listen good," he said in a menacing tone. "If I catch you interfering in this investigation again, I'll have the two of you locked up before you can say 'hard time.'"
I clenched my fists. "On what grounds?"
"I'll make some up," he said, raising his chin. "Now beat it before I make good on my threat."
Chandra, despite her platform stilettos, ran down the stairs and to the car like Florence Griffith Joyner on speed.
For the sake of my dignity, I exited the house with my head held high, but inside I was anything but poised. Scarlett was dead, and I felt semi-responsible. And now I knew I'd been dead wrong about the poison that had killed Ivanna Jones.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't understand why Ivanna would have been killed with belladonna when she had oleander-laced lip gloss in her hand. But I was starting to think that she'd known about the poison in the lip gloss. And if she had, I figured that she'd been coming to the plantation either to get the oleander or to give the lip gloss to an enemy. Of course, she could have been making trips to Oleander Place for some other reason. But what?
Once again my thoughts drifted to the pink diamond.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The busty blonde waitress literally bounced up to the table with a pot of coffee in hand. "Can I get y'all anything else this mornin'?"
"I'm good," I said from beneath her bulky breasts. Then I realized how that sounded under the, um, circumstances. "I mean, nothing for me thanks."
Veronica gave a wan smile and shook her head.
The waitress flashed a toothy grin. "Be right back with your check."
"Sorry if I've been a boring brunch date," Veronica said, staring at her mimosa glass as she twisted it in circles on the wooden table. "I just can't believe Scarlett's dead."
"I know." I looked at my half-eaten plate of Eggs Louisianne. "I woke up this morning thinking that it had all been a nightmare, but then reality hit me like a baseball bat. I can't help but feel partly responsible."
She glanced up at me. "You shouldn't, Franki. Scarlett was either involved in the murder or she knew who did it, and it was her responsibility to do the right thing. You reached out to her, but she made it clear she didn't want your help."
"I guess," I said, picking at my poached eggs with my fork.
"Do you think she was poisoned too?" she asked and then tossed a popcorn crawfish into her mouth.
"I doubt it." I rested my elbows on the table and clasped my hands. "This wasn't like Ivanna's murder. Whoever killed Scarlett did it to shut her up."
"Are you sure it wasn't some sort of ritualistic thing? After all, you did see that shrine."
"Yeah," I began, shifting in my chair, "but because the shrine was to Evangeline, it tells me that Obsessive Love Disorder was a factor in Ivanna's killing. My guess is that when Scarlett went to work early yesterday, she surprised the killer while he was worshipping Evangeline."
"That's so disturbing." She drained the last of her drink. "Who do you think did it?"
"Well, Miles might have had time to kill her before he left for the hardware store." I glanced at the wall of old wooden window frames that separated the dining area of Atchafalaya from the lobby. "But if I'm right about my altar theory, he couldn't have been inside the house when Scarlett came to work because he was looking out a window in the sugar mill when she arrived. And now that we know about the belladonna, I think Adam is a possibility. As a chemist, he'd have access to all kinds of poison."
She drummed her fingers on the table. "I still don't get why the killer would've put Scarlett in her crinoline."
"Remember, we don't know why she was wearing that dress." I popped the last of my crab cake into my mouth and licked creole hollandaise sauce from my fingers. "She could have put it on herself for some reason."
"But if she didn't?" She took a bite of her Eggs Treme.
"Then I might know why she was wearing it," I said, wiping my hands. "Ivanna too, for that matter."
"Why?" she pressed, leaning forward in anticipation.
"Troy said that crinoline literally gave women a larger presence in Victorian society and that it had an erotic aspect. And if you think about it, all of that fits with Obsessive Love Disorder. The killer transferred his obsession for Evangeline and her pink crinoline dress to Ivanna. But at some point, Ivanna crossed a line, so he put her in her place. As for Scarlett, she overstepped her bounds, so she got her comeuppance too."
Veronica nodded. "It makes sense, I suppose. But why the belladonna?"
I shrugged. "That's the part I don't get."
"Do you think the name is significant?" She cut into a boudin cake. "It does mean 'beautiful woman.'"
"I thought about that," I replied, stirring my green tomato bloody mary with the pickled green bean garnish. "My laptop is at the office, but I used my phone to look up belladonna on a poison control website. It didn't mention anything about the origin or history of the drug, but it listed some fascinating symptoms."
"Such as?" Veronica smiled at the waitress as she placed the check on our table.
I took a sip of my drink. "Well, it causes respiratory failure, for one thing. But it also causes blurred vision, blindness, and hallucinations."
"Well, aside from t
he respiratory failure, we don't have any evidence that Ivanna experienced those other symptoms," she said as she examined the bill.
"No, but if she was going blind or hallucinating, she might have been thrashing around the room, and that could account for the torn curtain and the broken perfume bottle." I sucked down the last of my bloody mary. "But then again, maybe she was in a fight for her life with the killer."
Veronica shuddered. "Let's change the subject. Have you heard from Bradley?"
At the mention of Bradley's name, I was filled with longing for another make-your-own-bloody-mary. "I texted him this morning, but he hasn't answered."
"It's only been a couple of days," she said, reaching for her billfold. "Give him a little more time."
"And let Pauline move in for the kill? Uh-uh, no way." I bit angrily into my alligator sausage as I flashed back to that dark day at the swamp. As far as I was concerned, those gators were partially responsible for my current relationship predicament.
Veronica rolled her eyes. "You don't have any proof that Pauline is after Bradley."
I started to tell her about the Three of Cups card, but I bit my tongue. Even I knew that a tarot card didn't exactly constitute hard evidence.
"Besides," she continued, "deep down you know she's not his type."
"I never underestimate the power of an enemy, Veronica, especially not one as pernicious as Pauline." I glanced at my watch and realized that it was almost eleven a.m. "I'm going to call him later, but first I need to find an elusive chemist, and after that I've got a frat party to attend."
"I'll go with you," she said. Then she held up her hand. "But only to Lickalicious Lips."
I looked at her in surprise. "I thought you had something to do."
"It can wait," she said, laying four twenties on the tip tray. "I don't think you should be alone when you question Adam about the belladonna."
I smiled. I was glad to have my partner back. As we left Atchafalaya, I joked, "I can't believe you'd miss the vassal's party. I mean, besides the Rex Ball at Mardi Gras, it's the social event of the season."
* * *
By the time Veronica and I drove from Uptown to the French Quarter, located a parking spot, and made our way through the throngs of Saturday tourists, it was almost noon when we arrived at Lickalicious Lips. As I'd suspected, Adam was there. In fact, he was in the process of locking the front door as he balanced a large cardboard box on his hip.
Prosecco Pink Page 16