She gave a reluctant nod, and I continued.
“I’ve had a lot of changes in my life recently – moving back here, taking over the Inn and the Tea room…”
“…becoming a witch,” she added with a grin.
“There’s that too, but I’m not a witch.” She just rolled her eyes, but I didn’t explain…and I didn’t mention the other change of having my mom and grandmother’s ghosts as my new constant companions either. “I just need things to slow down to a manageable and liesurely pace for a while before I turn my life upside down again.”
Cammy nodded. “I know…I understand that. I remember in Savannah how you’d rein me in on our wild escapades, hitting the dance clubs and things like that. I can get pretty squirrelly when I’m two sheets to the wind.”
I snickered. Squirrelly was an understatement – after two drinks every man looked like a Greek god to her. “I didn’t think you’d be able to remember any of those nights, Cam.”
Cammy scoffed “Ha! Sometimes I wish I didn’t”
We shared a nice laugh – and I was really glad that I was always the designated driver. It was nice to reminisce about the old days together in Savannah, and it gave me a few minutes of respite from the horrible tragedy of the day before.
Suddenly several people in the Tea Room started applauding gently. Oh, Lord, now what? I wondered. I followed their line of sight to the entrance and saw Karen Coon, the Bacchanalia Queen, walking in the door, arm-in-arm with Ron Jeffries who had played Prince Darling
Normally the newly crowned queen makes a grand entrance at the Lover’s Ball and dances with the prince. But, of course, the crowning was pre-empted by the terrible fiery death of Pamela Tedesco, Miss Georgia. Ron was carrying the shiny crown on a satin pillow, and Marguerite got up from her table and placed the crown on Karen’s head. There was more tearful applause as the royal couple managed to smile at the crowd of admirers. Lexi gave Karen a hug and led the pair to a table by the window.
“I don’t know how that poor girl can keep from exploding into tears right now. She’s really brave and strong.” Cammy’s eyes were moist as she applauded softly.
Antoine was at the table next to our booth with Marguerite and waved me over. “Miss Delacroix!”
“Good morning, Antoine. Has everything been satisfactory during your stay with us?”
“Well, I could have done without the horrible ordeal last night, but yes, yes, everything is fine. I will need an hour to interview Chef Pinochet for my article, and I will need to complete my review and submit it by this evening. Could you…”
“Certainly. Carlo will be arriving for his shift any minute now. Dinner starts at noon on Sundays, but I’ll hold Ginny over if necessary. Do you need a private room for the interview?”
“Not at all. Actually, I prefer to do my interviews while the chefs are preparing a meal so I can view their technique and use of ingredients. It shows me their culinary style as well as their personality, and it allows me to come up with much more interesting questions as I watch and challenge them.”
“Then you are free to have full access to our entire facility immediately. We have caps and hairnets in the kitchen, and I’ll set an apron out for you too so you don’t get your suit soiled. Marguerite, you can go with him to the kitchen too if you like. Where are your children, Antoine.”
“Well, given the events of last evening Nadine called for them, and they’re on their way back to new Orleans with their mother. I think Marguerite may want to explore your little antique shops along the avenue, but I will need Anjolie, my assistant, to accompany me. I haven’t seen her yet this morning, but she should be along shortly.”
“Great. Marguerite, when Antoine goes for his interview please join Cammy and my friends and me in the booth. We can give you the nickel tour of Whispering Pines.”
She smiled and nodded.
“Jess!” Now it was Lexi calling for me from behind the counter near the swinging doors to the kitchen.
I grabbed my coffee mug from my table and went to see what she needed. “What’s up?”
“My mom is coming in from Columbus today. She will mostly be at home helping out with the kids and housework. I made the mistake of telling her that I got tired easily during this pregnancy, and, well…here she comes to save the day!”
“That’s great! How long will she be staying?”
Lexi sighed. “Not sure, but Jack’s not coming with her, so she might stay for a while. I think she really misses Whispering Pines. I mean, she loves her new hubby, and Columbus has a lot more to offer than this place, but…”
“I know. It was her home for a long time. And the hubby’s not so new, dear. It’s been like eight years now, I think.”
“Yeah, well, anyway, you’ll probably see her around here for a couple hours when she arrives…and whenever the kids are in school.”
“That’s fine. We’ll just put her to work if she gets in the way. Actually, it will be great to see her.” I put my hand on Lexi’s arm. “Enjoy the time you have with her, Lex. It only comes around once.”
Lexi filled up my empty mug and then took the hot food in the pass-through window out to a table. That’s when I heard some operatic strains coming from the kitchen.
“Toreador, en ga-a-ar-de. Toreador! Toreador!”
I hadn’t heard Carlo’s baritone opera voice for a few years now. He actually wasn’t too bad. I told Antoine that the chef was in, and everybody at my booth stood up to go too.
“I better check in with Kyle.” Zach wasn’t officially on duty today, but there was a big case to investigate.
“And Dad and I have some hungry horses to feed and riding lessons for the Sunday Schoolers at noon.” Travis gave me a one-armed hug as he grabbed his hat with the other and whispered in my ear. “Happy Valentine’s Day. We should do that again some time.”
“Ya think?” I whispered, and punched him in the arm softly.
“What’s with you girls, slugging my arm all the time?”
Percival smiled. “That’s how you train a maverick, son. It takes a little tough love to keep him heading in the right direction. Bye now, Jessie.”
Travis winked and kissed me on the forehead. “I’ll call you tonight…babe.”
Babe, huh? Yeah, I’ll be your babe. “Talk to you later, Trav.”
“Dinner at the Swamp Fox tonight?”
“Maybe – but not too early.” Then I turned to the others. “Let’s all go with Zach and see if they will tell us anything about what they’ve discovered in their investigation,” I suggested.
Cammy and Marguerite agreed, and we followed Zach out of the Tea Room. With the Lover’s Ball over now, the investigative team had moved from the lobby to the solarium. The Sheriff and the forensics team were all out front poring over the crime scene, but Kyle was still looking at video of the event from every angle. The stage and cable lift were still up at the request of the Sheriff’s office, and the festival was still going on around the yellow tape.
Without the Sheriff and the others around, it would be a lot easier to dig some information out of Kyle.
“How’s it going in here, Sherlock?” I sat next to Kyle, and the others gathered around the small TV screen.
“Well, except for my eyes getting kind of bleary, I might be making some progress. Hey, Zach, what do you make of this?”
Kyle rolled back the video a little, just before the arrow struck Miss Georgia, and then moved it ahead frame by frame. Then he stopped it.
“Right here.” He pointed to the unfortunate young woman, and then moved the video back and forward several times.
“I see what you’re saying, Kyle.” Zach leaned in closer. “Just before the arrow was released, a red spot appeared on her chest. It looks like a laser site, like on a high-powered rifle.”
Kyle nodded. “Except, I don’t think it was coming from the assassin’s bow. Watch this.” He rolled the video ahead slowly. “When she waved to the crowd one last time, her arm crosses through the
laser beam…and the red dot appears on the top of her arm first. If the laser were coming from below, where the shooter was, it would hit the lower side of her arm.”
Cammy snapped into private eye mode. “Maybe we can line up the dot on her dress with the dot on her arm to figure out where the beam was coming from. It’s only a few inches difference – not much to base a trajectory on – but there can’t be too many places it could have come from.”
“Well…” Kyle scratched his head. “…there are a lot of rooftops along the boulevard where the beam could have come from. The Sheriff figured the point at which the arrow hit her chest was about 22 or 23 feet above the street. That lines up with a lot of the flat rooftops around here, and there are a lot of second story windows that the beam could have come from too.”
“Wait – go back one frame.” Cammy had locked onto something. I stood up and gave her my chair.
Kyle navigated back to the spot Cammy wanted to look at, and she tapped the screen. “Right there – see how the red dot is elongated as it skims over the top of her arm?”
We all nodded, understanding just what she was getting at. I spoke first.
“So, the long red streak is pointing directly to the point where the beam was originating from.”
“And it’s pointing pretty much straight in front of her, so…” Zach looked at me with wide eyes, but it was Kyle who finished his sentence.
“The beam came from right here at L’Auberge Hantée.”
There was a moment of silence while the revelation soaked in and the possibilities ran through our minds.
“But the beam didn’t kill Pamela,” Marguerite reminded us. “It was the flaming arrow that…that…”
“You’re right, Marguerite.” I broke in so that she wouldn’t have to say the words again.
Zach was a former Navy Seal, and his mind was working overtime. “It could have been a marker for the shooter to aim at, which could mean that our killer has a military background…”
“…or just that they weren’t sure there would be enough lighting for a clean shot.” Cammy understood the brainstorming process of crime-solving very well, and knew it was always best to add any possibilities while everyone’s brains were lit up with thought waves.
“True.” Zack put one hand on Cammy’s shoulder and clicked the video ahead a few frames. “But look here…Miss Tedesco looks down, and a little puff of smoke comes from her dress where the beam hits her. I think it burned her. It could have been a hot beam, and the arrow could have been a small version of a heat-seeking missile.”
Kyle stood up. “Let’s not get too carried away with futuristic fairytales. And I don’t think that was smoke – just a blur on a two pixel phone-cam. I need to tell the Sheriff what we’ve found and find out what they’ve learned from the crime scene.”
“Wait, Officer Carnigan.” Marguerite wanted to learn more about her friend’s killer. “Do you have any video of the person who shot the arrow? I’d like to see it.”
Kyle understood and nodded. Then he sat back down. “The video hasn’t helped us to identify the perpetrator so far, but there are more videos I have to look at. I’ll show you the best one I’ve seen so far. It’s from Ron Jeffries’ mother. Her son was Prince Darling, so she kept her camera focused on the stage most of the time.”
Granny came floating in, her curiosity getting the best of her. I gave her a stern look, and she sent me a short message: “Don’t worry, dear girl. I’ll be a good ghost.”
“It’s pretty crowded around the stage, Kyle,” I said, “And they kept the lights pretty low so they wouldn’t drown out the laser show.”
“Yeah. We haven’t been able to find any sign of the person lurking around the area. We didn’t see him at all until here, where he comes out from under the stage and jumps up there with his bow and some kind of smudge pot on his back to keep his arrow flaming.”
“Pretty athletic, the way he mounted the stage like a gymnast. Very light on his feet and coordinated,” Cammy added.
“Are you sure that’s a man?” Marguerite asked timidly. “He looks pretty girly to me.”
I leaned closer to the screen. “Marguerite’s right. Play it again.” My eyes were glued to the screen. “That’s no guy. It’s a woman. A guy would just throw one leg out to the side and up on the stage and then use his arms to push down on the stage and lift himself up. Go back…there. She turns her back to the stage, puts both hands on the edge of the stage behind her, and then jumps and pushes to get up. And here, look…She twirls herself around on her butt with her knees together. No man would do that.”
Marguerite was smiling for the first time today.
Kyle nodded. “I thought it was just a guy being theatrical. But I think you’re right. That long cape didn’t really give anybody a chance to size-up her body.”
We all watched the screen, trying to glean a clue, as the black-clad lady killer rose to her feet and walked perhaps 20 feet, right past Cupid and the Prince. Then she turned around, took three steps back, and shoved Cupid to the side.
“Stop!” Marguerite gasped and began breathing heavily, and Kyle pressed Pause. “That’s the walk! She did the walk!”
We all looked at each other, not knowing what she meant. Then we looked at Marguerite.
“It’s the Sylvestrian runway walk.” Zach pulled a chair behind her and took her hand as she sat, still very rattled by what she had just seen.
“Just breathe slowly, ma’am.” Zach poured a glass of water from the pitcher set out on the table for the officers and handed it to her. “Now tell us…what’s the Sylvestrian walk?”
Marguerite took a long sip of water and several slow breaths. Janet Sylvestry was the pageant director for many years. In fact, she was Pamela’s mother. Tedesco is her married name.”
Kyle looked doubtful. “You’re not saying…”
“No! No, of course not. Janet would never harm her daughter or anybody. She was First-Runner-Up 25 years ago. A few years later she married the Pageant organizer and did all the training for the girls and eventually became the Director. They taught her famous runway walk to all the girls in the Miss Georgia Pageant until maybe ten years ago. They still show it to all of the contestants even now. So it could have been anybody who was in the pageant more than ten years ago.”
“How do you know for sure it was Janet Sylvestry’s walk?” Cammy was on board, but she wanted to be sure.
“She swings her left arm and holds her gown – well, her cape – with her right. Then, when she gets to the end, she stands with her right foot forward and holds her cape out with her right hand. She pivots to the left, to the right, and then turns all the way around to her left. And the fabric in her right hand gets a lot of air under it from the twirl and looks really beautiful as she walks back. She’s butching it up a little to try to look like a man, but there’s no doubt that it was the Sylvestrian walk.”
•
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Chapter Eleven
“Arf!”
Arthur was getting hungry, so I followed him to his dish by the kitchen door in the lobby while the others continued to discuss the new theories on the murder. The front door of the Inn opened, and I saw the towering silhouette of Sheriff Muldoon as he walked in, along with Audrey, the head of his forensics team.
“Miss Delacroix,” he greeted with his usual southern charm. Then he took off his hat and looked through the double doors to the solarium where my girls were still gathered around Kyle and Zach. “It looks like you and your friends have been pumping your local officers for confidential information regarding the murder case, ma’am. And I presume that Officer Carnigan has been leaking like a sieve.”
I couldn’t tell if he was smiling or concerned. He was probably a good poker player because there was never much difference in his facial expressions.
“Mmmmm…not really, Sheriff. It’s more like we girls just advanced the investigation by leaps and bou
nds. And Cammy Jo finished up Kyle’s screening for deputization, plus she’s a licensed private investigator…and Marguerite was a close-up witness, so…”
“Mmhm, I see.” Now I was pretty sure he was smiling. He put one hand on his chin and nodded. “And what about you, Miss Delacroix? How do you fit into the inner circle in this investigation?”
Audrey jabbed him with her elbow.
“Me? Uh…well…I just filled the water pitcher for them.”
We both looked into the solarium where the nearly empty pitcher was sitting on the end of the table. He nodded and winked, and they headed toward the solarium.
“Oh, Miss Delacroix…” He turned his head back toward me. “…my men…and women…are going to need some lunch pretty soon. Set us up for a dozen people back in your sun room here, if you don’t mind…”
“Certainly, Sheriff.”
“…and tell those reporters creeping around your Tea Room that we’ll hold a little presser on the front steps to give them an update after lunch. Say, about 1 o’clock.”
“Yes, Sir!”
“Oh – and ask your chef if he can leave the sandwiches in one piece instead of cutting them into those tiny little delicate bites. It’s hard to tell when I’m done eating with those little things, and I tend to overeat. I have to watch my figure, you know.” He put his hat back on and ducked through the double doorway to the solarium.
Carlo was in full voice, gesturing broadly as he laughed and entertained the fascinated food critic in the kitchen with his stories and culinary wizardry. Antoine was peering over Carlo’s shoulder as the chef carefully torched the granulated sugar on top of several large ramekins of crème brûlée.
“Isn’t that cheating using burnt sugar to caramelize the top of the dessert?” Antoine asked.
“All’s fair in love and fine cuisine, Monsieur DeBonnaire!” The two men laughed heartily. “And if it is good enough for Le Cordon Bleu, it’s good enough for me, Sir.”
Jesse Delacroix: Curse of the Bloodstone Arrow (The Whispering Pines Mystery Series Book 3) Page 7