Lance cocked his head. “You’re probably getting spooked by what happened here. Are you sure you’re okay?”
The doorway was empty now. “I’m fine.” Slowly I turned back again. “But someone ran past this room. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not imagining things.”
“Okay, then. Whatever you say.”
“I’m telling you, someone ran by. Do you think they were eavesdropping on us?”
“I guess there’s no telling. What were we talking about?”
“I asked why you were still here. Are you doing more interviews?”
“No, I’m working on the supplemental report. I’ll give it to the forensics lab when I’m done.”
“But they found the body in the bathroom. Not here in the ballroom.”
“It doesn’t matter. The victim was all over the mansion before she died. This report will give them some info about what happened in the vicinity of the murder.”
“Do you have any suspects yet?”
Lance raised his eyebrows. He wasn’t going to dignify my question with a response.
“Okay, okay. I get it,” I said. “Everything goes into that precious report. How about this: Is there anyone you’ve ruled out at this point?”
“That’s better.” He finally flipped open the notebook to a spot near the middle. “We can discount any employee who wasn’t on duty this weekend. That’s about a third of ’em. Then there’s the guest list. A lot of people only had a passing acquaintance with the Solomons. Mostly bankers and other business owners. Oh, and a few politicians.”
“Plus the family. Guess you can automatically rule out the parents.”
He shot me a curious look. “Now, why would you say that?”
“C’mon, Lance. I know there are some strange people in the world, but no one would murder their own daughter.”
“You’d be surprised.” He puffed out his cheeks, as if he’d seen it all before and would probably see it again by dinnertime. “But you go right on believing that, baby girl.”
“Don’t patronize me. I’m not Pollyanna. I just can’t imagine anyone would do that to their kid. Especially right before her wedding, and especially since she was pregnant.”
A picture flashed through my mind of Mr. Solomon and Trinity, his face contorted with rage. A good old-fashioned hissy fit, from what I recalled.
“Uh-oh,” I said. “I may have forgotten to tell you something.”
Lance’s eyes immediately widened. “What’s that?”
“I heard them fighting on my first day here. It was Mr. Solomon and his daughter. He said something about how she shouldn’t have a say in the wedding. But the worst part was what she said to him.”
“Go on.” Lance pulled a pen from the spine of his notebook and held it over the paper.
“Now, it may be nothing. Just family talk. You know how you get so mad at your family sometimes you want to scream? Well, Trinity told her dad she wished he were dead.”
Lance didn’t flinch, but he began to write on the notepad. Impressive that he could watch me and scribble at the same time. “What time did that happen?”
“It had to be a little after four-thirty on Friday. We’d begun our tour when we heard them.”
“They came into the room with you?”
“No. They went in through the front door. Mr. Solomon first and then his daughter. He looked ready to spit nails. I thought he was going to lose it right there in the foyer.”
“What did he say when she told him that?”
“Nothing. She turned around and left, and he just stood there. Can you imagine?”
Lance stopped writing for a moment. “Hmm. Anyone else see this?”
“Yeah. Ambrose was with me. And Beatrice. And the others on the tour. We were all kind of embarrassed. But they didn’t seem to notice we were there.”
“Interesting.”
“But it doesn’t mean anything, right? People get angry all the time and say stuff they don’t mean. She was mad at him and she spouted off the first thing that came to her.”
Lance fell silent.
“C’mon. You can’t really believe Mr. Solomon killed his daughter.” My mind swirled with possibilities. Even though I didn’t know the family, there were a few facts everyone could agree on. It was well known that Mr. Solomon and his daughter didn’t get along. “Everyone knew Mr. Solomon pinched pennies,” I said. “Why would he waste all that money on a wedding if he knew it wasn’t going to happen? He wouldn’t do that.”
“Funny you should say that.” Lance replaced the pen in the notebook’s spine and began to rifle through the pages until he reached a clear plastic sleeve jammed against the back cover. It held some random papers, starting with a pale pink sheet. “Got a look at the catering bill this morning.” He didn’t open the sleeve, but merely nodded at it. “This is the catering invoice. Look how much he paid for a deposit.”
I moved closer for a better look and quickly scanned the page, crammed full of letters and numbers. After a while, I found a line next to the word deposit, which was blank.
“You mean he didn’t put down a deposit?” I asked. “That can’t be right.”
“It is right. Normally the plantation asks for ten percent. Anywhere from twenty-five-hundred to five-thousand dollars or more. But not this time.”
I double-checked the sheet. Dollar amounts filled every other line. Come to think of it, the wedding planner had asked me to waive my deposit until after the wedding. Normally I’d have said no, but this was a special case. Any client who could afford such a massive wedding at Morningside Plantation wouldn’t stiff me on the bill.
“I spoke with the catering manager this morning. She thought she’d insult Mr. Solomon if she asked him for a deposit. Called it a ‘professional courtesy’.”
“You don’t say.” I wondered if Ambrose had waived his deposit too. He hadn’t mentioned it, but then I hadn’t mentioned my waiving it, either. “So, Mr. Solomon didn’t put any money down for his daughter’s wedding?”
“Looks like it. Otherwise he would have paid about seventy-five-hundred dollars. Maybe more. But he put down zero. Zip.”
“Seriously?” It was hard to wrap my head around. “But that doesn’t mean he murdered his daughter. It only means everyone’s afraid of him. No one wants to get on his bad side because he has so much money.”
“Exactly. But you wanted to automatically exclude the family. Sometimes that’s not a good idea.”
“I suppose. But I still can’t believe any father would murder his daughter. Even someone like Mr. Solomon.”
“I would have agreed with you a few years ago. Now I don’t know. I stopped trusting people. Makes my job a whole lot easier.”
“That’s the most pitiful thing I’ve ever heard.” And I hoped more than anything, Lance was dead wrong about Herbert Solomon. By the time I said good-bye and left the ballroom, I’d lost my enthusiasm for touring the mansion. Somehow the shine had dimmed during our talk about parents and children and murder.
I retreated to the back of the house instead, where I felt more at home. After a moment, I reached the restaurant entrance, where someone with salt-and-pepper hair stood at one of the first tables.
Watching Charles from behind was like watching a magician. Like an illusionist before an audience, he whisked something shiny from a washtub next to him and then flipped it into a napkin in his other hand. His final trick was to wrap the silverware up all nice and tight with a quick flick of the wrist. All that was missing was an “abracadabra!” and a round of applause at the end of his show.
Never let it be said I didn’t know a golden opportunity when I saw one. I sidled into the restaurant, as if by accident, and then casually walked up behind him. My heels must have given me away, though, and he turned.
“Why, hello, Missy. I’m sorry, but we’re closed.” He glanced around the quiet restaurant as if to prove his point.
“I know.” I pulled a chair away from the table, all nonchalance. Moist knive
s and forks winked up at me from the tub like shiny coins tossed into a fountain. “And how are you doing today?”
“Okay, I guess. It’s my turn to prep the silverware.”
“I can see that.” Watching him roll the flatware had reminded me of making pigs in a blanket for Derby parties. It’s another chore I’d done dozens of times for dozens of parties. Since my hands were clean, I might as well make myself useful. I reached into the washtub and immediately felt warm, moist metal.
After a bit, Charles and I set up a comfortable rhythm in our silence. I retrieved some silverware, shook it off, and then passed the pair to Charles, who rolled up everything all nice and neat. The give-and-take, back-and-forth, provided me with the perfect distraction.
“I saw the strangest thing earlier,” I finally said. “A picture. I could have sworn it was of you.”
“Me? What was I doing?”
“That’s the thing.” I reached into the washtub and casually withdrew a wet fork. We were in no hurry, since dozens of the pieces lay waiting and supper wasn’t for several hours yet. “Hard to tell. Looked like you were at a party. A fancy party too.”
“Probably wasn’t me, then.”
“But it was you.” I married the fork with a knife and passed the pair to Charles.
The way he accepted it, so gingerly, reminded me of a museum curator with a precious artifact.
“In a tuxedo, no less. Do you belong to the Baton Rouge Country Club?”
“You’re kidding, right?” He began to chuckle, but stopped when he looked at me. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. But I doubt they’d let someone like me join, even if I could afford it.”
“That so? You must have a twin, then. A spitting image too. So you’ve never been to the Baton Rouge Country Club?”
“Well, I didn’t say that.”
“I’m sure they have lots of parties there. Did you happen to go to one, maybe with Trinity Solomon?”
“No . . . maybe . . . I don’t know.” Clearly discombobulated, Charles reached across me and plucked a fork from the washtub, essentially taking away my job. Strange how he refused to look at my face.
Well, this will never do. I decided to steer the conversation back to something neutral. “So, Charles, I’m guessing you grew up around here. It’s such a pretty area. Everything looks so green.”
Luckily, he paused and waited for me to hand him a knife, instead of taking one out of the bin. “I grew up down the road, and you should see my parents’ backyard. The cypress trees are so big I could hide behind them and no one would ever find me.”
“That is big. And to think you stayed right here after high school. So many people don’t do that. I didn’t.”
“I didn’t have much choice. After the refinery blew up, my dad lost all his money. Didn’t have a cent to pay for room and board at college. The only thing he had for collateral was a shrimping boat, and they took that away too.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Nearly killed him. The day the sheriff got the boat was the worst day ever.”
“You were there? How horrible.”
“I’ll never forget it.” Charles’s eyes glazed over. “Dad thought I was sleeping, but the dog went crazy, running around in circles and stuff. I woke up and went outside to see what was wrong.”
Instinctively, I laid my hands in my lap, since Charles’s story was ten times more important than wrapping silverware.
“It was frosty out. I didn’t have time to grab shoes and my feet got wet in the grass. Dad didn’t know I was there because I ducked behind a cypress before he could see me.”
“Hmm.” I pictured Charles, hiding behind a tree trunk, in his bare feet.
“Dad always told me he was gonna get rich off that refinery. Said putting his money there was safer than in a bank.”
“That should have been a good plan,” I said. “Until the refinery exploded.” Not to belabor the point, but the accident had devastated so many people in the area.
“My dad lost everything, and then the sheriff came for the boat. It was the last straw. He fetched his Smith and Wesson, because he thought someone was trying to steal his baby. Who could blame him, right? But he saw it was the sheriff before he fired. He told me I must have dreamt the next part.”
“Next part?” Was it my imagination, or did Charles’s eyes mist over, like the flatware, which was slick with condensation?
“I saw my dad bring the handgun to his own head when he realized what the sheriff wanted.”
“That’s horrible! Do you think maybe you made a mistake?”
“I know what I saw, Missy. He was scared to death. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he did that. He dropped his hand after a second, but it was too late.”
We both fell silent. The memory seemed painfully fresh for him. So fresh it looked like he wanted to reach his hand through the window and touch the cypress, the weathered fishing boat, and the father with a handgun at his head.
“I blame Mr. Solomon. That bastard.”
I flinched.
“I mean, he was such a jerk. Sorry to cuss, but that’s how it is. That oil refinery hurt a lot of people around here. A lot of people.” There was no mistaking the edge in his voice.
“I’ve heard all about him,” I said.
“It was over a year ago, but it’s why I still live at home and drive to LSU three days a week. To save money.”
“That makes sense to me. And I’m so glad your father didn’t pull the trigger.”
Ever so slowly, I passed Charles a fork to see what would happen next. But he fell silent and we stayed that way for several minutes, until I remembered something.
“I have friends who are counselors back in Bleu Bayou. In case you want to talk to someone about what happened.”
“Thanks. But I don’t like to talk about it. I don’t even like to think about it. So, let’s talk about something else. Anything new with you?”
“Goodness, what isn’t new? I still can’t believe everything that happened yesterday. Turns out I know the police officer in charge of the investigation. We grew up together.”
“That so?”
“Yeah. We lived next door to each other about a million years ago. The police still don’t have any leads. Or any leads I know of.”
Charles looked at me quizzically. “It’s only been one day.”
“True. But I’ve heard the first twenty-four hours are critical. We’re way past that now.”
“I’ve heard that too.”
It felt like the right time to ask him what I really wanted to know. “What do you think happened? I mean, with Trinity and all. I know you said some people complained about noise on Friday night, but you never told me what you think.”
Nothing stirred then, save for the blur of silverware as we passed it back and forth. Even the birds outside had fallen silent, as if they wanted to hear what Charles would say.
“To tell you the truth, I’ve never trusted that Sterling guy.”
“You mean Trinity’s fiancé?”
“Yeah. He didn’t act like a guy who was going to get married. I mean, it sounded like he was trying to hook up with someone yesterday when I heard him talking on the phone.”
“Hooking up? What makes you think that?” Of course, the memory of Sterling and Beatrice talking in the bar flew to the front of my mind. Maybe it was common knowledge around here that those two were a couple and I was the last person on earth to figure it out.
“He was mumbling into the phone like he didn’t want anyone to hear. And he must have been talking to a girl, because he kept calling her ‘baby’.” He looked disgusted, his eyebrows pulled tight. Obviously Charles didn’t care a lick for Sterling Brice.
“That’s a pretty good clue, all right. Who do you think he was talking to?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I have a bad feeling about this. I mean, if that guy was seeing someone on the side, he’d have a good reason to kill his fiancée.”
“Ma
ybe.”
Charles lowered his eyes to the tabletop. “What gets me is he didn’t even deserve her. She could’ve done a lot better.”
“You don’t say.” Carefully, I pulled a fresh fork from the bin. “Sounds like you were a fan of Trinity.”
“It was hard not to be. She always made you laugh. Great sense of humor—” He stopped short. The words lingered in the air, fat and bloated, for several seconds.
“But I thought you didn’t know her, Charles.”
His eyes shot from the table to my face. “Well . . . um. That’s what I’ve heard.”
“You know you can tell me anything. I’ve heard everything there is to hear, so don’t think—”
“I’ve gotta go.” Charles didn’t bother to accept the fork I tried to hand him. Instead, he looked desperate to leave the restaurant. “Cat probably needs me in the kitchen. I’ll do this later. Thanks.”
In a poof, he was gone. Like the magician I’d imagined him to be when I first arrived. Abracadabra. A puff of smoke and a hasty exit . . . and there went Charles.
Maybe I’d underestimated him, after all. Maybe there was more going on behind that friendly smile and those dancing eyes than I cared to admit. But what?
I rose from the table. The best thing I could do was hike around the plantation and sort out everything in my mind. The stiff breeze might blow away some of the doubts about Charles that had begun to cloud it.
Time was running short. First there was the crash in the hall the night before, then I’d learned the head chef was pregnant, not to mention seeing the photograph of Charles and Trinity. At this point I had a thousand more questions than answers.
Maybe that was why the sight of Darryl, as I walked down the hall and toward the front door, perked me up. Next to Charles, Darryl was one of the best sources for information about the plantation.
“Hello, Darryl.” Yes, it was definitely time to enlist his help. “How’re you doing?”
He was watering a potted fern and glanced up. “Good. Got time ta do tings, wot wit all da guests done gone.”
“Guess so. Sorry if I held you up from your work at the funeral home. And the church service was pretty good. You should go sometime.”
Murder at Morningside Page 9