Murder at Morningside

by Sandra Bretting

  “Why don’t we knock?” It was Ambrose, standing behind me.

  Leave it to him to always do the right thing. “You heard him . . . the Realtor’s gone. We could always peek around a little before she comes back. Doesn’t cost nuthin’ to look.”

  “Seems to me—”

  I gave in to temptation before Ambrose could finish his sentence and pushed open the door. Like before, sunlight glanced off the hardwoods and made them shine like that still water on a bayou.

  Ambrose whistled. “Look at that. Mahogany.”

  “That’s nothin’. Follow me.”

  I tiptoed into the foyer as quiet as a church mouse. I didn’t mean to intrude, but I wanted to gauge Ambrose’s reaction to all of that glorious wood paneling.

  “Wow!” He turned round and round like a little boy in a funhouse. “This is something.”

  “I knew you’d like it.”

  “Look at that crown molding. That’s at least four inches thick.”

  “You haven’t seen anything yet. C’mon.” Since Ruby could emerge from the shadows at any minute and cut her eyes at me, I hustled Ambrose through the foyer and into the dining room. Here the wallpaper bloomed with fading magnolias, and chipped dinner plates adorned an antique dining table.

  “See what I mean?” I said. “All it needs is a little work to put it right again. And look out there.” I pointed to the kitchen garden, like Mellette had done.

  “What’s that?”

  “A studio,” I said. “Can you imagine me out there working on my hats? Think about it, Bo. I could turn it into a showroom, and you could have this dining room. We wouldn’t have to write rent checks anymore.”

  “It’s something to think about.” He glanced nervously toward the foyer. “Maybe we should come back later. I have lots of questions for the Realtor. And then she can show us the second floor.”

  “Okay, if you say so.” He was right, although I hated to admit it. “Let’s take a peek at the studio on our way out, though.”

  We retraced our steps through the foyer, Ambrose’s head still swiveling around like a child in a fun house. I let him walk ahead of me and made sure to close the front door extra tight on the way out. Wouldn’t want someone to wander in off the street and traipse through the house all willy-nilly now, would we?

  A pea-gravel path led around the house to the garden. By this time, sunshine kissed the Doric columns out back, and a chorus of cicadas practiced trills from inside an overgrown rosebush. We followed the path until it ended at the shed’s Dutch door.

  “This is where you’d work, huh?” Ambrose said.

  The door’s top half stood open, so I peeked over his shoulder to get a glimpse inside.

  On the opposite wall sat a rusty metal shelf filled with broken pots, a few trowels, and leftover bags of fertilizer. A pile of towels or rags lay beneath a small window. The room seemed just large enough for a sturdy worktable and my collection of antique hat blocks; not to mention a display rack or two for my finished creations.

  “It’s perfect,” I said. Tiny motes of dust swooped and swirled through the light of the window like drips falling from a garden hose.

  “Looks to be about the right size.” Ambrose inched open the door’s lower half. “We could even put an awning between this cottage and the house for people to walk back and forth between our two studios.”

  I quickly moved around him and stepped into the cottage. The minute I entered, though, I noticed something unusual: the smell. Not a normal garden smell like mold or compost or rotting leaves . . . the room smelled like mint. A chemically mint odor, like the kind they used in menthol cigarettes.

  I glanced around for the source. The pile I’d spied beneath the window turned out to be a rumpled green business suit and matching shoes.

  It was Mellette Babineaux. Her feet splayed out at unnatural angles and her unseeing eyes stared straight ahead. My scream tore through the small space.

  “Missy!” Ambrose rushed forward. “Call nine-one-one. Quick!”

  But I couldn’t move. My feet had become rooted to the ground. Several seconds—or were they minutes?—passed.

  “Now!” he said.

  That woke me. I whipped out my cell and dialed 911.

  A voice answered before the second ring. “This is nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”

  “There’s been an accident at the old Sweetwater mansion. Not inside, but outside. We’re in a shed. Come quick!”

  “Slow down, ma’am.” The woman sounded much too calm. “What’s the address?”

  “I don’t know.” A flash of memory brought me back to my conversation with Herbert Solomon, though. We’d stood on the front lawn not more than half an hour ago. “It’s down the road from Morningside Plantation. That’s the one they turned into a big hotel.”

  The dispatcher was silent, and then she rattled off an address for me to verify.

  “That sounds about right,” I said.

  “And just who are you?”

  “Missy DuBois. The gal is the Realtor here.”

  “Is she breathing?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Are you with the victim right now?”

  Victim? I hadn’t really thought about her as a victim. All I knew was that Mellette Babineaux—the one who’d toured me around the house not more than an hour ago—now lay puddled in a heap on a dirty cement floor. “Yes.”

  “I’m sending help. Keep your phone on you, you hear? Someone may call you back.” With that, the line went dead.

  I spun around. “They’re coming.”

  “Good,” Ambrose said. “Wait for them in the main house. It’ll make it easier for them to find us.”

  I rushed to the Dutch door, anxious to put the sight of the limp body behind me. Quickly, I stumbled over the threshold and hurried down the gravel path.

  All sound had disappeared. A cicada probably called to me from its rosebush as I ran by, and my heels no doubt churned through the pea gravel, but I heard none of it. The back door quietly swept open, my shoes floated over the hardwood floor, and I landed in the kitchen.

  I paused to catch my breath. Truth be told, I was happy to leave the cottage. At least here I didn’t have to look at Mellette and her ashen face. The legs splayed at unnatural angles. And dear Ambrose trying to keep his composure while my screams woke the dead two states away.

  Since I still couldn’t breathe, I began to look around. Above my head hung a pendant light with a hammered copper shade, its soft light illuminating a soapstone counter. Next to that was a farmhouse sink surrounded by a backsplash with dozens of tiny rose-colored tiles. Maybe if I focused on something else, I could catch my breath. I began to count the tiles from top to bottom. On the thirty-fifth tile, or thereabouts, a siren finally wailed in the distance.

  Twelve more tiles and a police car arrived. Staccato bursts of light popped through the kitchen window in candy-cane colors when the cruiser pulled into the driveway. Someone opened and closed a car door before footsteps sounded on the stoop outside.

  “In here,” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

  A man in a navy uniform appeared on the other side of the screen door. Short and Hispanic, he wore a crewcut and mirrored sunglasses. “Did you call?”

  He looked like a teenager—all chubby caramel cheeks and black hair. Too young to be a police officer, let alone to carry a sidearm. “Yes, it was me.” I pulled the cell out of my pocket and laid it on the counter. “I used my cell phone.”

  The officer entered the kitchen and whisked off his sunglasses. “Officer Hernandez. Second district. What’s up?”

  “My friend and I found someone in the shed outside not more than five minutes ago.”

  The officer pulled a notepad from his pocket, where I fully expected to see race cars doodled on the cover but, thankfully, it was blank. “Did you know the person?”

  I nodded. “Yes. We went to college together a long time ago. Her name’s Mellette Babineaux, and she’s the Realtor
for the property.”

  When he didn’t react, I could tell he didn’t know Mellette. Instead, he continued to jot notes while he carefully studied my face.

  Someone explained to me once why policemen watch their witnesses so carefully while they speak. Apparently, if a witness glances left the officer knows she’s relying on memory. The witness looks right, and it means she is lying. I purposefully stared straight ahead, since I had nothing to worry about.

  “I wanted to show my friend the studio out back,” I said. “That’s where we found her.”

  More writing on his part. “I see. My partner is out there now. We’ll start with that area and establish the chain of custody.”

  I nodded again. That was a term I was very familiar with, since I’d taken a couple of classes in police procedure as an undergrad at Vanderbilt. At one time I actually toyed with the idea of law school, until I took those classes and realized I’d rather spend my time with sketch pads than cops’ notebooks or legal briefs.

  “Did you see anything else unusual?” He finally lowered his eyes from my face.

  “Now that you mention it, I did.” Hadn’t I been surprised to see Herbert Solomon’s Rolls-Royce hulking outside the house earlier? The man lived in Baton Rouge, after all, which was almost two hours away. He didn’t say anything about having an appointment with a Realtor, and that seemed a little strange.

  “We ran into Herbert Solomon when we got here,” I said. Even though he’d never met Mellette, odds were good he’d know about Louisiana’s most famous billionaire.

  “I’ve heard of ’im. So he was here too. Coming or going?”

  “Going,” I said. “Told me he couldn’t find the Realtor here. Didn’t even know if it was a guy or a gal.”

  “Did he seem upset?”

  I thought back to our meeting on the lawn. “More mad than upset. I assumed he wanted to buy this place, only he couldn’t find anyone to talk to.”

  “Anyone with him?”

  “No, that was it. But I did meet someone on my first visit.”

  He squinted up at me. “First visit?”

  “I’m interested in buying this place too. But I had to drag my friend along so he could see it for himself.”

  “So you met someone else, then?”

  “Sure enough . . . a caretaker by the name of Ruby,” I said. “Don’t think she liked me, though.”

  “Why’s that?”

  I shrugged. “Apparently, it’s bad voodoo to visit someone around here first thing on a Monday morning. If you’re a woman, anyway. I’d never heard that before.”

  “You’re not from around here, are you?” Officer Hernandez seemed surprised—or was he amused?—by my ignorance.

  “No, I moved to town about a year and a half ago,” I said. “I live down the road. Didn’t even know the mansion was for sale until this morning.”

  “Tell me more about the caretaker.”

  “There’s not a whole lot to say. She seemed to think they did voodoo ceremonies around here a while ago, or some-such thing. Said something about amulets and charms. Does that mean anything?”

  Now it was his turn to shrug. “It could. We get strange stuff out here. Think that’s enough for now. You’ll be free to go in a minute.”

  “But aren’t you going to ask me to come back with you to the station so you can write up my statement?” That’s how they explained it back in those classes at Vanderbilt.

  “Definitely. But we have to wrap up things here first. Get our report to Investigative Support Services. You can go, though. Do you have a ride home?”

  “I drove over with my friend.” That’s when I remembered Ambrose. Poor thing was still trapped in the shed with Mellette’s limp body and a police officer. “I’d better go find him.”

  I hastily said good-bye to the officer and stepped through the kitchen door. Somehow the sky seemed darker now than when we’d first arrived. I tiptoed along the garden path and met up with Ambrose about halfway down.

  “Hi, Bo. Did they ask you a lot of questions too?”

  “Sure did.” Ambrose looked drained. “The guy seemed surprised I didn’t know the lady lying on the floor right next to me. Once he got past that, though, he said I could go. Said something about you and me heading over to the police station later.”

  I nodded. “I know. By the way, was she—”

  “Yes,” he said. “She’s dead.” Ambrose stopped in the middle of the path, his eyes haunted. “But there’s something else, Missy.”

  “What is it?”

  “I saw something, back there in the shed. Something strange.”

  I laid my hand on his shoulder. “We found a dead body, Bo. Of course you saw something strange.”

  “No, it’s not that.” He shrugged my hand away. Whatever he’d seen, it’d shaken him to the core.

  “Tell me. What’s wrong?”

  “Somebody left a cross back there. A black cross.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “I don’t know. But there’s more.”

  How could there be more? Already my legs felt like muscadine jelly and I longed to sit on a garden bench or a backyard swing or even an overturned bucket.

  “There was something on the cross,” he said. “Looked like blood to me. Fresh blood too.”

  “But that would mean . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “Yeah,” he said. “They must have killed her right before we got here.”

  I sagged forward, suddenly winded. Thankfully, Ambrose caught me and steadied me against his chest. Why, oh why, did we ever come back to Sweetwater Plantation?

  We remained like that for several minutes, each of us lost in thought. Finally, some feeling returned to my legs, and I straightened.

  “Whatever we do, Bo, we’ve got to find out what happened. Mellette Babineaux and I went to college together. Same sorority and everything.”

  “Okay.” His eyes narrowed. “But only if we do it together. Promise me you won’t go running off by yourself. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “I promise.” I raised my hand in the Boy Scout salute to prove it.

  “The only question is . . . where do we start?” he asked.

  “My granddaddy always said it’s best to start at the beginning and keep going ’til you get to the end.”

  Of course, my dear granddaddy stole that line from a famous book about a girl and a White Rabbit, but that was neither here nor there at this point. Somehow, Ambrose and I had landed smack-dab in the middle of another crime scene. Time would only tell if we’d stumbled down a rabbit hole of our own.

  Sandra Bretting has served as a freelance feature writer for the Houston Chronicle since moving to Texas in 1996. She received a journalism degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and spent her early career in health-care public relations. She’s also written for the Los Angeles Times and Orange Coast Magazine.

  Bretting’s previous mysteries include Unholy Lies (2012, Five Star Publishing) and Bless the Dying (2014, Five Star Publishing). Her short stories have appeared in BorderSenses Literary Journal (a publication of the University of Texas at El Paso) and several anthologies.

  Readers can visit her website at www.sandrabretting.com

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  LYRICAL UNDERGROUND BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2016 by Sandra Bretting

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Lyrical Underground and Lyrical Underground logo are trademarks of Kensington Publishing Corp.

  First Electronic Edition: May 2016


  ISBN: 978-1-6018-3713-4

  ISBN-13: 978-1-60183-714-1

  ISBN-10: 1-60183-714-3