Magnolia Wild Vanishes (A Charmed Cat Mystery, Book 1)

by Peggy Webb

  “I’m sorry, Lucy.”

  “Steve is beside himself.” Her husband has a low tolerance for aggravation, especially when it upsets Lucy. “What are you doing on the road at this time of night, anyhow? Going to a late show?”

  “I wish. I’m leaving New Jersey, making a fresh start.”

  “What kind of fresh start?”

  I didn’t blame Lucy for being suspicious. It was my sister who sent me packing a year after our parents’ disappearance when all leads had gone cold. “You’ve got to quit hanging around Point Clear and get on with your life,” she’d told me.

  She also told me I had great things ahead, but she didn’t consider being a waitress at Coselli’s great things. And she thought Nick was a close relative of the anti-Christ.

  “Not the kind you’re going to like, Lucy.”

  She squealed when I told her I’d left both the restaurant and Nick, but her glee turned to a silence bigger than Texas when I explained that I was on the run.

  Finally, she asked, “From what?”

  “I can’t give you any details, Lucy. But trust me, I have very good reasons.” I wasn’t about to give her details that would put a target on her back.

  “Oh, my gosh, this sounds as bad as when Mom and Dad vanished.”

  “Not quite.” But close. Too close for my comfort. “I’ll call you when I get where I’m going.”

  “I don’t like the sound of this, Maggie. You should come down here and let us help you. Steve’s good at handling all kinds of problems.”

  Steve Sullivan knows everything there is to know about training race horses and motivating them to win the Kentucky Derby, but he’s the least violent man I know. He can’t even deal with nosy reporters. He wouldn’t have a clue how to deal with the Coselli family.

  “I know you would, but I can’t put you in danger.”

  “Good grief. This sounds like something that’s going to give me nightmares. Can’t you at least give a hint where you’re going?”

  “As far away from New Jersey as I can get.”

  “Maggie!”

  “That’s all I’m saying. ‘Bye, Lucy.”

  She yelled, “Wait,” but I’d already ended the call. I rummaged around in my duffel bag till I found a Yankee’s baseball cap. When I had all my hair tucked inside, I looked like I was hiding a large, furry animal on my head. I added some readers I thought I’d needed last year, and I was all set. Between the cap sprouting jet black twigs of hair and the enormous turquoise frames, I looked like a very tall, very disgruntled hoot owl.

  I swiped my hand across my mouth to remove any remnants of the lip gloss Nick loved and I hated, a color called pink lemonade that made me look exactly the way you’d figure, feminine and helpless. Well, almost. Nobody taking a hard look into my eyes would call me helpless. You’ve heard of steely blue? Icy blue? That’s me.

  I’m not proud of it. But when I lost Mom and Dad both on the same day, I lost warm and fuzzy, too.

  I wasted no more time looking back. I hurried inside the 7- Eleven and stocked up on bottled water, Hershey’s bars and Tom’s peanut butter and crackers. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.

  *

  Traveling back roads is not the most efficient way to get from New Jersey to New Orleans, but it had kept me alive. So far.

  The French Quarter hadn’t changed much since I’d seen it last. The remaining damage from Hurricane Katrina was mostly on the outskirts of town. Down on the riverfront, everything looked the same, including the Charmed Cat. I stood in front of the little shop on the corner of St. Ann and Decatur, my mouth watering for the fried beignets I could smell cooking across the street at the Café Du Monde. My stomach rumbled, reminding me that the last good meal I’d had was three days ago back in Trenton, New Jersey.

  The sign above the shop, a very large wooden cat painted black with bright pink polka dots, creaked as it swung in the breeze. I caught a glimpse of a real cat sitting inside the window, a huge black creature with green eyes and a predatory expression that said he was barely one step away from the jungle. Forget domestication and scratching posts. This feline was watching me as if I might be his next meal.

  Maybe I should have called ahead, but it was too late for that now. I was here, and I’d convinced myself it was my only option. My clothes looked like they’d been slept in, which, in fact, they had. But there was nothing I could do about that now. As I approached the door, my only hope was that blood ran thicker than water.

  Shop bells tinkled and I found myself surrounded by glass bottles of lotions and potions and scents so exotic I felt as if I’d entered another world. A billowy white-haired woman the approximate age of Noah’s Ark glided toward me. I didn’t recognize her at first, but then I noticed her eyes. They were a dead giveaway, a startling blue so like mine I knew I was looking at my great Aunt Grace Delaney.

  “My stars and garters! You must come with me this very minute.” Before I could say a word, she grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the back of the shop. “Houdini told me you were coming.”

  Two things occurred to me: There might be a good reason Grace was one of the family outcasts, and I’d made a huge mistake thinking I could hide out with my maternal grandmother’s disgraced sisters. So far, it appeared at least half of them didn’t have the brain power to keep a petunia alive, let alone a niece in deep trouble.

  “But, I haven’t even told you who I am.”

  “Houdini did.”

  “The dead escape artist?”

  “No, dear. The cat. He’s magic. You’ll see.” The big black cat was wrapped around my ankles like somebody had stuck him there with Elmer’s glue. He let out a series of loud sounds that made the hair on my neck stand up, and Aunt Grace winked at him. “You said a mouthful, Houdini. She does look just like her mother. I’d have known her anywhere. But it’s impolite to say she needs a good soaking in a lavender scented bubble bath.”

  The cat said all that? I was so tired I almost believed it.

  “Sorry about that, Aunt Grace. It’s been a long trip. Or did Houdini tell you that, already?”

  “He doesn’t know everything, dear. He just pretends to.”

  Aunt Grace hustled me past beaded curtains and into a room filled with cushioned chairs, a bank of ferns, a window seat covered in every shade of pink, a flowered china tea set and the heavenly scent of mint tea.

  “Sit,” she said.

  I didn’t need further invitation. I sank into a chair so comfortable I decided I might stay there for two days. When she handed me a steaming cup of mint tea, I amended that to three.

  The cat oracle unwound himself from my ankles and followed Grace as she poked her head through a door I hadn’t noticed, tucked behind a folding screen painted with pink flamingoes.

  “Pearl, come out. She’s here.”

  “Did you put the closed sign on the door, Grace?” The voice coming from beyond the door didn’t sound like any senior woman I’d ever heard.

  Both Pearl and Grace had to be seventy, if they were a day, but Aunt Pearl’s voice had the vigor of youth. When Grace trotted off to deal with the sign and Pearl emerged from whatever was behind that door, I could see why she sounded like a woman twenty years younger. She looked like one, too. She was tall, stylish, slender, and had flaming red hair with only a few gray roots to let me know the color was not natural. And her legs seemed to go on forever. There was no wonder she’d been such a hit as an exotic dancer. Such a scandal, too. Exotic dancer was Aunt Pearl’s term. The rest of the family described her as that Bourbon Street stripper.

  Peal sat in a chair beside mine and squeezed my hand.

  “Don’t let Grace fool you. She likes to make people think she’s a crazy old woman who talks to cats, but she has a genius IQ and a gift of knowing things before they happen.”

  I nodded as if I understood, but I didn’t. Not really. I’m trained to deal with cold, hard facts such as which kind of weapon is best for the target.

  “We kept up wit
h you, Maggie. Both of us were watching on TV when you won the gold medal. When Clint and Alice disappeared, Grace wanted to drive to Point Clear and get right in the middle of the investigation, but I talked her out of it.”

  “Why?”

  “I couldn’t stand to see my sister ridiculed again.”

  I thought of my own sister, and how I’d walk through coals to keep harm away from Lucy. Maybe coming here hadn’t been such a mistake, after all.

  “I’m going to be frank with you, Aunt Pearl. I’ve got the press after me and the Mafia, too. I need a place to hide, and I thought of you. My mother’s people are a well kept secret.”

  Even when reporters were digging up everything they could about me, they got so caught up in reporting about my famous football-legend daddy and my brother-in-law who trained a Triple Crown winner, they never dug deep enough into my family tree to get to the Delaneys.

  “We like flying under the radar. It’s more fun.”

  I couldn’t imagine what she meant by that, and at the moment, didn’t want to know. All I wanted was a hot bath and a good meal.

  “Still, I don’t want to bring trouble to you. I should have thought of that before I came.” I set down my tea cup and stood up. “I’ll be moving on.”

  “Fiddlesticks! We’ve got a house big enough to hide you and fifteen more like you. You’re coming with us.”

  As long term plans go, it wasn’t much, but I was so tired I embraced it without another thought. That’s how easy it was to follow two great aunts I barely knew to a house in the old the Garden District that at first glance looked as if it might be haunted.

  And that’s how easy it was to go from the frying pan into the fire.

  Chapter 3

  In which lavender and crime don’t mix

  Not that I went immediately into the fire. First there was the matter of my car. Continuing to drive it would be like waving a red flag for Rocco and Nick. Fortunately, Pearl and Grace had a massive four car garage befitting an aging mansion in the Old Garden District. Pearl parked her big blue Buick beside a yellow Stutz Bearcat that made my eyes bug out. Then she motioned me inside the garage and directed me to a parking spot beside a Harley Screaming Eagle.

  “Does the Bearcat still run?”

  “Of course, dear. “ Grace threw a tarpaulin over my little bug of a car. “Pearl has a way with engines.”

  “Who rides the Harley?”

  “Both of us.” Pearl grabbed one arm and Grace, the other. “Let’s go inside and eat. Excitement makes me hungry.”

  The two aunts set to work in a kitchen that looked like it came right out of the fifties, black and white checkered tile floor, table and chairs with chrome legs, ancient stove and a blender on the counter big enough to mix a wedding cake.

  The dinner table was soon loaded with casseroles dripping in so much butter you’d think Paula Deen had prepared the meal. I dug in like a starving refugee.

  “Eat up, dear.” Aunt Grace pushed her plate back then patted my hand. “I’m going upstairs to draw you a hot bath scented with lavender so you can look nice for Pearl’s knitting club.”

  “She’s going incognito, Grace. Did you forget?”

  “No, Pearl, did you? We have plenty of disguises.”

  I don’t even want to think about why my aging aunts would need disguises.

  “I think I’ll just stay in my room and rest. Do both of you knit?” I could imagine Grace with skeins of yarn tangled around her feet while Houdini kept a baleful eye over the whole process, but I couldn’t picture a former stripper doing anything with long-handled needles you’d want to talk about.

  “Grace does. I mostly just enjoy the gossip,” Pearl said.

  While Grace hurried off, Pearl told me about the gathering of ladies in her knitting group.

  “Lolly Beaufort thinks she’s the Queen of New Orleans. She has more hair than she has sense. Wears these hideous wigs in primary colors. The twins, Tilly and TammyLou Hankins, are sweet. Too sweet. They wouldn’t say boo to a cat. Especially Houdini.”

  The cat in question arched his back, cast an evil eye toward Pearl and then marched through the cat door. Probably to commit murder in the backyard around the bird feeder.

  Pearl talked on about the former mayor’s wife, Joanie Watkins, who eats too much sugar and pretends to wear a size eight though everybody in the club knows she wears a fourteen. Then there was a former swim coach, who rubbed everybody the wrong way, a church pianist, who made Bonaparte Baptist sound like Beale Street, and the new woman who said she used to be an actress in B movies in Hollywood, though Lolly vowed and declared that Susie Trumpet had never been near a movie set.

  “I don’t know how Lolly knows, but she’s the best source of gossip I’ve got.” Aunt Pearl winked at me, but I didn’t yet know her well enough to decide when she was kidding. “That whole motley gang will converge here in two hours, Maggie.”

  Which gave me just enough time for a leisurely soak and a quick search of the internet to see who was missing in Trenton, New Jersey. By the time the ladies of New Orleans got here, I’d be sound asleep.

  “I see Pearl has kept you amused while I was gone.” Aunt Grace marched through the door and passed the dessert to me. “Have some more pie, Maggie. Houdini said you need it.”

  “I’ve got to have a talk with that sassy cat.” I scooped up another piece of heaven, chocolate pie with a meringue so thick you could get lost in there.

  I’d already had two helpings of everything. Fortunately, my metabolism allows me eat anything I want without gaining an ounce. Knock on wood.

  I finished my second helping of pie, then kissed the aunts and went upstairs to the guest room. The first thing I saw was a claw-foot tub underneath stained glass windows in a bedroom big enough for the entire Olympics shooting team. Aunt Grace had already filled the tub with bubbles.

  I sank up to my chin in lavender and nearly went to sleep in the tub. Finally I dragged myself out, wrapped in a towel big enough for two then opened my laptop. Nobody missing in Trenton—except me.

  A society column tucked in section two of the local paper read: Nick Coselli, son of the famous restaurateur, Antonio Coselli, is headed to the Bahamas on his private yacht with his fiancée, Olympic gold medalist, Maggie Wild. They expect to be there for an undisclosed period of time. Could a secret wedding be in the making?

  The back of my neck itched, a sure sign of danger. It wasn’t a wedding Nick Coselli planned. It was murder. Mine. Probably a boating tragedy. A simple drowning would do. Woman overboard in the middle of the night. I can just picture Nick, teary-eyed and remorseful, telling the press, “Nobody heard her scream. And now I’ve lost the woman I love.”

  Or my death could come from an accidental but lethal shot from one of those Skeet guns Nick keeps on board the Maria.

  The boat’s named for his mother. At the moment the only good thing I could say about Nick Caselli is that he didn’t name a boat after me.

  Underneath the article was a picture of Nick and me taken six months ago at the restaurant. My smile looks genuine until you see my eyes. Twin glaciers.

  I shut off the laptop, double checked the door and all the windows then fell into bed with weapons tucked under the pillow and the mattress, behind the door, on the bedside table and standing at the ready beside the windows. My only consolation was that I was on the second story and there were no trellises or balconies that would make me easy pickings. If anybody came for me, they’d have to come through the bedroom door—and they’d be dead before they got one foot in.

  I lay down, reminding myself that I could shoot to kill if it came to my life or theirs. That was my last coherent thought until I heard the scream.

  Chapter 4

  In which Houdini discovers Fury Road and more

  A tom cat can’t even sit on the fence and howl in this neighborhood. Not that I’m any ordinary cat, not in your wildest dreams, but every now and then I enjoy the primitive rituals—howling on the back fence, trying to
grab a few tail feathers from that overbearing blue jay who hogs the bird seed from the cardinals, or climbing a tree and pouncing down on that stupid English bulldog next door just so I can watch him try to get away in his fat body on his ridiculously short legs.

  But not tonight. Oh no! First there was the murder—such a messy one, too.

  Then that girl burst into the back yard with her long, tanned legs and a silly night shirt that said, Give in to your Animal Instincts. And all those weapons. If I were a swearing cat, I’d say a nasty word or six about that girl’s guns—one in a shoulder holster, one in a hip holster and one in each hand. And there’s no telling what she had up that sleep shirt. You could fit her and Grace both into it and still have room left over for a nice juicy roll of Italian sausage.

  Suffice it to say, she looked like an escapee from Mad Max: Fury Road.

  Oh, I got you there, didn’t I? You had no idea I watched movies. Let me tell you, Houdini is a cat to be reckoned with. I can howl every song from The Lion King, dance every move from Dirty Dancing, and solve more problems than Einstein.

  Unfortunately, Grace is the only person who ever listens to me, and if you’re set on making your name famous, telling stuff to Grace is not the way to do it.

  That girl might be a horse of a different color. She was in a fighting stance, pointing two cannon-like guns all around the back yard.

  “Who’s there?”

  She’s not, timid. I’ll give her that. I heard the rattle of sabers in her voice.

  I could have told her there’d be no answer. The killer got away five minutes before she showed up, and the dead don’t talk.

  That girl stalked around the back yard and peered behind bushes and trees like she meant business. Which I guess, she does. Grace and Pearl kept every clipping of her when she won Olympic Gold. Grace told me her name is Maggie, but I refuse to call anybody by their first name until I get to know them better. And I’m not likely to form a fast friendship with this one. I smelled trouble all over her.

  My job is to protect Grace and Pearl and take care of things down at the Charmed Cat, not play body guard to a long-lost great niece. She was going to have a harder time getting out of her predicament than I had back in the day when I had only two legs and was thrilling crowds with my daring escapes.