“Our Leaning Tower of Pisa,” Miss Weena chimed in.
“You don’t think our Arthurs want Luci dead?” Miss Hermi asked. “They don’t even know her. I’m sure they’d wait until they got to know dear little Luci before wanting to kill her.”
Luci looked gratified and gave Mickey a look.
He patted his pockets, found the aspirin bottle and chewed a couple of aspirin, not bothering to track down water. After a time the taste didn’t bother so much. Delaney nudged him and Mickey tapped two into Delaney’s palm. Only then did he ask, “Is the concept of life and death that hard to assimilate?”
“Not with Miss Gracie here to put it into perspective,” Luci said, introducing the one topic Mickey wanted to avoid more than any other.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Louise enter, blackboard in hand, and approach Miss Theo. She pointed to “excuse me” on her list of pre-written statements, but Mickey didn’t have time to see if she could provide the needed distraction.
“I don’t think we should talk about Miss Gracie right now—” he began.
Miss Hermi looked coyly at Delaney. “I don’t think you feel that way, do you, dear boy?” She sighed. “So nice for her to have a beau after all these years. She hasn’t had one since she died.”
It was like watching a slow motion accident happening from outside the frame. There was nothing Mickey could do to stop the crash.
Delaney blinked. Twice. Finally he said, “Did you say—died?”
Miss Theo sighed. “Not all beaux are created equal.”
“Now let’s be fair,” Miss Weena said. “We don’t know he’s the one who shot her.” She turned to Delaney to explain, “Gracie didn’t see the perpetrator, you know. The cad shot her in the back.”
“Edmund’s dead now, so it doesn’t matter,” Miss Theo said with eldest sister finality. She looked at Delaney, who wasn’t moving or speaking. “Are you all right, dear?”
Delaney shook his head in slow motion, as if his body and his mind were out of sync. “I think...I must have...misunderstood...dead?” He shook his head again, like a guy shaking off a clean shot to the jaw.
It was time to intervene, Mickey knew, if he could just figure out—
Fate intervened for them. He heard the sound of running footsteps. Out of habit, his hand went to his gun, but he wasn’t really worried. Even before the door burst open, he noticed Louise writing Velma’s name on her chalkboard.
Velma paused in the doorway, looked around the room, then said with dramatic intensity, “I just can’t bear it anymore!”
Luci handed Velma a glass of water, guiding the glass to her mouth to make sure she drank some before saying, “I’m sure that Reggie isn’t dating in the afterlife, Miss Velma.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Miss Weena said. “But we could ask Gracie to see if he’s oozing around—”
Luci shook her head, but it was too late. The color that had been returning to Delaney’s ruddy cheeks faded again.
Velma pushed the glass away and said piteously, “I can’t live with Hugo after this. That he would be so cruel—”
She gave a sob that coincided with a choke from Delaney. Mickey had gotten him something stronger than water to drink and almost forced it down his throat. A hair of the dog remedy that took the dazed expression from his eyes and replaced it with bleak, mixed with denial.
“He’s not dead,” Velma said. “I’d feel it if he were. The psychic connection hasn’t been broken. There’s been a mistake—”
Mickey looked at Velma. “I don’t know if he’s dating, Miss Velma, but he is dead. The dental work is consistent—”
“No!” She pushed Luci away and jumped to her feet. “It’s wrong! All wrong!”
At her back was the row of family pictures, Luci noticed. Their stern, sensible faces so similar, despite the distance in time and space between them. Luci looked from Velma’s face to theirs.
“I think she’s right,” she said to Mickey. “Something isn’t right.”
“Do you think?” he asked, groping for the aspirin bottle again.
If the scene with Velma and the revelation about Gracie weren’t enough, Mickey was gloomily standing guard in the hallway, his ears ringing from too much aspirin when Captain Pryce arrived.
“Where’s my—Luci?”
Mickey pointed toward the dining room where Delaney had met his Waterloo, before going off to talk to Gracie and see for himself. “They’re working on the party preparations.” He rubbed his face. “It’s going to be a security nightmare, sir. They seem to just randomly invite people. No way to check them out before. And the mayor might be coming!”
“I told you they were connected,” Pryce said. “The Chief’s got his invite, too, but that’s not your biggest problem. You’re being watched.”
“What? Who? Where?” He edged back the lace curtains and spotted the dark car. “Dante’s guys?”
“I’m afraid so. Any idea why?”
“Well—” Mickey realized he was about to tell the Captain about Luci getting grabbed by Dante and stopped himself. It would surely be the last straw. “This just gets worse and worse.” He shoved his hands into his hair. “We need that search warrant, sir!”
“I got it—but only for Seymour’s room. You’ll have to wait until after the party for any more.”
Mickey took two frustrated steps away from Pryce. “Did you explain—”
“You don’t explain to a judge, Ross. You listen. It’s the best I could do—unless you ask the old ladies yourself.”
“I don’t think they’ll let us.” And if he tried, he was sure Luci would stop him. Mickey looked at the captain. Too many wild cards in the setup and now their captain was one of them. How good was his judgment going to be now that it was his daughter involved? Mickey took the warrant with a sigh. “Guess it’ll have to do.”
He turned to leave, but Pryce cleared his throat. Mickey froze, then looked at his captain. “Was there something else, sir?”
“This.” He held up an old file with the name Grace Seymour written in aged-looking handwriting on the label. “What’s your interest in a forty-year-old murder, Ross? You pursuing a line of investigation you haven’t told me about?”
“It’s going to be a lovely gazebo, Boudreaux,” Luci said. Working together, they’d been able to get the frame in place without the concrete Reggie had been so sure was necessary. Over Boudreaux’s shoulder she could see the bougainvillea with yellow Police tape still around it. “Not exactly original, but a workable plan, I will admit.”
Boudreaux, not following her train of thought, mumbled a question.
“The body under the gazebo thing. Think about it. You strip the body, remove all identifying clothing and jewelry—except for that touch of squeamishness about the privates it would have worked like a charm for him with Reggie and the bougainvillea—bury him, add a little cement and a gazebo and let nature take its course. In this climate, nature wouldn’t take long. Moisture would accelerate decomposition.” She waited for him to hammer a board in place, then added, “Reggie would have decomposed faster if it hadn’t been such a dry August.”
Boudreaux shared his opinion about August, then asked her to hold the next board.
Luci knelt in the dirt and grabbed the board he indicated. “I suppose he was storing the body until you were ready to pour the cement.”
Boudreaux indicated a desire to ask her a question.
“Of course. Ask me anything.” But when he did, she couldn’t quite assimilate it. “You saw someone besides Frosty the dead man in the freezer?”
He nodded and added that he’d seen a different body than the one whose picture was being shown on television.
Luci stared at him for a long moment, then got up and looked at the garden, wondering which flowering shrub this body was buried under. She sighed. Mickey was going to poop a brick when he found out. Probably better not tell him until she knew for sure. She looked at Boudreaux. “Do the aunts know you have a
television?”
His alarm turned him almost incoherent.
“Of course I won’t tell them! They’d freak and then bury it.” The sliding doors to the terrace opened and Luci saw her—her mind wouldn’t quite bend around the word yet, so she didn’t push it. He looked as uneasy as she felt. Not a feeling she was used to having. “Don’t tell anyone, okay? I need to think about this, but first I gotta talk to a man about a gene pool.”
Boudreaux patted her hand and mumbled reassurances.
“Is it that obvious?” she asked. “Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”
Mickey and Delaney waited until the fingerprint guy was through dusting every surface he could find, then donned rubber gloves and moved in to toss the room.
Delaney didn’t talk and Mickey didn’t press him. What could he say to him? You’ll get over it? How could he say it, let alone believe it when it was obvious that their Captain hadn’t gotten over Luci’s mother and he wasn’t sure he’d get over Luci? The Seymour factor was a great big unknown, even without the ghost factor.
It took them less time to assemble Reggie’s meager belongings than it had to dust the room. He hadn’t left much behind to tell his tale. Just personal belongings like toothpaste and toothbrush, shampoo and razor, several pairs of barely used shoes and a few papers.
Mickey picked up the bagged papers that he found the most puzzling: the three envelopes addressed to an Art Moon and each of them had a single dollar bill inside.
“This gets worse and worse,” he said.
Delaney didn’t agree or disagree. He just gave a miserable grunt.
Face to face with him, Luci couldn’t think of a single thing to say. It was, if not a first, a rare experience in her life. A Seymour might not have a gift for saying the right thing, but they were rarely at a loss for words. The storm of feeling that had robbed her of speech was unfamiliar territory for her.
Her father. The word felt strange in her thoughts as she tried it out. Only now, when he was here to fill it, did she notice the void in her life his absence had left. Or maybe she’d been afraid to notice? With hungry eyes she noted the broad shoulders she’d never been able to rest her head on while she confided her joys or sobbed out her sorrows. The man who hadn’t been there to run by her bicycle until she got her balance or to glare at her first date or to tell her what a thingamajig was really called. Luci had a sudden vision of them both bent over a motor while he unfolded the mysteries of internal combustion for her. Felt the pain bite deep for the peculiarly male dad hugs she hadn’t gotten. More than anything she wanted to cross the carpet and get her first hug from her very own dad. If only—
With a shock, Luci realized she was afraid. Dying didn’t frighten her, but being turned away by this man did. It terrified her.
He looked as uneasy as she felt, and—their images in the full-length mirror to one side caught her attention for an instant—were similar in how they showed it. She fought back an urge to laugh at how they looked with their hands clasped behind their backs, rocking from toes to heels, then back again.
His gaze, more hazel than her green one, met hers in the mirror, humor softening the eyes and the straight mouth that matched hers, only with whiskers.
She found she could breathe again. The fear was there, simmering beneath the surface, but a smile spread across her mouth. Almost in sync, they loosened the death grip they had on their own hands and shook the feeling back into the fingers. Then grinned, bigger this time.
“This is getting scary,” Luci said, her voice coming out huskier than she was used to as it squeezed past the fear.
“Yeah.” He hesitated, then took the first step toward her, his hand out.
Luci met him halfway, watching with a feeling of awe as her father’s strong, brown hand closed over hers and squeezed it. Like a father.
The lump rose so fast in her throat it also came out as a sob, but she managed to squeeze it back down, though not without some wetness around the eyes. She blinked until she could see his hand again, then looked up at him. It wasn’t a hug, but it was a place to start.
With only a slight tremor to her voice, Luci asked, “So, you’re a cop?”
“Yeah.” Was his voice husky, too? She didn’t know him well enough to tell. “Do you...have time to sit down and...talk?”
Luci felt that pesky lump trying to make a comeback, but that didn’t stop her from saying, “Yeah. I have time.”
It was a relief to be alone for a few moments. Mickey looked around the parlor and felt a sudden yearning for a male place. One with swearing and spitting, with men drinking beer and watching football. A place where he could scratch, no matter where he itched, and tell sexist jokes. A place that gloried in male chauvinism and didn’t allow women in ever. No way, no how.
He went out into the hall, hoping for some coffee since he beer wasn’t an option, and found Luci in the hall an odd look on her face and wearing her grubbing-in-the-garden shorts and tank top. Even dirty, her legs were an inspiration that made him yearn for a male-meets-female place.
She smiled at him, but there was strain in the smile. Mickey wasn’t Oprah, but he knew an Oprah moment when he saw one. He hesitated, then decided, what the hell? “Captain find you?”
For the first time since he met her she failed to look at him, instead tracing the pattern carved into the stair railing with her index finger.
“Yeah.” She pushed her hair back from her face, leaving a brown streak across her cheek. He caught her hand and made her look at him.
“He scares the hell out of me, too.”
Her smile was almost as good a reward as a kiss. It lit up her face, lit up her soul. He’d swear it even lit up her heart. Or maybe it was his? Mickey felt himself tumbling in and didn’t care. It was more like flying than falling. He’d always liked flying. It was the landing that he didn’t like. This one, he reminded himself, had all the markers of a crash and burn.
“Did he...” He had to clear husky out of his throat before he could continue, “…say what happened?”
“He’s a cop,” Luci said, sliding to a seat on the stairs, “so what he didn’t know, he could deduce.”
She propped her elbows on her knees and then rested her chin on her hands. The muggy cool of the hallway put a sheen on her skin and filled the air with her earthy scent, did bad things to his blood supply.
He grabbed a stool and sat down just outside her zone, and brought up a mental picture of his captain in a rage. It helped some.
“After they jumped each other’s bones, she did a freeze play on him when he followed up with a marriage proposal. He thought it was because he was shipping out to Nam. She never told him I was in the oven.” She sighed. “Don’t think mama expected him to come back. When he did, she took me and went west.”
She leaned back, resting her elbows on the stairs. The movement stretched her tee shirt across her breasts. Mickey looked up, studying the carvings that circled the hallway.
“I remember the day we left. We all cried.” She ran her hand down the banister. “I hung on to this until she pulled me away. She said we’d visit, but we never did. Now I know why.”
“You must have known you had a father,” Mickey said. “Why didn’t you look him up sooner?”
Luci looked at Mickey, who wasn’t looking at her. Dang, he was cute. And when he was kind, he was downright dangerous. He and her father were so far outside her experience she didn’t know how to deal with them or the feelings they stirred.
“I mean,” he continued, “I understand the men in your life haven’t been wonderful, but—”
Luci smiled. Not wonderful? Try a constant, raging embarrassment. But all she said was, “Quite honestly, it just never occurred to me to go looking for him. I know it sounds odd—”
“A little more than that,” Mickey put in.
He looked at her then. She felt the jolt of it clear to her grubby toes, which curled.
“Well, we’re a little more than odd, I’m afraid. The
fact that I didn’t have to deal with my father was a source of envy to my cousins. I’d still be blissfully unaware if Lila hadn’t called and I hadn’t told her about how my neighbor Helen met her husband by hitting him with her Volkswagen.” Luci shook her head. Lila had always been a less-than-satisfactory mother, but Luci had come to terms with that a long time ago. “She let slip that’s how she met my—him. Suddenly I found myself wondering—”
“Wondering...what?” Mickey asked.
“All the things anyone would. What was he like? Why he got involved with my mother when she almost killed him? Why he never tried to find me? If he’s the reason there’s this...split in my personality?” That was the biggie for her. She’d always been a Seymour, but not quite—since she seemed to be the only one who’d noticed they weren’t like the rest of the world. She wanted to know why she was like them, but not like them. She wanted to find out what it felt like to have a father, to be a daughter.
More than anything, she admitted now, she’d wanted him to want her, the way her mother hadn’t. The way her mother never had. In the ways that mattered, Lila never had been a mother. Luckily for Luci, she hadn’t needed that much care.
Then, like fate intervening, the invitation to Unabelle’s wedding had arrived. It had stirred up her memories of New Orleans, ignited a longing to come back and see if it was as magical as she remembered it. Or so she’d told herself, while the knowledge she had a father who lived there had burned like acid in her brain. Lila had freaked when Luci told her and asked if her father had a name. She’d clammed up, but Luci had been confident of her ability to smoke out her elusive dad. What she hadn’t counted on was the body count or the attempts on her life. Funny that it was what had been the catalyst that brought her father into her orbit. And Mickey.
“And did you?” Mickey asked, breaking into her thoughts right on cue.
Luci gave a kind of half laugh. “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I just hope she stays away until he has a chance to cool off. If he ever does.”
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