“That’s what I thought.” He tsked a few times. “There’s never a perfect time, you know. Maybe you should try to get involved. Learn a little about what makes our city tick. Seems to me that’s what the Goodes have done up in their little corner of the world.”
It was as if the man’s Teflon coat was melting before my eyes. Slowly, but surely, his true self had emerged. The merry twinkle in his eye? The glint of a seasoned politician. The aw-shucks persona? Cultivated through appearances at dozens of parades, town hall meetings, and front-lawn barbecues over the years. Make no mistake about it, Zephirin Turcott knew exactly what he was doing.
“You’re…uh…correct, of course,” I stammered. “Like I said, I’m hoping to get involved in local affairs when things slow down a little at my store.”
“Mayor?” His assistant once more moved in between us. “We’ve got to get going. There’s a follow-up to the press conference we had yesterday morning. The reporters want to hear more about the new health clinic. And if we don’t hurry, you’ll never make it onto their five o’clock newsfeeds.”
“Guess my handler says it’s time to go.” He switched on the megawatt smile. “What a privilege to meet you, Miss DuBois. Best of luck with that little shop of yours.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled. “Nice to meet you too.”
“If you have any more questions or concerns about my policies, please don’t hesitate to contact my office.”
“I’ll do that.” I never would, though. The look on his face when I mentioned Antonella Goode had told me everything I needed to know.
With that, the two men set off for a powder-blue convertible parked nearby. A very fancy convertible, as a matter of fact. Unless I was wrong, the car was a 1956 Thunderbird, with whitewall tires and a thick chrome bumper.
I turned away from the scene and walked back to my car. Only then did I notice Beatrice, who stood next to Ringo with a bulging paper sack from Odilia’s restaurant.
“Who was that?” she asked, when I reached her.
“That was our illustrious mayor.” I moved to the driver’s side and carefully gripped the warmed door handle. Once I threw open the door and hopped inside, I waited for Beatrice to join me.
“You’re kidding.” She quickly slid onto the seat next to me. “You know the mayor?”
“I do now. But I think I made things worse for myself. What was I thinking?”
She shot me a funny look, but I didn’t bother to explain. There’d be time enough to worry about the mayor once I had a chance to figure out my next move with Antonella. I could handle one problem at a time, and this latest one was a doozy.
Chapter 13
I clumsily fired up the engine, since my hands wouldn’t cooperate, and slowly pulled away from the curb.
“C’mon,” Beatrice urged. “Spill. What happened back there with the mayor?”
“I’ll tell you what happened…I tried to talk to him about the new hat shop. Convince him to put the brakes on its grand opening. But everything backfired.”
“Backfired? What do you mean?”
“I mean, he knows Antonella Goode’s family.” Even now, I couldn’t believe my bad luck. “Ambrose confirmed she’s the one who’s behind the new hat shop. I called him when you were in the restaurant.”
“Shut up!” Beatrice’s eyes widened the moment she realized what she’d said. “Sorry about that, boss. I don’t know why I keep saying it. Guess it’s a bad habit.”
“It’s okay. I know you don’t mean it.” While I’d normally reprimand her, today I had too many other problems on my mind to worry about it. “Anyway, like I said, our conversation didn’t go very well.”
“I can’t believe it. You’re usually so good when you meet new people.”
“Not today.” I checked the flow of traffic over my left shoulder, and then I drove the car onto Highway 18. “I wanted to tell the mayor there’s no way Antonella Goode could get the building permits in time for her new store to open. Ambrose said it’s supposed to open Monday.”
“This Monday? She’s gonna be really busy this weekend.”
“No doubt. And I don’t think she’ll have anything inspected before the store opens. She can’t, not with such a tight timeline. Which means she’s putting her customers—and her employees, if she hires any—at risk. Can you just imagine what’d happen if there was an electrical fire, or if she blocked the exits with packing boxes?”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Missy.” Beatrice seemed to want to say something good. “Will it make you feel better if I tell you Miss Odilia threw in some extra drumsticks?”
I gave her a slim smile. “Maybe. But I need to come up with a plan. Something that’ll stop Antonella in her tracks.”
We both fell silent during the short drive back to the Factory. While my conversation with the mayor didn’t go well, at least it was short and we’d beaten everyone else back to work. Since I had my choice of parking spots, I pulled into one in the very first row.
By the time I hopped onto the warmed asphalt, Beatrice had outpaced me, and she swung the bag from Miss Odilia’s casually back and forth as she walked.
“Wait up, Bea.” I hurried to reach her, and together we headed for Crowning Glory. As soon as we arrived at the entrance, a blue-clad figure leaning against the wall straightened.
“Hey, Missy. I was just about to call you.”
“Hi, Lance.” I jimmied a key into the shop’s front door. “Let’s get you inside.”
I quickly headed into the studio ahead of the detective. It wasn’t the bright sunshine that made me hurry indoors, but my need for privacy. I didn’t want my neighbors to know I sometimes teamed up with Bleu Bayou’s finest to help solve murder cases. It wouldn’t do for them to think their resident milliner dabbled in something as grisly as that.
“The ME gave me some more info.” Lance spoke over his shoulder as he strode to the counter. “Looks like the killer gave Ruby alcohol in addition to the knockout drug.”
“First thing in the morning?” I moved over to where he stood, and then I stashed my keys in a drawer under the counter. “How’d they pull that off?”
“Good question. But it’s a common trick. Alcohol makes a drug like that twice as potent.”
Beatrice lingered by the front entrance, since she rightly suspected we wouldn’t be able to include her in our conversation. “I think I’ll leave you two alone,” she finally said, as she turned toward the workroom. “See you later, Lance.”
I waited until she moved out of earshot. “So, it sounds like the killer did some research first.”
“Apparently so. He gave her just enough alcohol to make the drug more potent, but not so much that Ruby would question it.”
I threw him a sideways glance. “Or she did that. We can’t keep assuming the killer is a male.”
“You’re right.” He chuckled softly. “I always knew you should’ve been a detective. We would’ve made a great team. Kinda like Mulder and Scully.”
“Yeah, right.” While I appreciated the X-Files reference, I wasn’t about to go chasing after the supernatural with Lance. “Anyway, that is interesting. How’d the ME find out about the alcohol?”
“He analyzed the blood in her veins. It’s the best way to determine whether someone dosed the victim with alcohol.”
Before Lance could say more, the door to the studio swung open. In stepped Hollis, whose gaze flitted around the room.
“We’re over here, Hollis,” I called out.
He acknowledged me with a nod. Instead of hurrying toward us, though, he slowly threaded his way through the displays stiff-armed, as if he was afraid to touch anything. He seemed worried about the shiny sequins, fluffy tulle, and delicate feathers all around him.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You won’t break anything.”
He didn’t relax, despite my reassurances.
When he finally reached the counter, he plopped onto a bar stool. “Whew. I made it.”
“Hi, Hollis,” Lance said. “What’s up with you?”
The boy didn’t answer right away, and something about his demeanor bothered me.
“Is everything okay, Hollis?” I asked.
“No. Not really.”
He wouldn’t look at me either. “C’mon now. Something’s happened.”
“Okay, fine.” He pulled a cell from the pocket of his Nike shorts and tossed it on the counter. “It’s this.”
“You broke your phone?” Everything about the phone looked fine to me, except for a leering skeleton on the case, of course. “You can borrow my phone anytime you want.”
“That’s not it, Miss DuBois.”
“Then what’s going on?” Lance asked. “Are you in trouble?”
“Here’s the thing,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on. I got the weirdest phone call this morning, and it kinda freaked me out.”
Lance and I exchanged quick looks. While I desperately wanted to ask a follow-up question, Lance was the pro when it came to interrogating people. He needed to lead the conversation and not me.
“Did you know the caller?” Sure enough, Lance automatically switched into cop mode.
“I don’t think so,” Hollis said. “But it was hard to tell. It sounded like a guy’s voice, but it was all echo-y. I could barely understand him.”
Uh-oh. Someone had called Hollis using a voice scrambler, which was never a good sign. I bit my tongue and let the conversation continue without me.
“What did the caller say?” Lance asked.
“He wanted me to stay away from Grandma’s property. At least, that’s what I think he said.”
“Did he threaten you?” Lance asked.
“Not exactly. But he told me to stay away from the river house. Or else.”
“Or else, what?”
“He said I’d be sorry.” Hollis finally turned to me for a reaction, which I couldn’t ignore.
“You poor thing,” I said. “That had to be terrifying.”
“It creeped me out,” he said. “What if the guy means it?”
Once more, his gaze sought mine. While Lance was the expert, Hollis and I shared a past, and I couldn’t help but support him. “He could be bluffing, you know. Maybe it was a crank phone call.”
“But he sounded serious,” Hollis said.
“How did you know it was a guy who called you?” While we had other things to worry about, Hollis kept repeating something that bothered me. “It could’ve been a girl. It’s hard to tell with a voice scrambler.”
“Oh yeah. You’re right,” he said. “I guess I don’t know, now that you mention it. I was too freaked out by the echo.”
“Okay, let’s get back to the basics,” Lance said. “First of all, it’s easy enough to tell where a call comes from.” He reached over and grabbed Hollis’s cell phone. Once he tapped the screen, he laid it down again. “Figures. The person used an app to block the telephone number.”
It was a move I’d seen before. Early last year, a local wedding planner died in the parking lot behind my studio, and her murderer sent me a text message. But the killer was smart enough to block the cell number from appearing on my screen so I couldn’t figure out who’d called.
“Gosh, Lance. This is just like what happened last year. Remember that?”
“Do I,” he said. “These phone apps keep getting better and better. Which makes my job even harder. Say, Hollis. Do you mind if I keep your cell for a while? I want to put a tracer on it.”
The teen immediately frowned. “For how long?”
“Just a few hours. We’ve got a ‘stingray’ device back at headquarters that one of the tech guys can install.”
Now there was a term I’d never heard before. While I knew all about voice scramblers and call blockers, I’d never come across something called a stingray. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s a cell phone interceptor,” he answered. “It mimics the signals of a cell tower, so your caller’s cell will try to connect to it if he—or she—calls you again. That way I can get the location, and we’ll know who we’re dealing with.”
“That’s way cool.” Hollis sounded impressed…so impressed he momentarily forgot he was about to lose his cell phone. “It sounds like something from a sci-fi movie.”
“Even better than that,” Lance said. “The military developed it to fight terrorists.”
As impressive as that was, one problem remained. “But what if the person doesn’t call back?” I asked.
“Oh, they will.” Lance glanced at Hollis again. “Did you hang up on them, or was it the other way around?”
“I think I hung up first,” Hollis said. “I couldn’t stand hearing that voice.”
“Then they’ll definitely try to call you again. And I’ve got an idea.”
Lance angled his shoulders away from me, as if he knew I wasn’t going to like what he was about to say. Ever since we were little kids, I could read his body language like an open book.
“Uh-oh,” I said. “What’s on your mind?”
“Hollis needs to go back to the river house.” He wouldn’t look at me while he spoke. “We’ll trace the call from there.”
“But—”
“Hold on, Missy. Let me finish.”
I fell silent, which wasn’t easy, given every instinct urged me to protect Hollis. It had started back on the bayou, when I saw the look on his face after he’d found his grandmother’s clog. The feeling only intensified when he fell asleep on my shoulder in the cruiser on the way back from the police station. And now this.
“You know, you don’t have to go back home,” I quickly told the teen.
Lance frowned at me, clearly annoyed. “Do you mind? We need to find out who called him. If we can trace the call, we can probably catch the killer.”
“But why does he have to go home for that?”
“Because the stingray works best if two phones are close together. When the killer realizes Hollis has gone back home, the person is bound to make another call from the property. Then we can trace it and see who the phone’s registered to.”
“But it’s not safe, Lance.”
“Look…I’ll even request a backup unit for the woods. And I’ll stay with Hollis, so he’s never alone.”
“Uh, guys?” Hollis said. “I’m right here. You don’t have to talk over my head. I get it.”
We both ignored him. “I still don’t like it, Lance.” Much as I admired the newfangled police technology, I couldn’t imagine using Hollis as a guinea pig. “There’s no way Hollis should go back to the river house when Ruby’s killer is running loose.”
“This isn’t your decision, Missy. And he’ll be safer with me than with anyone else.”
Darn him and his firepower. Of course he was right. While Lance carried a Glock 22, the most sinister thing I owned was a pair of pinking shears. Neither I, nor Ambrose, had quick access to a loaded handgun or a backup unit. “I dunno—”
“It’s okay,” Hollis interrupted. “I don’t mind, Miss DuBois. You’ve been so nice to me. But I kinda want to go home anyway. I didn’t much sleep last night, and I’m bushed. No offense, but your fiancé snores.”
“Be that as it may”—my resolve weakened in the face of so much opposition—“I don’t want to let you out of my sight.”
“Really, it’s okay,” Hollis said. “I trust Detective LaPorte.”
“Thanks.” Lance reached for his phone, which he kept in his front pocket. “I’ll request the surveillance unit right now. Once I drop off your phone at headquarters, I’ll head over to your grandma’s house.”
“Gotcha.” Unlike me, Hollis didn’t seem worried by this latest turn of events. “I’ll go over to Miss DuBois’s place and pa
ck up my stuff.”
“By the way,” I asked, “did you drive over here?” Outside of his grandmother’s Jeep, Hollis didn’t have access to a car, as far as I knew.
“Your neighbor drove me over,” he said. “He’s been waiting for me in the parking lot all this time.”
Of course. “You must mean Mr. Dupre.” Leave it to Hank to help Hollis navigate his way to my studio when the boy needed help. “Please tell him I said thank you.”
“No problem. See ya later.”
“I’ve gotta head out too,” Lance said. “Try not to worry, okay?”
With that, they both retreated from the shop. Hollis seemed much more relaxed than when he’d first arrived, since his arms swung freely now, and Lance maintained the straight-backed gait I’d come to recognize.
The room fell silent for a moment or two, until Beatrice stuck her head around the door to the workroom and peered around the studio.
“Everyone gone?” Her gaze swept the shop from front to back.
“Yeah, they’re gone. You can come out now.”
She made her way to the counter with a Chinet paper plate balanced on her palm. On it she’d piled some fried chicken and rolls, and a streak of something bronze and runny marred her chin. “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t wait. I started lunch without you.”
Aha. Barbecue sauce. “That’s okay. I’m really not that hungry anyway.”
To be honest, I’d forgotten all about lunch. Once Lance told me his plan for Hollis, everything else flew out the window. How could Lance know for sure that nothing bad would happen to Hollis if he returned to the river? After everything the boy had been through, I wanted him to feel safe for once.
“Are you okay?” Beatrice’s voice brought me back to the present.
“Huh? What?”
“I asked if you’re okay. You look worried.”
“I am. I think I just agreed to something I shouldn’t have. Something I’m going to regret before this is all over.”
Chapter 14
I put aside my misgivings about Hollis long enough to take a few bites of the drumstick Beatrice offered me. We sat at the counter, where I nibbled the chicken and she polished off a bottle of Aquafina.
All Hats on Deck Page 11