Plantation Shudders (19 page)

A warm shower and a couple of croissants revived Maggie, and despite the urging of her family, she refused to take to bed like a distressed damsel. She threw on a teal cotton tank top and shorts and then went to find the Rykers before they and their treasure-hunting gear got away. She’d been relieved to hear that both the Rykers and Cuties had delayed their departures, not wanting to leave until they got all the dirt on the morning’s events and arrests.

Maggie found the Ryker kids entertaining themselves on the lawn in front of Crozat. Alice was texting on her cell as the boys tossed a ball back and forth. “Hey,” she greeted them. “Have you seen your parents?”

“They went for a walk,” Sam said, pointing down the road. “We’re sticking around to hear the copper’s story.”

She thanked Sam and headed in the direction that he’d gestured to. After a short stroll, she saw Carrie and Lachlan resting on a boulder, pulling their damp clothes from where they’d stuck to their bodies. Maggie wasn’t surprised to see that they hadn’t gotten very far. It was the kind of clammy Louisiana day that could produce perspiration in only a few yards.

Maggie sat down next to the Rykers. “Hi, there.”

“Hello,” Lachlan said politely.

“You know,” she said. “I realized something very interesting about this week. Well, besides the murders, which pretty much top any list of interesting events. Anyway, what I realized is that most of our guests had an agenda for their visit. What Detective Durand would call an ulterior motive. The Butlers, the Georgia boys, the Clabbers . . .”

“We didn’t,” Carrie said. Her face was red and her voice weak. She was a terrible liar.

“Oh, I think you did. So let’s talk about your clandestine treasure hunting on our property.”

Carrie and Lachlan exchanged a guilty look. “We’re awfully sorry about that,” Carrie said. “It’s just . . . things have been rather hard for us lately. I owned a needlepoint shop in Sydney, but when the economy crashed, it took my store with it and left us with a pile of debt that we’re still paying off.”

“And then about eight months ago,” Lachlan said, “the daily paper I wrote for folded. You can imagine how hard it is to get a job as a reporter these days. I was born in Los
Angeles, so I’m actually a U.S. citizen. We thought maybe we’d give America a go, you know, start over and all that. We were going to head straight to LA, where I still have family, but when we read about Louisiana and all the rumors of hidden treasure . . .”

“It was stupid, we know that now,” Carrie admitted. “Color us desperate, I guess.”

Maggie’s anger at the couple dissipated. She could certainly empathize with financial hardship. “Well, you’re not the first people who got sucked into that fantasy. And the hole you dug did save my life.” She paused. “What will you do now?”

“I have a great-uncle I’ve never met who lives in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley,” Lachlan said. “He’s a widower with a nice house, and he offered us a place to stay while we both job hunt. If you can bear our brood for one more night, we’ll start off on the drive in the morning.”

“We’ll pay,” Carrie added quickly. “We insist on it.”

As much as she wanted to, Maggie couldn’t bring herself to take the struggling family’s money. “Please, at this point, don’t worry about that.”

“Thank you so much. Oh, before I forget . . .” Carrie pulled something out of her pocket. It was Maggie’s missing gris-gris bag. “I found this by our car. It’s yours, isn’t it? It must have fallen off when you were rummaging through the dumpster.”

“Keep it,” Maggie told Carrie. “You need it more than I do now. In fact, I’ll ask my cousin to make you each one for
prosperity.” Right then, it hit her that she hadn’t touched base with Lia yet. “I have to go. I’ll see you later.”

When Maggie got back to Crozat, she saw Lia’s car parked in front. She ran up the wide-planked stairs into the house, where she found Lia and Kyle in the front parlor with Tug, Ninette, Gran’, and the Cuties, including Jan. Maggie threw her arms around Lia and then took turns hugging Kyle and Jan. “It’s over,” Maggie said as she sank into a damask chair. “What a relief.”

“It wouldn’t be over if it wasn’t for you,” Kyle said.

“Amen to that,” Jan declared, thumping the arm of her chair with her fist for emphasis.

“Thanks, but I had plenty of help,” Maggie said.

Gran’ wagged a finger at her. “Darlin’, what did I tell you about learning to take a compliment? I believe this calls for champagne. Tug, please pop open a few of my personal bottles.”

Tug did as his mother told him and filled delicate flutes for all. They toasted to Maggie, who tried not to feel uncomfortable with the attention. As they were about to sip, Sam ran in yelling, “The copper’s here!” Sam was followed by Luke, Carrie, and Lachlan. Alice lagged behind, trying to pretend that she wasn’t interested in what Bo had to report. But she took a seat in front of her brothers and ignored their griping.

Bo walked in a moment after the Rykers. He was still in his official attire of crisp shirt, blazer, and jeans. But when Gran’ asked if he was on or off duty, Bo quickly responded “off” and took the flute of champagne that she offered him.

“So,” he said as he sipped his champagne. “How is everybody?”

His audience groused, and Maggie chucked him playfully on the shoulder. “Stop being a jerk and tell us what happened. Did they reveal anything?”

“Mack MacIlhoney went from congratulating Kyle and Jan on their releases to signing up Emily as his next client,” Bo said. “So he shut her down as quick as possible. But by the time Shane’s public defender showed up, he’d given us enough of a story to make a cable miniseries.”

“I think I figured out at least part of it,” Maggie said.

Bo grinned. “Go for it.”

“Beverly Clabber was obviously the original distant relative who inherited the peerage. Remember how they called each other milord and milady? They weren’t just being obnoxiously cutesy. They were actually, well . . . milord and milady. That’s what Beverly planned to reveal and throw in Gran’s face. Gran’ may be ‘Louisiana royalty,’ but that’s a joke compared to the real thing, at least in Beverly’s eyes. She would have finally one-upped Gran’. I’m guessing her plan was to make a big announcement and then start flashing the ring around. The initials stand for Beverly, Duchess of Dundess.’”

“Like I care about that sort of thing,” Gran’ huffed.

“You never got the chance to give Beverly that lack of satisfaction because Emily, Miss Next-in-Line-for-the-Title, got rid of her competition.”

“Wait, this means Beverly and Emily were related,” Lia said.

“Very distantly,” Bo said, taking over the story. “In the way that I once met a man whose last name was Rockafellow, and
he was distantly related to
the
Rockefellers. ‘Rockafellow’ was their original name and an ancestor changed it at some point.”

“Did Emily and Beverly know each other before this all came up?” Ninette asked.

“According to Shane, no. Emily only found out about Beverly when she was contacted by the Dundess estate solicitors from Great Britain. That’s when—again, according to Shane, but we think he’s the money in this case—Emily came up with the scheme. She and Shane were both making squat at their start-ups and basically living off Emily’s trust fund, which was drying up. She manipulated her way into getting Beverly’s contact info from one of the solicitor’s assistants and then got in touch with Beverly using ‘family history’ as an excuse. When she found out the Clabbers were coming here, she booked a trip too. She convinced Beverly to keep their connection on the down low so it wouldn’t blow Beverly’s big moment of revealing her duchessdom, or whatever you call it, to Mrs. Crozat.”

“I told you, it’s Charlotte, not Mrs. Crozat,” Gran’ playfully chided Bo.

“Crawfish Crozat,” Maggie exclaimed. The others looked at her, confused. “Shane and Emily—they were the first ones to eat it at Fet Let. Everyone else was worried it might be poisoned, but they weren’t. Because they
knew
it wasn’t.”

“Exactly,” Bo nodded. “Emily found a time when the Clabbers weren’t in their room, snuck in, and filled Mrs. Clabber’s medicine capsules with the poison she stole from your plantation store. The Butlers had brought their own—Shane told us where they disposed of it, which gave us some solid hard
evidence—but Emily thought that using yours would focus the investigation on the Crozats, which it did—”

“Yeah, thanks for that.”

“—very briefly,” Bo continued, ignoring Maggie’s sarcasm. “Emily also knew about the ring and brochures because Beverly had shown them to her. When the police didn’t bring them up, she figured they hadn’t found them, which they hadn’t due to Rufus letting CSI get away with a half-assed job.”

“And pretty much anyone paying attention—which Emily certainly was—could figure out that I was doing my own investigating,” Maggie added, “which led her right to my place when it came to searching for that stuff.”

“Shane admitted that he was the one who planted faulty fuses in the backup generator,” Bo shared. “They couldn’t time when Beverly Clabber would take her medication, but once the storm hit so fierce, it was a pretty safe bet that she’d need something to calm down, and Emily figured a total blackout would kick up the old woman’s anxiety level. As it turned out, the whole fuse thing was unnecessary. When Hal had his stroke, you all just assumed that the trauma of the event triggered a stroke in his wife.”

“The term ‘evil genius’ comes to mind,” Kyle said.

“That’s Emily for sure,” Bo agreed. “The DA’s office researched her background and she appears to have been troubled from early on. She was asked to leave several schools due to disruptive behavior. It escalated to the point of a violent confrontation with another student in middle school, at which point she was sent to a boarding school for girls with personality disorders.”

“Emily once told me that her parents said their lives got more complicated after she was born,” Maggie recalled. “I thought it was such a terrible thing for them to say. But now I guess I understand where they were coming from.”

Bo downed what was left in his champagne glass. “Her behavior seemed to improve after her time at the boarding school, but in retrospect, it seems that her psychosis didn’t disappear, it just went dormant. It was triggered again by the news that she had a shot at becoming royalty. She became fixated on the idea, to the point of it becoming an overwhelming obsession.”

“Much like Beverly,” Maggie said. “I guess it ran in the family.”

“Shane, on the other hand, was mostly in it for the freebies. Although he did say he was looking forward to literally lording it over his blue-collar relatives.”

“I thought you Americans didn’t care about this kind of stuff,” Luke said.

“Most of us don’t,” Maggie replied. “But we still have debutantes and social snobs in this country. And Princess Kate and Prince William brought sexy back to royalty in general.”

The guests continued to pepper Bo with questions, eager to extract every last detail about the case from him. The conversation could have gone on for hours, but Ninette noticed Bo’s energy flagging.

“This has been a very long day and I’m guessing everyone here has quite the appetite,” she said as she stood up. “I’ve got a pot of jambalaya warming on the stove. Tug, will you help me serve?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Tug exited out of the parlor after his wife. The rest of the group drifted into the dining room, leaving only Bo and Maggie in the parlor.

“Thank you,” she said to Bo. “You’re the only one on the force who was really on our side. I owe you, Bo.”

Bo smiled. She had never noticed that he had a slight cleft to his chin. “You don’t owe me anything. But you do owe my kid an art lesson.”

The new week brought game-changing developments to Pelican. Ears all over town bled from the scream Vanessa Fleer let out when Rufus caved to her nagging and said, “Fine, I’ll put a ring on it. Now shut up and lemme clean my gun.” A proposal was a proposal in Vanessa’s book, so its lack of romance didn’t bother her, especially when she learned that her fiancé would soon be up to his bushy eyebrows in cash. The Durand family had finally received an offer on Grove Hall that even Rufus couldn’t refuse. Maggie and Bo crossed their fingers that the perpetually slothful Ru would feel flush enough from his share of the sale to quit his position as police chief. But Rufus had no intention of relinquishing his throne. “Money
and
power, buddy,” he gloated to his cousin as he unscrewed the cap on a thirty-two ounce bottle of convenience store beer. “I’m livin’ the dream.”

Bo took comfort in the fact that his share of the sale would allow Xander to attend Bright Start, the Baton Rouge school dedicated to kids with unique academic needs. And Maggie
did get to revel in Ru’s outrage when he learned that the LLC that purchased Grove Hall was owned by Kyle Bruner, whose move to Pelican brought joy to Lia and the rest of the Crozats. Any Crozat happiness would always mean Rufus Durand misery. “Tough break, Ru Ru,” Maggie fake-commiserated, making sure that she revealed Vanessa’s pet name for the police chief in front of delighted department gossips Cal and Artie.

To make up for the hell that Jan Robbins had gone through with her false arrest and Debbie Stern’s betrayal, Bo put in a call to the Cuties’ airline and arranged a few extra days in Pelican for the group with no change fee to their plane tickets. “You were the only ones who came here without some scheme in your visit plans, and I’ll never forget that,” Maggie told the women as she hugged them good-bye. Jan promised that when the Cuties returned to Cajun Country in the spring for their convention, many events would be held at Crozat, and with one last cry of “laissez les bons temps rouler!” the Cajun Cuties had taken off for the airport in their rented minivan.

There was news regarding the Ryker clan as well. Gran’, who’d set up an Internet alert for Crozat Plantation B and B, was tickled to receive an e-blast containing a rave review written by Lachlan Ryker on a website called
aussiesinamerica.com
. Carrie and Lachlan had adopted the American entrepreneurial spirit the minute they arrived in California and created a website for homesick Aussie ex-pats that would help them navigate the New World. It was rudimentary and would take time to grow, but Maggie’s instincts told her that the prosperity gris-gris bags Lia had gifted the family with would eventually bear financial fruit.

Crozat Plantation B and B slowly began its recovery from the fallout of a double murder on its property. Maggie came up with a “Don’t Labor on Labor Day Special” that offered low rates and a Crozat cookout, both of which attracted potential guests. “And we can credit morbid curiosity for a few of the reservations,” Gran’ said. “It’s sold many a ticket to a freak show.” The Shexnayders returned from their holiday rested and ready to resume their housekeeping and maintenance duties. From the little winks and butt pinches between them that Maggie observed, the break had also energized their libidos.

With Bud and Marie back at work, Maggie finally had time to market her line of souvenirs, and it was picked up by several of the nearby plantations. This provided the pressure she needed to convince Gran’ that it would be in perfectly fine taste to sell the items—displayed discreetly, of course—at Crozat. Once on board, Gran’ became a sales powerhouse, and no visitor to Crozat left without a memento, even if the poor soul just stuck their head in the door to ask for directions.

The best news of all came from a visit to Ninette’s oncologist, Dr. Felicia Gilbert.

“Negative,” Dr. Gilbert told Ninette’s family. “Every test.”

The Crozats fell into each other’s arms and breathed a collective sigh of relief. “But then what was wrong with me?” Ninette asked.

“There was no evidence of an infection, so I’m going to write off the fever and high white count as the result of stress you’ve been under, especially since your numbers are normal and appear to have stabilized. The night sweats are something
else. You’re menopausal, Ninette. And given the intensity of those sweats, you might be in for a rough ride.”

“Given the alternative, I’ll take it.” Ninette grinned. Maggie hadn’t seen a smile that big on her mother’s face in a long time. The family would never be free of worry about Ninette’s health, but Dr. Gilbert had given them a respite from it.

With life at Crozat running relatively smoothly once again, Maggie could return to her art. But first . . .

*

It was early afternoon, and the light offered the first golden glint of autumn. Two easels stood side by side on the lawn next to the parterre. Tubes of oil paint covered a small table between them.

“They’re arranged by color and shades within each color,” Maggie explained to Xander, who nodded, his brow furrowed as he concentrated on the tubes of paints. She was finally making good on her promise to give the boy an art lesson. Bo napped on a blanket next to them while Gopher rested his head on Xander’s feet. “But if you want to mix your own shade of a color, you can. Would you like to try that?”

Xander nodded yes. He picked up a few tubes with his slim little fingers and squeezed dollops onto the palette Maggie had given him. Maggie added a big blob of white. “You can make a ton of color shades just by adding a little or a lot of white,” she explained. Xander stared at the paints and then started carefully mixing some colors, adding a touch blue, a drip of yellow, a bit more white. When he was satisfied with the result, he showed it to Maggie, who stared at the palette, mesmerized.

“Wow, just . . . wow,” she sputtered.

Xander had created a shade of green that was extraordinary.

The boy then picked up tubes of yellow and blue and mixed them. He did the same with a range of other colors until his palette was a phantasmagorical rainbow. Maggie watched, amazed. How could a boy who wouldn’t eat his hot dog because the mustard and ketchup touched mix the most beautiful, otherworldly colors that she had ever seen?

Xander stopped and looked at her for approval. “Wow,” she said again. “Xander, those are just . . . gorgeous. Okay, so, let’s paint. I thought it would be fun to try and do the vegetable garden and chicken yard. Do you like that idea?”

Xander nodded and began painting. Maggie picked up a brush but put it down to watch Xander put his vision on canvas. He had a child’s surreal view, but it was coupled with an attention to detail that seemed channeled from another realm.

Xander’s hour lesson turned into the whole afternoon, which bled into early evening. The young boy finished his painting and wandered off to feed the chickens, followed as always by his canine shadow, Gopher. Bo roused himself from his nap with a yawn. “Has it been an hour yet?” he asked.

“It’s been four hours,” Maggie answered.

“What?” Bo jumped to his feet. “I didn’t mean to pass out.” He glanced at the finished canvas on the easel. “Hey, you’re really good.”

“That’s not mine. That’s your son’s.” Maggie pointed to Xander.

“Huh?” Bo rubbed his eyes. “Are you telling me Xander did this? Seven-year-old Xander?”

“Yes. He’s got a gift, Bo. Whether it’s from God or the universe or genetics, I don’t know. But wherever it’s from, it’s magical and special, and I want to help him.”

Bo ran his hands through his thick black hair as he tried to process what Maggie was telling him. “Yes. Sure. Do whatever you have to. I just want him to be happy. And feel good about himself. He needs that. He deserves it.”

Bo walked over to his son, picked him up, and carried him back to where Maggie was standing. “Wanna get something to eat?” he asked Xander, who nodded yes. “You wanna come with?” Bo asked Maggie, who shook her head no.

“You two go. I’ve got something I need to do.”

“Okay.” Bo rubbed noses with Xander, who gave a slight smile. “Do me a favor, buddy, go wait by the car. I’ll be right there.” He put Xander down, and the boy ran off around the side of the main house to the front drive where Bo had parked. Bo turned to Maggie. “Not to be crass and inartistic or anything, but the more lessons you give him, the more I get to see you in a way that even Ru can’t have a fit about.”

“I was so busy obsessing about Xander’s talent that I didn’t even think of that,” Maggie said. “But yes. Yay!”

Bo laughed. Then he bent his head down close to Maggie’s and kissed her. It was a kiss as soft and warm and electric as any she’d ever experienced or even fantasized about. Maggie shuddered. But this time, in a good way.

Bo held a finger to her lips and she nodded. The kiss, as well as any that followed, would be their secret . . . for now. No sense in poking the odious bear that was Rufus.

Bo disappeared into the darkness and Maggie soon heard the sound of his car driving away from Crozat. Then she turned back to the canvas on her easel and began sketching. She continued through the night, and when dawn broke, she transported her canvas and art supplies down to her special spot by the bayou, where she painted quickly and fiercely.

When Maggie was done, she eyed the result with a serenity that she hadn’t felt as an artist for a very long time. The painting depicted the languid bayou scene, but with a heightened photo-realism. Beyond that, an inquisitive art aficionado would discover something else—the silhouette of a man. Some would argue it wasn’t even there, that it was the mind playing tricks on the viewer. This was the artist’s intention—to imbue her work with a bit of sensual mystery.

She lay down and rested her head on a thicket of moss. “I know now,” she thought to herself. “I know why I came home.”

Then she smiled, closed her eyes, and with the soft Louisiana morning air as her blanket, Maggie fell asleep.