“I’m afraid the police have left quite a mess.”
Jeanne’s words brought Charlotte back from thoughts of the past with a jolt, and she pushed away the painful memories, sealing them back into the compartment of her mind where they’d resided for more years than she cared to count. Past was past, and Charlotte had long ago discovered that in order to survive, she had to learn to live in the present.
“Where would you like me to start?” she asked.
“In the library.” Jeanne turned and led the way through the dining room and into the foyer. “The rest can wait until tomorrow,” she said as they walked down the hall toward the library. Halfway down the hallway, she suddenly stopped and turned to face Charlotte. “You will be coming tomorrow, won’t you?”
When Charlotte nodded a confirmation, Jeanne seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.
At the doorway of the library though, Jeanne hesitated, just short of entering the room. “I—I’m not sure I can go in there,” she said, staring at the opening. “Th-that’s where it happened, where I found him. I didn’t even realize he hadn’t left for the office until I saw his briefcase still sitting on the floor in the foyer.”
Charlotte felt her throat tighten, and she reached out and squeezed Jeanne’s arm. “You don’t have to go in.”
Jeanne pulled her gaze away from the doorway, and her eyes filled with tears. She shook her head as if the action would hold the tears at bay. “Please,” she whispered, her hands balling into fists. “Just clean it all up.”
With one last entreating glance at Charlotte, she backed away, turned, then stumbled down the hallway.
Charlotte’s first instinct was to go after her just to make sure that she would be okay. But after she thought about it for a moment, she decided that the best course of action was simply to do as the poor woman had asked, to clean up the mess.
The moment Charlotte entered the room, she wrinkled her nose against the sour odor that hung in the air like an invisible layer of fog. Death . . . and violence, she suddenly realized with a shiver. What she was smelling was death and the violence that had precipitated it.
No wonder Jeanne couldn’t step foot in here, Charlotte thought as she gazed around the room. It was bad enough that the poor woman had been the one to find her husband murdered in the room. To make matters worse, the police had left the place in a mess.
Almost every surface in the small library was coated with a fine ashy film. Recalling the descriptions of the stuff from some of the police procedurals she’d read, she figured that the residue was the result of the police dusting for fingerprints.
Other than the fingerprint dust, one of the first things she noticed was the painting of the St. Louis Cathedral that hung between the built-in bookcases along the wall to her left. Instead of lying flat against the wall, the painting was sticking straight out, perpendicular to the wall.
Charlotte stepped over to the painting. Upon closer examination, she saw that it was hinged and hid a small wall safe; the door to the safe was open, and the safe itself was empty.
Funny, she thought. She’d known there was a safe somewhere in the house, and she’d dusted that particular painting many times. Even so, the hinges had been so well concealed that she never once suspected that it hid a wall safe. Whoever had installed it had done their job well.
She was still staring at the empty wall safe when a mosquito suddenly buzzed her head. When she swatted at the pesky insect, she noticed there were more flying around.
“What on earth—” She immediately searched for the source of their entry, and that was when she spotted the gaping black hole in the French door where one of the panes was missing. Small shards of glass littered the carpet in front of the doors, and as she stared at the hole, a terrifying realization washed over her. What she was looking at was the means of entry that had been used by the murderer.
Charlotte shivered and turned away to survey the room once again. She’d start with the desk first, she decided. Then she’d deal with the powder, glass, and the carpet.
The top of the desk was in shambles, with scattered papers, books, pens, several small framed photos, a collection of paperweights, and other odds and ends. In the midst of the clutter was a dark, uneven stain where it appeared that something had been spilled, then left to dry.
Charlotte began with gathering the papers. Only then did she notice that several of them were dotted with flecks of the same dark substance that was on the desk. As her gaze shifted between the papers in her hands and the stain on the desk, she suddenly realized what she was looking at.
Just clean it all up.
Charlotte shuddered with revulsion. No wonder Jeanne had fixated on the desk, she thought.
The dark stains had to be blood. Dried, congealed blood. Specifically Jackson Dubuisson’s blood, which could only mean one thing. Jackson must have been murdered at his desk. Even as her stomach turned queasy, an eerie prickle of awareness marched down her spine.
Just being near the desk was dreadful enough. Charlotte had to force herself to continue sorting through the bloodstained papers. Then she stacked the papers, along with the other items, in neat piles on the floor.
Armed with a small pail of warm, sudsy water, and rubber gloves, she scrubbed the desktop thoroughly. As she scrubbed, she tried to ignore the images flashing through her mind of Jackson slumped over the desk, his life’s blood oozing from what could only have been a fatal head wound of some kind. And she tried to ignore the persistent whispers in the back of her mind, whispers that felt important, seemed even urgent, yet remained elusive.
But ignoring the images and the whispers proved almost impossible. By the time she’d rinsed and dried the desktop, then applied a coat of lemon oil and polished the wood, her hands were trembling.
After restoring the desk back to order, she found that the rest of her task was almost a relief. Once she’d completely dusted and wiped away all signs of the fingerprint powder, she gingerly picked up the larger pieces of broken glass and deposited them into a wastebasket.
Finally, all that remained to be done was to vacuum the carpet and she’d be finished. Then maybe, just maybe, the horrible, violent images that kept swimming in her mind and the urgent whispers would disappear.
But vacuuming would be noisy. And though the noise wouldn’t disturb anyone upstairs, she wasn’t exactly sure where Jeanne was at the moment.
Charlotte quickly walked through the downstairs rooms, searching for Jeanne’s whereabouts. The last room she looked in was the back parlor. It was there that she finally located Jeanne, slumped over in a chair near the fireplace, her eyes closed and her breathing deep and even.
Poor thing must be exhausted, she thought as she tiptoed into the room and gently covered Jeanne with the crocheted afghan that was kept in a wicker basket near the sofa.
When Charlotte quietly left the room, she decided that closing the doors to the parlor as well as closing off the library doors should muffle the sound of the noisy vacuum. After all, there was no sense in waking Jeanne until she was finished.
Though it wasn’t the dirtiest or the messiest job Charlotte had ever tackled, cleaning up the library where Jackson had been murdered was by far the most horrible job she had ever been asked to do. Even so, once she’d vacuumed, all in all, it had only taken her a little over an hour to return the room back to order.
The only remaining problem was the gaping hole in the door. Charlotte decided that a piece of thick cardboard taped over the hole would have to suffice until Jeanne could call in someone to repair the broken glass pane. At least tape and cardboard might be enough to keep out the mosquitoes and bugs.
Charlotte had to rummage through almost every drawer in the kitchen before she finally located a roll of masking tape in the last drawer beneath the built-in oven. But where on earth was she going to find a piece of cardboard?
Then she remembered. In her van was a cardboard box that might be large enough to use. She should be able to cut off a piece that would be just about the right size.
The sudden peal of the doorbell in the quiet house gave Charlotte a start. With a frown of irritation and hoping the noise wouldn’t wake Jeanne just yet, she dropped the tape into the deep pocket of her apron and hurried from the kitchen.
The ornate oak entry door, with its insets of narrow, leaded glass panels, was framed on either side by cut-glass window lights. Through the window light on her right, Charlotte recognized her niece’s partner, Louis Thibodeaux. “Now what?” she muttered as she unlocked and opened the door.
Standing beside the detective was her niece. Behind the two detectives was a uniformed policeman. Judith frowned the moment she saw Charlotte; then she entered the foyer. Thibodeaux and the other man trailed after her.
“Aunt Charley, what are you doing here?”
Charlotte closed the door behind them, then faced her niece.
“Jeanne called me to clean up the mess your people left in the library.”
Louis Thibodeaux’s dark eyebrows shot up. “She did what?” His voice was a growl of disbelief as he glared at Charlotte as if she were a bug in need of squashing. Beside him, Judith groaned.
Charlotte glared right back at her niece’s partner, not liking his tone or attitude one bit. “I don’t think I stuttered, Detective Thibodeaux.”
“Great! That’s just wonderful,” he said, each word dripping with sarcasm.
An uneasy feeling washed through Charlotte as she stared first at Louis Thibodeaux, then at her niece.
Judith narrowed her eyes and tilted her head. “Did you, Aunt Charley? Did you clean it up yet?”
When Charlotte slowly nodded, the affirming answer brought on another round of groans from both detectives as well as the uniformed policemen.
“Didn’t you see the yellow crime-scene tape across the door?” But before Charlotte could answer, Judith answered her own question. “Of course you didn’t, because Jeanne had probably already removed it.”
The dire implication wasn’t lost on Charlotte. If Jeanne had removed the crime-scene tape and directed Charlotte to clean up the library, then she must have something to hide. And if she had something to hide, did she also have something to do with Jackson’s murder?
Charlotte shook her head in denial, but before she could protest aloud, Jeanne suddenly emerged from the back parlor.
“What’s going on out here, Charlotte?” she asked. “Who’s—” Jeanne froze, and her face clouded over with a look of pure distaste. “Why are these people back again?”
All eyes had turned toward Jeanne, but Louis Thibodeaux was the one who spoke first. “Mrs. Dubuisson, I’m afraid you’re in a lot of trouble.”
Chapter Eight
F
or long seconds, Jeanne simply stared at the detective and made no response.
No matter what the implications, Charlotte refused to believe that Jeanne could have had anything to do with Jackson’s murder. She was sure that there had to be a rational explanation for the misunderstanding about the crime-scene tape.
Louis Thibodeaux advanced menacingly toward Jeanne. “Why?” he asked, his eyes narrowing to dark slits. “Why would you purposely have that room cleaned when you knew we were coming back for one last look? Why—unless you have something to hide? What are you trying to cover up, Mrs. Dubuisson?”
Charlotte had every intention of staying put to hear Jeanne’s explanation, but at that moment, Judith caught her eye. There was a look of warning on her niece’s face, and with a sharp jerk of her head toward the dining room, she indicated that Charlotte should make herself scarce.
Feeling somewhat like a rat deserting the ship, Charlotte grudgingly left the foyer. She was almost to the kitchen before she heard Jeanne finally answer the detective.
“No one said anything about coming back,” Jeanne told him, her voice cold and blunt. “Besides, I was told they were finished.”
“Who told you that?”
“I don’t remember—one of the officers.”
“Which one?”
In the kitchen, Charlotte hovered just inside the kitchen doorway. She hardly dared to breathe for fear of missing the ensuing argument between Jeanne and Judith’s partner.
“There was no crime-scene tape.” Jeanne insisted. “And how many times do I have to tell you that no one told me I shouldn’t go in there.”
Louis Thibodeaux’s voice was a low rumble, and Charlotte couldn’t make out exactly what he’d said in response, but she had no trouble hearing Jeanne’s shrill retort.
“Stop it!” she cried. “No more questions, no more of your accusations, not without my lawyer.”
From that point on, nothing but the sound of low murmurs came from the foyer. Unable to determine what was being said, Charlotte was almost ready to give up trying when she saw her niece appear around the corner, where the dining room opened onto the foyer, and stride purposefully toward her.
When Judith reached the kitchen doorway, she took Charlotte firmly by the arm and led her farther into the kitchen. “You should go on home now, Aunt Charley,” she said, her voice low and urgent