“That’s a very good question,” I said, musing over the possibilities his story had brought up. “So you don’t know for sure who actually killed Tyrone?”
Monroe looked miserable. “Not one-hundred-percent sure, no. But if Willie didn’t pull the trigger that night, whoever did would of said something, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t of looked Hyacinth in the eye and lied when we were talking about it the other night.”
Pastor Rod looked uncomfortable. “No, I’m sure he wouldn’t have.”
They both had more faith in their friends than I did. “What night did you talk about it?” I asked.
“Wednesday?” Monroe tilted his head and thought. “No, it must of been Thursday. Wasn’t it?”
Pastor nodded. “Yes, I believe it was.”
“And the very next night, Dontae was killed.” Interesting.
Monroe looked back and forth between Pastor Rod and me. “Well . . . yeah. But that’s not why. It couldn’t be.”
The pastor looked away so quickly, I could almost smell guilt on his conscience. “I take it you don’t agree, Pastor?”
He met my gaze with obvious reluctance. “I don’t know what to think anymore,” he admitted sadly. “Our conversation that night may have stirred things up a bit.”
“How so?”
“None of us knew that there was any doubt that Willie pulled the trigger and killed Tyrone,” he said. “Not until Monroe came back.”
Oh, but he was wrong about that. One person had known, and I had a feeling that person was now dead. And I wasn’t really any closer to understanding
who
had wanted him that way.
Thirty-two
The storm and meeting up with Pastor Rod and Monroe had put a crimp in our property inspection plans. I placed a call to Sullivan while Miss Frankie and I waited out the rainstorm at the church. His cell phone went straight to voice mail, and his number at the precinct rotated there after several rings, so I figured he was out on a case somewhere. I left messages at both numbers telling him I’d found Monroe and that I had more information about the robbery at Letterman Industries, and I asked him to call me as soon as humanly possible.
When the rain finally abated, I told Monroe to stay where he was and asked Pastor Rod to keep him safe, then escorted Miss Frankie back outside. Neither of us spoke until we were back inside the car, buckled up, and Miss Frankie was merging into traffic. “I’m sorry about that back there,” I said. “I know it couldn’t have been easy for you hearing the pastor refer to Gabriel as your son.”
“No,” she said softly. “It wasn’t.”
“I know you didn’t approve of us pretending to be married, but nothing happened between Gabriel and me. It wasn’t like that.”
“I believe you.” But Miss Frankie clearly wasn’t happy. It was written all over her face.
Droplets hit the windshield, signaling that another bout of rain was about to hit. I chewed on my bottom lip for a moment, trying to decide on the best approach to take now. “Miss Frankie, you know I love you,” I said, sliding a glance at her to see how she reacted to that.
She blinked, once.
“When Philippe and I got married, I was deeply in love with him. But you also know that when he died, we were in the middle of a divorce. You know he was about to get married again.”
I could see Miss Frankie tense, ready to argue, so I rushed on. “I know, I know. It doesn’t make any sense to me either, but that’s how it was. I get that you want to believe we would have gotten back together if he’d lived, but the fact is, our marriage was over. He’d moved on, and it’s time for me to do the same.”
“I know that,” she said with a heavy sigh. “I do understand how the world works, Rita. And I think I’ve been quite understanding about your social life.”
I smiled a little. “You have been. And for the record, I’m not interested in getting seriously involved with anyone right now. I have too much on my plate trying to get Zydeco back on its feet and establishing my professional reputation here in New Orleans. But I need to believe that you’re not going to freak out if I occasionally date someone.”
We stopped at a traffic light, and she took her eyes off the road for a moment. Her expression showed no signs of imminent irrational behavior, so I let myself relax.
“My concerns have nothing to do with that,” she said. “I told you what worried me. Maybe I’m too stuffy or a bit old-fashioned, but Zydeco’s reputation is important to me. I don’t want anything to ruin it.”
“It’s important to me, too,” I assured her. “I just . . .” I let my voice trail away while I tried to figure out how to explain what I was feeling.
She took advantage of my silence. “Rita, I don’t object to you dating. I know you’re going to move on. Just be careful. I don’t want to see you get hurt. You’re all I have left.”
I laughed and put my hand on her arm. “Believe me, I don’t want that either. But I have some bad news for you, Miss Frankie. Unless you decide to dissolve our partnership at Zydeco, you’re stuck with me. I’m not going anywhere.”
* * *
Miss Frankie dropped me at home, and I checked my cell phone for messages as I watched her drive away. I wasn’t really surprised that I hadn’t heard from Sullivan yet. If he was on a case, it could be hours before he called back. But I was worried about Monroe and Pastor Rod. If I’d found them at the Fifth Street Church, someone else could, too. I ran over what they’d told me as I let myself inside. Those old people had kept their secret for forty years without killing one another, so it seemed reasonable to assume that Monroe’s return was the catalyst that had prompted one of them to strike out.
According to Pastor Rod, nobody had doubted Willie’s guilt until Monroe came back to town. That fact brought me back to Hyacinth over and over again. Her husband had gone to prison and died there for a crime he might not have committed. How had she reacted to that news forty years after the fact? Had she found out that Dontae let Willie take the fall for something he had done? Had that pushed her so far over the edge she’d laced Dontae’s pudding with poison to retaliate?
I puttered around the house for a while and then called Sullivan’s cell phone again, still hoping to run my ideas past him. Once again my call went straight to voice mail so I left another message asking him to call and disconnected before I remembered our conversation the day before when he’d mentioned going back to the Love Nest this afternoon. Determined to help the police unmask the killer before he—or she—could find Monroe at Pastor Rod’s church, I left the house and drove to the Love Nest.
Hyacinth was dusting in the parlor when I walked in the front door.
She looked up with what for her passed as a smile, but it faded as soon as she saw me. “You’re back.”
I glanced into the other rooms I could see from where I stood, hoping to see Sullivan interrogating one of the residents, but I couldn’t see anyone at all. Now that I was face-to-face with Hyacinth, I was a little nervous about admitting I was there to tell the police I thought she was a cold-blooded killer, so I decided to wing it and hope Sullivan would show up soon. “I think I left a ring in our suite,” I said. “Would you mind if I took a look?”
“Tamarra and I cleaned that room yesterday. There wasn’t a ring.”
“Could I look anyway? I know right where I left it.”
Hyacinth glared at me. “There was no ring. What do you really want?”
Clearly subterfuge wasn’t working, so I tried a little honesty. “To ask a couple of questions. Do you have a minute?”
“You got a badge? Because if you don’t, I’m through talking to you.”
Despite her fierce demeanor, I didn’t back down. “Who made the pudding Dontae ate the night he died?”
Her eyes flashed to my face, and her expression turned to stone. “What on earth are you talking about? What pudding?”
“Rice pudding. Did you make it?”
Hyacinth looked at me as if I’d sprouted a second head. “I may have. What about it? Don’t tell me it’s a crime to serve dessert to my guests.”
“It is if the dessert contained poison.”
Her eyes narrowed a little further. “I didn’t poison nobody’s food.”
“Well, somebody did.”
She put down her dust rag and turned toward me slowly. “Are you crazy, girl? What you doin’, accusin’ me of murder?”
This was not exactly the way I’d planned on our conversation going, but I knew it would be a big mistake to show fear now. “Should I be?”
“Hell no! I didn’t do anything wrong. You have a lot of nerve poking your nose into things that aren’t any of your concern.”
“But it is my concern,” I argued. “Dontae was killed while I was sleeping right upstairs. I could have eaten that pudding myself.”
“I doubt that. It was only for the folks in the annex.”
“For everyone, or just for Dontae?”
Hyacinth just stared at me, so I tried a different tack. “It must have been quite a shock to find out that Willie may not have been the one who pulled the trigger that night at the warehouse. How angry were you when you realized that they’d let Willie take the fall for something he didn’t do?”
Hyacinth moved to the table, sprayed and dusted with deliberation. Maybe she thought I’d grow tired of waiting for her to answer me. She was wrong.
“I know Monroe was there,” I said. “I know that Pastor Rod was waiting outside in the car. That leaves Dontae, Grey, Cleveland, and your husband Willie inside, and all four of them were armed, isn’t that right?”
She still didn’t answer.
“Did someone other than Willie fire the shot that killed Tyrone? Which one let Willie die in prison?”
Hyacinth sprayed a chair and dusted it.
Okay, so she was more patient than I am. Point made. “Look, Hyacinth, it doesn’t matter whether you talk to me or not, I’m still going to tell the police what I’ve learned. In fact, I’ve already left messages about it, and I’m meeting the detective on the case here. The story is going to come out. You can’t stop it.”
Hyacinth swore under her breath and tossed her dust rag onto the table. “Why are you doing this? What does any of this matter to you?”
“I’m a friend of Monroe’s brother, and I’m not going to let him take the fall for something one of you did. If you didn’t kill Dontae, why are you trying to protect a killer?”
“You don’t understand,” she said. “You don’t understand anything.”
“I understand that you’re all afraid that Cleveland, Grey, and Pastor Rod are too old to go to jail for something they did a lifetime ago.”
She sighed and sank onto one of the chairs. “Okay. Fine. You’re right. Grey and Cleveland were in the warehouse with Dontae and Willie. That idiot Monroe set off an alarm, and Tyrone came to see what was going on.”
“And Monroe called Willie by name.”
She nodded. “Everything would have been fine if he hadn’t done that. Willie and the others would have gotten away. But Tyrone was a friend. He knew them, and when Monroe used Willie’s name, they knew it was all over.”
“Willie must have believed that Tyrone would shoot him.”
“Willie knew that Tyrone would turn them all in, but he couldn’t have that.”
That was the part I still didn’t understand. “But why? I mean, the two of you were married and had a family. How could he just throw himself under the bus and spend the rest of his life in prison?”
“Wasn’t like he had a choice about that, now was it? He was going to prison no matter what. But Dontae didn’t have to go. He was married, too, and they had a brand-new baby. She left him shortly after the robbery, but by that time it was all decided. Cleveland’s mother needed him. We didn’t know what it was called back then, but we found out later she had Alzheimer’s. She couldn’t be left alone. And Grey? He’s . . . fragile, in a way that I can’t explain. You see how he is. Dressing up like a damn fool so he can teach those kids nobody else cares about. You can’t put a man like that in a cell with some thug. Prison would have killed him. And besides, Willie felt responsible. The whole plan had been his idea in the first place, and he’s the one who’d convinced the others to bring Monroe into it. And he thought he’d killed Tyrone.”
“So he sacrificed himself?”
“They had him for the robbery. They could prove he was there. Had his gun, dropped in the confusion after the shooting. The bullets matched the one they found in Tyrone. Ratting out the others wouldn’t have made any difference, I guess.
“By the time the police found Tyrone’s body at the warehouse, Monroe had already disappeared. For a while we thought he might resurface, but we worried about what he’d tell the police if he did. In the end, him disappearing that way was the best thing for everybody.”
“Didn’t you feel betrayed and angry with Willie?”
Hyacinth snorted a soft laugh. “Oh, baby, you don’t know the half of it. I didn’t even speak to the man for nearly ten years. I wouldn’t go see him in prison. Wouldn’t let Pearl see him. Wouldn’t have a damned thing to do with him. I thought that if he could just turn his back on me that way, I’d turn my back on him, too. Seemed fair.”
I couldn’t argue with that. “What about Lula Belle? How did she feel?”
Hyacinth actually laughed. “She was mad at everybody for a while, but she found herself a sugar daddy and moved on.”
“She wasn’t angry about what happened to her brother?”
“Have you met the woman, baby? Oh, sure, she was angry for a time, but it’s been forty years. Besides, Lula Belle’s only concerned about Lula Belle. As long as somebody is taking care of her, she’s fine.”
“So eventually you forgave Willie?”
“Pastor Rod helped me to understand. He said it was for me, not for him. All that anger . . . it wasn’t doing me any good. I guess he was right. I did feel some better once I let it go.”
I was really trying to believe her. Or maybe I was trying not to. Because if Hyacinth wasn’t angry with Dontae, my whole theory fell apart. And that meant that I’d been focused on the wrong person. Hyacinth put both hands on her ample hips and glared at me. “Now I got a question for you. Do
you
feel better now that you’ve stirred up all this trouble and made us think about things we’d buried in the past?”
“You can’t blame me for that. I’m not the one who stirred things up.”
“No? Well, have it your way. But I think you’ve done enough. You’re no longer welcome here, Mrs. Broussard. It’s time for you to make yourself scarce.”