Authors: Sally J. Smith
"I'm just sayin',
chère
," Cat closed her eyes and lifted her face to the breeze coming off the river, "dat man is delish, fo' true."
I glanced sideways at her, slid my hand along the railing, and laid it on top of hers. "And I'm just sayin',
chère,
you're spending too much time with that Cajun cop of yours. And dat f'shore too."
* * *
Once we docked, the ride to the resort on Mystic Isle took thirty minutes if there weren't any gators sunbathing in the road or big mud holes that had to be skirted. The shuttle ran back and forth all day every day from seven a.m. until midnight. It was a sight to behold, basically a smallish airport shuttle only N'awlins style. The front end was a purple Mardi Gras mask with headlights serving as eyes. On either side, The Mansion at Mystic Isle was scrolled in gold letters over dark but beautifully screened images glimpsing into the paranormal world of spirits and spells. Its route went via Jefferson Parish into the swamplands near the Barataria Preserve then over the bridge to the privately owned four square miles of swampland that was now the country's first, and possibly only, resort catering to those who believed in all things mystical and occult.
I stepped down from the shuttle just as Jack Stockton jogged up, out of breath, and spicier than Louisiana hot sauce.
"You need to turn around," he told the driver. "The Elway woman and her people are on their way from the airport to the ferry. If you're not there to pick them up, it won't be good."
As the shuttle circled back out, Jack turned and seemed to see me for the first time.
"Good morning, Miss Hamilton," he said quickly. That was just one of the things that set him apart from the locals. You never heard "Where y'at, baaay-beee?" or "Aw right, dawlin'" from his gorgeous lips. No sir, always polite and cultured, my Jack. My Jack? My fervent wish.
He wasn't in such a big hurry that he didn't take the time to notice. "Miss Hamilton, I believe that shirt just exactly matches your green eyes." Interest flared in his gorgeous peepers.
I smiled but didn't answer. As flummoxed as I was, it would have sounded like a foreign language.
After the shuttle turned back around, so did Jack. He stopped at the front entrance, and while the organ music groaned the welcome dirge, he asked Lurch, our obsessed-by-selfies doorman, how his day was going, and then he said to the morose giant of a man, "There are some VIP guests arriving later today. I'm going to request, as a personal favor to me, you not ask them to join you for a selfie. Please."
The fact that Lurch asked anyone and everyone to pose for a selfie with him seemed to bother Jack—the uptight New Yorker in him, I supposed. None of the rest of us cared a whit about it. In fact, it was a lot of fun to sit down with Lurch on a coffee break and have a slide show of all the pictures on his phone.
It didn't hurt anybody, and if someone didn't want to stand beside a seven-foot-tall, pasty-skinned man with hands the size of cast-iron skillets, they could always say, "No thanks."
Lurch groaned but nodded. "Yes, sir."
* * *
The Dragons and Deities Tattoo Parlor was located on the first floor of the auxiliary wing next to the hotel spa. The hotel owner, Harry Villars, a genteel Southern man with grand gestures and the soft-spoken mannerisms of Ashley Wilkes, had pretty much given me carte blanche in decorating, and I went with the Medieval Times look. Since the name of the place had to do with dungeons, it was just about my only reference material. The flickering wall sconces, stone masonry wallpaper, and red and gold drapery swags were nothing if not dramatic.
I was not ashamed to admit I kind of got off on wearing that girly garb the mystical theme required, and the skin paintings I created are ethereal and otherworldly. They went hand-in-hand with the theme of the hotel and more often than not challenged my artistic nature.
My first love was oil on canvas. The streets and people of New Orleans, my favorite subjects. When I didn't spend my weekend working at St. Antoine's trying to bring the beautiful old church back, I hauled myself out to Jackson Square and displayed my wares with other struggling artists. A gallery over on Julia Street took the odd painting every now and then. When I sold one, what I got for it went straight to the neighborhood restoration fund.
It was about three o'clock. My last client of the day, a nerdy neurosurgeon from Wisconsin, was still in the chair, just getting up from my work on the wizard I'd inked on his left butt cheek. He'd been all worried someone would see it, so he asked me to put it there, folks. It wasn't my idea. Believe me. The finished product was pretty gorgeous, if I do say so myself. The wizard's light-blue flowing beard, royal-blue flowing robes, and pointy hat were offset with the red sparks that flew from his wand. I had to say it kind of made me grumpy no one would ever see it. But like they say, the customer is always right. If he wanted a tattoo on his butt, who was I to deny him?
He'd just walked out when Catalina and Cap'n Jack walked into my domain.
Jack cleared his throat. "Miss Hamilton…"
"This is the South, Mr. Stockton," I said. "Please call me Mel."
His eyes found mine. "And I'm Jack," he said.
Cap'n Jack—it was all I could do not to say it out loud.
He went on. "I've already asked Miss Gabor—Catalina—but I wanted to ask you personally. Mrs. Elway and her party have arrived a day early. We can accommodate her with rooms, thank God, but the dining room is booked tonight for the annual banquet of the Dead-and-Loving-It Zombie Fan Club. I've arranged for Mrs. Elway and her guests to be served in the small dining room, but it's too late to bring in extra waitstaff from the city to serve them. I know it's not your job, and ordinarily I wouldn't ask, but I'm sure you've heard Cecile Elway and her personal psychic, Penelope Devere, are the president and vice-president of the International Paranormal Society. Their endorsement will put The Mansion on the map." He paused as those eyes and lips pleaded his case for him. I tried to concentrate on what he was actually saying. He was so, as Cat would say,
delish.
"It's a small group," he went on, "just six of them including the Great Fabrizio."
"She's having dinner with the hotel medium?"
"Yep." He shook his head as if the idea amazed him. "That's why she's here. Her personal psychic told Cecile to come. Said Theodore Elway, Cecile's deceased husband, spoke to her in a dream and wanted Mrs. Elway to have a séance with the Great Fabrizio to learn the secret to her husband's restless soul finding peace." He shook his head. "You know, if you'd asked me six months ago if I'd be lining up ghostly encounters for hotel guests, I'd have laughed you out of the room." He raised his eyes to mine. "And just look at me now, begging you to help me do this ridiculous thing."
I tried to ignore the amber gleam in his eyes.
Keep it business, Mel. He is.
"I'll do anything I can to help out. Just tell me what you need."
* * *
I offered my last scheduled appointment of the day a really nice discount to reschedule her body art, the Gryffindor crest from Harry Potter targeted for her right calf, and closed the parlor early. After changing into the proper uniforms, typical black-and-white antebellum-style long dresses and aprons, Cat and I took a crash course in table service lessons from the main dining room maître d'.
The smaller dining room was furnished with lovely period furniture that could well have been used in The Mansion during its plantation days in the 1800s. The oval table seated up to ten people. Mrs. Elway and the other five guests were comfortable that evening.
The widow was Cecile Elway, a fifty-something aristocratic-looking dishwater blonde with blue eyes, a strong chin, and aquiline nose she kept so high in the air I was pretty sure she had a stiff neck from it. She was haughtily lovely for (who my mama would call) a woman of that certain age.
Her stepdaughter, Rosalyn Elway Whitlock, on the other hand, looked like a small-town librarian with poodle-cut curly hair, watery grey eyes, face scrubbed so clean it shone, and a brown suit jacket over a white blouse buttoned all the way to the collar. A pair of tortoiseshell reading glasses dangled on a beaded chain around her neck. Her head stayed down, and her eyes stayed glued to the place setting in front of her.
Elway's stepgrandson, Billy Whitlock, was college-aged from the look of him, probably still had to have his nose wiped by his mama. He was skinny with an Adam's apple that sat in the middle of his throat like a golf ball. He only smiled at me, but when Cat walked by he jumped to his feet, took hold of her hand, and made a big deal about kissing it. I was surprised she didn't run into the kitchen and grab a bar of soap.
Then there was Terrence Montague. He was introduced as the President of the Society for the Preservation of the Lepidoptera Alien Caterpillar (say that fast three times). There was something about his smarmy good looks I didn't like. The Buddy Holly glasses didn't fit his persona. The fuzzy caterpillar pin on his lapel looked like it might have been solid gold, but it was as out of place on him as a My Little Pony T-shirt would have looked on me. Beside him, Cecile had her hand on his thigh.
Mrs. Elway's personal psychic, Penelope Devere, was there too. She was a short woman built like a fireplug. She might have been cute at one time, but today's look, the Little Dutch Boy haircut and her plain unmade-up features, didn't do much to add to her mystique.
Last, but no way least, was Fabrizio, the hotel's resident medium and a person dear to my heart, also known as the Great Fabrizio. He was one of my favorite people on the planet. Born in Yorkshire across the pond, he grew up poor, as he said, "With little more than a pence or two in the pocket of the hand-me-down trousers from my older brother. Fancied myself a bit of an Oliver Twist." He was about as much a psychic medium as I was the Dalai Lama.
Talk around the hotel was, back in the salad days he'd been honored by the Queen for his performances as Macbeth and Hamlet. There was little trace of that left in him these days. Formally trained or not, his career was flagging in his fifties, and I had the impression if this job didn't pan out, he had nowhere else to go. That night he was dressed all in black, like a riverboat gambler. His greying hair was covered by a silver turban with an enormous fake ruby in the middle—all the better to cement his celebrity status with the clientele.
And that, ladies and gents, was the cast of characters for the evening.
The menu was simple but elegant—puree of squash, Cajun-blackened salmon, rice pilaf, and grilled asparagus with hollandaise.
Cat and I were confident and sure-handed, balancing the serving trays as smoothly as The Mansion's resident juggler—that was until Billy Whitlock, whose baby brown eyes had been glued to Cat's swaying backside all night, suddenly whipped sideways to stare at her as she bent over to retrieve a dropped napkin from the floor. The bowl of soup I was about to set in front of him tipped backward when he hit it and landed on my chest before falling to the floor. The lovely puree, of course, stayed on the front of my service uniform.
All eyes turned to me as I scrambled to pick up the bowl off the floor. "Sorry," I said.
"No, dude, it's all me," Billy said, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down in this throat. I swore he looked at me like he wanted to lick it all off, but I didn't say anything else. Seriously? Hadn't he ever seen a woman bend over before?
While I stood back and took a napkin to my soup-laden chest, Cecile Elway lifted her hand to Fabrizio. "Oh, Fabrizio," she cooed, "I forgot to mention we have a special requirement for the séance." She exchanged a meaningful look with her psychic, who nodded what I interpreted to be encouragement. Cecile went on, "And since it's just the tiniest bit unusual, I wanted you to have ample notice for its procurement."
Fabrizio, with lifted chin and half-closed eyes in full-on medium character, smiled and said, "Of course, madam—"
As I turned to go back to the kitchen and change into a clean uniform, Mrs. Elway gushed, "Oh, Cecile, please," and batted her lashes, flirting with Fabrizio like a schoolgirl. She crooked a finger at him and whispered in his ear as he leaned his head toward her.
When she finished, he pulled away and gave her a look I can only describe as dumbfounded. "Really?" he asked. "For the séance?"
She smiled and nodded.
"Did I hear you correctly?" He stammered a little. "Did you say…clams?"
By the time we finished with the dinner service, the ferry had quit running, so Cat and I couldn't make it home. Jack found an empty room for us. It was on the second floor in the auxiliary wing about as far away from the main building as you could get, and the remodel hadn't reached it yet, but the beds were soft, the linens dense and luxurious. We both slept like newborns in the T-shirts we wore to work. The next morning we dressed for work in a fresh change of costumes housekeeping had put in our lockers.
Cat had an early appointment. My first, the elaborate Gryffindor crest, wasn't until ten thirty. I was in the employee lounge lingering over a cup of chicory (so strong it threatened to straighten my hair) and a warm cream cheese pastry (so yummy I was pretty sure it had been concocted by a voodoo priestess).
"Melanie, my girl, just like your name, your song strums the strings of my heart."
"Good morning, Fabrizio."
Some of the performers at the hotel worked the day shift—Cat, me, the masseuse, Mambo the voodoo priestess, for example. The entertainers took the evening shift—the magicians and Aurelia the Aura Reader fell into that category, the musicians, of course, and so did Fabrizio.
Fabrizio lived on the island in
la petite maison
with his sweetie, Harry Villars. He was seldom seen at The Mansion itself unless he was working.
I turned. "What are you doing here so early?"
He was dressed like a regular Joe that morning in a golf shirt and a pair of faded jeans. No eyeliner or pancake makeup. I liked him better that way. He sat down across from me and drew circles on the table with his index finger until the buff twentysomething golden boy who gave massages refilled his cup and left the room, and I was alone with Fabrizio.