Authors: Sally J. Smith
Rosalyn took a hanky from her bag and covered the lower half of her face.
Billy waved his hand in front of his face. "Ew, really? Gross."
Cecile only smiled. "Theodore's favorite. He always came to the table when we served clams on the half shell."
I actually didn't think they smelled bad. To each his own. I took my seat at the table as the Great Fabrizio went into his act.
He closed his eyes and threw back his head. His voice deepened. "Center yourselves. Reach out with your minds and souls. Think of your loved one. Call him."
The voices sounded.
"Theo?" Cecile's tone was uncertain.
Terrence Montague mumbled something I couldn't quite understand, but I could have sworn it sounded like, "Yeah, whatever."
"Daddy," Rosalyn twittered. "Daddy?"
"Mr. Elway." That was Penny, her voice soft. "Theodore."
"Hey, Granddad. S'up?" Billy's voice rang above everyone else's.
Fabrizio cleared his throat. "I feel the vibrations. Theodore? Theodore? Our beloved Theodore, we bring you gifts from life into death. Commune with us, Theodore, and move among us. Give us a sign."
The room grew cold as a stiff breeze circled the room, extinguishing the candles. The lights went out. I couldn't have seen my hand in front of my face. A collective gasp circled the table.
The bell tinkled, fell over, and rolled across the table.
It was Fabrizio speaking, but it wasn't his voice or accent. "Dammit all, Cecile, you forgot the hot sauce."
Cecile cried out. "Oh. Oh. Theo? Theo, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"Simple questions, Mrs. Elway," Fabrizio said, his normal pitch and British accent back. "Only yes or no questions."
"Daddy! Daddy!" It was Rosalyn's voice. "Daddy, tell us. How did you really die? Did someone murder you?"
A soft moaning came from somewhere above us. The table began to vibrate then to shake. And then the crazy thing lifted off the floor.
"Whoa, dude." Billy seemed to be enjoying the show.
If I hadn't known better myself, I'd have believed old Theodore had joined us. The table crashed back down. And suddenly I wasn't holding anyone's hand anymore. There were soft whimpers, the scraping sound of chairs scooting back, and feet shuffling.
It was scary.
Damn, Fabrizio. Good job.
The room grew quiet. No one seemed to be moving anymore.
The only sound in the room was the low hum of Fabrizio's voice as he continued with the farce, staying fully "connected" to the spirit world. After a few minutes, the lights came back on for no apparent reason I could see.
Everyone had stood and moved away from the table except Fabrizio, who was still in his chair, eyes closed. The rest of us all looked around the room at each other, relieved to have made it all the way back from the world beyond.
Or maybe we all hadn't made it after all.
Cecile Elway was still in her chair, slumped over, her face buried in the platter of clams. A few empty clamshells were strewn around in front of her.
Montague lifted her wrist and let it drop back. "My word," he said. "I believe she's…but she can't be. Can she?" He looked around at all of us. "Dead? She can't be dead."
But she was.
"Hmm," Billy said. "Bad clams?"
Deputy Quincy Boudreaux of Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office was a dream of a man with big brown eyes and brown-tipped blond hair. Cute enough all right, but there was a slight problem with Quincy. There was helter-skelter in those beautiful peepers, and his hair always stuck up all over like he just got out of bed, which combined to give him the look of a recent escapee from the state wacky shack over in Jackson. If the man didn't wear a badge on his chest and a gun on his hip, you'd think twice about being around him. You might think twice about being around him anyway.
Quincy Boudreaux was Cajun, born and bred in the bayou, and he was stone-cold crazy about my beautiful bestie. And she about him. It was a tempestuous love affair worthy of a Margaret Mitchell novel. I'd never felt that fire before. All my relationships to date had been sweet and calm, more platonic than anything else. I'd be lying if I said the passion Cat and Quincy stirred up didn't make me a little envious. That is, until Cap'n Jack showed up. Whenever that man came around, it was like someone struck a match in my pants. I had high hopes of someday being able to do something about that.
Deputy Quincy and a couple of other nice boys from Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office showed up at The Mansion about a half hour after we let the department know about Cecile Elway.
Those of us who'd been in the séance room all stood on the veranda while they wheeled poor Mrs. Elway, all zipped up in a plastic body bag, out through the front entrance. The welcome dirge played appropriately every time someone walked in or out.
"Will somebody please turn that off?" Quincy said a bit too loud.
Jack walked up just as they loaded the gurney into the ambulance. "Make it happen," he called back over his shoulder to the reception desk, and the dreary organ music stopped abruptly. Jack stood beside me.
"Just exactly what's he doing?" Jack squinted into the night.
Lurch leaned up against the rear door of the ambulance where the paramedics wrestled the gurney with poor Mrs. Elway into the ambulance.
"Oh," I said when I saw what was going on.
"Ohmigod," Jack burst out. "Lurch! Stop that right now."
Lurch looked up. He was as shamefaced as a third-grade boy caught sneaking into the girls' bathroom at school—but not ashamed enough to abstain from snapping off another selfie of him and the body bag.
Jack hung his head and sighed.
While he was looking for a suitable place to live in town, Mr. Villars had given Jack the use of the honeymoon cottage at the back of the property. Poor Cap'n Jack was always on site and consequently nearly always on the job.
He was dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt. I'd never seen him in anything but a suit, and I couldn't take my eyes off his strong arms and the planes of his hard chest and abs outlined against the tight cotton knit. His dark hair was ruffled like he'd been running his hands through it. He was close enough I caught his scent. I once had asked him what it was, and he'd shrugged and smiled and said, "Bleu. Chanel," then with a shy smile, "you like it?"
I did like it. It was fresh, yet sensual, and allowed a secondary unique scent to come through, what I called Eau de Cap'n Jack, clean, manly.
He put his arm around my shoulder and looked down at me in concern. "How are you doing, Miss Hamilton?" His voice was low. "I'm so sorry you had to experience that."
Oh, my. I couldn't help myself. I had a little trouble breathing. If it were a hundred and fifty years ago, I'd have said I had a bad case of the vapors. Translated to the twenty-first century for y'all, I was turned on.
The blip then rising yelp of the siren snapped me out of it, and I was instantly ashamed. Poor Mrs. Elway.
Quincy sucked his teeth and shook his head. "Nothing like bagging up a good stiff to start an eight-hour shift. Let's get dis done." He turned and went to the door.
Jack, Cat, and I stood outside under the portico in the still of the bayou night. Wispy clouds moved across the moon, playing hide and seek over the cypress trees. Crickets and frogs serenaded each other. The occasional splash foretold the entry of a gator moving in the water, maybe chasing dinner. It was a beautiful night if you didn't count somebody dying right in front of me.
Lurch was enormous, over seven feet tall, and his shoulders had to be half again that broad. He always turned sideways and ducked to get through most doors in the hotel, but he could carry enough bags to check in half a dozen guests in one trip. We nicknamed him Lurch, and everyone called him that. I don't think anyone but the HR Department knew his real name. Now, having been denied further selfie activity, he stood just inside the lobby, shaking his big old head and moaning at the grim goings-on in front of The Mansion.
The ambulance disappeared behind a grove of cypress around the bend in the road.
"Y'all coming?" Quincy led us all back through the hotel lobby where the rest of the looky-lou hotel guests and staff members stood around craning their necks and whispering to each other. We followed tiredly to the rear of the main building and the séance room.
Jack, Cat, and I waited in the open doorway. I was kind of creeped out after what happened there, but the lights were all on now, and aside from all the crime scene tape and evidence markers, the place looked pretty normal. A couple of deputies went around the room photographing everything. One of them came over and unapologetically took several shots of Cat, the rapid-fire shutter on his camera clicking like castanets. She posed dramatically. Quincy chased him off.
A stout middle-aged woman I'd never seen before stood at the table, dropping the slimy clamshells one at a time into a clear plastic bag. "Who's that?" I asked.
"My friend from the parish medical center. She helps us out since Jefferson Parish be too small for an official coroner," Quincy explained. "She be taking dem clams with her, y'all. We don't like da look of 'em."
Quincy jerked his head at us. "Let's leave 'em to it," he said. "Lead me to the kitchen."
Cat took hold of my hand as we walked, squeezing it. I squeezed back. She wasn't at the scene of the crime, didn't have to hang around for all this, but she did, and I knew it was for me. That was Cat.
The four of us made our way from the séance room in the farthest corner on the ground floor, back through the circular foyer where the grand staircase sat silently waiting for more glory days of Scarlett O'Hara descending with her hoopskirts and ringlets.
Cecile's family, Terrence, and Fabrizio had all been relocated to the main salon at the front of the house to give statements. We bypassed it and went behind the staircase to the lower level passageway to the kitchen.
Valentine sat at one of the tables drinking coffee. When we all walked in, she got up and brought the pot to the table along with four empty cups.
"Boy," Valentine said. Only Valentine Cantrell could get away with calling Deputy Quincy Boudreaux boy. "You better have one good reason f'true for making me come all the way back here tonight." Valentine lived over in Estelle in a pretty little red brick house with white trim and gardenia bushes in the front yard. I always figured that place she owned in Estelle, and the school and neighborhood where her eight-year-old son had put down roots were the reasons Harry Villars had been able to lure her to Mystic Isle. "What's up with all dem police cars?" she demanded.
Cat and I sat at the table. Jack sat beside me. Valentine poured us coffee—the strong scent of the steaming coffee and chicory was a dose of pure revival. I must have been looking a bit tired or something, because Jack patted my hand and gave me one of those sympathetic looks. I resisted the urge to put my arms around his neck and sit on his lap like Papa Noel.
Here's my Christmas list, Papa Noel. All I want you to bring me downriver in your bateaux is you in a Santa hat and thong.
Quincy got out his phone and sent a text. Within a minute or two, a couple of deputies came to the kitchen.
"Now, Miss Valentine, we'll be needing the rest of those clams from the same batch you sent to the séance tonight."
She drew in an agitated breath. "Clams—"
"In fact," he went on. "We'll be needing whatever clams you have here altogether."
She didn't like it much. I could tell by the way her eyes spit daggers at him and the way she stood and smacked her palm down on the table. "You think I served them bad clams? Me? You think I don't be knowing the difference between a good clam and a bad one?"
He just smiled and spread his hands. "Now, Miss Valentine, don't take it personal. Y'all know I gotta cover all avenues,
chère
."
She stomped over to the big walk-in fridge at the far side of the room, went in, and came right back out with two enormous Ziploc bags full of clams still in the whole shell. From the hard squint of her eyes and the momentum of her carriage, I could have sworn she was going to throw them at him, but instead she plopped them down onto the counter then stood back, her hands on her hips. "Dere ya go, boy. I hope you're happy. These is the ones I was planning to use for my mama's special chowder. Now because of this silly boy and his suspicious mind, I ain't got nothing to fix for tomorrow's lunch menu."
She cast an exasperated look at Jack, who threw up his hands and shook his gorgeous head, obviously at a loss, like Valentine.
The two deputies came forward and loaded up a good-sized evidence bag with the clams then put them in a Styrofoam cooler and walked out.
Quincy cleared his throat and began to pace, hands behind his back. His brow was furrowed. He turned to Valentine, apology written all over his face. "Miss Valentine, darlin', I know you wouldn't serve no bad clams, but we have to check 'em all, or we won't be able to say whether there might have been something wrong with the ones she ate."
I couldn't help it. "You think it was the clams that killed her, Quincy?"
He shrugged. "Well, she dead, ain't she?"
"But you don't think Valentine had anything to do with it…?"
He smiled. "Course not. Look at dat woman—why, she a pillar of virtue, that one."
Valentine gave him a look, and then her face broke into a smile that beamed all the way to the state line. "Aw, boy." She waved her hand at him. "You try that sugar on someone who might be fool enough to lap it up."
He cocked his head and grinned. "And besides, Chef Cantrell, what motive could you possibly have to number one, serve bad clams, or number two, to kill off Miz Elway? I mean, you never even met her. Ain't dat right?"
He watched as Valentine smiled, sat back down at the table, and lifted her coffee mug.
"So, Chef," he went on, "who came to you asking for dem clams in the first place?"
Valentine's mouth drew into a hard line, and she shook her head.
Law of the bayou, I guessed. Don't ever rat anybody out. I knew who sent for the clams. Anyone who'd been in the dining room Saturday night knew who sent for the clams. Cecile Elway originated the request, but it would have been Fabrizio who went to Valentine to make sure they were available the next night for the séance.