Page 1 of Gumbo, Ghosts, and Deadly Deception (A Midnight House Mystery #1)
ONE
My morning had started with chicory coffee, a busted air conditioner, and a skunk in the linen closet.
Which made it a regular old Tuesday at Midnight House, the bed and breakfast I had recently inherited from my great aunt.
It was one thing to tell stories about eighteenth century duels gone wrong and Victorian ladies dying of a broken heart, but it was another thing altogether to think Odette was hanging around scrutinizing how I ran the B&B.
Which would not be, according to her, The Way Things Were Done. But were more along the lines of The Way Things Had to Be Done For Me To Make Any Sort of Profit.
I was halfway through my second cup of coffee when I heard the thump-thump-thump of a struggle behind the laundry room door.
I set down my ghost-shaped mug and opened the door to find my skunk, Teddy, burrowing into a freshly folded stack of bath towels on the shelf.
He looked up with the wide-eyed innocence of someone who absolutely knew he wasn’t supposed to be in there.
“Teddy,” I said, striving to be stern even though—let’s face it—he was adorable. “Explain yourself.”
He chirped, leapt free of the towels, and waddled out with the same self-assurance he’d had the day he broke into the mini-fridge in the communal parlor and stole a hunk of Gruyere meant for the afternoon charcuterie board.
Teddy was a skunk among skunks. A skunk savant, really, who had the instincts of a detective and the attitude of a jazz trumpeter in the French Quarter at midnight—cool, sharp, and just a little unpredictable.
He was also descented and recently had become the star of our social media campaign to bring more attention and hopefully guests to the B&B.
“Don’t give me that look,” I muttered, grabbing the disheveled towels and tossing them into a laundry basket to be rewashed.
The guests were generally charmed by Teddy but that probably didn’t extend to drying off with towels he had rolled around in.
I shoved the basket to the side, determined to return to my coffee when a faint, sweet aroma made me pause mid-step.
Gardenias.
But it was October, and the gardenia bush in the courtyard had long since finished blooming.
The B&B had been in my family, the Bergerons, for four generations, and I had grown up running through its Victorian hallways, though I had never expected to inherit it.
Aunt Odette had always emphatically stated that, and I quote, no Millennial who made a living from her cell phone could ever appreciate Maison de Minuit.
Which grossly misstated my career, but I got tired of explaining how podcast advertising worked and left her to her opinions.
My family had always assumed she was planning to bequeath the house and its wonky plumbing (seriously, why did every toilet require a ritualistic triple flush?) to the historical society.
But nope. She’d left it to me six months earlier and I had traded my cramped Magazine Street apartment for fifteen rooms of creaking Victorian splendor.
The first thing I had done was shift from the French name of Maison de Minuit to the more tourist-friendly Midnight House.
Then I had stopped using terms like "historically atmospheric" and "spiritually enriched" and leaned in hard to the haunted house angle.
We’ve. Got. Ghosts.
That was our new official slogan used on everything.
I had grown up listening to Odette's stories about the house.Tales of Confederate soldiers who checked in but never checked out, of jazz musicians whose melodies still drifted through the walls on humid nights, and of a young woman who'd vanished during Mardi Gras 1984, leaving behind only a room full of gardenias and a half-finished letter.
Those stories may or may not be accurate but they were our dangling carrot for the paranormal curious.
The gardenia scent grew stronger as I pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen.
If I smelled out of season flowers, skeptic or not, I was going to make a video about it and post it.
I pulled my phone out to record but Teddy ran over to the back door and perched on his haunches, his black and white fur gleaming in the morning light.
He chittered softly, then turned his attention back to something only he could see.
"What is it, boy?" I knelt beside him, following his gaze toward the courtyard. If it was rats I was calling an exterminator. I don’t do rodents.
The banana trees swayed in the October breeze, their broad leaves casting dancing shadows across the brick pathways.
Everything looked business as usual, with no sign of critters or anything out of the ordinary, except for the small pile of gardenias scattered near the base of the old crepe myrtle tree.
My stomach did a little flip that I refused to acknowledge.
I'd lived in New Orleans my entire life, had grown up surrounded by voodoo shops and ghost tours and people who claimed to commune with the dead.
I was willing to acknowledge that the city held mysteries I couldn't explain, but practical enough to look for logical explanations first.
All while profiting off the paranormal.
Fresh gardenias in October were a little weird. But New Orleans in general was a little weird.
"Probably just fell off somebody's funeral arrangement and blew over here," I told Teddy, who gave me a look that clearly said he wasn't buying it. "Or maybe Mrs. Patterson from next door was doing some late-night gardening."
The skunk's expression remained skeptical.
The old brass bell over the front door jangled and I turned away from the window, casting a longing glance at my now-cold coffee. I wasn’t a total Millennial. I had no use for iced coffee. Give me piping hot java all day long.
My phone screen read 7:15 AM, which meant whoever was at the door was either very early or very lost. Check-in wasn't until 3 PM, and most tourists didn't venture into the Marigny before double digits on the clock. The Big Easy led to big hangovers.
"Coming!" I called, straightening my vintage Saints T-shirt and running my fingers through my dark curls.
Teddy trotted alongside me as I hurried back through the dining room, past the parlor with its velvet furniture and mysterious cold spots, and into the foyer where the grandfather clock continued its cheerful rebellion.
A willowy woman stood silhouetted in the foyer’s stained-glass light.
She wore a flowing purple dress and enough chunky crystal jewelry to either summon the spirits or open up a boutique.
With her silver hair and her combat boots I could easily picture her reading tarot cards in Jackson Square for thirty bucks a pop.
Or heck, maybe it was more now. I tended to avoid the Quarter and its throng of tourists these days.
But I had walked by enough readings in my lifetime to know the drill.
I see a romance in your future. You’re about to come into some money. You are lonely.
They all said the same thing. Optimistic but vague. That was the key. Sort of like what I promised my guests. We. Have. Ghosts. But…they might not take a shine to you and be shy during your stay.
“Welcome to Midnight House,” I said, stepping forward with my best ‘B&B proprietor who definitely has her life together’ smile. “I’m Harper Bergeron, owner and unofficial ghost wrangler. You must be Ms. DuMont?”
We only had one guest due to check-in today, which was good, because I was going to have to call the HVAC guy. Again. The neighbors were going to start to think I had a crush on Ralph of Ralph’s Heating and Cooling.
“Call me Delia,” she said, her voice a high lilt that seemed at odds with her mysterious Bohemian style. It had a hint of Valley Girl to it. California native, maybe? Maybe not so at odds then. “The spirits told me I’d love it here.”
“The spirits don’t lie,” I said. “Usually. Except for that one time in Room 5, but we don’t talk about that.”
Delia smiled faintly. As she pulled a purple rolling suitcase behind her she glanced around the foyer.
Her eyes lingered on the old grandfather clock, then drifted upward to the chandelier that was swaying gently even though no one had touched it.
Not even the air conditioning, which definitely wasn’t doing a dang thing.
“There’s something here,” she murmured.
“Most of it’s dust,” I said lightly, though a chill prickled up my spine. “You're here for the Crescent City Paranormal Convention, correct? You're early, but that's perfectly fine. Your room is ready.”
"Time," Delia said softly, "is more of a suggestion than a rule, don't you think?"
I had no idea what that even meant. “The IRS doesn’t seem to think April 15 is a suggestion,” I joked.
Delia gave me a look that reminded me of Aunt Odette when I was six and had run straight through the screen door off the kitchen. Like I wasn’t very bright.
"I trust all is arranged for tomorrow evening?”
I nodded. She had booked the parlor for a private event. “Yes, of course. A table, eight chairs, appetizers.”
“I'm hosting a séance for some colleagues. Nothing theatrical, just a quiet gathering to commune with the spirits of your beautiful home."
That was news to me. The séance part.
I felt a flutter of anxiety. I'd inherited the B&B's reputation along with its mortgage, which meant that roughly half my guests expected genuine supernatural experiences.
The other half expected me to debunk any ghost stories they encountered.
Both groups left reviews, and both groups affected my bottom line.
It was important to me to control the narrative.
If I had known Delia DuMont was hosting a séance I would have arranged for my best friend, Maggie Martin, to be present to film with me.
I might be something of a marketing genius—thank you very much—but Maggie knew sound and editing.
Together, we’d created the hit true crime podcast, Gumbo and Gris Gris: Crime in the Crescent City.