Page 17 of Gumbo, Ghosts, and Deadly Deception (A Midnight House Mystery #1)

TEN

That night, I couldn't sleep.

Which wasn't unusual for me since moving into Midnight House since old buildings make odd noises. But this night the combination of creaking floorboards and my overactive imagination often kept me tossing and turning. Every sound felt significant and my attic room seemed full of extra shadows that I’d never noticed before.

All of which presumably had an explanation but it still had me whipping my head around to squint into corners every five minutes.

At 2 AM, I gave up on sleep entirely. When I checked the time I saw I had a text from Maggie that I’d missed at some point when my eyes were screwed shut praying for sleep. It had come in around midnight.

Ginger’s got priors. In ’85, she was questioned in connection with a poisoning. Not charged.

Poison? That made me sit straight up in bed.

There was a follow-up from Maggie.

Claimed it was an accident. But maybe her whole mystical herbs thing is a cover.

Maybe. But I guess two accidental poisonings in forty years wasn’t that insane?

Or maybe it was.

Throwing back my covers, I tugged on a sweatshirt over my tank top and pajama shorts.

Phone in hand, I padded downstairs to the kitchen, Teddy trailing behind me.

The house was quiet except for when I hit the landing on the second floor I heard Abigail Hart listening to videos on her phone in Room Three.

Once in the kitchen, I made myself a cup of chamomile tea and sat at the table, staring at the hidden door I'd discovered behind the pantry. Even though I'd explored the secret room and read Aunt Odette's journals, something was still nagging at me. A piece that didn't quite fit.

"What do you think, Teddy?" I asked my skunk, who was conducting his nightly inspection of the baseboards with full dedication. "Are we missing something obvious?"

Teddy chittered softly and continued his patrol.

That's when I remembered the tarot card.

The Tower card I'd found on the stairs the night Delia died. I'd been so caught up in everything else that I'd barely examined it. I'd shoved it in the kitchen junk drawer and forgotten about it completely.

I opened the drawer and rummaged through pens, rubber bands, and loose batteries until I found it. The card was slightly bent at one corner, and the illustration of the lightning-struck tower seemed more ominous in the dim kitchen light than it had before.

But as I turned it over, I noticed something I'd missed entirely. There was writing on the back, in sharp, slanted handwriting.

#25. Back room. Ask for Lucien.

My heart started beating faster. This wasn't just a random tarot card that had fallen from Delia's deck. This was a message. A clue.

But a clue to what? And who was Lucien?

I pulled out my phone and googled "#25 New Orleans," but got a million hits and nothing useful. Then I tried "Lucien New Orleans" and got results, but none of them seemed relevant to psychic mediums or missing persons cases.

Maybe it had nothing to do with anything. Maybe that had been on Delia’s tarot card for years. I turned the card over again, tracing the number.

Frustrated, I was about to give up when Teddy made an urgent chittering sound. He'd stopped his baseboard inspection and was sitting at attention, staring at the back door.

This was the part where I had to fight with myself. Open the door and potentially be abducted or open the door and find a clue of some sort.

Then I realized the only thing I was going to find on the other side of the door at two in the morning was a pile of gardenias (which would freak me out completely), the wind, or a killer.

None of those seemed like anything I wanted to tackle in the middle of the night in my pajamas.

“Um, hi?”

I jumped and turned toward the doorway to the hall.

Abigail was standing there, also in pajamas. But unlike my sloppy shorts and massive sweatshirt she was in cute satin lounge pants and a matching satin button up top emblazoned with pumpkins.

“Hi, Abigail. Sorry, you startled me.”

“I’m a night owl and I thought I heard you talking so I was just looking for some company. I can only look at pimple popping videos for so long before I question my existence.”

If I even watched one of those I would question my existence so I fully understood. “I couldn’t sleep either. That was me talking to my pet skunk.”

I realized that might have just officially put me in the eccentric category.

“Come on in and join me,” I added. “Do you want some chamomile tea?”

I was actually grateful for Abigail’s cheerful presence. The vibe tonight had been spooky and it was getting under my skin. Making me jumpy.

“I’d love some, thanks.”

As I got up and pulled down a tea mug, Abigail asked, “Do you read tarot?”

I glanced back over my shoulder. Abigail was looking at the tower card sitting on the table.

“No. I’m just trying to solve a riddle.” Maybe if I talked it through out loud with someone who wasn’t invested in the situation it would give me some clarity. “Do you know anything about tarot?”

“No. But this card looks like a castle. You just know there’s a moat surrounding it and a dungeon underneath it.”

“It’s definitely a foreboding card.” I poured hot water into the mug and dunked the tea bag in it to steep.

Then suddenly I stood straight up.

Basement.

Ginger kept insisting underneath…basement…

Dungeon.

The Dungeon.

The bar in the Quarter.

#25. An address? No. Twenty-five was a quarter. The Quarter.

That had to be it.

“Abigail, I think that’s it. It’s a dungeon.” I set the tea in front of her.

“Okay,” she agreed cheerfully. “Glad I could help!”

My heart was racing, which meant that now sleep was really going to be impossible. I couldn’t go to the Dungeon until tomorrow afternoon anyway so I needed to strive for patience.

Might as well be a friendly hostess. “What brings you to New Orleans? Are you meeting up with someone or traveling solo?”

“I’m here for Homecoming weekend. I graduated from Tulane last year and moved back to California. I’m meeting up with friends all weekend.”

That reassured me. I felt oddly concerned for Abigail’s safety running around New Orleans by herself being super friendly. Which was ironic, given that I had her staying in a room where a potential murder had occurred.

Also, she had attended Tulane so she was at least familiar with New Orleans.

“That sounds fun. I went to Loyola,” I told her. “I’ve lived here my whole life though.”

“It must be so cool to have a house like this.” She sipped her tea and glanced around the kitchen. “Though your WiFi is a little dicey.”

“Everything is a little dicey,” I remark. “She’s a beautiful lady but lawd, is she high maintenance.”

Abigail laughed. “Then I know she and I will get along just fine. So Hollis isn’t your husband? Or boyfriend? He’s super cute.”

I was pretty sure Hollis would hate that description of him. I hated it too. At least coming from Abigail. But far be it for me to stand in the way if they shared some sort of mutual attraction. “He’s a good guy.”

Then my best intentions flew out the window and I heard myself say, “But cranky and set in his ways.”

Neither of which was one hundred percent accurate or anything that bothered me.

I was just jealous.

Maybe Hollis didn’t have a Harper situation.

Maybe I had a Hollis situation.

The Dungeon was the kind of place that you could walk past a hundred times without noticing.

The sign wasn’t substantial and if you were the timid type you might feel like it was a place you shouldn’t just enter randomly.

Like you had to be in the know. It had definitely catered to the goth crowd in decades earlier but had settled into a mix of both local and tourists as patrons in recent years.

The doorman was built like a refrigerator, arms crossed over his chest. He gave me a slow, unimpressed once-over. “ID.”

“Seriously?” I asked. That wasn’t a question that was asked very often anywhere really. It was also only four o’clock in the afternoon so I wasn’t sure what mischief he thought I might be capable of.

He nodded.

Given that he looked like he could benchpress a car, I dug around in my bag and pulled out my driver’s license. “I’m here for Lucien,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt.

I didn’t even know if I was right about my far flung guess but I might as well discover I was wrong right off the bat.

To my amazement, the name got a reaction. There was a flicker of recognition in the doorman’s eyes before his expression smoothed. He barely glanced at my driver’s license before he stepped aside.

“Where can I find Lucien?” I had no interest in just wandering around the Dungeon.

“Who’s asking?”

“Harper Bergeron. Midnight House.” I figured he’d already seen my ID so what difference did it make?

He nodded, but he didn’t say anything beyond, “In the back.”

That wasn’t particularly helpful. But I just gave him a smile and started into the bowels of the bar, passing black walls and fake skulls along the way.

At least I had dressed appropriately. I had on a sweatshirt with a sugar skull on it in honor of the season.

Hopefully it didn’t make me look like I was trying too hard.

I passed a couple of counters where patrons were resting on stools in the dim space. The glaring contrast between the afternoon sunlight and the bar was disorienting. It could have been midnight in here for the lack of light. The air smelled like liquor, with just a hint of something else.

The bartender leaning on the bartop in the room furthest from the front looking bored was your standard NOLA bartender in her twenties or early thirties, wearing a black corset, with hair dyed blue, and a lip ring. Her bare arms were covered in tattoos.

There was no one drinking in this room and I could see she was scrolling through her phone.

“Hi, can you tell me where Lucien is?” I asked.

She gave me a look I couldn’t decipher. But she didn’t peel herself off of the bartop as she just said, “I don’t know.”