Page 25 of Gumbo, Ghosts, and Deadly Deception (A Midnight House Mystery #1)

FOURTEEN

Suddenly, I understood exactly who had been trying to silence everyone who got too close to the truth about Francine Darrow.

It wasn't Father Claude, protecting his guilty secret.

It wasn't Hollis, defending his father's reputation.

It wasn't even Ginger, driven by forty years of grief and rage.

It was Arthur—mild, harmless Arthur—who had been staying in my house all along, watching and waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

Hollis didn’t answer when I called him.

Maggie was pacing back and forth in the studio.

“Try Hollis again. Text him it’s urgent.”

“He’s driving Abigail to the airport. He’s probably not looking at his phone. He seems like the safe driver type.” Had he told me what time Abigail’s flight was? Things were getting muddled in my head.

“What do we do?”

“I don’t know. Something feels…off.” I closed my eyes and tried to remember the minute I had realized someone was tugging my purse off of my shoulder.

I tried to visualize the man running away from me.

It seems like he was slighter, a little taller than Arthur.

“I don’t think Arthur was the one who stole my purse. The build doesn’t seem right.”

My phone buzzed on the desk. I snatched it up quickly. I had a text from an unknown number.

Found something you need to see. Meet me at St. Louis Cemetery #1. Come alone. —Beau

"Beau," I said, showing Maggie the message. “Why is he using a new number? And why the cemetery?”

"We’re not going there. Absolutely not. Have you learned nothing from every horror movie ever made? 'Come alone' is code for 'bring a shovel to dig your own grave.'"

"It's Beau. Not to mention it’s broad daylight in a public cemetery. What could go wrong?"

"Said every dumb girl in a movie before she gets whacked.”

“This is too much of a weird coincidence. Why on earth would Beau say to come alone? This is a set up, Maggie. It has to be.”

“I literally just said that.”

She kind of had, but I waved my hand around. “I’ll text Hollis and tell him where we’re at.”

We climbed into my car against both of our better judgment.

St. Louis Cemetery #1, because of its proximity to the Quarter, is arguably the most touristy cemetery in New Orleans, which is saying something in a city where the dead are major attractions.

The above-ground tombs, necessary because of our below-sea-level geography, create a maze of marble and stone.

Some of the tombs have seen better days and are crumbling at a rapid pace, which is unnerving.

That enough time had passed that whoever was interred was no longer remembered or cared for.

It’s a crusty, crumbling little cemetery, the water levels from Hurricane Katrina still visible on some of the tombs.

Tour groups wandered through the narrow pathways, guides spinning tales of a voodoo queen and gambling debts.

A hustler or two was also usually present, trying to pretend they were tour guides, approaching tourists walking alone and offering to tell them tales for tips.

It seems like no matter the time of year, the cemetery was always sweltering hot and an odd blend of history, death, capitalism, and a testament to our obsession with the macabre.

I never went there if I could help it and I couldn’t imagine why the heck Beau would choose to meet there, which made me cautious enough to very seriously consider it wouldn’t be Beau at all, but Arthur Kellum, waiting to unalive me behind a headstone.

Then again, why would Arthur need or want to kill me? I had no evidence he’d done anything, if he was the culprit. I wasn’t sure what his motive would have even been to kill Delia. If it was related to the past, that envelope from Lucien was gone. Presumably in his hands.

But to my complete surprise, we found Beau standing near the tomb of Marie Laveau, the legendary voodoo queen of New Orleans. He looked nervous, glancing around as if he expected someone to jump out from behind a tomb.

"Harper," he said when he saw us approaching. "I said come alone."

Maggie frowned. “You’ve known me for years. What’s the big deal?”

“It’s just…” Beau looked around again.

"Maggie's my backup. And my witness. What is going on? Why are you being so weird, and what did you want to show me?" His jumpy demeanor had me on edge as well.

“I have a confession to make,” he murmured. “That you’re not going to like but I can’t be involved in this and I’m kind of being blackmailed.”

There was dewy sweat on Beau’s upper lip and he took a deep breath.

My eyebrows shoot up. “What are you talking about?”

“Let me try to start at the beginning. But I don’t have much time.” Beau pulled out his phone. "I've been going through my father's papers since Delia died. Found some things that... well, they connect to what happened in 1984."

He showed us a photograph. It was a group of men in suits standing in front of a construction site. I recognized Beau's father immediately. I’d seen him on and off throughout my childhood at various school functions.

“That's the site where the Pelican Development Group was building their first hotel in the Quarter."

"Okay,” I said cautiously. Did that mean Beau thought his father was involved?

"Look at this." He swiped to another photo. This one showed a woman in a light-colored dress standing near the construction site, partially hidden behind a pillar. "I think that's Francine."

I squinted at the image. The woman was too far away to make out clearly, but there was something familiar about her posture, the tilt of her head.

"When was this taken?"

"February 20th, 1984. Two days before she disappeared."

Maggie leaned closer. "Why would she be at a construction site?"

"That's what I've been trying to figure out. But Harper, there's something else." Beau's voice dropped. "There was a client list in Delia's things. The police questioned me and my father about it as next of kin."

"Next of kin?"

"Distant cousin. She didn't have anyone else."

“You’re her cousin ?” Maggie practically shrieked.

My sentiments exactly.

“Distant cousin,” he insisted. “Like third cousins. That branch of the family left New Orleans in the fifties and went west.”

“You didn’t think that was important to mention before now? I introduced you to her!” It occurred to me this might have been how Hollis felt when I failed to mention the note or the phone to him.

“We never met,” he insisted. “I didn’t even know who she was since she was using a made up name. I found out after she was killed.”

That gave me pause. I could almost believe it, but I still felt a little suspicious. “What do you mean by client list?”

“Psychic appointments.”

“What does that have to do with the Pelican Group?”

“There was a missing person consultation on a girl that went missing in 1983 before Francine," Beau said.

"A socialite from one of the old Garden District families who were heavily invested in the Pelican Group.

Big story at the time. A beautiful young woman, wealthy family, no apparent reason to disappear. The case was never solved."

"And Delia was consulting on it?"

"According to this, the girl, Vivienne, her family hired Delia to try to make contact with her spirit. They wanted to know if she was alive or dead."

"That's..." I paused, thinking. "That's probably pretty common for psychics, right? Families of missing people looking for closure? Geez, that’s really sad."

"I guess so. She met with them three weeks ago. Right before she came to your B&B."

The pieces were starting to fall into place, forming a picture I didn't like. Two women, only a year apart, both disappearing under mysterious circumstances. Both connected to the same development company, the same families, the same network of power and privilege that ran New Orleans.

“But we don’t have any way to prove anything about this,” Maggie. “And who the hell is blackmailing you? For what? What did you do?”

That was a great question.

Beau seemed to remember he was potentially in danger.

He wiped his brow and looked around the cemetery.

He took a few steps back, between two tombs that were still well preserved.

"Forty years ago, my father was a good man trying to clean up this city.

Pelican Development was going to bring jobs, tourism revenue, respectability to neighborhoods that were falling apart. "

I had a sinking feeling. “So you’re protecting your father? He murdered Francine?”

“No, of course not. You know my father, Harper. He can be a commanding businessman but he’s not violent. No, I found evidence that my father was concerned about some financial misdealings and that one man in particular might be involved in something even shadier.”

“Who?”

“I can’t say. But if anything happens to me, talk to my father. He’ll know what to do.”

“Beau—”

Beau took another couple of steps back. “I’m the one who stole your purse,” he confesses in a rush of words.

“What?” Maggie demands. “Why would you do that?”

“The evidence…” Beau had cleared the back of the tombs and was now on the gravel path between one set of tombs and the next row.

Alarm bells finally started to ring.

Yep. Definitely a set up.

“Run ,” Beau mouthed to me silently.

You didn’t have to tell me twice. I nudged Maggie hard with my elbow right as someone yanked Beau to the side. It was Arthur Kellum. As I was still trying to figure out what was really happening, Arthur came rushing between the tombs toward us.

He had a syringe in his hand.

That was my cue to get the heck out of there.

Maggie and I both started running, but almost immediately we got caught by a group of tourists taking photos in front of Marie Laveau’s grave. Darn her popularity.

I tried to shimmy around them but I got poked in the eye by a floral arrangement someone had brought to leave as an offering for the famed voodoo queen. I stumbled over a loose stone at the base of another tomb and put my hands out to brace my fall.

In an instant, Arthur hauled me to my feet by my arm and spoke. “Sorry about that, everyone. My daughter had a few too many hurricanes this afternoon.”

The crowd chuckled.

I was about to vehemently protest when I felt the prick of a needle on the inside of my wrist. It didn’t break the skin but it was an obvious threat. I froze.

“Don’t move, Maggie,” Arthur murmured in her direction as she was clearly about to bolt toward the front of the cemetery. “Or Harper goes night-night.”

Night-night ? I was suddenly ice cold in the middle of a sunny October afternoon.

Arthur was cuc-koo .

Maggie stopped her attempt to flee and eyed me with a “what-now” expression. I shrugged.

I flicked my tongue over my suddenly dry lips and managed to speak. “Let’s talk about this, Arthur. You don’t have to do this.”

I wasn’t exactly sure what “this” was but I didn’t want it to happen.

“Come here and sit down.” Arthur gave me a shove in the direction of a flat tomb, the lid slightly askew. “Sit down.”

“On a grave? That seems…rude.”

“Shut up,” he said fiercely. “Just sit down. Let me explain what is going to happen here.”

Thank goodness, because I definitely needed a head’s up if he was going to shove me in a grave and take off running.

“Just so we’re clear, I destroyed all the evidence that Lucien gave you. I should have known she was going to be trouble.”

Maggie was backing up, very slowly, her hands behind her back.

I could see she was trying to get close to the side of Marie Laveau’s tomb.

Maybe she planned to take one of the offerings and whack Arthur on the head with it?

I sincerely hoped she would grab a bottle of wine and not a string of Mardi Gras beads.

Though now that I thought about it, I supposed those would work for strangling Arthur.

But then I remembered how long strangulation actually took and decided the bottle would be better.

"I didn't kill anyone. Well, not back in ‘84.

But I helped clean up the mess left behind after my business associates handled the problem.

Delia was getting too close to the truth though.

She'd figured out about the others. Not just Francine and the girl Vivienne, who Beau discovered, but the women who came after.

Women who asked inconvenient questions about property transfers and missing persons reports that got filed away and forgotten. "

Beau . I tried to look around discreetly. Had Beau gotten away? Maybe he was calling for help.

"How many?" Maggie asked.

"Does it matter? They were collateral damage in a bigger project. New Orleans needed saving from itself, and sometimes that requires difficult choices."

“They were people, Arthur. Just like Delia. And Ginger.”

“Ginger wasn’t my doing. That was on her. Snooping around, she accidentally put the powder under her nose, best I can figure.” Arthur was sweating profusely and pacing in front of me. He’d concealed the syringe again in his shirt sleeve, which was a good sign.

At least I had a chance at escape. I also strongly suspected Maggie was recording this conversation on her phone. She would have had an opportunity when Arthur was shoving me toward the grave.

Arthur’s face had changed. The disinterested, scholarly mask slipped, revealing something harder underneath.

"You're very smart," he commented. "Both of you. Just like Francine was. Just like Vivienne. That's always the problem with smart women. They ask too many questions."

“That’s very misogynistic,” Maggie remarked. “Like appallingly misogynistic.”

Arthur shrugged. “Never had much luck with women.”

With good reason, clearly.

I honestly couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

Arthur Kellum had killed Delia, attacked Ginger, and terrorized my guest. He'd been hiding in plain sight for days, playing the role of the harmless paranormal enthusiast while planning his escape.

But now he was cornered. Beau’s research, mine and Maggie’s poking around, Lucien’s envelope, Odette’s journal, Hollis’s constant police presence had all brought him here, where the dead were laid to rest, his back against the wall.

And cornered animals were the most dangerous of all.

The question was could we disarm him before he bolted and disappeared?

Or before he decided to eliminate the two people who could identify him as Delia DuMont's killer?

He pulled something from his jacket pocket. Not a gun, thank God, but a small glass vial filled with what looked like crushed leaves.

"Datura," he said. "Amazing plant. The Creoles used to call it zombie cucumber. Makes people very compliant, very confused. Easy to lead around, easy to... arrange. You’re both going to take a swig like good girls."

The problem was, Aunt Odette hadn’t taught me to be a good girl.

She’d taught me to stand up for myself.

“Why the hell would any smart woman do that?” I asked.

Then I gave a mighty roar and went at Arthur with everything I had inside me.