Page 4 of Gumbo, Ghosts, and Deadly Deception (A Midnight House Mystery #1)

THREE

The next morning, the house was damp and stuffy from the leftover humidity of last night’s storm. Not that humidity is ever really a leftover in New Orleans. It’s always on the menu as the main course.

Still no A/C, which meant the call to Ralph I meant to make yesterday was now top of the priority list for today.

Sure, it was October, but fall was a mere suggestion in Louisiana.

Waiting for cool weather in New Orleans was like a woman on the lookout for an engagement ring from a foot-dragger of a boyfriend.

It might show up tomorrow or possibly never.

As I stood in the kitchen, barefoot on the cool tile, watching the coffeemaker sputter and steam, I thought about the card I’d found the night before.

I hadn’t told anyone about it.

What would I even say?

“Good morning, I found a tarot card predicting death on my stairs last night. Cream and sugar?”

Well, not death on my stairs. I didn’t think. Or maybe it was literal? The railing was a little wobbly.

I’d just tucked the card into a kitchen drawer to decide later if I should mention it to Delia or not.

Teddy was perched on the windowsill, nose twitching toward a crack in the glass where the rain had left a muddy trail. He hadn't moved much since sunrise. That was always a sign. When Teddy got quiet, something was coming.

“Don’t suppose you’d like to solve this one for me,” I muttered, pouring coffee into my mug.

I heard the front door creak open, followed by a man’s voice. “Harper?”

I poked my head out of the kitchen and found Beau Williams in the foyer, rain-damp curls falling into his eyes, a manila folder tucked under one arm like it might contain either historic blueprints or a treasure map.

We had known each other since preschool and other than one night our freshman year at Loyola, when Beau had tried to kiss me, and I had nervously laughed, crushing his tender teen heart, we’d gotten along well.

“I brought the property records you asked for,” he said with a sheepish smile, shrugging off his jacket. “And a fresh croissant.”

“You’re amazing, thank you. Coffee?”

The first few months running the B&B had just been baptism by fire, but now that things had settled down a bit, I wanted to do my own research on the house. My aunt—hell, my entire family—was known to embellish the truth. I wanted to separate fact from fiction.

“You know I can’t say no to you.”

Sometimes Beau still sounded a little flirty with me, but I always chose to soundly ignore it. Before I could answer, measured and slow footsteps sounded on the stairs. Delia DuMont appeared at the landing.

She looked a little different.

Not in a “skipped the hair and makeup” kind of way. In a “I haven’t slept and possibly spoke to the dead for hours” kind of way.

She wore a silk emerald green robe with embroidered flowers along the sleeves. I wasn’t sure it was a day outfit or a wrap for her pajamas. It certainly looked comfy and sophisticated all at once. She carried her tarot deck pressed tightly to her chest. When she saw Beau, she paused.

“Oh,” she said, her voice brittle. “Hello. A new guest?”

Beau gave her a polite nod. “No ma’am. I’m a longtime friend of Harper’s.”

“Delia, this is Beau. Local historian and amateur croissant courier. Beau, this is Delia DuMont, one of my guests. She’s here for the paranormal convention.”

“I hear that’s a spirited event,” Beau joked.

Delia didn’t smile. “Do you keep records of this house?”

Beau blinked, caught off guard by the question. “Some. It’s been rebuilt a few times, but most of the original structure is still intact. Why?”

Delia hesitated, then glanced at me. “Do you have a basement?”

“Basements and soft soil aren’t a good fit. Just footers and spiders.”

“Is there anything beneath the foundation? A crypt, maybe?”

Beau and I exchanged a look. Midnight House might be a tinge in the direction of gothic, but it wasn’t Paris catacombs level of creepy.

“Nope, nothing under there. This isn’t one of those European castles,” I said.

Delia didn’t respond. She simply turned and walked back upstairs.

I stared after her, eyebrows lifting.

“She’s been like that since she checked in,” I murmured to Beau. “Nervous. Jumpy. Keeps saying things like ‘the veil is thin’ and talking about murder.”

“Old houses have their secrets,” Beau said, opening his folder. “Maybe this one has more than most, though I am certain if a murder happened here we’d know about it.”

I snorted. “Absolutely. There would be a plaque on the front of the house announcing it.”

He laid a set of papers on the kitchen table: deeds, maps, old photos.

I skimmed the oldest floor plan. There was nothing unusual until Beau pointed to a faint pencil mark behind what was now the kitchen pantry.

“This wall wasn’t always here,” he said. “There was once a passage that led to the back garden where the summer kitchen was. Closed up sometime in the 1920s and then presumably knocked down at some point since it’s no longer there. The door is still under the drywall, I’m sure.”

“That’s not very exciting. I was hoping for a secret room at the very least. Possibly a hidden wall safe with a few hundred grand in it. You know, that sort of thing.”

He gave me a small smile. “Sorry, nothing on the blueprints. Have you checked the attic for hidden treasure?”

Before I could reply, there was a knock on the kitchen door.

Teddy started and bolted behind the cupboard.

The door swung open and Maggie strode in, carrying her ever-present tumbler, which I knew would contain iced coffee. “What’s up? Murder Maggie in the house.”

Beau made a face. He thought encouraging the nickname was flippant and disrespectful of human life. “Good morning. You look…festive.”

Maggie had naturally blonde hair, perfectly symmetrical features, and a body like a back road—full of curves.

All of which frustrated her and she generally ignored except when it was convenient not to, like while avoiding a speeding ticket or getting free drinks.

She was usually dressed like a teen skater boy, baggy pants and Converse with graphic T-shirts.

But this day she was wearing a black tutu with purple knee socks, a black lace shirt, and a tiny witch’s hat tilted jauntily on her head at an angle.

“You like it?” She did a curtsy. “If we’re filming today, I want to get some video as well so I might as well embrace the Halloween vibe.”

I glanced down at my gray joggers and my Metallica T-shirt. “I feel like I need to change.”

“Definitely.”

“I think you look fine,” Beau said.

Maggie turned and rolled her eyes at me. She thought Beau was too much of a yes-man. But considering her terrible taste in men—we will not discuss the time she started writing to a convicted felon for a podcast episode and thought he was a changed man—I thought she was too hard on Beau.

“Change after we do all our set-ups and sound checks.”

The day was a flurry of activity from feeding my guests to setting up the parlor for the seance to helping Maggie film a few shorts for our channel. Beau had left immediately after realizing he might be expected to haul chairs or be in a video but he said he would be back for the séance.

I was too busy to take another peek at the papers he’d brought me.

By the time Delia came down the stairs to the parlor in head to toe purple velvet, Wednesday evening seemed to match her mood.

Both arrived with all the drama of a Gothic novel.

We were on the tail end of hurricane season and Mother Nature liked to frequently remind us we were all living on the edge in a geographic bowl under sea level.

Storm clouds rolled in from the Gulf, the air grew thick with the promise of rain, and every light in the house flickered at least once before seven o'clock.

By the time Delia's guests began arriving, Midnight House was practically vibrating with atmospheric tension.

After the early morning outfit shaming from Maggie, I'd dressed for the occasion in a vintage black dress that had belonged to Aunt Odette.

Partly because it seemed appropriate and partly because all my other clothes were in the laundry.

Teddy wore his formal collar—the one with the tiny bow tie—and had positioned himself near the parlor door like he was setting up for a photo shoot as a bouncer.

The first to arrive was Father Claude Broussard, a tall, silver-haired priest who'd been performing cleansing rituals at allegedly haunted locations around the city for the past twenty years. He wore his regular collar instead of his exorcism gear, which I took as a good sign. He had started out his career forty years ago as a church sanctioned priest, but somewhere along the way had been asked to leave due to his nontraditional views on certain topics. Meaning, he was way too inclined to declare there were demons here, there, and everywhere. I wasn’t sure if he was technically excommunicated or if they still even did that anymore, but I was pretty sure his current title as “Father” was self-imposed and his suit and collar were from a costume shop.

But, in spite of his paranormal paranoia, he’d always been super nice to me and he was one of Odette’s inner circle of friends. I hadn’t realized he had known Delia, but they must have known in the same crowd back in the day.

"Harper, child," he said in his gravelly voice, kissing both my cheeks. "You look just like Odette in that dress."

"Thank you, Claude. Delia's set up in the parlor whenever you're ready." I knew he wanted me to call him ‘father’ but the ick factor on that was too high. I had a father, thank you very much, and he was retired and living in Lake Charles.

He nodded, then lowered his voice. "I must ask if there has been any unusual activity since our psychic friend arrived?"

I thought about the gardenias, the whispers in the walls, the way Teddy had been acting overly suspicious. "Define unusual."