Текст книги "Plantation Shudders"

Автор книги: Ellen Byron

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Chapter Twenty-Four

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Gran’ cautioned. “It could be a common burglar. I’ll see if my jewelry is gone and you do the same.”

“I don’t have anything worth stealing.”

“Well, the burglars don’t know that.”

The women went into their bedrooms and checked on their valuables, which in Maggie’s case meant sentimental costume jewelry like a charm bracelet she’d received for her seventh birthday featuring images of the Spice Girls, a pop group she’d idolized at the time. She and Gran’ then reconvened in the living room.

“Nothing’s missing,” Maggie reported.

“Nothing of mine either.” Gran’ said. “I never thought I’d be disappointed not to be robbed.”

“So all they wanted was Beverly Clabber’s things. How did they even know I had them? Or that she had them?”

“I think if we knew that, we’d know who killed the poor woman. By the way, hiding the copies in that ‘Receipts’ folder was very clever of you. At least you still have something to work from.”

“To be honest,” Maggie confessed, “I didn’t do it on purpose. I just grabbed the nearest empty folder.”

“My dear, learn to take a compliment.” Gran’ stood and stretched. “I’m going back to bed.”

Maggie stared at her grandmother. “You can sleep now?”

“Well, I don’t see any use in the alternative. I’d much rather be killed in my sleep than lie awake waiting for it.”

“Gran’, that’s so brutal.”

“I prefer to think of it as practical. Good-night.” Gran’ walked to her room but stopped in the doorway. “Although do throw the deadbolt tonight for a bit of extra insurance.”

Gran’ disappeared into her room and Maggie stared at the mess on the floor. No ring or brochures magically materialized, so she put everything back in the drawer, which she then maneuvered into place. The only item she kept out was the folder with the copies.

She got up, threw the deadbolt, then returned to the desk and turned on the desk lamp. Unlike Gran’, there was no way she could sleep. Instead, she pulled out the copy of the McDonough Castle brochure and powered up her tablet. An Internet search yielded the website for the castle, and Maggie studied it carefully. The “About” tab took her to a chatty page that shared the castle’s history as the ancestral home of the Murrays, Scottish-landed gentries who could trace their peerage back to the late seventeenth century. The eldest Murray laid claim to the title Duke of Dundess.

At the bottom of the page was a crest, and under that a monogram. Maggie pulled out the copy of Beverly’s ring; the florid script on it was an exact match to the McDonough Castle monogram’s calligraphy. Clearly, Beverly had some connection to the place. Was she just a McDonough Castle fangirl? Maggie knew the obsessive love people developed for a certain part of the world. The Cuties were the perfect case in point. Maybe Beverly was a British Castle Cutie. If Maggie was going to discover whatever it was that motivated Beverly to ape the monogram’s calligraphy, she needed to learn more about the castle, which meant going beyond the first page of the search.

But first, she stared at the crest. She could swear she’d seen it before but couldn’t place where. She closed her eyes, took some meditative breaths, and tried clearing her mind.

*

The next thing Maggie knew, sunshine was streaming through the windows and Gran’ was gently shaking her. “Wake up, darlin’. You fell asleep right on top of your computer.”

Maggie roused herself and looked at the computer screen. Her castle search was gone, replaced by gobbledygook. At some point, she must have passed out with her head resting on the keyboard and hit a bunch of keys.

“Jan is back,” Gran’ said as she adjusted the tie on her bathrobe. “The police can’t charge her with anything until they get the results from the DNA test. Heavens, listen to me. In my life, I never thought I’d sound like some character from a TV police show. Back to business; the Cuties are staying here with her, but our other guests are preparing to check out.”

“No,” Maggie said, frowning. “I need more time.”

Gran’ went into her room to dress for the day and Maggie retyped her Internet search, this time listing it as “information on McDonough Castle and Cobs Manor.” On the second page, she found the connection between the two historic sites featured on Beverly’s brochures. Cobs Manor was also an ancestral home of the Murrays, sort of a summer place.

She canceled her search and entered “Duke of Dundess—McDonough Hall.” An obituary for Hamish Murray, a.k.a. Lord Livingston, Duke of Dundess, filled her screen. A solitary sort, he had passed away only a few months ago at the age of ninety-two, survived by no one. She entered another search specifically for the late duke, and a brief article from one of Scotland’s leading newspapers, The Herald, popped up. It was titled “American Royalty?” and explained that because Hamish left no heirs in the British Isles, his attorneys had to cast a wide net. They managed to track down a very distant relative in the United States, guaranteeing that the dukedom wouldn’t go extinct.

Maggie sat back and digested this information. Was horrible Hal Clabber slated to be the next Duke of Dundess? She had read enough Jane Austen to know that inherited titles only passed to sons, not daughters—at least in the nineteenth century. Maybe things had changed in the last two hundred years. She searched “inherited peerages” and was disappointed to see a long list of articles about an ongoing battle in Britain to allow daughters to inherit when no son was in the picture. Apparently, things hadn’t changed, which pointed to Hal Clabber, which made no sense since he had died of natural causes while his wife was the murder victim.

Maggie groaned. Then a sentence under the title of one article caught her eye: “Most Scottish peerages, like the ancient English baronies, allow the peerage to pass to the ‘heirs general,’ so females can inherit them.”

“Oh my God,” she said. It was all starting to make sense.

Gran’ came out of her bedroom, dressed in a pale blue linen sheath with matching sandals. “I heard that,” she said. “Are you onto something?”

“I think so.” Maggie filled Gran’ in on what she’d learned so far. “What if Beverly, not Hal, was next of kin to Hamish Murray?”

“That would certainly explain the signet ring. Beverly Clabber, Duchess of Dundess. It would also explain why she bragged to Yvonne about having something to lord over me. At the end of my time on this earth, I will have been many things, but a duchess is not one of them.”

“What it doesn’t explain is why she was murdered.”

“Well, why do people kill?” Gran’ mused. “There’s jealousy. And please rule me out on that score. Then there’s money. Lots of people kill for that. I adored your grandfather, but believe me, there was the occasional time when I understood why someone would do in their spouse for the insurance payout.”

“Gran’!” Maggie admonished.

“I’m sorry, but the man did have his days.”

Maggie picked up where Gran’ had left off. “There’s fear, there’s feeling threatened. There’s revenge. And then there are sickos who just kill for fun.”

“My goodness, there are so many reasons to murder that it’s a wonder any of us live to see another day.”

Maggie tabbed back to the McDonough Castle homepage and stared at it. “I know I’ve seen that crest before. This is making me nuts.”

“You know what you need to do, dear.”

“Yes.” Maggie repeated by rote, “Clear my mind and give space for the answer.”

“Exactly. I’ll see you at breakfast. I believe we’re having pecan pancakes. At least Mr. Clabber isn’t around to complain that we’re predictable.” With that, Gran’ sauntered out.

As soon as she was gone, Maggie closed her eyes and willed her mind to sift through its memories. Pictures floated through her recollections, some lovely, some not. While she quickly shook off the image of Debbie’s lifeless body, she was tempted to linger at the memory of Bo’s kindness during her dark moments the night before. Instead, she concentrated all her energy on the image of the crest. And suddenly she remembered. She knew where she’d seen it. Then she finally landed on the significant snippet of conversation from the Clabbers’ funeral.

One by one, images clicked into place until they formed a clear picture of Beverly Clabber and Debbie Stern’s murderer.

Maggie threw on a clean T-shirt and jean shorts. She ran out the front door of the shotgun and past Gran’, who was chatting with the Butlers and Carrie and Lachlan Ryker. “Gran’, have they hauled away the garbage yet?” she called to her.

“No, dear. Late as usual. Someone really should complain to—”

Maggie didn’t stop to hear the rest of the sentence. She just ran, ignoring the glances that the Butlers exchanged with the Rykers. She reached the back of the Crozat property, where unsightly items like the B and B’s dumpsters were housed, and noticed a log cut from the stump of an old cypress tree. It took all her strength to push it next to the dumpsters, but she managed to maneuver it into place. She then climbed on it, threw one leg over the edge of a dumpster, and jumped in. Fortunately, the Crozats composted as much solid waste as possible, but given the effect of Louisiana’s humidity on garbage, the dumpster still smelled wretched. For once, it didn’t bother Maggie, which she credited to her olfactory glands having been beaten down by the stench of the Georgia boys’ room.

Raccoons had gotten into the trash. Bags were ripped open and stuff was strewn about. Maggie hoped that even given the wide debris field, garbage was still generally grouped together. She wandered through the dumpster until she found an item that narrowed her search. She planted herself in the northwest corner of the dumpster, pawed through god-knows-what, and finally found the crumpled sheet of paper that she was looking for.

“Yes,” she cried out triumphantly. “I was right.”

“Uh, are you okay?”

A male voice startled her. She looked to see Shane Butler and Lachlan Ryker staring at her with odd expressions.

“I . . . I accidentally threw out something I needed, but I just found it.”

“Oh,” Shane said. “That’s good. Need any help getting out of there?”

“No thanks. I’m fine.” Maggie willed them to leave. She desperately needed to get in touch with Bo and didn’t want any guests around when she made the call.

For a moment, there was an awkward standoff. Then Lachlan shrugged. “Right then. No worries.”

The two men walked off, much too slowly for her taste. She took out her cell phone, but it rang before she could call Bo and alert him to the evidence she’d dug out of the dumpster. The screen flashed “Gaynell.” Maggie answered the call with a quick “Hey.”

“I have info for you,” Gaynell said. “About Pi Pi Iota. I think I know why the Georgia boys are at Crozat.” Gaynell filled her in and by the time she reached the end of her story, Maggie was furious.

“Those creeps. I’m booting them out right now. Look, Gaynell, do me a favor. I think I know who killed Beverly Clabber. Call Bo and tell him this.”

Maggie shared her theory. When she was done, Gaynell was silent for a minute. “It’s so hard to believe that anyone would be that demented,” she finally said. “But I guess it does make a very sick kind of sense. I’ll call Bo, but be careful, Maggie. This is dangerous stuff.”

“Don’t worry. I’m never without my gris-gris bag.” Maggie patted the waist of her jeans, where she thought she had pinned the protection bag Lia had made for her. It was gone. “Great. It must have fallen off somewhere in here. I don’t have time to look for it now. I promise I won’t do anything until Bo gets here. I have to go.”

“Maggie—” Gaynell said, but Maggie ended the call. She climbed out of the dumpster, hopped to the ground, and took off for the Georgia boys’ room. The boys were packing and the door was wide open. She ran in and slammed the door behind her.

“Jesus,” Georgia One said. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

“Two words,” Maggie said through clenched teeth. “Southern Glory.”

Georgia One’s face relaxed into a smile. “Aw, dang, you found out. We wanted to surprise y’all.”

“I’m chapter president, so I get to tell her,” Georgia Three said. He then adopted the voice of a documentary narrator. “Every year, the Beta Chapter of Pi Pi Iota hosts a celebration of our beloved Deep South’s glorious history. We rent out a plantation and assume the ranks of Confederate soldiers, from officers on down. We stay in tents on the property and our dates stay in the plantation’s housing. We rent uniforms and wear them the entire time and on a Saturday night host the Robert E. Lee Memorial Ball, where our dates get to wear the kind of ball gowns ladies wore back then.”

“At the ball, we pretend that the Confederate Army won the War of Northern Aggression,” Georgia Three threw in. “It’s totes awesome.”

“We’ve spent a lot of time this summer checking out different plantations. And congratulations. We’ve chosen Crozat as this year’s location for our Southern Glory Weekend.”

Maggie was so filled with anger that for a moment, she couldn’t speak. She felt like she might explode and hoped she was too young to stroke out. “Get. Out.”

“Huh?” Georgia Three looked confused.

“Get out now or I swear to God, I will have the police run you out of here. And don’t ever come back to Crozat.”

“Hey, if we leave, we take our business with us,” Georgia One said, insulted. “And after what’s gone on here, you guys should be thanking us for even still thinking about renting this place.”

“Yeah,” Georgia Two chimed in. “You’re lucky we think a place where there’s been murders is cool.”

Maggie’s face twitched as she tried to calm down. “Let me try to explain this to you,” she said working to keep her tone even, despite the rage she felt. “Obviously we celebrate aspects of our Southern heritage here in Pelican, and especially here at Crozat. But there are many aspects of our history that we’re not proud of. There’s a saying, ‘To forget is to condone.’ We can’t acknowledge the good without paying homage to the bad—something your incredibly superficial event ignores. So we would never sanction it, no less let it happen on our property. Have I made myself clear?”

“I think she’s on her period,” Georgia Three whispered none too quietly to his cohorts.

Maggie had had it. “If you’re not gone in five minutes, I will find rabid dogs and sic them on you,” she screamed at the boys. She flung open the door and slammed it shut behind her. As she marched back to the shotgun, she saw the Butlers’ car pull out of the driveway. The Rykers were loading up their SUV. Then Maggie noticed Angela and Suzy carrying suitcases to the Cuties’ minivan. She ran up to them.

“You’re leaving too?”

“We have to,” Angela said. “We’d booked a return flight for tonight and it’s really expensive to change.”

“We’re on fixed incomes,” Suzy explained.

“We were going to stay here for Jan, but she wants us to get back to New York and post positive updates about our trip on our website. We need to do some damage control about Debbie and her plans and her murder.”

“Well,” Maggie said, trying to sound nonchalant, “we’ll miss you.”

She bid them good-bye, and then as she walked away, pulled out her cell and texted Bo one word: “HURRY!”

Maggie hastened into the shotgun, eager to update Gran’ on her theory, as well as the morning’s events. The living room was empty. “Gran’?” she called out as she went into the kitchen and got a glass of water. Her throat was scratchy from yelling at the Georgia boys, and the water soothed it. She heard muffled sounds coming from Gran’s room, and ran in. But the bedroom was also empty. “Gran’?” she called again.

“Help!” came Gran’s voice. Maggie traced it to the closet.

“What the—” She ran to the closet and pulled on the doorknob. “It’s locked.”

“I know. I was puttering around, minding my own business when someone threw a pillowcase over my head. They made me get the key to this door, then shoved me in here and locked it.”

“Was it a man or a woman?”

“I couldn’t tell. The voice was very low and rough. It could have been a man, or a woman disguising her voice.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll find the key.”

Maggie turned to start the hunt and screamed. Facing her was Emily Butler. She had a Crozat kitchen knife in her hand. Maggie recognized it as one of the sharpest.

“I don’t think you’ll be finding that key,” Emily said in a whisper. “But I’m guessing you did find the stupid drawing of the knight that my stupid husband made.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Emily poked Maggie with the knife and motioned for her to move into the living room. “I don’t want your grandmother to hear my voice,” Emily said in a venomous whisper. “She could identify me. Tell her you’ll be back when you find the key.”

With a knife jabbing painfully into her stomach, Maggie did as she was told.

“Thank you, dear,” Gran’ said from the closet. “And if you could hurry, that would be wonderful. It’s a bit stuffy in here.”

Emily prodded Maggie into a far corner of the living room, away from the windows. “So did you find it?” She stuck her with the point of the knife so sharply that Maggie felt it draw blood. “The sketch with the knight and his crest that Shane was supposed to throw away. Did you find it? Did you?”

“Yes,” Maggie said quietly.

“That idiot,” Emily said through clenched teeth.

Maggie winced as the knife’s point pocked her skin. The screw was now painfully on the other foot. “So thanks to him,” Emily continued, her tone aggrieved, “I had to figure out a way to fix this. Which, being a problem solver, I’m proud to say I’ve done.”

“Congratulations,” Maggie said. “Any chance it doesn’t involve my death?”

“Ha, ha. Nope. Now, step one—leave your cell phone on the table. And hand over the doodle.”

“That sounded kind of funny.”

“Do it,” Emily hissed with fury.

“And that didn’t.”

Maggie took the balled-up scratch paper and her phone out of her back pocket and placed both on the desk. Emily stuffed the paper into the front pocket of her pants and then took out a dog leash and attached it to Maggie’s belt loop. “This is to make sure you don’t run away.” She secured the leash and then used her weapon to steer Maggie down the shotgun’s long hallway. “Now let’s go out the back door into the woods.”

Maggie had always welcomed the shotgun’s slight isolation, but now she cursed it. The back door opened into the no man’s land of Crozat, a dense area of woods and thicket rarely ventured into by family or guests. “Please,” she said to Emily, “whatever you’re going to do with me, all I ask is that you don’t hurt my grandmother.”

“No worries. You’re a threat; she’s harmless. If she’s lucky, someone will find her before she suffocates in that closet. If not, well, she’s old. She had her life.”

Emily and her knife stayed so close to Maggie as they entered the woods that she could feel the girl’s warm breath on her neck. Twigs snapped and scraped her feet. She’d picked the wrong day to wear flip-flops. Then again, she hadn’t foreseen being the prisoner of a lunatic.

Her heart thumped so loudly that she could hear it. She needed to calm herself so she could think rationally. “It’s interesting how the mind works,” she said, keeping her tone as calm as possible. “My dad and I were talking about keeping secrets and it reminded me of something, but I couldn’t remember what. When I was looking at Shane’s sketch, it came to me. How he said at the Clabbers’ funeral that Mrs. C hadn’t even told Mr. C she’d lived here before. That’s a huge secret. Why would you not share that with your husband but tell a complete stranger? Unless the person you told wasn’t a stranger.”

“Shut up and keep walking,” Emily snapped. Maggie was encouraged by the undercurrent of nervousness in her captor’s rough tone. A vulnerable head case might be more malleable than a confident one.

“That’s why you were always in your room, wasn’t it?” she said. “You were planning the murders.”

“A little. And then we’d have sex. The planning got us hot.”

“Ugh, gross!”

“God, be a prude why don’t you?” Emily said with a smirk.

Maggie silently cursed herself. She’d shown an emotion and now it was advantage, Emily. “Whatever,” she said, resuming her casual tone. “By the way, nice move bringing up how the poison could have been planted earlier. Even when they found the old box of arsenic from the plantation store, that thought was still on people’s minds.”

“Thanks, but I really can’t take credit for that one. That moron Jan gave me a gift with her speech about how ‘no one here is a murderer.’ Which made it hilarious when the cops thought she was.”

“Hilarious. Not exactly a word I’d use in the situation.”

“Jesus, get a sense of humor.”

Maggie and Emily continued to trudge through the woods, but their psychotic chitchat had given Maggie time to think. She slowed down, forcing Emily to slow with her. “You know, there are snakes out here,” she told her captor, hoping to scare her. “Poisonous ones.”

“If you see one, let me know so I can push you on it. Having you die from a snake bite would save me a lot of trouble.”

Well, that was an epic fail, Maggie thought. “What exactly is your plan for me?”

“I wanted to surprise you,” Emily said, sounding more like she was talking about a birthday party than a murder. “But what the hell. The plan is stab you, then push you in the bayou. By the time anyone finds your body, Shane and I’ll be long gone.”

“Okay, first of all, the definition of bayou is ‘a slow-moving stream,’ so don’t count on my body being quickly carried away to oblivion. And second, Shane’s already gone. I saw him pull out this morning.”

Maggie hoped this news would upset and distract Emily, but instead she just smirked. “Sorry, but he just went to town. He’s being the wonderful husband who wants to buy some last-minute gifts for his poor wife who got the shock of her life when she discovered a fellow guest’s lifeless body. Nobody’ll suspect us for a minute.”

“Unless they wonder why the same person found two dead bodies—Debbie’s and potentially mine.”

“Hmmm. Good point.” Emily pondered this potential dilemma, and Maggie congratulated herself on derailing the girl’s master plan. “Oooh, I know. We’ll have Shane find your body instead of me. I told you I was a problem solver.”

“Yeah, you’re brilliant,” Maggie shot at Emily. She was frustrated to find herself thwarted again. “Why did you kill Debbie, anyway? I know you did it. You can tell me; I’m going to be dead soon so it’s not like I’ll turn you in.”

“She heard something she shouldn’t have. She told us she’d never tell and actually knew a way to make it work to both our advantages. She wanted to tie our castles into this secret plan she had for the Cuties. You know, create a Castle Cuties group that she could develop and market the same way she planned on capitalizing on the whole Cajun Cutie thing. But she was screwing her own friends, so I didn’t exactly trust her.”

“Nice move stealing and hiding the scarf to implicate Jan in Debbie’s murder.”

“You know, you’re awfully chatty for someone who’s going to die in a few minutes.”

“I’ve never been in this position before,” Maggie said. “To be honest, I think maybe I’m in shock.”

“I looked up the symptoms of shock when I had to pretend I was in shock after killing Debbie. The way you’re acting wasn’t on the list. Maybe you still think you’re going to live.” Emily stopped, threw her hand over Maggie’s mouth, and gave the knife the deepest thrust yet. Maggie let out a muffled cry. A few tears even escaped, despite her determination to hide her fear and pain. Emily pulled her hand away from Maggie’s mouth and smiled. “That’s better. Now walk.”

The two women trudged through the dense foliage in silence. Sweat dripped into Maggie’s eyes and burned them. “You know,” she said after a few minutes, “there are alligators this way.”

Emily stopped and Maggie sensed she’d finally struck a nerve. “You’re lying,” Emily said.

“Feel free to take that chance.”

They walked a few more steps, and then Emily stopped again. “Is there another way to the bayou?”

Maggie nodded and started in a new direction, Emily and the knife right behind her. They pushed back branches and batted off swarms of mosquitoes as they got closer to the bayou. The ground was uneven and both women stumbled occasionally, but Emily still managed to keep the knife in the small of Maggie’s back even as she clutched her captive’s arm for balance.

“I don’t know how you live in this place,” Emily grumbled. “I can’t wait to get out of here. I can’t wait to get out of America.”

“So that’s the plan? Move into one of your newly inherited estates, Your Highness? Or is that not what you call duchesses? Maybe it’s ‘milady.’ That’s what Beverly Clabber would have been if she’d lived. It’s what she and Hal called each other the one night they were with us. ‘Milord’ and ‘milady.’”

Emily said nothing. She just continued to push Maggie through the woods.

“You may have stolen the rings and brochures from my house, but what you didn’t get were the copies of them that I made,” Maggie continued. “And I stared at those copies long enough to remember where I’d seen the Murray family crest before. On the paper scrap in your room. It was the crest on the knight’s shield. And I thought, could the person who murdered Beverly be next in line for the Dundess inherited peerage? And could that person be you or Shane? My guess, given your family’s background, is that it’s you.”

“Wow,” Emily said. “Way to put things together. I thought you were just some whiny, self-involved artist.”

Maggie was surprised to find herself stung by Emily’s judgment. “I’m going through a hard time, okay?”

“Like I said, whiny. Yeah, it’s me. My dad told me when I was little that we were distantly related to this titled Scottish family, but the odds of us ever inheriting were pretty remote. Then I started doing some genealogy research. The family was a bunch of nut jobs—I mean, literal nut jobs, like they ended up either in loony bins or killing themselves—and there was just one old guy left in Scotland. When my dad died, that meant I was next in line on our side. But then I found out about Beverly, a Murray on her mother’s side. She was one less removed than I was, so she’d be ahead of me, which made me really mad. You know why she changed her name from Francine to Beverly? Because Beverly was the name of the first Duchess of Dundess. What a wannabe.” Emily peered ahead. “I think I see the bayou. God, I never thought we’d get here.”

Maggie stopped short. “Oh, crap.”

“What now?” Emily said, annoyed.

Maggie pointed to what looked like a large piece of wood. “There—a gator.”

“Bull,” Emily scoffed. “That’s a log.”

“Does a log have two eyes? Let’s go—quickly.” Maggie turned abruptly, throwing Emily off balance. As Emily tried to steady herself, Maggie threw her weight into her captor. Emily let go of the leash she’d attached to Maggie, and the knife went flying out of her hand as she fell into the hole that the treasure-hunting Rykers had dug. She clawed at the edge as she pulled herself to standing. It was a surprisingly deep hole, and Emily was in it up to her neck. “My leg,” she screamed. “Oh God, it hurts. I think it’s broken. Help, please. Get me out of here before the alligator sees me.”

Maggie knelt down and got in Emily’s face. “You can just rot here until I come back with the police. Because, guess what? You were right. That is a log.”

Maggie stood up, triumphant over her enemy. But Emily still looked terrified. “I’m not talking about that one,” she said, gesturing to the log with her hand. “I’m talking about that one.” Emily pointed beyond it to what looked like another log.

Only this one moved.