Текст книги "Plantation Shudders"

Автор книги: Ellen Byron

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Maggie stared, frozen in place, as the alligator hefted his enormous body out of the water onto dry land. Emily whimpered, and the gator turned his head toward the women. He eyed them with curiosity.

“What do we do?” Emily asked in a shaky voice.

“Pray that he’s already eaten.”

Emily whimpered again.

“Never show fear to a wild animal,” Maggie snapped at her.

The gator contemplated his next step, which gave Maggie a chance to contemplate hers. As much as she’d love to leave Emily to her fate, she couldn’t bring herself to do that. The gator was moving slowly, as if he had a full belly, but her parents had always warned her not to buy into the misconceptions about a gator’s behavior. Alligators had the ability to move fast on land, and while most avoided human contact, others could be aggressive. The jury was out on this one, but the fact that he hadn’t retreated back into the water was not a good sign. Maggie regretted not asking her parents for a refresher course on what to do should she actually run into one.

“We need to get out of here,” she told Emily.

Emily, who was waist-deep into the hole, tried to hoist herself out of it, and groaned in pain. “I can’t.”

“Great,” Maggie muttered. “I get to save the woman who wanted to kill me. I better get points for this somewhere.”

She bent down, hooked her arms under Emily’s armpits and with great effort, and pulled her out of the hole. She started to drag a sobbing Emily through the woods but stopped when the gator advanced toward them.

“What’s wrong? Why are you stopping?” Emily asked between sobs.

“Our friend there thinks that you’re my prey and I’m dragging you off to eat. Which only makes you look more delicious to him.”

“Oh my God, I’m gonna die.”

“No you’re not. At least not here. Hopefully in the jail where you’ll be spending the rest of your life.”

“Forget it,” Emily cried. “I’d rather be eaten by the alligator.”

Maggie ignored her and thought for a minute. She and some friends had once gone camping in California’s Sequoia National Park. A park ranger warned the group, “If you’re confronted by a mountain lion, don’t act scared and run. Instead make yourselves appear as large as possible, then yell and scream and act like you’re the predators.” Maggie wondered if the same trick might work with an alligator. She dropped Emily, and pulled herself up to her full height, expanding her physical presence as much as she could.

“Yah!” she screamed at the gator as she waved her arms in a threatening manner. The gator stared at her, and Maggie began to panic that instead of telegraphing “Go away!” her actions were sending the message, “Come ’n get it!” But it was too late to take a different tack, so she continued to yell and stomp around like a lunatic. After what felt like the longest seconds of her life, the gator turned away and slowly slunk back into the water until he was completely submerged.

“You did it,” Emily said. “You got rid of him.”

“Yup,” Maggie said as she started off. “And now I can get rid of you. I’ll be back with the police.”

“Wait,” Emily begged. “Don’t. Let me go and I’ll give you whatever you want. I have money. Or one of the castles. I don’t need both; you can just pick one. They’re both awesome.”

“You have got to be kidding.” Maggie, furious, put her hands on her hips and bent down until she was face to face with Emily. “Can you possibly think that I’d be like, ‘Hey, she murdered two people but I get a castle, so no biggie?’ That is the most insulting thing anyone has ever said to me in my life. How dare you think—”

Maggie’s diatribe was interrupted by the sound of shouting.

“Maggie! Maggie, where are you?”

She instantly recognized the voice. “Here, Bo! By the hole!”

Leaves crunched under the feet of someone running through the woods. Bo yanked some branches out of his way as he emerged from the trees with his gun drawn. Gaynell was right behind him. Both ran up to Maggie.

“Are you all right?” Bo asked.

Maggie nodded yes. “But she’s not,” Maggie said as she pointed to Emily, who was making a futile effort to crawl away. Bo trained his gun on her and she stopped. “Emily murdered Beverly and Debbie, and she was going to kill me too. We have to free Gran’. Emily locked her in the closet in the shotgun.”

She began running toward the shotgun, but Gaynell pulled her back. “Your Grand-mère’s okay,” Gaynell said. “We found her when we went to look for you. Bo used GPS to trace your phone to the shotgun house. Gran’s on the veranda having a Gin Fizz and sharing her story with anyone who’ll listen.”

“Thank God.” Overwhelmed, Maggie sunk to the ground, the drama and danger of the morning finally catching up to her.

Gaynell knelt down and put an arm around her friend’s shoulder. “You can relax. It’s over.”

There was the rhythmic sound of steps in the woods, and they all tensed up. Bo quietly circled, gun at the ready.

“Em?” a voice whispered. “Emily are you there?”

“Shane,” Emily called. “Help! I’m hurt and these people won’t let me go. They think I killed those women.”

Shane shoved his way through a tangle of trees and ran to Emily’s side. “What the hell? Boo Bear, what happened?”

Emily burst into tears that Maggie figured were at least half-real, given her busted leg. “It’s awful. Maggie accused me of murder and chased me into the woods, and I fell in a big hole and I think I broke something.”

Shane whipped around and faced Maggie. “I’m gonna sue your ass off.” Then he turned to Bo. “And have you thrown off the force for police brutality.”

Maggie snorted. “Nice act, Shane.”

Bo held the gun on Shane with one hand and pulled out a pair of cuffs with the other. “You’re both under arrest for the murders of Francine-slash-Beverly Prepoire Roubideaux Walker Clabber and Debra Stern.” He holstered his gun and turned back to Shane. “Hands behind your back.”

“You can’t do this,” Shane said as Bo cuffed him. “It’s false arrest. I’m gonna sue your ass off too.”

The others ignored him. “It’s going to be hard to get a stretcher through these woods,” Maggie said. She motioned to Emily. “Do you think we should carry her or let her put an arm around each of us and have her hop out?”

“Don’t you touch her,” Shane shouted. “She might be pregnant.”

“That’s right,” Emily said. Maggie could see Emily looking for a way to use this to her advantage. “Pregnant suspects need to be treated very carefully.”

“Sorry to break it to you, Emily,” Maggie said. “But we happen to know you’re not pregnant.”

“Yup,” Gaynell said. “We found the negative pee stick in your trash.”

Maggie saw the relief on Shane’s face. Unfortunately for him, so did Emily. And it really ticked her off. “The whole thing was his idea,” she cried out. “He forced me into it.”

Shane stared at her. “What?! Are you out of your mind? You’re the one who came up with the entire plan. You said I’d get my own golf course in Scotland.”

“He’s lying,” Emily sobbed theatrically. “He only wanted me to have a baby as insurance. That way we’d definitely have an heir.”

“No, no way, she’s talking crazy.” Shane’s voice and panic level rose simultaneously. “It was all about the golf course. And hunting. I could hunt in England and Scotland at my mansions, but I wouldn’t have to wear a skirt unless I wanted to, and then I’d have my own, one of those kilt things.” Shane devolved into babbling while Emily continued to hurl blame at him.

Maggie marveled at how quickly the couple had gone from sugary “boo bears” to selling each other out. Had they ever really cared for each other, she wondered, or was their connection solely based on a mutual desire to live out some warped version of a fairy tale replete with duchies and castles?

An ambulance siren wailed in the distance. A moment later, a police siren joined in. Shane turned to face Bo. “It was all her idea, I swear. I’ll tell you anything you want to know, just cut me a deal.”

“Don’t believe him, he’s full of it,” Emily said, her tone vicious.

The sirens grew louder as the ambulance and police cruiser drew closer to Crozat. “As easy as listening to you two incriminate each other makes my job, I’m really not interested in some lovers’ quarrel,” Bo said. “I just want to get your statements and hand you over to the DA.”

The sound of sirens was replaced by screeching tires and slamming doors. Someone called Bo’s name and he yelled back his location. Soon the area was overrun with EMTs and police officers. Bo and Cal Vichet led Shane to the black-and-white while Artie got in the ambulance to escort Emily, now officially under arrest, to the hospital.

“Let’s get you home for some rest and a shower,” Gaynell told Maggie.

“That sounds so good right now.”

As she followed Gaynell out of the woods, she glanced back at the bayou and saw a pair of black eyes staring back at her. The gator’s head then rose just above the water, and Maggie could swear it was grinning at her.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

A warm shower and a couple of croissants revived Maggie, and despite the urging of her family, she refused to take to bed like a distressed damsel. She threw on a teal cotton tank top and shorts and then went to find the Rykers before they and their treasure-hunting gear got away. She’d been relieved to hear that both the Rykers and Cuties had delayed their departures, not wanting to leave until they got all the dirt on the morning’s events and arrests.

Maggie found the Ryker kids entertaining themselves on the lawn in front of Crozat. Alice was texting on her cell as the boys tossed a ball back and forth. “Hey,” she greeted them. “Have you seen your parents?”

“They went for a walk,” Sam said, pointing down the road. “We’re sticking around to hear the copper’s story.”

She thanked Sam and headed in the direction that he’d gestured to. After a short stroll, she saw Carrie and Lachlan resting on a boulder, pulling their damp clothes from where they’d stuck to their bodies. Maggie wasn’t surprised to see that they hadn’t gotten very far. It was the kind of clammy Louisiana day that could produce perspiration in only a few yards.

Maggie sat down next to the Rykers. “Hi, there.”

“Hello,” Lachlan said politely.

“You know,” she said. “I realized something very interesting about this week. Well, besides the murders, which pretty much top any list of interesting events. Anyway, what I realized is that most of our guests had an agenda for their visit. What Detective Durand would call an ulterior motive. The Butlers, the Georgia boys, the Clabbers . . .”

“We didn’t,” Carrie said. Her face was red and her voice weak. She was a terrible liar.

“Oh, I think you did. So let’s talk about your clandestine treasure hunting on our property.”

Carrie and Lachlan exchanged a guilty look. “We’re awfully sorry about that,” Carrie said. “It’s just . . . things have been rather hard for us lately. I owned a needlepoint shop in Sydney, but when the economy crashed, it took my store with it and left us with a pile of debt that we’re still paying off.”

“And then about eight months ago,” Lachlan said, “the daily paper I wrote for folded. You can imagine how hard it is to get a job as a reporter these days. I was born in Los Angeles, so I’m actually a U.S. citizen. We thought maybe we’d give America a go, you know, start over and all that. We were going to head straight to LA, where I still have family, but when we read about Louisiana and all the rumors of hidden treasure . . .”

“It was stupid, we know that now,” Carrie admitted. “Color us desperate, I guess.”

Maggie’s anger at the couple dissipated. She could certainly empathize with financial hardship. “Well, you’re not the first people who got sucked into that fantasy. And the hole you dug did save my life.” She paused. “What will you do now?”

“I have a great-uncle I’ve never met who lives in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley,” Lachlan said. “He’s a widower with a nice house, and he offered us a place to stay while we both job hunt. If you can bear our brood for one more night, we’ll start off on the drive in the morning.”

“We’ll pay,” Carrie added quickly. “We insist on it.”

As much as she wanted to, Maggie couldn’t bring herself to take the struggling family’s money. “Please, at this point, don’t worry about that.”

“Thank you so much. Oh, before I forget . . .” Carrie pulled something out of her pocket. It was Maggie’s missing gris-gris bag. “I found this by our car. It’s yours, isn’t it? It must have fallen off when you were rummaging through the dumpster.”

“Keep it,” Maggie told Carrie. “You need it more than I do now. In fact, I’ll ask my cousin to make you each one for prosperity.” Right then, it hit her that she hadn’t touched base with Lia yet. “I have to go. I’ll see you later.”

When Maggie got back to Crozat, she saw Lia’s car parked in front. She ran up the wide-planked stairs into the house, where she found Lia and Kyle in the front parlor with Tug, Ninette, Gran’, and the Cuties, including Jan. Maggie threw her arms around Lia and then took turns hugging Kyle and Jan. “It’s over,” Maggie said as she sank into a damask chair. “What a relief.”

“It wouldn’t be over if it wasn’t for you,” Kyle said.

“Amen to that,” Jan declared, thumping the arm of her chair with her fist for emphasis.

“Thanks, but I had plenty of help,” Maggie said.

Gran’ wagged a finger at her. “Darlin’, what did I tell you about learning to take a compliment? I believe this calls for champagne. Tug, please pop open a few of my personal bottles.”

Tug did as his mother told him and filled delicate flutes for all. They toasted to Maggie, who tried not to feel uncomfortable with the attention. As they were about to sip, Sam ran in yelling, “The copper’s here!” Sam was followed by Luke, Carrie, and Lachlan. Alice lagged behind, trying to pretend that she wasn’t interested in what Bo had to report. But she took a seat in front of her brothers and ignored their griping.

Bo walked in a moment after the Rykers. He was still in his official attire of crisp shirt, blazer, and jeans. But when Gran’ asked if he was on or off duty, Bo quickly responded “off” and took the flute of champagne that she offered him.

“So,” he said as he sipped his champagne. “How is everybody?”

His audience groused, and Maggie chucked him playfully on the shoulder. “Stop being a jerk and tell us what happened. Did they reveal anything?”

“Mack MacIlhoney went from congratulating Kyle and Jan on their releases to signing up Emily as his next client,” Bo said. “So he shut her down as quick as possible. But by the time Shane’s public defender showed up, he’d given us enough of a story to make a cable miniseries.”

“I think I figured out at least part of it,” Maggie said.

Bo grinned. “Go for it.”

“Beverly Clabber was obviously the original distant relative who inherited the peerage. Remember how they called each other milord and milady? They weren’t just being obnoxiously cutesy. They were actually, well . . . milord and milady. That’s what Beverly planned to reveal and throw in Gran’s face. Gran’ may be ‘Louisiana royalty,’ but that’s a joke compared to the real thing, at least in Beverly’s eyes. She would have finally one-upped Gran’. I’m guessing her plan was to make a big announcement and then start flashing the ring around. The initials stand for Beverly, Duchess of Dundess.’”

“Like I care about that sort of thing,” Gran’ huffed.

“You never got the chance to give Beverly that lack of satisfaction because Emily, Miss Next-in-Line-for-the-Title, got rid of her competition.”

“Wait, this means Beverly and Emily were related,” Lia said.

“Very distantly,” Bo said, taking over the story. “In the way that I once met a man whose last name was Rockafellow, and he was distantly related to the Rockefellers. ‘Rockafellow’ was their original name and an ancestor changed it at some point.”

“Did Emily and Beverly know each other before this all came up?” Ninette asked.

“According to Shane, no. Emily only found out about Beverly when she was contacted by the Dundess estate solicitors from Great Britain. That’s when—again, according to Shane, but we think he’s the money in this case—Emily came up with the scheme. She and Shane were both making squat at their start-ups and basically living off Emily’s trust fund, which was drying up. She manipulated her way into getting Beverly’s contact info from one of the solicitor’s assistants and then got in touch with Beverly using ‘family history’ as an excuse. When she found out the Clabbers were coming here, she booked a trip too. She convinced Beverly to keep their connection on the down low so it wouldn’t blow Beverly’s big moment of revealing her duchessdom, or whatever you call it, to Mrs. Crozat.”

“I told you, it’s Charlotte, not Mrs. Crozat,” Gran’ playfully chided Bo.

“Crawfish Crozat,” Maggie exclaimed. The others looked at her, confused. “Shane and Emily—they were the first ones to eat it at Fet Let. Everyone else was worried it might be poisoned, but they weren’t. Because they knew it wasn’t.”

“Exactly,” Bo nodded. “Emily found a time when the Clabbers weren’t in their room, snuck in, and filled Mrs. Clabber’s medicine capsules with the poison she stole from your plantation store. The Butlers had brought their own—Shane told us where they disposed of it, which gave us some solid hard evidence—but Emily thought that using yours would focus the investigation on the Crozats, which it did—”

“Yeah, thanks for that.”

“—very briefly,” Bo continued, ignoring Maggie’s sarcasm. “Emily also knew about the ring and brochures because Beverly had shown them to her. When the police didn’t bring them up, she figured they hadn’t found them, which they hadn’t due to Rufus letting CSI get away with a half-assed job.”

“And pretty much anyone paying attention—which Emily certainly was—could figure out that I was doing my own investigating,” Maggie added, “which led her right to my place when it came to searching for that stuff.”

“Shane admitted that he was the one who planted faulty fuses in the backup generator,” Bo shared. “They couldn’t time when Beverly Clabber would take her medication, but once the storm hit so fierce, it was a pretty safe bet that she’d need something to calm down, and Emily figured a total blackout would kick up the old woman’s anxiety level. As it turned out, the whole fuse thing was unnecessary. When Hal had his stroke, you all just assumed that the trauma of the event triggered a stroke in his wife.”

“The term ‘evil genius’ comes to mind,” Kyle said.

“That’s Emily for sure,” Bo agreed. “The DA’s office researched her background and she appears to have been troubled from early on. She was asked to leave several schools due to disruptive behavior. It escalated to the point of a violent confrontation with another student in middle school, at which point she was sent to a boarding school for girls with personality disorders.”

“Emily once told me that her parents said their lives got more complicated after she was born,” Maggie recalled. “I thought it was such a terrible thing for them to say. But now I guess I understand where they were coming from.”

Bo downed what was left in his champagne glass. “Her behavior seemed to improve after her time at the boarding school, but in retrospect, it seems that her psychosis didn’t disappear, it just went dormant. It was triggered again by the news that she had a shot at becoming royalty. She became fixated on the idea, to the point of it becoming an overwhelming obsession.”

“Much like Beverly,” Maggie said. “I guess it ran in the family.”

“Shane, on the other hand, was mostly in it for the freebies. Although he did say he was looking forward to literally lording it over his blue-collar relatives.”

“I thought you Americans didn’t care about this kind of stuff,” Luke said.

“Most of us don’t,” Maggie replied. “But we still have debutantes and social snobs in this country. And Princess Kate and Prince William brought sexy back to royalty in general.”

The guests continued to pepper Bo with questions, eager to extract every last detail about the case from him. The conversation could have gone on for hours, but Ninette noticed Bo’s energy flagging.

“This has been a very long day and I’m guessing everyone here has quite the appetite,” she said as she stood up. “I’ve got a pot of jambalaya warming on the stove. Tug, will you help me serve?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Tug exited out of the parlor after his wife. The rest of the group drifted into the dining room, leaving only Bo and Maggie in the parlor.

“Thank you,” she said to Bo. “You’re the only one on the force who was really on our side. I owe you, Bo.”

Bo smiled. She had never noticed that he had a slight cleft to his chin. “You don’t owe me anything. But you do owe my kid an art lesson.”