Текст книги "Plantation Shudders"

Автор книги: Ellen Byron

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

As she set up her supplies, Maggie’s eyes adjusted to the dark. The outside world fell away as she focused on her canvas. She had taken to painting at all different hours, capturing the way light and dark played with the lush Louisiana landscape. She particularly loved the plantation grounds at night, when clouds, stars, and the moon competed for space in the sky. The evening’s full moon provided the scene with highlights and shadows; Maggie filled in the rest with her imagination.

A long gray cloud wandered over the evening’s full moon, and she took a brief break to let her eyes readjust. She heard leaves crunch nearby. An animal, she assumed, probably a neighbor’s dog. There was another crunch. Then another. And Maggie realized that she wasn’t listening to an animal. She was hearing footsteps.

Maggie was no longer alone.

Chapter Three

Maggie froze, heart pounding. Should I scream? she wondered. No. Relax. It’s probably just a guest who can’t sleep. She took a few deep breaths to calm herself.

“Hello, who’s there?” She called into the darkness. “It’s me, Maggie Crozat. Is everything okay?”

The footsteps stopped. Then they resumed at a quicker pace, fading as whoever it was took off in the opposite direction. Maggie packed up her supplies and hurried home. She checked out the main house and outbuildings to see if the late-night visitor might be one of Crozat’s guests, but all was still in both buildings. She scurried inside her house, double-locked the door, and rested her ear against it, listening for any sound that indicated movement outside. There was a rustle of leaves, and Maggie tensed. She peeked out the front window and noticed Spanish moss swaying from a slight breeze. I must have heard the wind picking up the leaves, she thought. She waited in silence, but there were no more footsteps.

Maggie sat on the couch and tried to calm herself down. The event spooked her. Why would anyone be wandering around Crozat in the middle of the night? And if they weren’t “up to no good,” as Gran’ would say, why was there no response when she called out? Maggie fussed over these questions and more as she readied for bed. She checked to make sure her window was secured, crawled under the bed covers, and fell asleep clutching the gris-gris bag Lia had given her for protection.

*

Maggie woke up a few hours later to find that the weather was growing dark and moody. There was no way the day would pass without a storm, at least a brief one. She decided not to mention what had happened the night before to anyone. She didn’t want to worry her parents or Gran’.

The guests slowly assembled on the veranda for the tour of Crozat, yawning at the early hour and limiting their small talk to perfunctory greetings. The only no-shows were the Clabbers. Maggie debated skipping her hostess duty of checking on them, but guilt propelled her down the hall to their room. She could hear the sound of tandem snoring through the door, so she left the couple to their beauty sleep, although in this case the only thing beautiful about it was that it freed her from their company for a few more hours.

Maggie led her guests through the main house, sharing its history as they went. She was so used to giving tours at both Crozat and Doucet that she could cheerfully impart information while thinking to herself, as she was doing at the moment: How did I go from aspiring artist to plantation guide and maker of cheesy souvenirs?

She took everyone onto the front lawn for a panoramic view of the stately mansion. “Every side of the house has windows almost a full story high,” Maggie shared. “When all of them are open, they provide a cross breeze that I’m guessing saved at least a few of my ancestors from death by Louisiana mugginess.”

“I think I got a bad case of that myself,” Cutie Angela muttered. A stout woman bordering on obese, she wiped perspiration off her second chin before it dripped down to her third.

The group left Crozat’s manicured grounds and hiked through abandoned fields where the plantation’s slave quarters and sugar mill lay in ruins. The Crozats hoped to have the money to restore the plantation’s outbuildings someday, but given the cost of maintaining the buildings that still stood, someday seemed far off.

Maggie stopped in front of what appeared to be a miniature store. “This was the plantation store, which was built after the war. After the Civil War,” she added for Debbie’s benefit. “Postwar, a lot of former slaves returned to their plantations as tenant farmers, so some plantations set up stores where they could buy supplies more easily than going into town. As transportation improved, the stores disappeared. Crozat’s has been closed for eighty years.”

Maggie took a skeleton key and unlocked the store’s old door, which crookedly swung open. Everyone stepped into the space and gazed around the century-old time capsule with fascination. The interior was completely intact, down to a few old cans and other dust-covered items still on the shelves. A turn-of-the-century cash register sat on the counter waiting for what could only be a ghostly transaction at this point. After months of showing off the shop to visitors, Maggie had reached the point where, if she wanted to, she could close her eyes, point to a shelf, and rattle off its faded occupants with 100 percent accuracy.

“Fantastic,” Jan said. The other Cuties echoed the sentiment, as did all the guests.

“Oh, Boo Bear, I love it,” Emily Butler gushed. “Don’t you?”

“Totally, Boo Bear.”

Maggie took a moment to enjoy their reactions. Guests’ enthusiasm made her efforts worthwhile, especially if they translated into glowing reviews on a travel website. “I always like to finish up my tour here. Now, anyone besides me ready for breakfast?”

The whole group answered in the affirmative, so Maggie brought them back to the main house. Since the Georgia boys were heading off on a fishing excursion and the Ryker family on a swamp tour, Ninette packed their breakfasts to go. The Butlers—who would now forever be known to the Crozats as the Boo Bears—asked for breakfast in bed.

“I didn’t know that was an option,” grumped Hal Clabber, whose crabbiness had returned. He and Bev had roused themselves and were seated between Kyle and Jan, who Maggie had learned was the Cajun Cuties’ board president. While the other guests helped themselves to reasonable portions, Hal heaped his plate with pecan pancakes, scrambled eggs, andouille sausage, cheese grits, fruit, and Lia’s delicate croissants, clearly determined to squeeze every last breakfast item out of the complimentary buffet. Bev sported a slightly modified version of her husband’s plate. The couple’s eating habits are eating away at our profits, Maggie thought darkly.

“Everything is delicious,” Beverly said, smiling as always. Maggie wondered if she slept with that grin on her face.

“It’s predictable,” Hal declared. “I’m disappointed in the lack of creativity.”

Then stop stuffing your face with it, Maggie wanted to scream. Instead she said, “We’ll work on that.”

As soon as the guests finished breakfast and left the table, Maggie cleared it. She was about to return to the shotgun when she heard a timid voice behind her.

“Excuse me.” Maggie turned to see Cutie Debbie. “We were wondering if you’d like to come into town with us. We want to support the local businesses and perhaps you could fill us in on some of Pelican’s history on the way.”

Maggie decided to embrace the opportunity to remove herself from the Clabbers’ beck and call. “That sounds like a great idea,” she told Debbie and followed her to the Cuties’ van, where the rest of the group greeted Maggie’s addition to their numbers with great joy. She climbed into the front passenger seat of the van, and they took off.

As Jan drove the women into the village, Maggie pointed out the occasional landmark—like an old schoolhouse that still possessed a working bell and a white-columned Jesuit monastery almost two hundred years old.

“You see that alley of trees that ends in an empty field?” she said to the women as she gestured out the window toward the river. “That’s where another plantation once stood.”

“Petite Chambord,” Jan said. “Once the largest in the area, lost to fire in 1871.”

Maggie looked at Jan in surprise. “Nice. I’m impressed.”

Jan shrugged and grinned. “What can I say? I gotta have something to put in my Cajun Cuties newsletters.”

The van made its way into Pelican and found an empty parking spot in front of Fais Dough Dough. Maggie jumped out and was dropping coins into the meter when she saw Rufus “Ru” Durand saunter toward her. Ru was the Pelican chief of police, a patronage job that few residents gave much thought to since crime in the town was so infrequent. Ru, who was the color and shape of unbaked bread dough, was oblivious to his lack of importance. But fortunately for Pelican, his arrogance and sense of superiority were kept in check by what many locals considered a genetic streak of laziness.

“Hey, Maggie.”

“Hey, Ru.”

Ru took the nightstick he was swinging like a Keystone cop and pointed it at the meter where Maggie was parked. “That got changed, ya know. Only half an hour.”

“Yes, I do know,” Maggie checked her phone. “It’s 8:54. I’ll be back at 9:24.”

“So will I,” Rufus said. “Ready to write you a ticket at 9:25.”

Maggie clenched her teeth and managed to refrain from a nasty comeback. She knew Ru was taunting her. Enmity between her family and the Durands went back more than one hundred fifty years. “Not to worry, Ru. I’ll be right on time.”

“If you say so.” Rufus turned to the Cuties. “Enjoy your all-too-brief visit to the bakery, ladies. And Maggie, tell Lia that I think of free coffee and croissants more as a thank-you than a bribe. I’m just sayin’.”

Rufus winked at her and strolled off. Jan glared at his back. “In New Jersey, we have words for guys like him.”

Maggie laughed. “I bet they’re the same words we have in Louisiana. I’m sorry about that. Let’s just forget it ever happened and buy us some homemade treats!”

The Cuties happily followed her into the store. They shopped up a storm at both Bon Bon and Fais Dough Dough, grabbing many of Maggie’s souvenirs as well as Lia’s treats. While they loaded up their baskets, Maggie filled Lia in on the horror that was the Clabbers.

“What did you do when he said breakfast was ‘predictable’?”

“I responded politely and then spent the rest of breakfast fantasizing about putting my grapefruit knife in just the right position so that if someone ‘accidentally’ tripped Hal Clabber, he’d be impaled by it.”

Lia laughed. “Oh, it’s gonna be a long week. I think you could use some ice cream.”

“We all could. I’ll take a gallon of Brown Sugar. It’ll go great with Mom’s Bananas Foster tonight.”

Lia tried to press the ice cream on Maggie as a gift, but Maggie insisted on paying her cousin for it. Then she and the Cuties drove home as quickly as possible. Rain was certain to come by afternoon or evening, and she hoped the summer storm wouldn’t bring with it a power outage. The Crozats had a backup generator that kicked in pretty quickly, but there was always that transitional moment when guests panicked.

Maggie and Gran’ spent the afternoon helping Ninette prep for dinner and sharing notes about the week’s guests. All three agreed that the Clabbers were awful, the Ryker kids cute, the Butlers bland, the Cuties entertaining, and Georgias One through Three harmless.

“For my money, the most interesting guest in this lot is the handsome Mr. Bruner,” Gran’ said. “He’s quite refreshing for a Texan.”

“What does that mean?” Ninette asked as she put a pot of water up to boil.

“He doesn’t wear cowboy boots, which even the most sedentary of his fellow statesmen insist on tromping around in. And so many of the Texans who come here can’t stop bloviating about how great their state is. Remember that one man? Every time you put out a flower or a piece of fruit, he would say something like, ‘We have roses the size of your head in Texas.’ Or ‘I once grew a cucumber that was as big as a basketball player’s forearm.’ That was my favorite. I wanted to say, ‘Do you live in a state or a nuclear testing site?’”

The others couldn’t help but laugh at this. “I’ll tell you one thing, though,” Gran’ continued. “He’s got a story, that Kyle. Good looking, obviously successful—he had one of those high-end credit cards, didn’t he, Ninette?”

“That’s nobody’s business, Charlotte,” Ninette chastised.

“Well, he did, I saw it. But no wife, no family? And he didn’t set off my gaydar. Trust me, there’s a story.”

Maggie raised her eyebrows. “You know about ‘gaydar’?”

“I doff my cap to the Internet.”

Maggie excused herself from dinner prep to set the table. At five, the guests assembled for happy hour. Tug mixed Sazeracs, and Kyle once again helped serve.

“Oooh, milady would love a refill,” piped up Beverly Clabber, who was buzzing from the first round Maggie had delivered to her mere moments before. She gave her husband a flirtatious poke in the ribs. “What about you, milord?” Hal Clabber grunted what sounded like a yes.

“At the rate those two are inhaling food and beverage, we’ll be lucky if we break even on them,” Maggie muttered to her father as he mixed the couple’s second round. He put a finger to his lips, simultaneously shushing her and suppressing a smile.

Ninette stuck her head in from the kitchen. “Dinner’s ready.”

A loud clap of thunder startled everyone, and then the skies opened. Rain poured down outside and was hurled against the house by wind gusts. The lights flickered for a moment but then regained their power.

“Fantastic,” Cutie president Jan enthused. “Nothing like a Cajun Country summer storm.”

Fortunately, despite the initial noisy thunderclap, the storm wasn’t as close as it seemed, although Maggie could tell it was heading their way. As they dined, the guests filled each other in on their day’s activities. Hal Clabber never said a word, and welcome as his silence was, Maggie began to wonder if something might be wrong with him. Gran’ also seemed to notice the change in his behavior.

“Mr. Clabber, you’re awfully quiet tonight,” she said. The man responded with a grunt.

“Hal’s not feeling great,” Beverly explained. “The humidity here really gets to him.”

“Why don’t we have our liqueurs in the front parlor?” Gran’ suggested. “It’s a bit cooler there.”

“Thanks, but we need to get our boys to bed,” Carrie Ryker said. Her sons groaned and protested, while their sister snarked her refrain about how embarrassing her entire family was.

“And if it’s okay, we’re gonna take it to our room,” Shane Butler said. Emily entwined her fingers with her husband’s. The couple’s lust for each other was starting to annoy Maggie, who wouldn’t have admitted to her best friend that it had been more than a year since she’d even made out with someone.

The Rykers and Butlers took off, and the Crozats herded the rest of the guests into the front parlor. The storm was moving closer to Pelican, with less and less time between lightning strikes and thunder booms. Maggie could tell that some of the guests were feeling jittery. After about fifteen minutes of forced small talk, all conversation petered out. Maggie chose a soothing classical playlist from the bed and breakfast’s iPod, hoping it would distract everyone, but with the storm practically on top of Crozat, even she felt edgy.

“It’s not a hurricane, is it?” Suzy asked after a particularly loud boom.

“No, just a typical summer storm,” Tug said with a reassuring smile. Suddenly, a fierce crackle and loud explosion of sound made everyone jump, and Crozat went completely dark. The room filled with chatter from the nervous guests.

“It’s okay, we have a generator. It’ll come on any minute,” Maggie called to everyone. But the generator didn’t come on, and the guests stumbled around in the dark.

“Dad, what’s wrong?” she asked as Tug pulled out backup flashlights that she quickly distributed.

“I don’t know. I’ll go take a look.” Tug left to check on the generator while Ninette and Gran’ helped the guests with their flashlights. Georgia One held his under his chin and made a face.

“Arghgh, I’m a zombie.”

“Dude, that’s awesome,” Georgia Two said as he and Three broke out laughing.

“Stop it, that’s not funny,” Jan snapped.

“Arghggh.”

“I said stop it.”

“That wasn’t me, I swear,” Georgia One replied. Maggie flashed her light around the guests and finally landed on Hal Clabber, whose face was purple and hideously distorted. Angela and Suzy screamed, as did Hal’s wife Beverly.

“Hal!”

“Arghgh,” Hal choked out. Then his eyes rolled to the back of his head, an enormous shudder engulfed his body, and he did a face plant to the floor.

“Everyone, out of the way,” Kyle ordered the others, who drew back but didn’t leave the room, frozen in either fear or fascination. Kyle dropped to his knees, flipped Hal over, and began performing CPR.

Maggie grabbed the phone and dialed 911. “Help! I’m calling from Crozat, we have a very sick guest.”

“Tug, Tug!” Ninette yelled to her husband, who raced back into the house. Moments later, an ambulance roared up to the front of Crozat. Two EMTs ran in and took over from Kyle, but it became clear that lifesaving measures were unnecessary because there was no life to save.

“Hal, Hal!” Mrs. Clabber cried. She grabbed Maggie and drew blood as she dug her long nails into Maggie’s wrist. “My pills, in my purse, I need my pills.”

Being that Beverly was the kind of woman who never strayed too far from her handbag, it was dangling from a purse holder she’d attached to a nearby lamp table. Maggie fumbled through it and pulled out bottles of Xanax, Zoloft, and Abilify. No wonder she’s always smiling, Maggie thought, then snapped out of it and handed the bottles to Beverly. The woman’s hands shook as she tried to open them.

“Here, let me help.” Maggie opened the bottles, and Beverly grabbed them from her. She quickly choked down several pills.

“Wait, you need water.” Maggie, guided by her flashlight, found a water carafe on the bar and poured a tall glass. “Here, Mrs. Clabber.”

Beverly grabbed the glass with one hand. Then she clutched her chest with the other.

“My heart,” she gasped. Then Beverly made an awful choking noise, frothed at the mouth, and collapsed onto the floor next to the late Mr. Clabber. The EMTs instantly switched their focus to her, but it was obvious that the task was equally hopeless. Mrs. Clabber was as dead as her husband. As the EMTs notified the coroner’s office, a dazed Maggie realized something.

Beverly Clabber had finally stopped smiling.

Chapter Four

Given Police Chief Rufus Durand’s usual slothful gait, it was surprising how fast he and a few of his officers showed up at Crozat.

“Probably to revel in our bad luck,” Maggie muttered to Gran’ as Tug filled Ru in on the Clabbers’ deaths. After discovering that the main house’s blackout had been caused by bad fuses and not the storm, Tug restored power. Meanwhile, Ninette tended to the guests in the kitchen. Liquor calmed all of them fairly quickly, helped by the fact that no one really knew or liked the Clabbers, so the general emotion was a surface shock rather than deep sorrow. The Butlers, who’d come downstairs to get flashlights, joined the others around the kitchen’s large oak table and were filled in on the night’s startling events, as were Carrie and Lachlan Ryker. The Clabbers’ simultaneous demise was rapidly turning into the kind of bizarre story that would elevate each guest’s vacation anecdotes way above a friend’s routine stories.

“Tape off this room and the one where the Clabbers were staying,” Ru instructed a rookie officer, as the couple was bagged and loaded onto the coroner’s gurneys. “I don’t want anyone touching anything until the coroner’s report comes back.”

“Good heavens, you’re being rather dramatic, Ru,” Gran’ said. “It’s tragic those poor people died, but do you really need to turn this into some television episode?”

“Just doing my job, ma’am. Two people dying within minutes of each other could be some kind of crazy coincidence. Or it could be something else.”

“What, like murder?” Maggie scoffed. Ru didn’t say no and Maggie got a sick feeling in her stomach.

“Stop it, Magnolia,” Gran’ reprimanded her. “You’re being as ridiculous as he is.”

“Man, I am working up a powerful thirst here,” Ru said as he leaned against a wall and watched his underlings scurry around Crozat.

“Tug, why don’t you mix Rufus a Sazerac?” Grand-mère said.

Tug didn’t respond, but he fixed a drink for Rufus and handed it to him without a word. Rufus took a swig, closed his eyes, and nodded. “Yeah, that’s right good. You keep mixing Sazzies like this and Crozat might come back from the Katrina dead.”

Maggie resisted the urge to grab Ru’s drink and dump it on his head. She noticed her father clenching and unclenching his fists and hastened to change the subject before either he or she exploded. “Are your guys going to take much longer, Ru? It’s been a rough night for all of us.”

Rufus held out his glass for a refill. Tug mixed him a fresh drink, and then the police chief motioned for Gran’, Tug, and Maggie to follow him out of the room and onto the veranda. The worst of the storm had passed, but a light rain still fell.

“Now, Maggie here happened to mention murder,” Ru said as he chomped on an ice cube. Maggie winced. She could never understand how people enjoyed chewing up something that cold and hard. Rufus addressed Gran’. “You may be right, Mrs. Crozat. Me and Maggie may be making a big deal over nothing. On the other hand, what kind of law enforcement officer would I be if I didn’t at least pursue that avenue of investigation?”

“This is outrageous,” Gran’ fumed. “There hasn’t been a murder at Crozat in over a hundred years. Well, that we know of. Frederick Crozat was found hanging from one of the oak trees around the turn of the old century, but they never did determine whether that was suicide or Arvin Johnson taking revenge for Fredrick bedding his mistress.”

“My concern is the Clabbers,” Rufus said. “I’m gonna get the coroner’s office to put a rush on the autopsies. In the meantime, no one leaves Pelican until we interview every last guest, and that could take some time seeing as how shorthanded we are at Pelican PD.”

“What?” Maggie exclaimed as Tug groaned and buried his head in his hands. “You sonuva—”

“Maggie,” her father warned.

Gran’ pulled herself up to what was left of her full height, having shrunk by four inches over the years. Still, with heels, she managed to be eye-to-eye with Rufus, who skimmed 5'6" on a good day. “If this is standard procedure, that’s one thing, young man,” Gran’ said. “But if you’re milking it to make trouble for us, that is just plain bad manners.”

“Thanks to budget cuts, we genuinely do have a personnel shortage at the station, ma’am,” Rufus responded. “But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying this a little.”

“You are a giant, steaming—”

“Maggie,” Tug said, his tone sharper.

“It’s all right, Mr. Crozat,” Rufus said. “I’ll chalk it up to the situation. But like I said before, I got a job to do. Right, Maggie?”

She ignored Rufus, and he took off in his squad car, kicking up dust and gravel. But Maggie knew he had a point. And she also realized Ru was brighter than she usually gave him credit for.

“Well, I guess I better break it to our visitors,” Tug said.

“I’d be surprised if any of them were terribly upset,” Gran’ said. “Especially if they’ll be staying gratis.”

“Gran’, we can’t afford to do that,” Maggie protested.

“We can’t afford not to, chère. How can we charge them for a vacation spent being grilled by the likes of Rufus Durand? Yes, it will cost us, but if our guests make a disgruntled departure, it will hurt us more in the long run when they post unflattering comments on all the travel websites.”

“I think you’re right,” Ninette said. She turned to Tug. “I don’t see any other way around this, do you?”

Her husband pursed his lips and shook his head no.

Tug assembled everyone in the parlor and filled the guests in on the police chief’s request for their continued presence, leaving out the possibility of murder. Initially, there were a few complaints. “Maybe we should see if they fixed the plumbing at Belle Grove,” Angela groused to Jan and the other Cuties.

Gran’ jumped in before anyone could respond. “Even if they did, this is Louisiana, honey. Lord knows when they’ll get rid of the mold or its awful smell.” She turned up the charm as she addressed all the guests. “Y’all seem like such lovely people and I do believe that once we get past this tragedy, you’ll have a stay at Crozat that’s memorable for the right reasons. I know this experience was not on anyone’s itineraries, so we want to make it up to y’all. The rest of your stay will be entirely complimentary. That means a week of beverages, hospitality, and home-cooked meals on us.”

That silenced the grumblers. The guests, now bonded by what had become an adventure—and a free one at that—commiserated with each other about the shocking turn the evening had taken. A few made shared plans for the morning and exchanged supportive hugs before retiring to their rooms. Only Kyle remained behind.

“Your offer is extremely generous,” he told the Crozats, “but I’d rather book a moldy room at Belle Grove than take you up on it. I’ll be paying for my stay.” The family protested, but Kyle ignored them and walked out of the room.

“What a kind man,” Ninette said.

“He’s awesome,” Maggie agreed.

Tug smiled at his daughter. “Am I picking up on something?”

“God, no.”

“He’s not her type,” Gran’ said. She’d traded her highball glass for a wine goblet. “Too stable. Maggie prefers a man who’s a hot mess.”

“Oh, nice, Gran’,” Maggie shot at her. “And by the way, men aren’t called hot messes, just women.”

“Not according to urbandictionary-dot-com.”

“That’s it, I’m cutting off your Internet access.”

“Enough, you two,” Tug admonished them. “We have bigger problems to solve than Maggie’s love life. I don’t like what Rufus Durand was intimating.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Ninette said. “Why would anyone want to kill them, especially poor Mrs. Clabber?”

“I know,” Maggie agreed. “I can see people lining up to take a whack at him, but her . . .”

“Maggie, honey,” her mother said, “the man may have been a terror, but he is gone. We should show some respect.”

“Ugh, Mom, that’s so old-fashioned. Why should we show respect to someone who didn’t deserve it? Shouldn’t respect be earned? Even posthumously? He was a nasty old coot, and I’m not going to say differently just because he’s dead.”

“Hey, don’t you talk to your mother like that,” Tug scolded Maggie.

“It’s all right, we’re all tired,” Ninette said with a sigh. “I’m going to bed.”

“I am too,” Gran’ said and followed behind her daughter-in-law.

As soon as the women were gone, Tug focused on Maggie. “You need to be more sensitive to your mother’s health, Magnolia. Stress can make a body do bad things, and with two guests dying plus us having to float the other ones, that’s one big bag of stress.”

“You’re right.” Maggie was filled with remorse. “I’m so sorry. That was totally thoughtless of me. I’ll do anything I can to help, Dad. And as soon as things are normal around here, I’m going to work on building up my souvenir business, see if I can get more plantations to sell my stuff. Including ours. Gran’ has to get over thinking it’s ‘déclassé’ to shill our own merchandise.”

Tug looked at her, amused. “Shill?”

“I dated a guy in the garment business when I first moved to New York. And no, he wasn’t a hot mess. In fact, he broke up with me.” Maggie paused. “So maybe I’m the hot mess. Or the just plain mess.”

Tug opened his arms. “Come here.” Maggie shared a hug with her father. Tug sighed. Then he shuddered.

Maggie drew back. “What’s wrong?”

“Well . . . there’s something I didn’t want to mention in front of your mom. Did you happen to notice that the main house was the only one that went dark tonight? When I checked the generator gas line, I saw that it’d been turned off. And I swear I changed those fuses just about a month ago, but the ones that blew were old and worn out. And not even the brand I buy.”

Maggie was silent as she digested what Tug was saying.

“Look, maybe I’m the one who’s being dramatic,” Tug said. “It’s late, and my brain is worn out from all this. I’m going to bed. But first, I’m walking you to the shotgun. I’m sure the Clabbers’ deaths are nothing more than a tragic result of old age and health issues, but I don’t want to take any chances. If Ru’s instincts are as sharp as I wish they weren’t, we’ve got way bigger problems than a lack of cash flow.”