Читать книгу Death Comes to Dogwood Manor - Sandra Bretting - Страница 9

CHAPTER 4

True to his word, Lance arrived at the mansion in under ten minutes. The moment he entered the hall, a stately African American in a crisp navy police uniform, the crowd reverently parted to let him through.

He quickly made his way toward me and offered me his hand.

“Hey there.” He pulled me to my feet.

“Hi, Lance.”

“We’ve gotta stop meeting like this, Missy. People are gonna talk.”

“Let ’em. I’ve been accused of worse things.”

He led me down the hall to the empty foyer. Once there, he withdrew a notebook from the pocket of his uniform, while I tossed the empty water bottle into a trash can.

I proceeded to tell him every detail about the morning. How I’d tried to find Herbert Solomon in the library…the box from Olde Time Books of New Orleans that sat on the floor…even the way Cole Truitt spoke about his boss’ death.

By the time I finished, at least four pages’ worth of notes spooled through Lance’s notebook. He flipped it closed, then checked his watch. “Is that everything?”

“’Fraid so.” I swallowed, annoyed to feel the tickle return. “That’s all I can remember anyway. You’ve got your hands full here, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll call you later.” He gazed over my shoulder. “I need to go inspect the bedroom and establish a chain of command. Don’t forget to come over to the station later so I can videotape your statement.”

“I know, I know.” I didn’t mean to sound flippant, but I’d been through the drill many times before. “I’ll head over there after my eleven o’clock appointment.”

“Sounds good. And you might want to take it easy today.” He frowned. “Don’t roll your eyes at me… I mean it. Sometimes shock doesn’t set in for several hours. And I know how you get. You’ll tell everyone you’re ‘fine,’ and then you’ll fall apart in private.”

He knows me too well. “Okay. I’ll take it easy.”

“I’ll call Ambrose for you, so he knows what’s going on.”

“Please don’t,” I said. “We’re right in the middle of the wedding season. He’s got a thousand things on his mind, and he doesn’t need something else to worry about. I promise I’ll tell him tonight. Just as soon as I get home.”

While Ambrose and I had started out as friends, we were now roommates in a bubblegum-pink cottage that sat on the outskirts of Bleu Bayou.

“Good,” Lance said. “He should know what’s going on with you.”

Once our interview was over, Lance turned and began to walk toward the bedroom. Unlike before, when construction workers gathered in tight clumps to gossip, hard hats in hand, now the hall stood empty.

I turned the other way and left the foyer. It felt surreal to dart under the tarp and emerge in bright sunshine. Everything looked so normal outside the mansion.

Over there was the rosebush, where a lone cicada had serenaded me earlier. Beyond it were the marble steps, which led to an ornate gate with a useless lock that dangled from a length of chain. It felt like days had passed—not just minutes—since I’d arrived on the property, and I was surprised to see the sun wasn’t higher in the sky.

Once again, the hammering, sanding, and scraping were silenced, replaced by the cccrrruuunnnccchhh of pea gravel under my feet. Once I reached Ringo, I started the car’s engine and began to drive down LA-18, my thoughts a million miles away. I barely noticed the sugarcane fields, which looked brown in the summer sun, or my favorite restaurant, Miss Odilia’s Southern Eatery.

I only snapped to attention when I entered the parking lot at the Factory and spotted cars crammed cheek by jowl. It’ll take a miracle to find a parking spot this time of the morning.

Unfortunately, arriving at the Factory at eleven was as bad as getting to work at three. No one would leave until lunch, and then they rushed out en masse, leaving the whole lot wide open.

In between, the stragglers—like me—cruised around and around, until the patron saint of parking blessed us with an empty spot.

This time, the saint heard my prayers on the third go-round, and a gap appeared between a tiny MINI Cooper and a white-paneled van in the last row. No doubt the oversized van, splashed with the colorful logo for Flowers by Dana, had shielded the spot from other drivers.

I breathed my thanks as I pulled into the parking space. Once I threw Ringo’s door open, I gingerly stepped onto the asphalt. Heat radiated off the pavement in waves as I barreled across the lot and moved through the door of Crowning Glory.

Beatrice stood behind the cash register. While she should’ve looked rested after taking the morning off, she looked even more strained than usual.

“Hi, Bea.” I longed to blurt out the news of my discovery, but I didn’t want to work us both into a panic. Better to give her the news in little dibs and dabs. “It’s been a crazy morning, but I came back for our eleven o’clock appointment. Where is she?”

“Thank God you’re here!” Beatrice blew out a puff of air, which ruffled her brown bangs. “I was worried about you.”

I started toward the counter but became distracted by a feathered fascinator someone had knocked to the ground. I gingerly picked it up and fluffed the smashed hat before I returned it to its spot on a display table that looked surprisingly bare. “What happened to all the other stuff that normally goes here?”

“It’s a funny story.” Somehow, she did not look amused. “And I heard about what happened to you this morning. Everyone’s talking about it.”

No doubt. “Okay, but first things first. What’s been going on around here?”

I gingerly approached the cash register, wary of the changes in both my store and my assistant. While Beatrice normally wore wonderful costume jewelry made with enormous rhinestones, today her ears and neck were bare. The gemstones usually matched her apparel—a man’s dress shirt, which she tucked into a pencil skirt, for a fun, funky vibe—but now her shirt billowed over the skirt haphazardly.

“I’m almost afraid to ask,” I said. A mound of sparkly jewelry greeted me when I reached the counter. “Let me guess…you got stuck holding a baby this morning, and it didn’t go well.”

“Bingo.” She swept out from behind the counter and wearily plopped onto a bar stool. “We had a second-time bride come in. With her whole gang.” She began to rub her bare earlobe, the skin raw and red. “The little tyke yanked off my jewelry, but his mom didn’t even notice.”

“And he took the hat stands off the table, too?” While it sounded far-fetched, stranger things had happened in our store.

“Oh, no. His sister took those. Did you know those things make excellent weapons? She pretended one was a sword, and then the little angel wouldn’t give it back.” Her voice dripped sarcasm. “She even got me in the legs…more than once. Look.” She pointed to a hole in her tights.

“Ouch. Don’t worry. I’ll pay for those. And what’s that spot on your skirt?”

“Jelly. Blackberry, of course. The darkest kind they make.”

I moved to a stool next to hers. “Take it to the dry cleaners and charge it to the studio. Now…what happened to our eleven o’clock appointment?”

“She called and said she had an emergency, so she had to reschedule. Something about a problem with her wedding chapel.”

“Oh, no.” My hand stalled. No doubt the bride had planned to use Dogwood Manor for her nuptials, and now she’d had to reschedule. There was no telling how many people Mr. Solomon’s death had affected. Or how many of our clients, although that seemed a bit selfish, given the circumstances.

“I’ll bet you dollars to donuts she booked the wedding chapel at Dogwood Manor,” I said, “and now she has to scramble to find a new place. So, did you hear that I was the one who found Mr. Solomon’s body this morning?”

“That’s right!” Her eyes widened. “And here I am babbling on and on about me and my morning. What happened?”

Although barely thirty minutes had passed, no doubt half of the population of Bleu Bayou knew by now, and the other half would find out by lunchtime. News traveled fast in Bleu Bayou, or, as we liked to say, it traveled at the speed of boredom.

“Mr. Solomon was lying in a back bedroom,” I said. “I thought it was a pile of dirty laundry at first.”

“Shut up!” Tired or not, Beatrice found the energy to slap her hand over her mouth the minute she said that. “I’m sorry…I’ve gotta stop using that expression.”

“It’s okay. I understand why you’d be surprised.”

“Stuff like this keeps happening to you. I mean…what are the odds you’d be the one to find another body?”

“Tell me about it. My friend, the detective, came over right away. He’s going to handle the investigation.”

“Wow. Do they know what happened?”

“No, not yet. Everyone thinks it might be a heart attack. But the guy also had a real talent for making enemies.”

“I know all about that, remember? He and my uncle weren’t exactly friends. In fact, they bickered like an old married couple. I never could tell whether they really hated each other or they just loved to fight.”

I shrugged. “Guess your uncle doesn’t have to worry about him anymore.”

“That’s true. But what was it like to find the body?”

“Well, like I said, I didn’t know it was a body at first.” Truth be told, the glass finial had captured my attention, not the person lying under it. All that changed when I realized the bauble was resting on someone’s back. “But I saw Mr. Solomon earlier today, and he didn’t look well.”

“What do you mean?”

“He had a skin rash and he’d gone completely bald.” I suddenly realized why Beatrice would want to know. “Wait a minute. Didn’t you want to become a pharmacist when you went to LSU?”

While she’d planned to enroll in the pharmacy program at the University of Louisiana at Monroe after her undergraduate studies, Beatrice changed her mind when she realized how much memorization it’d involve. She made the right choice to give up on the pharmacy program, given her quirky personality, but she still was a whiz at medicines and such.

“Let me tell you about his symptoms,” I said. “The rash was purple with red bumps. And he didn’t have one strand of hair left. He was completely bald.”

I could almost hear her mind working. After a moment, she leaned back. “Sounds like a metalloid poisoning.”

She must’ve noticed my blank expression, because she spoke again. “You have your heavy metals, like mercury or lead, and radioactive ones, like radium. Sometimes they build up in the immune system until your body begins to shut down.”

“But would that cause a skin rash? It even showed up on the back of his hand.” I’d noticed it when he took the pen from Erika Daniels in the library.

“It could cause the rash to spread. We’d call it a sign of the poisoning. A symptom would be something only he could feel…like sleepiness or confusion.”

“I noticed the rash right away.” His scalp had seemed bruised when I’d spied him under the ladder. And, although he’d always been skinny, the shoulders of his dress shirt sagged midway to his elbow.

“Well, you’ll have to see what the coroner says, but it sounds like he had signs of acute metalloid poisoning.” Her diagnosis complete, Beatrice squinted. “Now, the real question is…who would do something like that?”

“I don’t know.” Although, to be honest, the image of Cole Truitt immediately came to mind. “One construction worker told me the crew members had been taking bets on when the old man would have a heart attack.”

“Ouch. That seems a little cold.”

“Exactly. And Mr. Solomon barked at everyone this morning. There’s no telling how many people he’s ticked off along the way.”

People like Shep Truitt, as a matter of fact, who had nothing good to say about the man. And if the foreman would confide in me, a total stranger, who knew how much he really hated his boss? Ditto for Erika Daniels. While she didn’t complain about him, she’d seemed ready to clobber him when he’d criticized her in the library.

“Bottom line is, half the people in Bleu Bayou probably wanted him gone,” I said. “And the other half would help them do it.”