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Dickce shuddered. “How awful.”

Benjy nodded. “Poor woman. She didn’t deserve that.”

An’gel told them about the figure she had seen earlier near Estelle’s apartment.

“Could you tell who it was?” Benjy asked.

“No,” An’gel said. “To be truthful, I’m not completely sure I really saw a person. It was only a fleeting impression, out of the corner of my eye, and by the time I looked, whatever it was had gone.”

“You think it was the person who got into Estelle’s place and put the poison in her whiskey,” Dickce said.

An’gel nodded. “I think it’s a distinct possibility. What I’m wondering is, what poison would work that quickly.”

“Likely it wasn’t poison, Miss An’gel.” Jackson frowned. “Miss Estelle was deathly allergic to peanuts. All somebody had to do was grind up some peanuts real fine like and put ’em in her bottle.”

“How awful,” Dickce said again.

“Did everyone know about this allergy?” An’gel asked.

Jackson nodded. “Oh, yes. Miss Estelle talked about it to everybody. You know how she was about complaining. Wouldn’t ever cook nothing with peanuts, and wouldn’t have no peanut butter in the house.” He shook his head. “Little Miss Tippy loves peanut butter, and Miss Jacqueline has to sneak it into the house for her.”

There was a knock at the back door, and Jackson got up to answer it. He opened the door and stood aside to allow Officers Bugg and Sanford to enter the kitchen.

Bugg looked straight at An’gel. “Ma’am, I need to talk to you about this unfortunate event. You reckon you feel up to telling me about it?”

“Yes, Officer, I do,” An’gel said with more conviction than she felt. She knew she had to do this. Best to get it over with. “Would you like to talk here? Or we could go to the parlor?”

“Here’ll be just fine, ma’am,” Bugg said. “But I’d prefer to talk to you by yourself.” He glanced at Jackson, Dickce, and Benjy. They took the hint and excused themselves, though Jackson paused long enough to offer the policemen something to drink. Bugg declined, and Jackson followed the others from the room.

Bugg plopped down across from An’gel in the chair Dickce had vacated. Sanford sat to her left in Jackson’s spot. He pulled out his notebook and pen.

“All right, ma’am,” Bugg said. “Why were you there in the deceased’s apartment? Was you in the habit of visiting her there?”

“No, I wasn’t. I had never been in her apartment before today,” An’gel said. “I went there to ask her a few questions about odd things that have been going on in this house.”

“Like what, for example?” Bugg put his arms on the table and leaned on them, focused intently on An’gel.

An’gel had to think quickly about what she could tell him without violating Jacqueline’s confidence. She didn’t want to tell him some things without her goddaughter’s permission. As soon as Jacqueline returned from town, she vowed, she would urge her goddaughter to tell everything to the police.

“Ma’am?” Bugg prompted.

“Sorry, just putting my thoughts in order,” An’gel said. “The main thing was the incident with the wedding dress that caused my cousin to collapse and have to be rushed to the hospital. I believe I mentioned it when you first came to Willowbank to investigate Sondra’s death?”

Bugg looked annoyed. “Yes, ma’am, you did indeed mention it as I recall. The young woman was pitchin’ scraps from the wedding dress over the railin’.”

“Yes,” An’gel replied. “Or so we thought at the time. Mireille collapsed and was rushed to the hospital, where she died.” An’gel felt rage all over again at Sondra’s nasty trick, and she took a moment to calm herself.

“That Sondra was a hellcat sometimes,” Bugg said. “Still, it’s hard to believe she’d do something like that to her own grandma. But you said, ‘so we thought at the time.’ Does that mean it wasn’t the real wedding dress she tore up?”

“Yes. Mireille had apparently had a replica of it made some years ago, and it was the replica Sondra destroyed. In the heat of the moment, though, Mireille and Jacqueline didn’t realize that.”

“So you went out there to talk to the deceased about this. Why? Did you think she had something to do with it?”

Bugg was more astute than An’gel had earlier thought. “When I told Jacqueline I had found the original dress, we talked about the incident. She swears Sondra wouldn’t have done something like that unless someone else put her up to it. I thought Estelle might know something about it.”

“Did she?”

“I think she did,” An’gel said. “I was trying to get her to tell me what she knew, but she was stubborn. I think she intended to blackmail whoever it was. Then she drank some whiskey and collapsed. She died without ever saying another word to me.”

She hesitated for a moment but decided she had better tell the officer about the figure she thought she had seen earlier in the day.

When she’d finished, Bugg stared at her. “You say you don’t know who it was, or even if it was a man or a woman. Just an impression.”

An’gel nodded. She knew how insubstantial it was.

Bugg was still staring. “Tell me, ma’am. Do you wear glasses? Or contacts?”

Taken slightly aback, An’gel said, “No contacts. I do have glasses I use sometimes for needlework or reading.” Then she realized why he was asking about her eyesight. “My distance vision is fine, Officer.”

“All right, ma’am.” Bugg held up a hand in a placatory gesture. “Had to check. You’re sure you saw something, right?”

“Yes,” An’gel said. She had seen something move. She just couldn’t swear that it was a person. Given what had happened to Estelle, however, she felt it likely she had seen the murderer leaving after poisoning the whiskey.

“You got all that?” Bugg said to Sanford. The junior officer nodded.

“I reckon we got two murders, then,” Bugg said to An’gel. “Coroner’s pretty certain now that Sondra was dead before she ever went off that gallery.”

“Do you have any idea who’s responsible?” An’gel asked, curious whether Bugg would share anything of consequence.

“I got my ideas,” he responded lugubriously. “What about you? I checked your bona fides with the police and the sheriff’s department over in Athena, ma’am, and they tell me you was involved in several murders a coupla months ago.”

An’gel nodded reluctantly. She preferred not to think about those events if at all possible. “Yes, Officer, unfortunately murders were committed in our home.”

“That lady deputy in the sheriff’s department thinks an awful lot of you and your sister,” Bugg said in a tone that to An’gel sounded slightly incredulous. “Told me I should ask you what you think is going on here.”

That last sentence sounded like a challenge, An’gel thought. While she appreciated Kanesha Berry’s expression of confidence, she did not know Officer Bugg well enough to talk to him as candidly as she had always done with Kanesha. He seemed bright enough, but she didn’t want to send him haring off on the wrong tangent by anything she said.

She decided there was one thing she could safely tell him, and let him make of it what he would. “In my opinion, Officer, it’s all about money. You figure out who needs money desperately, and you’ll find the person who killed Sondra and Estelle.”

Bugg looked disappointed, as if he had expected more from her. His words confirmed that. “I ain’t dumb, ma’am. I know there’s a lot of money in this family. Shoot, Terence Delevan was probably the richest man in this parish. Heck, richest man in several parishes. That means his wife and his daughter both got a lot of money when he died. We know all about that here in St. Ignatiusville. I was hoping you was going to tell me something I didn’t know.”