“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.”
Epilogue
The new week brought game-changing developments to Pelican. Ears all over town bled from the scream Vanessa Fleer let out when Rufus caved to her nagging and said, “Fine, I’ll put a ring on it. Now shut up and lemme clean my gun.” A proposal was a proposal in Vanessa’s book, so its lack of romance didn’t bother her, especially when she learned that her fiancé would soon be up to his bushy eyebrows in cash. The Durand family had finally received an offer on Grove Hall that even Rufus couldn’t refuse. Maggie and Bo crossed their fingers that the perpetually slothful Ru would feel flush enough from his share of the sale to quit his position as police chief. But Rufus had no intention of relinquishing his throne. “Money and power, buddy,” he gloated to his cousin as he unscrewed the cap on a thirty-two ounce bottle of convenience store beer. “I’m livin’ the dream.”
Bo took comfort in the fact that his share of the sale would allow Xander to attend Bright Start, the Baton Rouge school dedicated to kids with unique academic needs. And Maggie did get to revel in Ru’s outrage when he learned that the LLC that purchased Grove Hall was owned by Kyle Bruner, whose move to Pelican brought joy to Lia and the rest of the Crozats. Any Crozat happiness would always mean Rufus Durand misery. “Tough break, Ru Ru,” Maggie fake-commiserated, making sure that she revealed Vanessa’s pet name for the police chief in front of delighted department gossips Cal and Artie.
To make up for the hell that Jan Robbins had gone through with her false arrest and Debbie Stern’s betrayal, Bo put in a call to the Cuties’ airline and arranged a few extra days in Pelican for the group with no change fee to their plane tickets. “You were the only ones who came here without some scheme in your visit plans, and I’ll never forget that,” Maggie told the women as she hugged them good-bye. Jan promised that when the Cuties returned to Cajun Country in the spring for their convention, many events would be held at Crozat, and with one last cry of “laissez les bons temps rouler!” the Cajun Cuties had taken off for the airport in their rented minivan.
There was news regarding the Ryker clan as well. Gran’, who’d set up an Internet alert for Crozat Plantation B and B, was tickled to receive an e-blast containing a rave review written by Lachlan Ryker on a website called aussiesinamerica.com. Carrie and Lachlan had adopted the American entrepreneurial spirit the minute they arrived in California and created a website for homesick Aussie ex-pats that would help them navigate the New World. It was rudimentary and would take time to grow, but Maggie’s instincts told her that the prosperity gris-gris bags Lia had gifted the family with would eventually bear financial fruit.
Crozat Plantation B and B slowly began its recovery from the fallout of a double murder on its property. Maggie came up with a “Don’t Labor on Labor Day Special” that offered low rates and a Crozat cookout, both of which attracted potential guests. “And we can credit morbid curiosity for a few of the reservations,” Gran’ said. “It’s sold many a ticket to a freak show.” The Shexnayders returned from their holiday rested and ready to resume their housekeeping and maintenance duties. From the little winks and butt pinches between them that Maggie observed, the break had also energized their libidos.
With Bud and Marie back at work, Maggie finally had time to market her line of souvenirs, and it was picked up by several of the nearby plantations. This provided the pressure she needed to convince Gran’ that it would be in perfectly fine taste to sell the items—displayed discreetly, of course—at Crozat. Once on board, Gran’ became a sales powerhouse, and no visitor to Crozat left without a memento, even if the poor soul just stuck their head in the door to ask for directions.