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  Begging the officer to remain until she felt recovered, Suzanne promised to reveal more about Mrs. Angers. Actually, she had nothing else to share about Cherie, other than a strong opinion that the woman was a slut. Revealing her latest theory about the stolen silver at a dinner party had gone out the window, upstaged by Cherie Angers’ disappearance. There would be no Agatha Christie ending. She had to expose the villain in another way.

  Feigning dizziness, she swooned into George’s arms and faintly asked him to carry her upstairs to the room Cherie had vacated. While she fully enjoyed being pressed against the warmth of his broad chest, he whispered that she didn’t feel very frail. He grunted when they got to the landing.

  “You didn’t complain about my weight the other night,” Suzanne whispered.

  “We were going downstairs the night of the storm, not up,” he complained into her ear.

  She would have punched him, but that seemed inconsistent with her illness. Besides, he might have dropped her.

  “George, I know you were out on the balcony with Cherie last night. I heard you laughing and carrying on. Did you wear your costume? I thought that was our special thing,” she hissed.

  “I wasn’t with Cherie. Why do you always think I’m lying?” George answered through gritted teeth.

  He dumped her in the middle of the four-poster’s mattress so hard she bounced. If the sheriff and Birdie hadn’t been downstairs and Doc Sonny on the way, they might have worked out their problems right then and there between the sheets. Suzanne sighed and changed the sound to a sickly moan. They just didn’t have the time.

  ****

  Dr. Sonnier took his own sweet time arriving—Suzanne no longer being a favored patient—but he did come. Doc Sonny sat on a desk chair taking her blood pressure at bedside. She asked for Sheriff Duval. In a few moments, the stage would be set.

  She tried to look as feeble as possible lying in the big canopied bed Cherie had left rumpled and unmade. The strong scent of hootchie mama perfume on the sheets gave Suzanne a headache and helped in achieving a pained expression. The linens also had a faintly musky smell as if they’d absorbed sexual juices. She wrinkled her nose. Damn, George really had lied about last night.

  Still sipping coffee and brushing biscuit crumbs off the front of his uniform, Sheriff Duval arrived to lean in the doorway. Birdie pretended to dust antiques in the hall as close to the door as possible. George sprawled on the fainting couch at the foot of the bed, his long arms and legs dangling over its scrolled ends. Her proposed scenario would not get any better than this.

  “I feel much better now, Dr. Sonnier. I wanted you here for another purpose.”

  “Then, I have patients who really need me. I have no time for this.” The doctor dropped her arm, briskly unsnapped the cuff, and stood to go.

  “You, Dr. Jefferson Sonnier, you are a thief,” Suzanne accused and pointed what she wished were a longer, bonier finger at him. George toppled the couch getting up. Sheriff Duval stood at attention in the doorway. Birdie ceased her pretense of dusting. Jeff Sonnier laughed.

  “Not a thief, Miss Hudson, because I’ve paid for the goods. In one way or another, I’ve paid for it all.”

  As if someone had pressed a button on Sheriff Duval’s back, he began reciting the doctor’s rights, especially emphasizing the part about the right to remain silent. Dr. Sonnier took the suggestion.

  “Isn’t it true, Dr. Sonnier, that you were having coffee with Birdie when she was called away on a family emergency? As a frequent visitor to this house during Virginia Lee’s time, Birdie trusted you to let yourself out. You allowed the door to remain unlocked and returned after George had given me my sleeping pill. Using surgical gloves, you emptied the sideboard of its silver, having full knowledge of where the key was kept since you were Mrs. St. Julien’s trusted lover of over twenty years!”

  She paused to gauge her effect, but George ruined it all.

  “Except I locked the doors when I left with my great-aunts.”

  “A woman’s lover would have a key to her house.”

  Then, Sheriff Duval had to butt in. “Shucks, Miss Hudson, this is a small town. Everyone knew about Ginny and Sonny for years on end. We all figured since Helene was Catholic she wouldn’t give the doc a divorce, and old Jacques wouldn’t let his wife go out of pride. I figured Sonny could have done it. He had the chance, being up here when the silver was took, but why in hell would he? He had years to take Ginny’s silver. She would have given it to him. Why now, Jeff?”

  “Why don’t you ask Miss Hudson?” Jefferson Sonnier relaxed, reseated himself on the desk chair, and stretched out his legs. “She seems to know it all.”

  Suzanne conjured up a picture of Dr. Sonnier sitting hunched and concerned by the bedside of a dying woman. Virginia Lee asked one last thing of her lover.

  “Sheriff Duval, the famous Magnolia Hill silver was fake, replicas and plate substituted by Mrs. St. Julien as she sold off the real things to pay her medical bills and keep this house in the family. Randy Royal can confirm this, though I am sure she kept no record of the sales. You see, she didn’t inform the insurance company. You say the whole town knew about Sonny and Virginia Lee. Then, they must also know she was the kind of woman who would extract a promise from her lover to finish what she started. By arranging for the collection of the insurance money on the fake goods after her death, she freed her son of debt and saved the house, her only reward for a loveless marriage.”

  “That’s right,” Jefferson Sonnier said. His distinguished face remained unperturbed.

  “No, no it ain’t right!” Birdie burst in from the hall, knocking Sheriff Duval out of the doorway and filling the small bedroom with her bulk. “Take me, ’cause I’m more guilty than Doc Sonny. Take me.” Asking to be cuffed by the sheriff, she thrust out her fat wrists.

  “It was me who called Doc Sonny when Miss Suzanne found out about the silver. After Miss Virginia died, he wanted to just let things be, to see if Mr. Georgie could make it on his own or just outright give him a loan. I went along with that, but then, I seen danger ahead with Georgie being in trouble with the insurance company, and I calls and I says, ‘Let’s do it now. Let’s give nice Miss Suzanne and Georgie a chance like you and Miss Virginia never had.’ I was helping him load that fake stuff while Miss Suzanne slept that morning after he gave her a shot to keep her still a couple of hours when the call came about my boy. ‘Go,’ says Doc Sonny, ‘You need an alibi anyhow. I’ll hide the silver where it won’t be found.’ I went.”

  Defiant and belligerent, Birdie braced her hands on her wide hips. “Now Doc gets the blame of it. It ain’t right ’cause I had the idea. Peoples think you so dumb they can sell good silver right out from under you, so dumb you can’t listen at a dying woman’s door. And you, Miss Suzanne, you ain’t as nice as I thought you was. Look at this mess you done stirred up, ruint Doc Sonny, ruint me, hurt Miss Helene and Georgie when it all comes out. Why Georgie’d be as good off with that tramp who come here last night.”

  Birdie had powerful lungs and filled the air of the room with guilt that settled over Suzanne like a feather quilt, light yet smothering. She tried to shake it off, no longer interested in being the girl detective or the heroine of the story. She slid down the high side of the bed and went to George who stood there hunched over as if one of the Patouts had punched him in the gut. Putting her arms around him, she felt truly sick when he did not respond.

  “Well, I’ll be. I’ll be,” Sheriff Duval sputtered not knowing what cliché to be. “The polygraph man says he couldn’t get a good reading on that black maid because she’s so hysterical all the time, and here she is, the mastermind.” He removed his handcuffs from his belt.

  “Wait a minute.” George looked up from the spot on the floor that had been occupying his attention. He did not glance at Suzanne. “I won’t press charges against either of them. I knew the silver was faked when it was stolen, a detail Suzanne left out of her great exposé. That makes me liable to Mutual
Trust. If Jeff returns the fake silver, I will reimburse the insurance company by getting another mortgage on the house. We’re old clients, old family. I’m sure we can work this out.”

  Amazingly, George smiled. “Interest rates are the lowest they’ve been in twenty years. Financially, I will be better off than before, Birdie. Thank you.”

  “The silver is in my old brick cistern behind the house, Sheriff. I’m afraid it will take more effort to get it out than to put it in. That hole goes down deep and is full of water,” Dr. Sonnier added.

  “I can have my boys out there tomorrow, Jeff. I’d like to have a big write up in the Sentinel about how I cracked this crime, but I reckon I can live without it. I’ll try to keep it quiet, but some is bound to come out, y’all know that.” Sheriff Duval tipped his Stetson, which he never took off, to the group and started for the stairs.

  Everyone behaved so nobly. They’d worked out a solution in a genteel southern way among themselves, and no one was going to thank the nosey, interfering Yankee from Philadelphia for raking up all this muck. Suzanne felt truly nauseated now, but the least she could do was put her jealousy aside and be the one to say, “But what about the disappearance of Cherie Angers?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Suzanne’s story

  “Give her overnight,” Sheriff Duval said. “The woman’s had marriage problems. No sign of struggle in the room. Could be a stunt to get her husband back or gain George’s attention. Could be she threw herself in the bayou. I’ll start asking around today. See if anyone’s seen her. If she doesn’t turn up, we’ll make it formal tomorrow. Mornin’, Miss Hudson, George, Doc. And you, Birdie, you, too.” He tipped his hat directly at the maid and left.

  With a weary step, Dr. Sonnier followed the sheriff. George shrugged Suzanne off and said he had to get to work. He phoned later to say he might go over to Linc’s that night, not to wait up for him. She thought that was a good idea, knowing he’d talk things out with his friend, maybe get over being mad at her and realize she’d been trying to help. Birdie gave her the silent treatment. She went about her work as if she were the only person in the house.

  Suzanne made her own lunch and walked out for the mail afterwards. Relieved, she found nothing from Paul for a change. She read a long, newsy letter from her mother, mostly about how bitterly cold it had been, would winter never end? Her brother, the lawyer, had won another case and might possibly be settling down with one woman at last. How was her only daughter doing? Had she met any nice men besides her employer? And Mom remained glad she did not live alone in Philadelphia anymore. The serial killer had struck again last week, a young woman exactly Suzanne’s age stabbed to death in her bedroom. That made twelve victims in less than a year. Nothing like this had ever happened in her day. Sure, Mom.

  Suzanne tried to work on her paper but felt too restless and wandered the house, double checking information on the furnishings. By the time she returned to her room, Birdie had made the bed and neatly repacked Cherie’s clothes as if the woman would return at any minute and scold if the work had not been done. The window to the bedroom was latched again. Suzanne wondered if the linens had been changed. She’d prefer sleeping in this room rather than Virginia’s, but not in sheets smelling of Cherie and George together.

  She didn’t own the man, hadn’t even wanted him until that night in the cabin when dull, stable George turned out to be a devil in the sack. Ironically, George St. Julien was her ideal man—steady, nice, and a wonderful lover. Now, he despised her for meddling and wanted Cherie Angers. Magnolia Hill had no bodies under the beds but plenty of skeletons in the closet. She simply couldn’t resist dragging them out and dusting them off like forgotten priceless antiques. Everyone had been unmasked now, thanks to the interference of Suzanne Hudson.

  The telephone rang. Hoping George called, she got halfway down the stairs in an instant, but Birdie answered.

  “Oh, no, oh Lawd, Lawd,” she kept saying softly to the voice on the line. Hanging up, the housekeeper sat in the chair by the phone and wept.

  “What is it?” Suzanne asked. “Is it George? Your son? What happened?”

  “Doc Sonny’s dead. Took his own life this afternoon. Odette St. Julien done heard it from the Sonnier’s maid. Left a long letter saying to his wife how he was a liar, an adulterer, and a thief, and asking for her forgiveness. Left letters for his children and Mr. George. They say he went into Opelousas with his son after he finished his morning appointments. Come back an hour or so later and said he would be going up to his bedroom to rest before the afternoon patients, give himself a shot of something in the arm, and died.”

  Birdie didn’t say it, but Suzanne knew what she thought. This was the city girl’s fault, all her prying Yankee fault. Rip off the mask and some men crumbled, some stood tall, and some men showed an entirely different nature.

  Paul was like that, a man in a mask, impeccably dressed and well-mannered, a methodical perfectionist but underneath filled with rage. What had his last letter said? “I’m coming to get you,” just what they all said, another note to be disregarded and thrown in the trash. What if George had been telling the truth and hadn’t gone to Cherie’s room or tussled with her on the balcony? Had Paul come last night and found Cherie Angers in her bed? Had the kidnapped Cherie taken a knife meant for Suzanne and wielded by a serial killer from Philadelphia?

  She knew which bed she would have to lie in that night. The one she had made for herself—and she’d be sleeping in it alone. Sure, she could call Sheriff Duval and share more of her fine crime solving skills with him. He would love that. He was probably going to be one of Jefferson Sonnier’s pallbearers. Besides, she hadn’t kept even one of Paul’s letters. No evidence to show. No blood, no knife in the room, only a missing woman who had slept where Suzanne should have been, an old flame who thought at one a.m. her former boyfriend wanted to play wicked games. Cherie had laughed when Paul carried her away. Could she still laugh now?

  Birdie, upset by Doc Sonny’s suicide, went home early. George did not return, and the dark set in. Having creeped herself out with her theory about Paul, Suzanne stayed dressed in practical clothes—jeans and a shirt—and tucked a carving knife from the kitchen under her pillow. She put out the lights and drew the covers up to her chin. She lay there, so tense and afraid she quaked under the quilts. Near midnight, she heard a sound at the window. A dark figure filled the frame. The sash jerked so hard the ancient latch snapped open. Clutching her knife, she prayed.

  “Oh, please, God, let it be George in his mask and cape. Let this all be for fun where no one dies and everyone lives happily ever after. Please!”

  The person leaning over the bed was not George. Suzanne stared up at the face concealed by a black ski mask and tried to rip the butcher knife from under her pillow. His hand clamped on her wrist. He took the knife away easily, twisted her arm behind her back, and hauled his former girlfriend from the bed. Suzanne figured she deserved to suffer for the pain she’d given Paul, George, Birdie, and most of all, Doc Sonny.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Linc’s story

  Linc came home from school and found the Ghost working out with the weights, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up and his tie undone like he’d come directly from the office.

  “So how could you blow it with Suzanne in just two days, man! When I picked you up at the lake and dropped you off at the Hill, I thought I’d fixed everything up just fine, and here you are working it out with the weights.”

  “A lot can happen in two days,” he told Linc.

  “Such as…”

  “Such as Cherry Fontaine showing up and disappearing. Such as finding out Birdie and Jeff Sonnier stole the silver.”

  “What you say!”

  The Ghost was still filling in Brother Linc when the phone rang, and Doris came out to get her husband. His mama had called with the news about Jefferson Sonnier. Suicide, she said. He told the Ghost the call was nothing and let him finish what he had to say. All the whil
e Linc wondered how he would tell George that Doc Sonny killed himself. Knowing how his friend felt about the man, thinking Doc should have been his father, not old philandering, hard-drinking Jacques, Ghost would take it hard. Meanwhile, George kept talking about this good man who had kept a promise to a dead woman and tried to spare her son. All mixed up in this were Cherry Fontaine and Suzanne Hudson, the past and the future. Still working on his words, Linc noticed when Sheriff Duval drove up in his squad car.

  Funny how a sight like that in these liberated times can still cause a black family to retreat, the children to seek their mama, the wife to move toward her husband. Having the law in your driveway never meant any good in the old neighborhood. The men in uniform rarely came to protect or to serve, only to question and to take people away, but the Man wasn’t looking for Linc this time. Sheriff Duval wanted George.

  “Miss Breaux told me you was out here. Guess you heard about Jeff Sonnier taking his own life this afternoon.”

  George dropped the bar he pressed into the rack. The sweat on his cheeks looked a little like tears as it ran down to his chin.

  “Doc left several long letters and a will all signed and witnessed. You get whatever we find in that cistern tomorrow, but that’s not what I come about, George.”

  Linc shook George’s arm to make sure he listened. Not paying attention to the Law when it talks can lead to trouble.

  “We checked out your old girlfriend, Mrs. Angers, with her ex-husband down in New Orleans and asked around town if anyone saw her since yesterday. They all said no, but Evelyn Patout over at the museum claimed a stranger came in yesterday morning who didn’t want her tour or any historical information at all—a stocky blond fellow driving a light blue rent car. First, I thought Mr. Angers had hired someone to tail his ex. Maybe he wanted to be sure she didn’t sell off any of those antiques she took with her before their settlement. But, it turns out this blond guy only wanted directions to Magnolia Hill. Said he had a friend living up there named Suzanne Hudson, and did Miss Evelyn know her. Sure, Miss Evelyn says, and he’d better hurry up and get there because George St. Julien and that girl have been out on the town together, and Suzanne thinks she’s too good for any other man in Port Jefferson. Leave it to a Patout, even one by marriage, to stir things up. Anyhow, this guy gets sort of red in the face and stomps out.”