Mystic Mischief Page 14

  On Percy's page, he and the young woman standing together as stiff and unsmiling as the American Gothic couple. Elroy, on his page, laughing and goofing around with his friends. Percy and his fiancée again on her page locked in that hot kiss—

  The iconic light bulb lit up over my head. Light bulb, hmph. More like a spotlight.

  I picked up the resort phone from the nightstand, rang the front desk, and asked to be connected to Percy Villars.

  No answer.

  Didn't matter. I'd find him. I drained the rest of my sweet tea and headed out to look for him. I needed to talk to Percy, and it felt like I needed to talk to him now.

  * * *

  Percy was at the patio bar. I had a word for the way he looked, a really good word, one I'd heard Fabrizio use. My friend had told me that when he first arrived in the States before he found his way to Mystic Isle, he'd been lost and lonely and dolorous. I'd stopped him and asked what it meant—technically: woeful, miserable. But that Monday afternoon if you'd looked up the word in the dictionary, you'd be likely to find a picture of Percy Villars. Even his big ol' ears were drooping. His eyes were red rimmed and swollen. From the empty collection of hurricane glasses on the table it looked like Percy had opted for a liquid lunch. I got it—his brother dead, his woman gone, his book deal fading away.

  Heck, the man was a living, breathing country song.

  "Hello, Percy."

  He looked up at me—mouth downturned, curly hair standing up in strange little reddish clumps. Even the skin on his face seemed sallow and saggy—like I said: dolorous.

  "I'd ask how you're doin'," I said, "but it's pretty obvious. Do you mind if I sit with you?"

  He looked back down into the tall glass that only held a sip or two more. He didn't say yes, but he didn't say no. In fact he didn't say anything, so I pulled out a chair and sat.

  "I wanted to ask you a couple of questions, Percy. About your engagement. I understand you recently broke it off."

  Still he just sat there, hands on either side of the mostly empty cocktail glass, head down.

  Hmm. Maybe a new tact? "I've seen photos of your girlfriend on social media. She's cute, Percy. I bet you miss her."

  Not even a twitch. Was he still breathing? I resisted the urge to reach across and pinch his arm.

  "I was a little confused about one of the photos, though." I fished in my pocket for my phone on which I'd left the Facebook app open to the picture I had in mind, the kissing photo that had been tagged as Percy and his girl at the restaurant. "This looks like you with her, Percy, but I don't know. I just have to wonder if it isn't Elroy."

  Nothing happened for a beat—two—three. Then it was as if someone had yelled, "Fire!"

  Percy jumped up, nearly knocking over the table in the process, and ran away. He was yelling and screaming like a hysterical three-year-old and waving his arms above his head. Everyone on the patio jerked around in surprise to watch the show.

  I bolted to my feet and ran after him, wondering if this was what Nancy had meant when she told Cat she avoided the subject of his broken engagement because he reacted strangely.

  "Percy." I shouted after him. "You don't have to run away. I just want to talk to you."

  If anything, he ran faster.

  I was getting pretty winded, and Percy had begun to pull away. That "no exercise" policy I'd been following since completing my credit requirements in high school gym class wasn't working out all that well for me.

  "Please," I puffed. "Just stop."

  I couldn't believe it, but he kept running—really fast. He sort of had that thing going on that reminded me of the way Tom Cruise runs in all his movies, legs pumping like pistons, arms in perfect rhythm with legs, shoulders down, back straight. I'd never catch up to him—Mission: Impossible—except I got a break.

  He was heading for Harry's Garden, and I remembered that a good-sized area of that had been cordoned off for the construction.

  Thankful as all get out, I slowed down as Percy came to a dead stop at the far end of Harry's Garden and stood looking around as if he didn't know where he was or which direction to go from there.

  "Percy." It came out in a wheeze.

  He whipped around. "What happened between Juliette, Elroy, and me is no one's damned business." Crap, he wasn't even breathing hard, and he was turning to take off again.

  "You're right." I blurted out, stopping several yards away from him. "You couldn't be more right."

  He paused and turned back.

  "You must have been so hurt when your brother and Juliette turned to each other."

  "Turned to?" He laughed. Well, not so much a laugh as a harsh bark. "You think Juliette was in on it? She didn't even guess, except she was ever so hopeful that maybe soon I might be feeling frisky again like I was with her that one night. Frisky." He did that bark/laugh thing again.

  Elroy had pretended to be Percy and hadn't even told Percy's fiancée? Oh man, that was really low. The jerk might have deserved what he got after all, even though I was pretty sure the law wouldn't see it that way.

  I took a mental guess that this wasn't the first time someone had died when a woman came between brothers. I didn't really want to ask but felt the question needed to be raised. "Did you do it, Percy? Did you kill your brother to get even for the awful thing he did to you?"

  Percy opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. He'd focused on something behind me, his face distorted, his mouth gaping in a silent scream before he was set in motion again, whirling and scrambling.

  I heard it before I saw it—a growl, low and guttural, like a lion or tiger beginning to think about an out-and-out roar. I spun to the sound.

  It was the pesky gator that'd been cruising the resort, disrupting, wreaking havoc. Only it didn't look so pesky just then from where I stood—it looked positively menacing and completely deadly.

  I vaulted out of its way. Even if I was slower than Percy, I was faster than the gator. It had raised up onto its short but powerful legs and came scuttling across the lawn, its enormous jaws partially open, so the dang thing looked like it was smiling at me. And why not? It had cut me off from getting around it.

  "Help!" I managed one yell.

  Terrified to take my eyes off it, I glanced away for a brief look around. There. Off to my side. Salvation—the staging area of construction materials—pavers, boulders, bricks, other supplies, stacked on pallets, some covered in thick plastic sheeting, others uncovered. I launched myself at it, using my hands and legs to scramble up onto a pile of big boulders then climb farther up onto the flat tops of the stacked pavers and bricks.

  Just to be on the safe side, I yelled again. "Somebody help me!"

  In the near distance, a delivery van had pulled up outside the resort, and two men were unloading what looked like cases of liquor through a service door that had been propped open with a steel rod. I stood as tall as I could and waved both arms, shouting again. Neither one of the men looked up.

  I was scared, but at least I felt like maybe I was out of reach of the humongous reptile, if only for the time being.

  My moment of triumph was way too freakin' brief. Not only did that gator not stop, but after a brief pause of what looked first like assessment then like brazen confidence, the crazy thing started up the slope of the rock pile toward my perching spot only a few feet above it.

  I had nowhere else to go. "Oh please, help." This time it was barely a whisper.

  But it was the one that seemed to work.

  A chorus of shouts rang out, male voices, and I took my eyes off the gator to look across the garden lawn.

  It was the Gator Brigade, Odeo, Lurch, Ralph from the shuttle bus, and a couple of others—God bless them—God bless 'em all. They were running full-on after the gator, and they were loaded for bear. Or maybe it was alligator they were loaded for.

  Whatever. To me they looked like angels from on high. And I couldn't help squealing like a delighted child when their yelling and general overall pandemo
nium finally caught the attention of the big old thing. It stopped climbing and set up with a series of growls and chuffs, obvious dares. But it did back down the boulder pile and take off in the other direction.

  "Hallelujah."

  As soon as the way was clear, I began a careful climb down off the pallets of bricks. I hadn't been nearly so careful on the way up, and my palms and knees were a little scuffed.

  While the others ran on after the gator, Odeo stopped, threw down his heavy-duty six-foot snake tongs, and reached out two strong arms to help me.

  "Oh, goodness sakes alive, Miss Melanie. I was nearly scart to death when I saw you there with dat ol' gator on its way up to you."

  I relaxed and let Odeo lift me the rest of the way down as if I were no bigger than an eight-year-old child.

  When my feet found the carpet of exquisitely cared for lawn once again, I wasn't surprised to discover I was shaking.

  "You okay?" Odeo must have thought I was going to fall down because he reached his big hands in my direction.

  "I'm just shook up, Odeo. I'm just all kinds of shook up."

  Lurch and the rest of the reptile hunters were heading back in our direction, their heads down, their pace slow.

  It looked like the gator had once again made a clean getaway, and Percy Villars wasn't anywhere to be seen either.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I made it back to the main building on wobbly legs, Lurch on one side of me and Odeo on the other. I thanked them effusively for about the tenth time, and we parted ways.

  I went straight up the stairs, hoping to find Harry in his suite. He wasn't there. Neither was Fabrizio.

  Back down the stairs. It was important to me that I find Harry and tell him there was a strong possibility good old Percy might have offed his brother after all.

  Downstairs, Lucy was on duty at the front desk. One guest was turning to walk away as I approached. One guest, not the more than thirty she'd had to wrangle the day before. But then that had been Sunday, a weekend day, when many weren't working and people were free to boogie on over to the bayou and hunt for a missing historical document. Not nearly so many people seemed to be hanging around on Monday afternoon.

  She turned and smiled when she saw me. "Hi, Mel." She gestured toward my jeans and long-sleeved Henley. "Not working today?"

  "Not since this morning," I said.

  "How do you like the suite?" she asked.

  I smiled and nodded, wiggling my eyebrows. "Nice."

  "I know, right? They're so dreamy. Both Mr. Villars and Mr. Stockton told me to make sure you were well taken care of, had everything you needed. Do you have everything you need, Mel?" Her smile was big and friendly.

  Did I? No. I needed to be back with my man where I belonged, and I'd take care of that as soon as I could, but right then I was looking for— "Lucy, have you seen Harry Villars today?"

  "Oh, sure," she said, waving a hand in the direction of the entertainment wing of the resort. "That good-looking sheriff's deputy rounded up a bunch of people and herded them into the Seeing is Believing Gallery. Harry was one of them."

  I caught my breath. There was something going on with the investigation, something I sensed might be quite revealing. And I wasn't part of it? What was up with that?

  I thanked Lucy and hotfooted it over to the auxiliary wing. Then I took the short hallway leading into the entertainment section of the hotel which housed the Chamber of Illusion, the Sleight of Hand Parlor, and the Seeing is Believing Gallery. The rooms ranged from large (the Chamber of Illusion), to medium (the Sleight of Hand Parlor), down to the smallest and most intimate Seeing is Believing Gallery where only twenty-four guests were seated within scant feet of the magician.

  If Quincy had taken people there, it was to question them—plain and simple.

  The door to the small room was open, and I stopped just outside where I could see in.

  Quincy stood in the front of the room where the magician would normally perform. In the stadium-style seats rising up from the floor were: Sergeant Pam Mackelroy of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's office, Archie and Theresa Powell, Nancy Villars, Roger Goodwin, Harry Villars, and Fabrizio.

  "Now I've checked the footage Mr. Goodwin so graciously provided from the work that was done Thursday night between twenty-one and twenty-three hundred hours—"

  Nancy raised her hand.

  Quincy bobbed his head in her direction.

  "Twenty-one hundred?" Nancy said in a whiny voice.

  "Nine p.m. and eleven p.m., Miss Villars," Pam Mackelroy answered quickly. "Chief Deputy Boudreaux is speaking in official department terms." She threw a look of such adoration at Quincy, when I looked back at him I expected to see he'd sprouted wings, a halo, and a golden aura. How would the good sergeant ever manage to handle things when Quincy was officially off the market?

  Quincy didn't acknowledge her but went on. "All of you have at one time or another told me you were present at the site where the documentary film crew was working in the old cemetery most of the night from nineteen hundred to twenty-four hundred hours."

  Pam said, "Seven to midnight."

  Quincy's mouth tightened in irritation, but he didn't address it and turned toward Harry and Fabrizio. "That excludes the two of you, of course, who were still out of town."

  Harry spoke then. "If you realize we weren't even in the state when the murder took place, Deputy, then why have you included us on your guest list on this beautiful afternoon? We have an event taking place here tonight, and my attention may be required elsewhere in the resort to set the stage, so to speak."

  "Just outta courtesy, Mr. Villars, just dat good ol' Loosiane courtesy. Dis killin' of Elroy Villars, it took place at your abode, and I figured you'd be wantin' to know all 'bout what happened." Quincy said, slipping back into his thick Cajun accent. I always found it fascinating how he used his ethnicity to his own advantage. There when he wanted to be charming and one of the good ol' boys, absent when he was all business.

  "Now—" Without a pause or even a look in my direction, Quincy strolled over to the open doorway, wagged an index finger in my direction, and closed the door, essentially in my face. Behind the closed door, his muffled voice continued. "What I need to ask you all about is…"

  "Dang it!" It was a hushed, frustrated whisper as I turned and hurried along the hallway to a storage closet on the other side of the big showroom, the Chamber of Illusion. I opened the door and slipped inside, fumbling over my head for the pull string on the old-fashioned naked bulb light.

  A person unfamiliar with the building who went inside the tight space would have thought it was merely a place where extra chairs, display tables, odd props, and other sundry items were stored. But ever since the time of that petrifying experience in the back halls and secret passages of The Mansion, I'd used the occasional break I'd had between appointments at my salon or times when I'd been waiting for Jack to address some issue at the resort to wander those same passageways until they were almost as familiar to me as the public areas of the hotel.

  It wasn't just a storage room—it was one of the hidden entryways into a dark and more clandestine area of the resort that had been part of the original plantation building. And when Harry had discovered them in the older part of the house, he'd incorporated them into the new sections to use as convenient ways for staff to get from one area of the resort to another.

  I pushed aside a big shelving unit on wheels and opened the door behind it, finding myself in the dark passageway. Ever since the time I'd nearly gotten lost back in there, Harry had switched the lights from timers to motion sensors, so my progress from the storage room back to an area behind Seeing is Believing was sporadically lit, making me feel a little like Michael Jackson in the "Billie Jean" video. Light. Dark. Light. Dark.

  I knew exactly where to stop and listen as Quincy's voice carried loud and clear through the vents. Still, I put my ear to the wall.

  "…Goodwin was good enough to provide the rough footage of what y
ou all filmed that night, including shots of the crowd, which was considerable by the way. And I don't blame people for showing up there at all. It's probably a fascinatin' thing to watch a movie get made." Quincy's accent had diminished, and I could tell he was getting ready to do some serious police interrogation.

  I heard a murmur of agreement from the others.

  Quincy went on. "So when the camera caught shots of you all, again except the two of you,"—I imagined he was indicating Harry and Fabrizio—"that pretty much backed up y'all's alibis."

  A dim shaft of light a few feet from where I stood caught my eye. What? I slid over to it and was surprised to see a small drywall square separate from the main sheeting attached to the wall by hinges on one side. The light I'd seen came from behind it. No. Really? Gently latching on to the unhinged side with the tips of my fingers, I pulled it open. My Grandmama Ida would have said, "Saints be praised," but I didn't want to alert anyone to my sneaky eavesdropping presence, so I just grinned and pushed my face up against the eyeholes in the wall behind what I remembered as a big old oil painting of a woman in an elaborate dress from the pre-Civil War period. It had been done in sepia tones. What was most unusual about the poor woman was the way her hair had been styled. Princess Leia and her Cinnabon hair looked pretty darn normal next to the lady in the painting. This poor thing had three separate sections of hair that had been rolled and piled up until she looked like she was sporting a plate of strung sausages on top of her head.

  I figured the sepia-toned lady in the painting now had bright green eyes. But Quincy held everyone in thrall, especially Pam Mackelroy (Cat's own version of Sydney Baxter), and I was pretty sure no one would be looking at the sausage-haired woman in the portrait.

  "Has anyone heard from Percy Villars?" Quincy paused, waiting for an answer. "Miss Villars?"

  "I haven't seen Percy all day. I looked for him but couldn't find him. I did leave a voicemail. I wish he'd call me back." Nancy sounded worried.