Secrets, Lies, and Crawfish Pies Read online

  “What?” I asked. I hadn’t been paying attention.

  “You’re nothing like your aunt.”

  “Oh. No,” I said, surprised he was trying to assess me. “I’m not.”

  “No. You’re more like a... I don’t know,” he said. He shrugged. “More like a faire tapisserie.”

  I arched an eyebrow. I was anything but a wallflower. Did he think it would sound better because he said it in French?

  How could he say that? He hardly knew me.

  Still, his comment made me feel self-conscious.

  I smoothed down my hair. In all the heat and humidity of Texas it had started to curl up. No longer the straight tresses that I’d coveted in Chicago. It bothered me that I had no control over it.

  No control over much of what I was going through as of late.

  I ran my hand down the leg of the tan-colored pair of tapered, cotton, cut-at-the-ankle slacks that I’d thrown on. I had on a white, summer blouse and had stuck my feet in a pair of flat brown mules. Earlier, a lab coat had covered it, but still I thought I looked...I don’t know–nothing like a wallflower.

  I huffed.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said. This wallflower is just fine.

  “So, if you’re going to live here,” he said, “you’re probably gonna need me to drive you around.”

  So you can insult me more?

  “No. I won’t,” I said.

  “No?” he said. “I wouldn’t mind.”

  “I doubt I’ll go out much,” I said. “Only going out now because my auntie called. Plus, I won’t be here that much longer.”

  “Here? As in Roble?”

  “Yep. Roble.”

  “I thought you were going to live here.”

  “Oh no.” I chuckled. “I’m not living here.”

  “Oh,” he said. Confusion washed over his face.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s just that I thought...I was told...”

  “What? Did my auntie tell you I was staying? Because it seems like she’s got the wrong impression.”

  He grinned. “Yeah. She did.” He glanced at me, his smile re-emerging. “I was looking forward to getting to know you.”

  “My auntie only wishes I would stay,” I said. “But Roble isn’t the place for me.”

  “You like living the big life, huh?”

  “It’s just a different life, that’s all. The one that I want. The one I worked so hard to get.”

  “I can understand that.” He said it like he knew exactly how I was feeling.

  “So you’re just helping out while you’re here?” he asked.

  “Yes. And only reluctantly so.”

  “So. Good. I don’t have to worry about you taking over my job,” he said.

  “Your job?”

  “Yep. I’m the one she usually calls when she needs something.”

  I laughed. “Oh no, no need to worry. You can definitely keep your job. I don’t want to go running around with her getting caught up in her harebrained antics.”

  “She does that?”

  “Are you talking about Suzanne Babet Derbinay?”

  “Yes,” he said. “She’s never asked me to do anything I thought to be harebrained.”

  “You must not have been around very long,” I said. “Just consider yourself lucky.”

  This time he laughed. “She is rather eccentric with her greenhouse and all of her homemade remedies—”

  “They’re potions,” I corrected. “And eccentric is not the word to use for that aspect of her.”

  “And she is in a lot of clubs,” he continued.

  “Now that does make her eccentric.”

  “I think she’s cute,” he said. “Especially at her age. She’s got more spunk than I do.”

  “It’s cute until she needs an accomplice. She’ll wrestle you down and hogtie you until you give in.”

  “Has she done that to you?”

  “Yes.” I blew out a breath. “I’m almost sure that’s why she wants me to come out to the Grandview now. She wants to include me in one of her nefarious plans.”

  “Ooh. Nefarious.” He scrunched up his face like he had a bad taste in his mouth. “Should I turn around? Do you need me to take you back to safety?”

  “You can’t hide from her,” I said. “She’ll hunt you down. Make you do what she wants.”

  “No need to try and resist, huh?”

  “I still try.” I looked at him. “Call me crazy, because I know it won’t work.”

  “I wondered how she got you to work the Information Booth at the festival. A big Chicago doctor and all.”

  I frowned. “I’m not working the Information Booth at the festival,” I said.

  He hiked up an eyebrow. “Babet told me you were.”

  “Oh Jesus!” I said and slapped a hand across my forehead. “I have to hurry and get back home.”

  “Home?” he asked. “I know you said you weren’t staying, but isn’t Roble still ‘home’ for you?”

  “No. Definitely not.” I shook my head. “I couldn’t survive here.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “Where are you from?” I asked.

  “Houston.”

  “Then you know. Nothing like a big city. The night life. The amenities. The endless opportunities.”

  “Roble’s not enough for you?”

  “No, it’s not.” But as soon as I said the words, I knew it hadn’t come out right. “Yes.” I wanted him to understand what I meant. “It is. It’s just that I’m past all of this.”

  “All of what? The things here?”

  “Yes.”

  That probably sounded bad, too.

  How could I make him understand that by staying here, I would lose my identity? The only time I had felt like myself since I’d been back was when I was doing the autopsy. Now I was starting my mornings by having tubs of snapping crawfish brought over for me to bake pies without anyone asking me if I would, or if I even wanted to. Making phone calls to plan a festival that I had no intention of even going to and being called to come out on some stealth mission to aid my auntie and the ladies of the Red Hat Society to do who knows what.

  Other than performing the autopsy, my life had taken such a turn. So much of a turn that I wondered if I could get it back on track. No more morning walks along the lakefront trail. No more taking in the comforting smell of the antiseptically clean hospital corridors, or my morning latte and scone. No more Dr. Alex Hale romancing me with candlelight and white wine. Holding me in his arms...

  This new life, I was sure, was going to be detrimental to all I had held dear.

  “You too big for it?” Rhett asked interrupting my thoughts.

  “Maybe you should just stop asking me questions,” I said. “I don’t think my answers are coming out right.”

  He shrugged. “Just tell me what you mean.”

  “I mean that my life is back in Illinois. In Chicago. My job. My man. My friends. My life.”

  “You’re seeing someone?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Why? What did Auntie Zanne say about that?”

  He got quiet for a moment, and bit on his bottom lip. “I don’t know if I should say.”

  “You started this.”

  “Yeah. I guess I did. She told me you were single.” He glanced at me. “That you were needing someone to...I don’t know...fill a void. Be with you.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. My auntie, the matchmaker, was a menace. I had learned not to be embarrassed about it years ago.

  “That’s funny?” he asked.

  “No. It’s just that she shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Because it isn’t true?”

  I looked out of the window. Who knew what was true abo
ut my life anymore. I surely didn’t.

  Thought I’d better change the subject.

  “She did tell me that I’m supposed to help you with the music,” I said. “She said you were in charge of it.”

  “I am,” he said. “Do you like music?”

  “Who doesn’t like music?” I asked.

  “Now maybe it’s me whose words aren’t coming out right,” he said. “I should have asked, what kind of music do you like?”

  “The blues,” I said. Here was a subject I didn’t mind talking about.

  “Wasn’t your father a blues player?”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “Babet told me.”

  “What? You and my auntie been sitting around having pow-wow sessions about me?”

  “No. She likes to talk about you. I like to listen to her talk about you.”

  “Oh really?”

  I thought I saw him blush. “Yes. Really.”

  “Yes. My father was into blues. I don’t have too many memories of him without his Gibson Les Paul in his hands.”

  “Oh. You know about guitars?” he asked.

  “I do,” I said.

  “A woman after my own heart.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. I wasn’t going to ask what that meant.

  “Well, I need help with the zydeco band,” he said. “Remember you met a couple of the guys?”

  “Spoon and Gus,” I said. “So that’s your band?”

  “Not all of them and not really my band. I got some guys together just for the festival. Posted a couple of flyers. Asked around. So, I guess that makes me in charge of it.”

  “And what is it that you want me to do?” I asked.

  “Well, I ran into a little snag, and Babet told me you could help me out.”

  “Doing what?” I asked, the radar on my Interfering-Suzanne-Meter ramping up.

  “Baking pies.”

  “Pies?” I laughed. “What does that have to do with a band? Wait. What kind of pies?” I wasn’t sure if she’d negotiated me to bake something other than those crawfish pies she’d been talking about.

  “Crawfish pies.”

  I shook my head. “Okay. But why?”

  “Well...” He hesitated. “I had to make a last-minute replacement.”

  “In the band?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  “And I want to tell the guys about the replacement at the sound check Thursday night. Over at the fairgrounds.”

  I leaned closer, indicating I was listening.

  “Well, you know,” he said. “I thought I’d make it a festive kind of evening, get everyone in a good mood by serving food and some beer. That usually calms people down.”

  “Beer doesn’t always calm people.”

  He chuckled. “I guess that’s true. Maybe I’ll switch that idea out and get soft drinks instead.”

  “And my auntie volunteered me for the food part. Said I’d make crawfish pies?”

  “Not so sure how the guys will take the new addition. They might get upset. Babet said that your crawfish pies are so good they could bring peace to the Middle East.”

  “She did?”

  “She did.” He glanced at me. “Are you really that good of a cook?”

  I laughed. “People like my crawfish pies, it’s true. But I don’t think they’d do anything about forging peace anywhere. It never worked between me and my auntie.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Rhett Remmiere seemed to be trying to charm me. Acting all gentleman-like, professing an interest in me in a way that made me unsure if it was only platonic.

  But I hadn’t forgotten my promise to my cousin, Pogue. I wasn’t going to let Rhett charm me out of remembering to help him out. And I’d certainly be remiss not to ask questions when I had one of his suspects right in my grasp. I had to find out what he knew about our John Doe.

  I looked up and saw a mile marker. Only seven more miles to go. It was now or never.

  “So, what do you know about that dead body turning up at the funeral home?” I asked.

  “Whoa,” he said looking over at me. “That was a one eighty in our little conversation.”

  “Is that a subject you want to avoid?” I asked.

  “I didn’t say that,” he said. “It’s just that we were talking about music, beer, and pies, not murder.”

  “You got an answer?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “It’s a mystery. Isn’t that the general consensus?”

  “A mystery that needs to be solved. Can you help piece any of the clues together?”

  “I’d say the murderer was pretty clever. A funeral home.” He shook his head. “Perfect place to hide a body.”

  “Do you consider yourself clever?” I asked.

  I heard a small laugh come from the back of his throat. “You’re not accusing me of anything are you?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “If I’d done it,” he said, not sounding defensive at all, “I would have gotten rid of the body before Babet got back.”

  “Unless you didn’t have time to,” I said. “Maybe Josephine Gail found it before you could.”

  “Maybe,” he said with a smirk. “But I had time to dress it all up and put it in a casket?” He shook his head. “Even if that happened, I wouldn’t be ready to confess. I’d wait to see what you had against me.” He took his eyes off the road again to look at me. “What do you have?”

  I stared at him, unsure how to take this conversation we were having. “Nothing much yet,” I said. “But we’re working on it.”

  “Let me know when you get something,” he said as we turned into the hotel. “Then we’ll see about that confession.”

  A menagerie of red hats filled the parking lot of the Grandview Motor Lodge. A sea of poppies, bobbing and swaying atop a plethora of laughing and chattering women.

  “I’ll wait until you find her,” Rhett said doing his own one-eighty, signaling it was time for me to get out of the car.

  I stepped out and let my eyes wander. How was I ever going to find her? It seemed that the meeting was over, but there were still so many congregating around. Then I heard someone laying on the horn of a car. It made me jump, thinking I was in the way of a moving car, but nothing was coming past me.

  Honk, honk! I saw a hand stick out of the window beckoning me over.

  It wasn’t Auntie Zanne’s car, but who knows, she might be inside of it making a deal for me to bake more pies.

  “Aunt Julep!” I said, peeking in the window when I got to the car. She was sitting on the passenger side. I reached in and hugged her, knocking her pillbox hat off its angle. “You a Red Hat Lady?”

  “For fifteen years. Joined same time as Babet.”

  “I’m here looking for her,” I said. “You’re not driving, are you?”

  “No. Got somebody drops me off and picks me up.”

  “Why are you sitting out here?” I asked. “It’s too hot to sit in a car. I don’t want you getting sick.”

  “It’s running,” she said. “Don’t you hear it? We’ve got the air on.”

  “Oh, I do hear it,” I said.

  “I forgot my prize I won at the meeting,” Aunt Julep said. “But if I do get a heat stroke, I know I’ll be alright. I got my pretty niece, the doctor, in town now.”

  I didn’t want to go through the whole conversation with her that I wasn’t staying.

  “So your driver went back it to get your prize?” I said instead.

  “Yep.”

  “Did you win something good?”

  “Don’t know,” she said and smiled. “Didn’t open it yet. Was waiting until I got home.”

  “I’m so happy to see you,” I said. “You know I was planning to come over. There was just was so much
stuff going on at the house when I got there.”

  “I know,” she said. “Murder.” She scrunched her face. “I never thought I’d see it in Roble.”

  “Me either,” I said.

  “I told Pogue that whoever did it works in a funeral home.”

  “You think so?” I asked.

  “Yes. I do. Most folks afraid of funeral homes. Don’t go into one if they don’t have to.”

  “Not even to hide a body?” I asked.

  “Not even to hide a body,” she said. “Looka there,” she said and pointed out past the motel. “Why go in a funeral home when you got all them woods to dump it in?”

  “Good point, Aunt Julep,” I said. “Well I know my cousin will get it all figured out.”

  “He said you were going to help him.”

  “I’m going to try,” I said.

  “I hear Babet is trying to solve it, too.”

  “All Auntie Zanne is doing is getting in the way,” I said.

  “That’s her specialty,” Aunt Julep said. “But don’t dismiss her. She’s got a good head on her shoulders.”

  “A hard head,” I said, which made Aunt Julep laugh. “You going to be okay here? I’m going to go find Auntie Zanne.”

  “Oh yeah, he’ll be here in a minute. I just wanted to say hi.”

  “I love you, Aunt Julep,” I said and leaned in the window to kiss her. “I’ll be over to see you soon.”

  “You gonna come and sit a spell?”

  “I sure am,” I said. “We’ll visit right proper like.”

  She beamed. “I’d like that.”

  Sheesh. Right proper like?

  Two days in Texas and I was already butchering the English language.

  The Grandview Motor Lodge, reminiscent of an Econo Lodge motel, was a three-story, u-shaped building with doors to the rooms on the outside. The railings on each floor were painted white, and in the center was a yellow-tiled swimming pool. The sidewalk was concrete and there were planters of alternatively pink and yellow rose trees.

  It was a fairly large motel to be in Yellowpine, a small-town leftover from the timber boom of the late 1800s, early 1900s. The town hadn’t even had a post office since the early 1950s, and I didn’t think there could be more than a hundred people that lived there. The motel, as far as I could remember, was frequented by hikers, bicycle enthusiasts and the like, and evidently by the ladies of the Red Hat Society. Those few frequenters were probably the only reason it was still an up-and-running business.