Mystic Mayhem (20 page)

"In fact, Rosalyn, I don't think it was anybody's ghost. Séances and haunted houses? There aren't as many of them around as you might think. They're few and far between. And I'm pretty sure the spirits hanging around don't spend their spare time in the Hidden Passage Spa getting the house lotion rubbed all over them."

Rosalyn just sat there a minute, staring at me then she blinked several times. "That's what that smell was? I never smelled it before, so I thought it was, you know, the way ghosts smell."

Cat had been hanging back, standing off to the side letting Jack and me take the lead. I motioned her over. She came and stood next to Rosalyn, whose nostrils flared. "Oh, sweet Jehoshaphat." She took hold of Cat's hand, dragged it to her nose, and took a good deep whiff. "That
is
it, isn't it?"

I nodded.

"The
house
lotion, you say?" she asked.

"It's imported special for the spa here, and as far as we know, it's not used anywhere else." I looked at Jack. "At least nowhere else around here."

Rosalyn took a minute to put it all together in her rum-soaked brain. "So whoever's been trying to drive me crazy is as mortal as I am?"

Again, I nodded.

"Well, I'll be." She looked stunned. "And who do you think it was?"

I shrugged. "We know Penny has the lotion, and Terrence."

Rosalyn frowned. "Terrence? That no-good, lying womanizer."

"You think Terrence might be up to trying to make you believe Cecile's ghost was coming after you?"

"Are you kidding?" She rang the words together, and her tongue tangled up around them. "He might even be the one who actually killed my stepmother."

I don't know about Cat and Jack, but I was afraid to speak or even move, afraid that in her state of inebriation, the poor girl might just lose her train of thought.

But she didn't. She wrapped it all up and handed it to us. "Cecile was Terrence's sugar mama. Under the guise of his Alien caterpillars, he took money from her—from us. But when she found out there was no such thing as a conservancy for the nasty little buggers, she was about to cut him off. Isn't it convenient?" It came out
covenant.
"She died before she could do it. And, isn't it just too interesting," it came out
interfering
, "I told him the night Cecile died that I'd be following her wishes and cutting him and the blasted caterpillar off at the dick."

Beside me, I thought I heard Jack gasp as he put a protective hand near his crotch.

He cleared his throat. His voice cracked at first, but he went on. "I have a question, Mrs. Whitlock."

She turned to him.

"We were told you can't swim."

"That's true," she said, batting her eyes. "I can't, which makes you my hero, Jack. If there's anything I can do to repay you for saving me…"

Well, she certainly didn't have any trouble saying that.

"We were wondering about the boat—about why a person who can't swim would get in a boat and head out to the middle of pond far too deep to stand up in."

Rosalyn blinked her red-rimmed eyes and looked up at the cabana boy arriving with a tray and yet another Captain Hook cocktail. She took a long drag through the straw. "That's easy, Mishter Stockton. There was a ghost chasing me, and everyone knows, ghosts won't go out on water. They hate the stuff."

Cat and I looked at each other and said in unison, "Who told you that?"

"Penny, of course."

Oh, of course. "She oughta know. She is psychic, after all."

*   *   *

 We sat with Rosalyn another fifteen minutes or so while she finished off her last drink. Jack asked one of the pool girls to go walk her up to her room so she could sleep it off.

Jack had hotel business to take care of, leaving Cat and me to find Billy Whitlock even though Catalina assured me, since she'd been telling his fortune and reading his cards, she was positive he wasn't a killer. There were still a couple of things we needed to know, about Penny Devere specifically.

"Shouldn't be all that hard," Cat said, her voice drier than the Kalahari. "He's always in one of three places—the House of Cards paying for reading but the whole time just bugging me for a date, the Presto-Change-o Room soaking up hurricanes, or the Hidden Passage Spa harassing Tina while she's trying to give him a professional massage."

"Could that possibly make him our sweet-smelling haint?"

"No way," she said. "I feel it in my bones. The boy couldn't kill a fly, unless he annoyed it to death."

Sometimes I believe Cat
is
a legitimate fortune-teller.

Billy was facedown on the massage table, having a thorough going over by Tina, our gorgeous Asian masseuse with size D cups.

He rolled over at the sound of Cat's voice, and we couldn't help but notice his nether regions rise to the occasion as Tina covered him with the sheet.

Cat rolled her eyes and made it a point to stay back out of his reach.

"Billy," she said. "Mel and I need to ask you a few things."

"What's in it for me?" He was positively leering.

"If you help us out, I might not call my boyfriend and ask him to take out a restraining order against you."

"Oh," I said, nodding. "And I've heard Deputy Quincy Boudreaux has a very special way of serving those restraining orders."

"He does," Cat said. "You don't happen to have a bulletproof vest, do you, Billy?"

He smiled tightly, obviously aware we were making fun of him. "What questions?"

"What do you think of Penny Devere?"

"She's not my type."

"No, Billy. What do you know about her relationship with Cecile, and with your mother too?"

"Oh." He narrowed his eyes and wagged a finger. "What do you ladies have on your gorgeous minds?"

We waited.

He propped himself up on his elbows. "Penny was my grandfather's longtime psychic adviser. He used to call her up if the market went down or if he was in the middle of some merger or other business deal. He relied on her—a lot. There were times she was stuck to him like Velcro.

"After my grandfather died, Penny started hanging around Cecile more and more. Cecile finally started paying Penny to be
her
psychic adviser. They were both on the board of the International Paranormal Society. Cecile was the president—you know, the grand pooh-bah of the whole shebang. She got Penny nominated as vice-president and suckered her into doing all the work. I think Penny got her nose out of joint about it. Heard them having a pretty good go-around about it one time when they didn't know I was nearby. This club thing was real important to them, to both of them, but maybe more important to Penny than to Cecile. She didn't really have anything else going for her. You know? She ain't that great to look at, and if you ask me, she's about as psychic as a boloney sandwich."

My cell phone went off, Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper." I snatched it up as the air whooshed from my lungs. It was the Jefferson Parish jail with a call from Fabrizio.

"Melanie, my dear?"

"Yes, Fabrizio, what's wrong?" I breathed.

"Nothing's wrong, my dear. Well, that isn't entirely true, is it? But on the whole, I'm in reasonably good shape. Catalina's man, Deputy Boudreaux, has been hospitable, all things considered."

"Oh." What a relief. A thousand terrible thoughts had bombarded my mind.

"I'm hoping you'll grant me a favor," he said softly.

"Oh, yes. Of course. What do you need?"

"I know it's a huge imposition, my dear, but I'm wondering if you might consider making the trip to the indictment with Harry tomorrow. He isn't in very good shape, and if things don't go as planned, I'm afraid he might need—"

I interrupted him. Since I was knee-high to a ladybug, Grandmama Ida had drilled into my head that the spoken word was a powerful weapon and that putting it out into the universe could make it manifest. I wasn't going to let Fabrizio temp fate like that.

"It's going to come good, Fabrizio," I said, my heart and soul full of hope and prayer that what I was saying was true. "The arraignment will result in them setting you free. I just know it."

He didn't speak for a moment, and when he did, his voice was flat. "Will you come with him?"

My heart broke in two. "Of course I will."

*   *   *

I went out to the boathouse where Odeo was working and borrowed the keys to one of the resort golf carts guests and employees used to get around the considerable acreage of the resort. I hadn't ever driven one before, but how hard could it be—especially after the crash course Odeo gave me.

Harry Villars lived on the resort grounds a ways off from the main building in what had once been the plantation office where the owner and his accountant met to review the personal, plantation, and household books.

The path to it was paved and smooth and provided no hazards unless you counted the half-dozen or so costumed women from the Covenant of Tara, a Wiccan group who gathered yearly at the resort to honor their namesake goddess, Tara, the mother goddess of unquenchable hunger that propels all life—take that, Alex Trebek. They spent their five-day retreat moseying around the grounds and sitting on the veranda eating and drinking, all day, all the time—unquenchable being the key word here. Good thing the ladies hung out in those loose, flowing robes.

They were a colorful, eclectic group, and I couldn't help but watch as they approached. I veered off to the right so they could pass, and before I knew it, the cart bumped up onto the rise of a small berm. And Jiminy Christmas! The center of gravity shifted, the right two wheels went up in the air, and I was doing a stunt worthy of a James Bond flick. I steered what little I could to keep from going completely over. The pavement was way too close to my face. The Wiccans began to gurgle and shriek, and just as I thought I was going to lose it, three of the courageous witches ran over and leveraged their weight against the cart, bringing it (and, more importantly, me!) safely down onto all four wheels. I lifted my foot off the accelerator, snapped down the brake, and jumped out to embrace them.

"Ohmigod. Thank you so much."

The women literally purred, blessed my future with "white light and smooth pavements," and went their way.

Whew. Their spell must have worked, because I made it on over to
la petite maison
without further incident.

Harry and Fabrizio's place was a smaller version of the main building, only of red brick construction instead of lumber.
La petite maison
was in the Georgian style with four Roman columns spaced across the front. A red door with white trim led the way into the one-story house.

I'd only been there once before for Harry's famous Christmas party. The medium-sized house had filled to the brim with what must have been two hundred people of all sizes, shapes, ethnicities, and economic classes. Harry was well-known as a Renaissance man with little or no prejudices unless you counted rudeness or mean-spiritedness.

His place reflected his genteel upbringing and impeccable style. Dark wood floors blanketed with Persian rugs, rich jewel tones on the walls, chandeliers from another era—a comfortable sense of home and manor.

Grandmama Ida would have drooled over the wall-to-wall antique furnishings and tchotchkes. Her traditional double-shotgun house was built in the 1920s. There was no room or money for the accumulation of things. But she did love her some of that old Southern stuff.

"My dear." Harry opened the door and stood back, obviously surprised to see me. "Won't you please come in?"

He looked bad, real bad. Unshaven, hair tousled, eyes sunken and despaired. I knew he was in big-time trouble when I noticed he was wearing, oh lord, sweatpants. But no matter how exhausted, worried, or sad he was, Harry Villars was a gracious host.

"May I get you something, Miss Hamilton? Peach-flavored iced tea? Iced latte?"

"Oh, Mr. Villars, thank you, but I'm fine. I came to ask you a favor."

"Of course, let's sit down." He led me from the lovely, light-infused foyer to a darker, but just as cozy, parlor where a lovely late nineteenth-century Haake upright piano grounded the room on one side, and a traditional marble-manteled fireplace anchored the other.

The piano top hosted dozens of photographs of Harry, Fabrizio, Harry and Fabrizio together, as well as other people I didn't recognize but who held a strong resemblance to Harry, so I figured they were members of his family.

We sat on a tufted leather sofa with gorgeous scrolled arms.

Harry wrung his hands and looked around the room, obviously distracted. "Are you sure I can't offer you some libation?"

"No, Harry." Best get down to it. "I came about tomorrow morning. I was hoping you wouldn't mind if I tagged along with you, you know, to the arraignment proceedings? I want to be there for him, but I just don't think I can do it alone."

I had thought about what I wanted to say to him as I walked all the way from the main building to the boathouse for the cart. I didn't want it to appear as if I was doing this because I thought he was too wimpy to handle it. And even though Fabrizio had alluded to that very thing, I had to admit going with Harry would provide me some comfort too. That is, if things went badly.

Something flickered in his eyes. Relief? Gratitude? He gently laid his hand on mine. "Why, Miss Hamilton, you don't even have to ask. It would be my pleasure to accompany you to court tomorrow."

I patted his hand with my free one. "Thank you, Mr.—"

"Harry, please."

"Thank you, Harry. I've just been so worried about Fabrizio. Having someone else there who cares about him…"

 "And we both do, don't we, Miss Hamilton? Care about Fabrizio, that is."

"Yes," I said. "But I still have high hopes that we can get Fabrizio a get out of jail free card before he's formally charged."

His eyes lit up, and he smoothed his moustache, the first I'd seen of the old Harry. "Have you been successful in your discovery, Miss Hamilton, you and Mr. Stockton?"