Mystic Mayhem (23 page)

I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. My bladder tightened. My heart felt like it would explode right out of my chest.

The quiet voice in my head seemed to come from nowhere. "Mellie gal, you gots to move." Then it screamed, "
Now
!"

And without even thinking about it, I swung one arm while I bucked. My fist connected with the side of her head, and my hips threw her off me. The gun flew out of her hand as she was tossed aside and onto the floor.

I twisted and rolled, pulled my feet up, and was off like a sprinter out of the starting blocks. The voice in my head led me along without a light or anything to guide me, just the soft sound of the voice, "Go. Go. Go."

Then. "Left. Left." Then. "Stop. Here."

The doorknob seemed to find my hand rather than the other way around. I gripped it and twisted. It turned, and the door swung open.

I was standing in the indoor pool area. The soft lighting cast an ethereal glow over the lovely old structure. It was all dark blue and gold tile throughout the deck area and pool itself. I always thought of it as a lagoon setting for a
1001 Arabian Nights
and wouldn't have been surprised to see Scheherazade shimmy around the corner.

But no time for that just then. Had to move. Had to move now. Had to move fast.

But I wasn't fast enough. Before I even made it halfway around the pool, her voice stopped me cold.

"I have a gun."

I stopped. You would too.

"Turn around."

I did, and she was right. She did have a gun, and it was pointed at me. Something I'd never seen before and never really thought I would see. But here it was, and what was I going to do about it?

"You don't want to do this, Penny." But she obviously did.

She looked ridiculous standing there in her shabby ghoul garb and that nasty wig, but I didn't dare take her any way except seriously.

"I don't blame you for killing Cecile, you know." I tried to make my voice as conversational as possible. "She had it coming."

She nodded. "You don't know the half of it. She was my friend, you know. Before she knew Theo, she knew me. We went to meetings of the International Paranormal Society together. She was elected president—I was vice-president. For a while it was fun until she got lazy and started handing all the work off to me. Like a fool, I did everything she asked, and I did a hell of a job, too. She took the credit. I didn't mind so much at first because I figured eventually she'd get bored with it like she did with everything else. But not only didn't she step aside so I could run for president, she ran for another term and then another."

She paused. I waited. When she didn't go on, my brain went on overdrive trying to come up with something to keep her talking until I could think of a way out of this mess.

She took a couple of steps closer to me. "I'd been with my Theo for a couple of years. He loved me, you know, even if we couldn't tell the world. He wanted to marry me, but because of his business partners and their uppity ways, he had to wait until the timing was just right."

I nodded, sympathetically I hoped, although I felt more like a bobblehead standing there.

"Theo, he told everyone I was his psychic business adviser. That way no one thought anything about my being invited along on business trips and social gatherings."

"Makes sense to me."

Her jaw clenched, and her eyes hardened. "Then along came Cecile. She seduced him. He would never have fallen for a piece of trash like her unless she got on her knees for him. She took him from me." She screwed up her face and squeezed out a few tears. "And then the bitch killed him."

"Really? I mean, I know Rosalyn always believed that, Penny. But you believe it too?"

"I
know
it. She was all hot and bothered over that sleazy scam artist Terrence and his freaking caterpillars. Theo was onto them. You can't give away as much money as she was doling out to that charlatan and have it go unnoticed. Theo was going to put a stop to it all. He was, and he was going to come back to me. We would have been together, but no. Cecile had to have it all, and she convinced my poor darling if he were better in bed, she'd leave the caterpillar man and belong only to him. My poor, foolish love. He took the blue pills. She knew his heart wouldn't take it. She knew it. Rosalyn was right, has been right all along. If Theo couldn't get to his nitroglycerin tablets, it was because she withheld them from him. She killed him." She heaved and sobbed. Dry. Racking. But no tears.

I swallowed hard. Such grief. Such pain and rage. "So you killed her to avenge Theodore."

"He was the only man I ever loved. The only man I ever will. If not for her, we'd be living in wedded bliss today."

Unless the
timing
was never quite right. But I didn't say that. Instead, I dared to ask, "I understand why you killed her. You had to. It was as simple as that. And I have to say, it was downright brilliant."

She smiled, but it was creepy, manic. "It was too easy. Cecile wasn't a killer, not really. She couldn't handle it. Guilt was eating her alive. It was easy. I just told her that Theo's poor spirit was wandering eternally restless, crying in the dark, and if she came here and had this Fabrizio medium—I read an article about him and this resort in the Society newsletter—conjure a proper séance, his spirit could finally be at peace. She bought it, the idiot, and convincing her he wanted the clams on the half shell at the séance was nothing." Her eyes lit up as if she suddenly thought of something. "Did you know the resort tours are a gold mine of information? We learned where the cold storage is and when the kitchen staff goes on break."

"But how did you know Cecile would eat the clams?"

"I told her to, that's how. Told her that was part of my dream, part of Theodore's conditions for the séance. She had to eat the clams. She really was a simpleton, you know."

"So once you arrived, she requested the clams. You learned how to get to them by taking the guided tour of the resort. You snuck into the kitchen and tainted the clams, and dere ya go." I adopted Quincy's thick accent. "She dead."

 "Yes. She was dead." She just stood there, somewhat triumphant. "The tour guide also took us through a few of those hidden passages throughout the place that were used by slaves to move about the main house without bothering the sanctity of the plantation family. It was easy to lift a master key off a housekeeper's cart. That's how I got to Rosalyn." She snorted. "Even scared the living crap out of you that one night, didn't I?"

Well, I wouldn't say that, and I didn't. "What was the purpose of haunting Rosalyn, anyway?"

She rolled her eyes and took a few more steps, which brought her to within an arm's length of me. "What are you, stupid? Cecile changed the terms for the administration of the family trust. In the event Rosalyn was unable to serve as executor, I was to be the person in charge." She laughed. "Played right into my hands, didn't she? And Theo's. You know, Theo would have wanted it this way. I wasn't going to hurt Rosalyn, not really. Theo wouldn't want that. But I could drive her crazy—just a little. No harm in that. Just enough to have her committed. Then I'd be right where I should have been all along. The mistress of the Theodore Elway legacy. As I should be."

Okay, so her sanity was out there floating around the cosmos somewhere.

"I didn't want to kill anyone else. Just Cecile, but now I have to get rid of you too."

"You don't have to. I won't—"

"Tell anyone? Sure. If you hadn't stuck your busy little nose into it to begin with, I wouldn't have to do it. I would have gotten away clean."

"Let's think about this. Let's figure out a way to—"

"The tour guide showed us the passages that are no longer used for servicing the resort. No one will hear the gunshot. By the time they find you, I'll be long gone, and no one will be any the wiser. The medium, your friend Fabrizio, will be convicted of killing Cecile. Rosalyn will be committed. And I'll—"

"You'll skate free with your ninety thousand in cash and authority over the Elway estate." Why didn't Jack come? Or Cat? Or Quincy? Where was everyone? The answer was simple. They were all at the dang magic show, and if I didn't think of something fast, I was going to be deader than Baron Samedi.

"
My
ninety thousand? What the hell are you talking about?" The look on her face was puzzled. "Never mind. It doesn't matter." She reached out with her free hand and grabbed my arm. "Now come on."

"In your dreams." I wrenched free, grabbed her arm, and twisted. She lurched at me, and we toppled sideways into the pool.

She wound up on top, bigger than I, and heavier, as the masses of material in the costume wrapped around both our legs, pulling us down. I sensed that she let go of the gun, because both her hands were suddenly in my hair, using my head to push against in a futile effort to stay afloat.

I took in a huge breath when I could and held it while she thrashed above me. I kicked free of her, let myself float down under the water, and then pushed against the bottom of the pool, brought my feet under me, and put them down. I stood erect, the water hitting me chest high. We were in the shallow end, but Penny didn't seem to be aware of that.

She screamed and gurgled and kicked and flailed. I wasn't going to be the one to tell her to stand up. I saw the gun lying at the bottom, so I took in a breath and dove down to get it. When I came back up, Jack was racing across the deck.

He dove in and swam straight to me, threw his arm around me, and pulled me to the side. He looked at me like he'd never seen me before. "You okay?"

Still out of breath from my exertions and excitement, I nodded. "Go get her," I said.

He swam back and tried to manage Penny, but in all her craziness she knocked him off his feet and rolled over onto him. The bitch was drowning my Cap'n Jack.

"Not in this world, woman."

I swam over to them and punched her in the face. She went still.

Jack grinned, wrapped his arm around her, and took her across the pool to the steps. I went too and helped him pull her up onto the top step so her head was out of the water. She wasn't a lightweight to start with, and she had all that wet fabric around her. It was like pulling a limp walrus from the water.

We huffed and puffed and finally got her far enough out of the water that she wouldn't drown.

Jack leaned back against the edge of the pool. So much for that tux, but if you were going to be rescued, a dream of a man wearing a tux straight off Fifth Avenue wasn't a bad way to go. He pushed his hair out of his eyes.

"Thanks," he said.

"No." I couldn't take my eyes off his beautiful mouth. "Thank you."

Then, out of a clear blue sky, he put one hand behind my neck and pulled me to him, planting his luscious wet lips against mine. I dissolved into a thousand brilliant sparkling stars. Ah, yes, Cap'n Jack. Every time I kissed him, it was better than the time before.

*   *   *

Quincy responded to Cat's summons at about twelve forty-five that night. He'd been out on another call and couldn't come straight there, but in the end, who needed him? I had my own tuxedoed buccaneer who managed to save the day with swashbuckling flair.

Between Jack, Lurch, and me, we managed to keep Penny corralled in Jack's office until Quincy and two other deputies came, Mirandized her, and took her statement.

I couldn't say whether or not Penny Devere was psychic, but she might have been, and maybe she saw that in the end they'd get her anyway, because she confessed to everything except stealing the money.

The two deputies cuffed her, tucked her into the back of a squad car, and took her to jail.

Two more deputies and a forensics officer from New Orleans PD arrived.

Penny's room, all her things still inside, was thoroughly tossed. It took over two hours. They found traces of the insecticide used to lace the clams on a pair of latex surgical gloves tucked into a jacket pocket. In the secret passage she and I had chased each other through earlier, they came across taloned rubber gloves and her cell phone with a horrible screeching ringtone that Rosalyn identified as the sound her spectral visitor had made. What they didn't find was the ninety thousand dollars in missing cash.

Billy, Rosalyn, and Terrence were rousted from bed to be interviewed by Q and the other deputies. They were questioned at length as to what they knew of Penny Devere.

I wasn't present at the interviews, but Quincy sat down with the three of us and gave us the
Reader's Digest
version.

Rosalyn had felt completely vindicated in her dislike of the woman and was convinced Penny's actions supported her convictions that Cecile had murdered her father.

Terrence had little to add. His only contribution had been that Cecile had, in fact, believed in Penny's psychic ability and had taken everything she said to heart, which it seemed had ultimately led to her demise.

Billy had only reiterated what he told me about Penny having been somewhat of a business adviser to his grandfather and a friend and adviser of his stepgrandmother. Guess the young man didn't know anything about all the sordid goings-on between the older generation. Just as well. All he really had to add to the scenario, according to Quincy anyway, was, "Radical, dude."

Jack, Cat, and I had taken coffee out to the front veranda hoping the caffeine would help us all keep our eyes open until all this hullaballoo was finished. It was after eight when Harry Villars drove up in his big old cream-colored '72 Benz with Fabrizio beside him.

I jumped up and ran to meet them.

"Oh, my goodness gracious, Fabrizio. I'm so glad to see you." I threw my arms around him and buried my face in his chest to keep him from seeing my tears.

"Dearest Melanie, hush. I'm here. All is well."

Quincy walked up. "Well, maybe not all."

Really? What now?

"There's still the matter of a hundred thousand dollars. And no one but Fabrizio to accuse of its theft."