Body on the Bayou (9 page)

As her hostess chattered on about her roses, Maggie pretended to pay attention, but her mind was focused on the latest addition to the catalog of Ginger’s evil deeds. She
wondered if there was a connection between Nancy Brown Bradley’s sad saga and Ginger’s death. Nancy Brown was gone, but there might be Bradley family members around who carried a grudge against Ginger—a grudge so strong that it led to murder.

As Maggie readied herself for dinner with Bo and his friend, she contemplated Sunny’s story. It made anyone connected with Nancy Brown Bradley a suspect. But she doubted that it had been Ginger’s only attempt at a shady development transaction, which widened the field of her victims—and potential killers.

She finished applying a swipe of teal eyeliner and switched her attention to critiquing her ensemble in the full-length mirror attached to the bathroom door. Presented with an opportunity to see Bo somewhere besides a bar, a parking lot, or a murder scene, she opted for a look that would be appropriate for the barbecue joint where they were meeting but also amped up the sexy. She subbed out her usual jeans for a snug denim miniskirt and equally snug teal top, an outfit that highlighted her curves. She slipped on a pair of
wedgie sandals that added a few inches to her height and then headed for the front door, teetering slightly on the heels that she wasn’t used to wearing.

She followed GPS instructions from Sunny’s to the Barbecue Inn, an iconic Houston restaurant in its seventh decade of serving comfort food. The place was all wood-and-red-vinyl booths and suffused with the scent of barbecued meats. Maggie glanced around and spotted Bo and another man in the farthest reaches of the restaurant. He waved to her, and she headed over. Both men stood up as she reached the booth. “Hey,” Bo greeted her. “This is the friend I told you about, Johnny Tucker. Johnny, this is Maggie.”

Johnny shook Maggie’s hand with a hard grip. With his cowboy hat, lanky build, and weathered skin, Johnny seemed cast in the role of Texas lawman. Maggie couldn’t imagine what he’d look like without his ten-gallon straw Stetson. She blushed when his blue eyes, made bright in contrast to his tanned face, gave her an admiring head-to-toe once-over. “Nice to meet you, Maggie,” he said. “Glad you’ll be joining us. Real glad.”

Johnny’s interest seemed to spark Bo’s territorial instinct, and he motioned for Maggie to sit next to him. She did, and he moved closer to her. The three made small talk while they perused the menu. Johnny asked after Xander and expressed regrets that Bo’s marriage had broken up. “We just grew in different directions,” Bo said. “But we’re still friends. We’re close.” Maggie focused on the menu to prevent herself from blurting out, “How close?”

“Now you can get out there and catch up on what you missed by getting married straight from college,” Johnny said. “After my divorce, there wasn’t a website or app I didn’t hit.”

“Not my style,” Bo responded, his tone terse.

“Hmm,” Johnny said as he looked from Bo to Maggie. “Wouldn’t be much of a detective if I didn’t get that there’s a story here. But I won’t interrogate you.”

A waitress came over and took their orders: beers for all three, ribs for the men, chicken for Maggie, which elicited teasing from Johnny about her “girly” order. As soon as the waitress left, his demeanor became serious. “So I’ve been looking into this Ginger Fleer-Starke, and let me tell you, she was a piece of work.”

“Clue us in to her life here,” Bo said.

“She was basically run out of town because no one would work with her. She was an equal-opportunity suer. Clients, tradesmen, contractors—you name it. She’d accuse people who made the mistake of working for her of doing a crappy job and then refuse to pay them. They’d have to settle for pennies on the dollar. She also sued a couple of clients for ‘falls’ she took on their property. Their liability insurance had to pay up.”

“She was about to pull that scam on us,” Maggie shared. “She was setting the stage for a ‘fall’ due to a ‘bad step.’”

“Yeah, that was one of her favorites. She was equally good at getting sued. Clients who found overcharges, workmen who’d been stiffed. Her husband Fox is well liked, by the way. No one understood why he stayed with her. He was
probably terrified of what she might do if he left. And she had charisma, no doubt about it. Most grifters do.”

“Yes, I got a big dose of that the first time I met her,” Maggie said. “She sucked me in, but only briefly, thank goodness. Now, thanks to my Houston hostess, I discovered another scam that you haven’t mentioned.” She filled the men in on the sad saga of Nancy Brown Bradley.

“Wow,” Johnny said when she was done. “That is some nasty stuff. Nice job sussing that out.” He motioned to Maggie. “She’s a sharp one, Bo.”

“Yes, she is,” Bo said. She felt his hand on her knee under the table and placed hers on top of it, allowing for a brief moment of contact.

“There’s one other thing I’m looking into,” Johnny said. “There are rumors that Ginger had a little side business going.” Maggie and Bo looked at him quizzically before he said, “Prostitution.”

“What?” Maggie tried to process this new, dark information. “She slept with men for money?”

“That’s the basic definition of prostitution,” Johnny said. “But this little lady did it less for money than for blackmail—which is a way bigger payoff in the long run.”

“Sort of a grifter’s five-year plan,” Bo said dryly.

“I don’t get it,” Maggie said. “I just don’t understand how anyone could have as much as she did and be that horrible.”

Johnny shrugged. “Some psychopaths are born, some are made. Bottom line—who cares? They’re still psychopaths. Anyway, I’m gonna work the Houston angle. I’ll go through
everyone who had an issue with her, which is one damn long list.”

“Sounds good,” Bo said. “Get in touch with me on my personal cell. I’m working the case on my own. My a-hole boss doesn’t know about it.”

“Maybe I should go through Miss Maggie here,” Johnny said with a grin. “You know, just to keep you totally clean.”

“Go through me,” Bo said, glaring at his friend. His cell rang and he checked out the caller. “It’s Whitney. We arranged for me to say good-night to Xander.”

Bo got up and left the table so he could take the call in private. As soon as he was out of earshot, Johnny leaned in toward Maggie. “I’m not gonna ask questions about what’s going on with you two. But I will tell you this. Watch out for Whitney. Truth be told, none of us liked her too much. She’s one of those women who keeps going and going until she gets what she wants. I know she’s remarried and all, but I have a bad feeling about it.”

“So do I,” Maggie confessed.

Johnny grinned again and pointed a finger at her. “See? Sharp.” He leaned in even closer; the brim of his cowboy hat touched Maggie’s forehead. “I’ll say this for my buddy, Bo. His taste in women sure has improved.”

*

Dinner finished uneventfully. Johnny shelved his flirting, which Maggie wasn’t sure she was happy about. She found it both annoying and flattering but definitely enjoyed seeing the rise it got out of Bo. Johnny, Maggie, and Bo concentrated on
analyzing every detail they knew about Ginger’s life. Maggie and Bo agreed to be on alert at the funeral. “Her murderer could show up just to make sure she’s really dead,” Johnny said. “It sounds like a joke, but it’s happened.”

“More than once,” Bo concurred. “In fact, I can think of three times when I was on the force in Shreveport.” He and Johnny shared war stories and then segued into memories of their college days at LSU. After an hour of this, Maggie excused herself for the night, leaving the men to their law enforcement male bonding.

In the morning, she dressed appropriately mournfully in a vintage, black wrap dress that she’d found in a Brooklyn thrift store. She shared coffee and croissants with Sunny, who gave her directions to the funeral home Fox Starke had chosen for his late wife’s service. “I’ve been there many times,” Sunny said. “People like it because there’s a great Mexican restaurant right next door. It’s real convenient. You can pay respects and then shoot right over to El Paseo. They make their own tortillas. I like when there’s an early evening wake because El Paseo has a terrific happy hour.”

“I’m not sure what Fox has planned after the service, but I’ll keep El Paseo in mind,” Maggie said politely, then paid her bill and bid Sunny good-bye. She planned to drive back to Pelican as soon as she was done nosing around Ginger’s mourners.

Sunny’s directions proved easy to follow, and it took only fifteen minutes for Maggie to find the Barnard Family Funeral Home. The home was a nondescript but dignified building that looked to have been built sometime in the
1980s. She parked and walked into its hushed lobby, respectfully decorated in whites and neutrals. The air was thick with the perfume of lilies, a scent that Maggie had come to associate with funerals. A sign directed her to Ginger’s service, and she made her way into what had to be the smallest room in the facility. Like the rest of the place, its palette was subdued. A large urn rested on a pedestal at the front of the room, flanked on each side by some desultory flower arrangements featuring the ubiquitous lilies. Fox Starke sat in a chair in front of the urn, staring at it.

“Fox?” Maggie said. She spoke softly, not wanting to startle him. He turned around, but his gaze was so foggy that he seemed to look through her. “Maggie Crozat. From Crozat Plantation B and B. I’m here on behalf of the Fleers. And my family, too.”

Fox’s expression cleared. “I’m so sorry for not recognizing you right away. I’m still in kind of a daze. Thank you so much for coming.”

“Of course.”

They fell into the awkward silence of two people who barely knew each other brought together by extreme circumstances. “I should pay my respects to Ginger,” Maggie said.

Fox nodded. She made her way to the urn, closed her eyes, and assumed the position of prayer. This turned out to be a handy stance for eavesdropping, so she hung out that way for a while. Most of the guests seemed to be there for Fox, but no one seemed so passionately supportive that they’d kill for him. A few made disparaging remarks about Ginger, then caught themselves and covered with a perfunctory “may
she rest in peace.” The only genuine grief Maggie heard was from Ginger’s hairstylist and masseuse. Judging by their bemoaning the loss of a good client, she had tipped both well and never sued either.

Having learned nothing useful, Maggie grew bored and stepped away from the urn. She wondered where Bo was and was about to text him when he strode into the room. He wore a black button-down shirt with his requisite jeans and the unexpected addition of cowboy boots. Maggie didn’t need to note the admiring glances of pretty much every woman in the room to know that he looked, as usual, totally hot. The women were disappointed when he zeroed in on Maggie and made his way to her. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, “but Whitney texted me this.”

Bo called up a photo on his phone and showed it to Maggie. On his own, Xander had used paints Maggie had given him to create a portrait of the Crozats’ rescued animal brood. The puppies and kittens nestled against their mothers, rendered in the prodigy’s unique stylistic balance of rudimentary and beautifully detailed. “It’s . . . fantastic,” Maggie said, overwhelmed by the young artist’s natural talent.

“It is, isn’t it? Lord knows where he gets it from. Whitney and I we were laughing about how neither of us has a lick of artistic talent.” Bo flashed a boyish grin, and Maggie felt heartsick. There was a lightness to him that she’d never seen before. The photo, his demeanor, his teasing relationship with his ex—it all served to remind Maggie once again that he and Whitney shared the immutable bond of parenthood.

“Incoming,” Bo muttered to her, nudging her to look at the front of the room. She saw Bibi and Trent walk in together. Bibi immediately peeled away and went to Fox. She hugged him and whispered in his ear. The widower shot daggers at Trent and then switched to pointedly ignoring him. Bibi released Fox and watched wistfully as he moved on to greet other guests. Her love for him was so palpable that Maggie noticed a couple of women subtly point at her and whisper to each other. Bibi’s longing confirmed for Maggie that there was at least one person at the service who would kill for Fox.

A somber chaplain arrived, and the guests took their seats. The chaplain delivered a short service full of the kind of generalities men in his position delivered when they had never met the deceased and weren’t given much to work with. He ended with the Lord’s Prayer and an announcement that Fox would like everyone to join him for a lunch in Ginger’s honor at El Paseo restaurant next door. This sparked some enthusiastic muttering among the crowd; Maggie swore she even heard some muffled applause. Sunny had called it—El Paseo was a popular place.

As the guests trooped over to the restaurant, Maggie made contact with the Texas Fleers and pleaded Tookie’s case for their returning to Pelican for Vanessa’s wedding. They listened politely, but Maggie got the impression they were humoring her. Tookie would have to come up with another way to maneuver them into ponying up presents. The funeral party reached the restaurant en masse and made a beeline for its banquet room, where a tempting spread had
been laid out. A bartender poured pitchers of margaritas, creating a rush for the bar, so Maggie had the lunch line to herself. She filled her plate with fajita fixings and snacked on a tortilla. Once again, Sunny was right; they were fresh and delicious. Bo approached her and motioned to her plate. “Stoking up for the drive home, huh?”

“Yes. I want to avoid stops.”

“I’ll grab a plate and we can sit somewhere.”

“Actually, I’m going to meander through the crowd,” Maggie said. “See if I can pick up any useful gossip.” This wasn’t the time to bring up her fears about Bo’s feelings for Whitney, so she opted to retreat before he could sense her discomfort about the situation. She strolled around the room and eavesdropped on snippets of conversation, none of which proved useful. She stopped behind Trent, who was chatting with Ginger’s former masseuse. “You’ll be hearing from me,” he told the woman. “Bibi’s going to run the Baton Rouge office, and I’m going to rebrand us here in Houston. I’m going to work the kinks out of the business, and you can work ’em out of my body.” He laughed heartily at his own joke. Maggie marveled at how Trent had turned his boss-lover’s death into a golden career opportunity.

Maggie realized that she’d emptied her plate and got on the buffet line for seconds. She found herself behind Fox, who was chatting with some men who looked like fellow executives. “My secretary has the file from the Monday meeting,” one of them said to Fox. “I’ll have her e-mail it to you.”