Maggie yawned and debated powering down but opted to check out one more guest. She typed in an image search for “Debra Stern” and the screen filled with a variety of Debra Sterns from coast to coast. Maggie found a photo that looked vaguely similar to the Cajun Cutie—if the Cajun Cutie had been a female executive who preferred power suits to ill-fitting leggings. Maggie stared at the picture, wondering if she’d made a mistake. She scrolled through a dozen more images for Debra Stern but returned to the original one that caught her eye. She was sure the woman in the navy wool blazer with the confident smile was the Crozat’s anemic guest.
The caption under the photo read, “Debra Stern, CEO, SPI.” Maggie typed this into her search taskbar and was rewarded with a long list of sites that revealed Debbie had founded Stern Partners International, a headhunting firm with offices around the globe, which she’d sold five years prior for a small fortune. Debra Stern, CEO, was successful and ambitious—the polar opposite of the dim bulb she now appeared to be.
Maggie turned off her tablet and snuggled under the cool cotton duvet cover. But she was too excited to sleep. She’d finally found someone with a secret—perhaps a secret that somehow led to Beverly Clabber’s murder.
Chapter Ten
As Maggie drove to her tour guide shift across the river at Doucet Plantation, she pondered the best way to bring up the dichotomy of Debbie to Cuties leader Jan, who might hesitate to talk behind a member’s back. She slowed down as she passed through Pelican’s infamous speed trap, the brainchild of a very proud Rufus. While Pelican PD usually spared locals, they showed no mercy for people trying to make time between New Orleans and Baton Rouge when I-10 backed up, and Maggie grudgingly gave Rufus credit for gifting Pelican with a steady stream of much-needed speeding ticket income.
The morning went by quickly as bus after bus unloaded vacationers taking advantage of summer’s last week. Maggie, suited up in her fake plantation garb, gave back-to-back tours where she patiently answered the same questions over and over again; no, it wasn’t hard to be a hired hand at the estate that her mother’s family once called home, and yes, she’d pose with visitors for selfies next to the portrait of Magnolia Marie, the ancestor she’d been named after.
By lunchtime, Maggie was ready for a break. She took her sandwich and joined a few of her fellow guides at their private rest area behind the overseer’s cottage. “You are Doucet’s queen of selfies,” Gaynell Bourgeois, a nineteen-year-old coworker, teased her.
“I know, right?” Maggie said as she fanned herself. “If I had a dollar for every one I posed for, I wouldn’t need this job.” She took off her banana-curled wig, pulled a travel-sized antiperspirant out of her bra, and swiped it across her underarms to avoid the dry-cleaning fee that would come out of her salary if she got sweat stains on her flouncy costume. She was getting to know and like some of the other women working at Doucet, like Gaynell, who seemed sweet and ingenuous. There was only one coworker Maggie wasn’t crazy about.
Vanessa Fleer was a tall, zaftig woman teetering on the edge of obese and had the arrogance that sometimes accompanies ignorance. A trend follower who considered herself Pelican’s foremost trendsetter, she’d recently tried the ombré look on her bleached blonde perm. The at-home dye job resulted in an erratic patchwork of yellow and orange, giving her hair the look of melting sherbet punch. As if Vanessa weren’t unlikeable enough on her own merits, she was dating Rufus Durand.
“Lord, it’s a hot one,” Vanessa said. She motioned to Maggie’s deodorant stick. “Can I borrow that?” Without waiting for an answer, she pulled the deodorant out of Maggie’s hand, pushed aside the frilly sleeves of her plantation gown, and swabbed her underarms.
“I had two busloads of Japanese tourists,” Gaynell, Maggie’s Doucet bestie, shared eagerly. She sat cross-legged on a towel, the edge of her pantaloons sticking out under her knee-length plaid dress. Gaynell, who barely grazed five feet and weighed under a hundred pounds, often got drafted to play a plantation child since she was the only guide who fit into the costume. “I love the Japanese group tours. They take so many pictures with me, I feel famous. And they gave me some real nice tips.”
“Japanese don’t usually tip, it’s against their culture,” Vanessa informed Gaynell in her usual superior tone. She tossed the deodorant back to Maggie, who pointedly dropped it into a nearby trashcan. Vanessa didn’t seem to notice. She was too busy devouring a diet cookie from her latest weight-loss plan. “The men were probably hoping you’d run off with them and be their geisha.”
“God, Vanessa, that’s so racist,” Maggie said, disgusted. Vanessa rolled her eyes and sat down on a bench. Her hoop skirt popped up like a spring, covering her face and revealing a too-tight pair of Daisy Dukes. The other women roared with laughter.
“Shut up!”
“I’m sorry,” Gaynell said as she wiped tears from her eyes, “but it’s funny every time.”
“Yeah, well, when I marry Rufus Durand and we turn Grove Hall into a showplace, I’m gonna invent a hoop skirt that’s way easier to sit in.”
Grove Hall, the decrepit plantation home with beautiful bones that Maggie had immortalized in her Save Our Structures series, was the Durand family home. Descendants had been trying to unload the place for years but couldn’t without Rufus agreeing to the sale. And Rufus constantly refused, preferring to live in a trailer on the property and get pleasure from how much Grove Hall’s decay bothered upstanding Pelican citizens like the Crozats.
“What about the curse?” Gaynell teased Vanessa. “You know all Ru’s relationships are supposed to fail. My mom told me he’s already been married three times.”
“So?” Vanessa adjusted her skirt, which continued to fight back. “That’s only one more ’n me. Besides, my relationship with Ru is stronger than any stupid curse. I can’t believe your great-great was so mean, Maggie. Then again, she was the only River belle who married one a’ them Yankees.”
It never took long for Vanessa to get on Maggie’s nerves. “‘One a’ them Yankees?’ You know, Vanessa, just because you’re wearing a hoop skirt doesn’t mean it’s actually 1860. Besides, Magnolia Marie’s ‘Yankee’ didn’t live very long, poor guy. He went in one of the yellow fever epidemics.”
Vanessa pounced on this. “Speaking of not living long, ohmuhgawd, that murder at Crozat is so terrible for y’all. People must be canceling their reservations like crazy.”
Vanessa was right, but Maggie would never give her that satisfaction, so she kept quiet.
“Their loss,” Gaynell declared. “Crozat is awesome.”
“Still, Maggie, I feel for you,” Vanessa said, doing a bad imitation of somebody who actually felt emotions like sympathy. “I know it can’t be fun giving tours here at Doucet when your family used to own it. If y’all lose Crozat, it’d be pain on top of pain.”
Maggie drew in a deep breath, quelling the urge to give Vanessa a swift kick in the hoop skirt. “As I’ve told you a million times, I do have fun working here. And while I know us losing Crozat is Rufus Durand’s wet dream, it’s not going to happen.”
Vanessa stood up and held her hands together as if she were praying. She wasn’t; instead, she was doing some old-fashioned isometric exercise that claimed to firm up sagging breasts. “I heard—and I can’t say from who—that the lady who died wants to be buried here. Someone I know heard from the lawyers for the estate and it turns out she used to live here. Can you believe it?”
Maggie couldn’t. Beverly Clabber had lived in Pelican? When? Where? This widened the pool of suspects considerably. Maybe the murderer wasn’t a Crozat guest. Maybe it was someone from the woman’s past settling an old grudge.