Rufus strode off, and Maggie’s face flushed with humiliation. He had nailed the reason Ninette’s dish had no takers. People were afraid to eat it. She assumed local gossip had progressed to the point of pegging one of the Crozats as the murderer, but the locals actually fearing her family was a low that she hadn’t foreseen. Maggie debated how to break the news to her parents, but she didn’t have to. They’d overheard her conversation with Rufus.
“I’ve never been so embarrassed,” Ninette said, her voice quavering.
“I’m sure people are just being . . . you know . . . careful maybe . . . or busy.” Maggie hated how lame she sounded. She noticed that Ninette was stirring her pot as if she had a weird tic, tightly clutching the large wooden spoon and whipping it around the pot in repetitive circles. “Mom, let me do that. Please take a break, the stress isn’t good for you.”
She reached for the spoon, but Ninette refused to let go. “It’s my dish and my job.”
Tug, furious, balled his hands into fists and pounded them together, a substitute for actually pounding someone. “We’ve known these sonuvabitches all our lives,” he muttered. “Now I never want to see ’em or speak to any of ’em again. Ever.”
Emily and Shane bounded over, holding hands. They’d been dancing and both were damp with perspiration. “I’m starving,” Shane said. “Tell me you still have food left. I know how popular your dish is.”
“Oh, that’s so not a problem today.” Maggie filled the Butlers in on the crawfish debacle. The couple was incensed on the Crozats’ behalf.
“Unbelievable. Em, come with me.”
Shane marched off with his wife, and Maggie wondered what he might up to. She found out a few moments later when he returned with every Crozat guest—the Cuties, the Georgia boys, Kyle, even the Ryker family. They formed a line at the stand.
“I hear this is the best dish at Fet Let,” Shane announced loudly, for the benefit of passersby.
“As a guest of Crozat Plantation, I know what care they put into their delicious food and what fresh ingredients they use,” Jan said. She couldn’t have sounded more stilted, and Maggie couldn’t have been more grateful. Ninette and Tug happily dished out hearty bowls to all their guests, whose pleasure didn’t have to be faked.
“Oh my God, this is amazing,” Carrie Ryker said as she dug into her pasta.
“It’s beyond amazing.” Lachlan Ryker held out his bowl, which he’d quickly emptied. “I must have some more.”
As the guests devoured their portions, Cal and Artie sauntered over, still in uniform. “We just got off,” Cal said. “Now where’s that pot of Crawfish Crozat you promised, Tug?”
“If the Pelican PD, the guys who searched our kitchen, are eating here, you should too,” Maggie, emboldened, called to the crowds of festivalgoers. And slowly customers trickled up to the stand until a line finally formed. Ninette’s dish might sell out after all.
The Crozat guests dismissed the family’s thanks. “Uh, excuse me, we’re doing ourselves a favor eating this,” Georgia One said as he tucked into his third helping.
“That is the truth, my friend,” Artie agreed. “It’s okay to get fat if it’s on Crawfish Crozat.”
“Hah, that’s my partner, Rapmaster R2DCool.” Cal guffawed and then coughed as he choked on a crawfish. Shane Butler gave him a swat on the back and the fish went down Cal’s gullet. “Thanks, buddy. Almost saw my maker. But what a way to go.”
“The police here are so much nicer than in New York,” Emily Butler whispered to Maggie. “I once saw a cop screaming at a homeless man trying to wash car windows outside the entrance of the Lincoln Tunnel. I felt so bad for the guy that I gave him two dollars, even though we don’t even own a car.” Maggie recalled the time she’d seen Rufus sock a local driver whose brakes went out at a stop sign but chose not to share the story with the guests. Better to have them retain an image of Pelican as a Cajun Brigadoon, which it was living up to at the moment.
“Maggie, hon, would you mind picking up a couple of beers for your mom and me at the beverage tent?” Tug asked. Her father’s face was reddened by the large crawfish pot’s steam and his shirt pocked with sweat stains, but Tug was in his element tending to the growing line of customers.
“Sure, Dad. Be right back.”
She headed to the beverage tent, which was being manned by the Crozat support staff, Marie and Bud Shexnayder.
“Glad to see business is finally picking up at the stand,” Bud said.
“Yeah, it was iffy for a while.”
Marie made a face. “That idiot Rufus Durand came by and was giving us grief about working at ‘the scene of the crime.’ Even implying that we might want to quit, especially since he don’t know if they’ll ever solve the murder.”
“More like he don’t want to,” Bud grumbled.
“You know it, Bud,” Maggie said. She got the beers, delivered them to her parents, and then sat on bench under one of the giant oak trees that encircled the green. Bud was right. Ru would throw up every roadblock he could to the investigation. Maggie realized that the only option was to circumvent him. She hurried back over to the Shexnayders.
“You guys have been so wonderful during this horrible time,” she told them. “I don’t know how we’ll ever thank you, but we can start by giving you the rest of the week off. Paid, of course.”
“Oh, Maggie, that’s sweet, but it’s not necessary,” Marie said.
“Yes it is. Do something fun, like go down to New Orleans.”
“You got a pretty full house,” Bud said. “Who’s gonna do all that cleaning?”
Maggie waved off the question. “Not your problem, but don’t worry, we’ll make sure it gets done.”
Bud hesitated. “I don’t know. I feel like we should be there for you.”
“You have been, Bud. That’s why we want to do something special for you. Really, we insist.”
Marie hesitated. “It has been a while.”
“I hear they fixed up Broussard’s,” her husband said. “I’d love to see that. And now that I’m thinking New Orleans, I’m craving a Mother’s Oyster Po’boy. Dressed, with extra everything, lettuce, tomato, mayo . . . mmmm.”
Marie smiled at her husband. “Now you got me craving one, too. If you really think it’s okay, Maggie, then I guess we’re going to New Orleans for a getaway weekend.”
“Excellent. And bring me back one of those po’boys, you hear?”
Maggie bought a beer from the Shexnayders and left them eagerly planning their trip. She checked on her parents, who were dishing out the last of Ninette’s Crawfish Crozat, which was once again the hit of the Fet. She scraped herself a bowl from the bottom of the pot and then found a square of empty grass on the crowded green to enjoy her meal.
She gave herself a mental pat on the back for coming up with the idea to take over the Shexnayders’ housekeeping and maintenance duties. Both jobs offered great opportunities for snooping. The fact that Beverly Clabber had once lived in Pelican certainly widened the pool of suspects beyond Crozat’s boundaries, but the B and B at least offered a convenient starting point for Maggie’s informal investigation. While she hated to think that any of Crozat’s guests might be responsible for Beverly Clabber’s death, Rufus Durand’s call to inaction for the PPD meant that someone had to either rule them out as suspects or reveal one of them to be a murderer. And it looked like that someone would be Maggie.
Chapter Fourteen
Early the next morning, an unhappy Maggie surveyed the mass of cleaning products jammed into the Crozat housekeeping closet. Tending to each guest room in the B and B now seemed like an enormous task, and she had no idea where to begin, having sent the Shexnayders off on their minivacation without asking for any guidance.
“I really didn’t think this through,” she muttered. For a moment, she was tempted to hire a cleaning crew. But she reminded herself that housekeeping provided the perfect cover for investigating the plantation’s guests.