“I like that song.”

“Me too.”

The two shared a smile and then broke apart to applaud as Gaynell finished “Jolie Blon.” She announced that the band would take a break, and Bo led Maggie back to their table where a big bowl of popcorn shrimp awaited them, steam rising off the crustaceans’ crusty coating. “So,” Bo said, “I’ve got some information on Suzy.”

“Really?” Maggie said. “I can’t wait to hear.”

“Don’t get too excited,” Bo cautioned. “Her husband’s a successful divorce attorney, so they’ve got plenty of money. The IRS has nothing on the Cajun Cuties. Their tax return is simple and straightforward—money in, money out, with no hint of impropriety. It’s a tiny nonprofit and they run a lean, clean operation, so it’s pretty hard to imagine what Suzy would get out of stealing their coin.”

“Oh,” she said, deflated. “But you never know about people. Look at how many kleptomaniacs have plenty of money and just steal for the thrill of it. Maybe Suzy’s like that.”

“Could be.” Bo picked up their drained beer glasses. “I’ll get us refills.”

As Maggie watched him walk away, she was overwhelmed with guilt for withholding what she’d learned from Yvonne about Gran’. He was clearly the one good apple on his low-class family tree.

Bo returned with the beers. The shrimp had cooled off enough to eat, so Maggie gave them a good dousing with Tabasco sauce and Bo dug in. She picked up a shrimp and toyed with it. Nerves had dampened her appetite. “Bo,” she said. “I discovered something that I need to tell you.” She took a deep breath and then related her conversation with Yvonne, not leaving out a single damaging detail. When she finished, much to her surprise, Bo simply shrugged. “Yeah, Yvonne told me all that already.”

“What?” Maggie yelped. “She told me she never breathed a word of it to you.”

Bo shook his head at her naïveté. “She’s an eighty-year-old lady who doesn’t get many visitors and then finds herself in the middle of this town’s most exciting drama in years. You think she’s gonna keep her mouth shut?”

“Oh, I am so mad at her. Look, Bo, even if what she said is true, I’m begging you to give Gran’ the benefit of the doubt. I just can’t bring myself to believe that she’d ever do something this horrible.”

Bo popped a shrimp in his mouth and crunched it. “Me neither.”

She stared at him. “Really?”

“Really. Two facts we know for sure: the murder weapon was that old box of rat poison, and it was planted in your kitchen to frame someone in your family. There’s no way on earth you could convince me that your Gran’ would do that. I may not be a Louisiana aristocrat, but you can’t function in this state if you don’t understand how they operate. And they would be ruthless about protecting their own; they’d never betray them.”

Maggie was overcome with a sense of relief. “I was so worried I didn’t even think about that. Thanks for figuring out what should’ve been totally obvious to me. God, I’m starving now.”

She grabbed a handful of shrimp and popped them into her mouth. Bo laughed. “Glad to see I gave you back your appetite. But we’re supposed to be sharing those.” He reached for a shrimp and she playfully pulled the bowl toward her. As they tussled over it, they didn’t see Ru approach the table.

“Well, look at you two.”

Maggie and Bo let go of the bowl. Ru’s appearance had ruined both their appetites. “Cavorting with the enemy,” Ru said, shaking his head. “Nice, Coz.”

“It’s consorting, not cavorting,” Maggie shot back before Bo could respond. “And he’s not. He’s just being polite and keeping me company because I was here alone.”

“Never could hold on to a boyfriend, could ya, Magnolia?”

“Hey, that’s enough, Rufus.” Bo stood up, towering over his cousin by a good head. “My personal life is none of your business.”

“Relax, I was just kidding around,” Ru said. “But you know what is my business, Bo? Your job, which won’t be yours much longer if you keep company with the Crozats. It’s not exactly the way to repay me, is it now?”

Bo’s face reflected his fury, and Maggie was afraid that he might strike Rufus. “We were talking business,” she said, trying to cover. “I was telling him something important about the murder.”

Rufus and Bo both stared at her, Ru with skepticism, Bo with confusion. Maggie froze. She didn’t dare say anything about Gran’ to the police chief to make his dream of jailing a family member come true. She wracked her brain, and then remembered something. “Footsteps. The night before Mrs. Clabber died, I went into the woods by the bayou to paint and I heard footsteps. They spooked me so much that I just grabbed everything and ran back to the house.”

“You’re just remembering this now?” Ru’s tone oozed distrust.

“I know I should have remembered sooner, but with all the craziness going on, I didn’t put it together that it happened the night before she died. That’s what Bo and I were just talking about.”

“Funny how a couple of turns around the dance floor jogged your memory.” Ru turned to Bo. “Check it out in the morning. And it better not be bull or you’ll be reloading whatever you unloaded from your pickup truck and looking at Pelican in your rearview mirror.” Having delivered this ultimatum, Ru headed back to Vanessa.

“I’m not lying,” Maggie insisted to Bo. “I did hear footsteps and they did scare me.”

“I believe you.” Bo looked toward Ru, his expression grim. “But it’ll be a whole lot better if we find something to prove that.”

Chapter Seventeen

“I have a newfound respect for your job,” Maggie said late the next morning as she and Bo crawled through the forest thicket trying to find any clue that would prove someone had been in the woods the night she’d come to paint. It was one of the summer’s steamiest days, and bits of leaves and twigs had found a home in her hair, which tended to expand with humidity.

“Yup, it’s a lot of grunt work,” Bo said as he scanned the ground and examined the branches of trees to see if any fiber from a shirt or pant leg might have gotten caught. He’d left his blazer in the car and stripped down to his T-shirt, which clung to his cut, sweat-soaked body. It was a good look for him. But then, thought Maggie, pretty much anything seemed to be a good look for Bo. And for a moment, she felt her body go weak.

Bo noticed Maggie falter and reached out to her, but she brushed him off. “You know, once when I was walking through Central Park in New York, some detectives stopped me and showed me a picture and asked if I knew the girl,” she said, trying to defuse the moment with mindless chatter. “They were canvassing everyone. Turned out she was killed by her boyfriend. But I remember thinking, wow, those detectives have to do that all day, how sad and bor-ahhhh!”

She suddenly lost her balance and tumbled into a hole that had been clumsily covered with a canopy of twigs and leaves. Bo raced over, reached down, and pulled her out. “Are you okay?”

Bo gently examined her, and still stunned by the fall, she let him. “Ow,” she said. “That fall really hurt. I feel like every bone in my body got a shake.”

“You’re banged up, but I don’t see any serious damage. More like you were in a fender bender than a big wreck.”

“What the hell?” Maggie rubbed her head where it ached from colliding with a wall of the hole. “What is that? I mean, I know what it is, but what is it doing here?”

Bo kneeled at the edge of the hole and examined it closely. “This is recent. Any guess why someone would be digging on your property?”

“Yes. It used to happen sometimes when I was growing up, but not since I’ve been home, so I forgot about it. The other night Gran’ was telling stories, and one of them was the legend about pirates burying treasure in our woods. It sometimes gets people to thinking they should go on a treasure hunt. I did it a few times myself with friends when I was a kid. I bet one of our guests has been doing some prospecting.”