Tug managed a half-smile. “Don’t worry about it. Just stick to that promise.”

*

After getting her dad’s assurances that he’d text her with updates about Ninette’s condition, Maggie raced home. She was one of those people who, raised by a great cook, preferred to compliment the chef rather than prepare anything herself. If there were health risks associated with microwave use, she was destined to be Patient Zero. But now she had to feed a houseful of people, none of whom was expecting a nuked Lean Cuisine.

She parked and ran into the shotgun, where she knew Gran’ had a few boxes of jambalaya rice. Maggie grabbed them and planned an ad hoc meal in her head as she rushed to the kitchen in the main house. She stopped in the doorway and gawked at the sight before her.

Gran’, a butcher’s apron over her taupe silk blouse and slacks, was tossing shrimp into a large sauté pan while Alice Ryker chopped celery. The girl’s brothers stood next to Gran’ holding measuring spoons and spices. “Two bay leaves and a teaspoon of thyme,” Gran’ ordered. The boy measured and tossed in the spices. “Well done. Now I need the celery.” Alice walked over and tossed celery into the pan; it sizzled as it hit butter melting in the pan.

Gran’ dumped a bowl of tomatoes into the concoction on the stove. “Hello, chère,” she called to Maggie.

“Uh . . . you cook?”

“Of course. Children, cover your ears.” The Ryker kids did so. “Back in the day, there was a saying: if you want to get a man, you need to be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen, and a bad girl in the bedroom. Nowadays, I’d take a fist to anyone who said this, but it did motivate me to pick up a few recipes. Why don’t you throw together a salad and heat up some dinner rolls while I finish making my Shrimp Creole?”

“Can we uncover our ears?” Sam asked.

“Yes, my apologies, I forgot all about that.”

Maggie put together a salad, impressing herself when she jazzed it up with dried cranberries and chopped pecans. Ninette had left a bowl of dough to rise, and she pinched off balls to turn into rolls.

“Your mama’s going to be fine,” Gran’ told her as they worked. “I got a real strong sense of it.”

“I hope you’re right,” Maggie said. “I’m not getting a thing from my sense.” She pulled a tray of browned dinner rolls out of the oven, took a picture of them, and sent it to Ninette with the text, “#Success!” Anything to distract her mother from the unspoken fear that they all shared.

The meal that night was a group effort. The Rykers and Butlers served the appetizers that went with the drinks Kyle mixed at the bar. The Georgia boys provided music that was more suited to an electronic dance party than a sedate lodging like Crozat, but at least it was upbeat. Cuties Jan, Angela, and Suzy set the table and took charge of the dessert Lia brought over. The only guest not pitching in was Cutie Debbie, who seemed so believably semicatatonic that Maggie wouldn’t be surprised if Bo unearthed some acting lessons in the woman’s background.

Maggie looked around the table as everyone dined and chatted. The night felt more akin to a family gathering than a hostess tending to her guests. She had trouble believing that one of these lovely people might be a killer. It would be like finding out that the fun cousin who taught you how to make armpit farts was leading a double life as a violent criminal.

After dinner, she thanked everyone for their help and then shooed Gran’ off to bed, taking on cleanup duties herself. She was finding it therapeutic and would have added cleaning to her Crozat duties if she didn’t know how much the Shexnayders needed the job. She finished loading the dishwasher and turned it on. Her phone pinged and vibrated with a text, and she eagerly read the message from Tug: “Mom sleeping well. Fingers crossed.”

Her emotions vacillated from disappointment that the text wasn’t from Bo to relief that her dad seemed optimistic. She sent him heart and fingers-crossed emoticons and then pocketed her phone and headed toward the back door through what the family called the Event Wall Hall of Fame. Every event held at Crozat since its inception as a B and B was commemorated with a framed photo on this wall. Aside from decorating a dull area few guests ever saw, the pictures served as visual reminders of highlights from one successful event that the family could use for another. In this way, the wall served as a large scrapbook of party-planning ideas.

As she walked past them, Maggie realized that she’d missed dusting the tops of the frames. She went back to the kitchen, grabbed a rag, wet it, and returned to the hall. Cynic that she was, she wondered how many of the couples were divorced by now as she dusted a handful of wedding portraits. Her eye landed on one of the older photos, taken about ten years prior. The groom, smiling and elegant in a morning coat, looked familiar. She struggled to place him. Then it hit her, and the realization of who he was made her gasp.

The groom in the photo was Kyle Bruner.

Chapter Nineteen

Maggie stared at the picture. She knew Kyle had lost his wife in a car accident. Was she the beautiful bride standing next to him, or had he been married previously? Either way, why had he never mentioned that he’d stayed at Crozat before? That he’d been married there?

Kyle was keeping secrets. And in a place where a murder occurred, secrets could be dangerous.

Maggie knew this was something that she couldn’t withhold from Bo. But she had to talk to Lia first. She pulled her cell out of the back pocket of her jeans and texted her cousin to meet at the bandstand and then ran to the kitchen and extricated a reusable grocery bag from a pile stashed under the sink. She returned to the Event Hall of Fame, removed the photo from the wall, and stuck it in the bag. Then Maggie raced out of the house and hopped into the Falcon, whose top was down. As she drove, her heart thumped unpleasantly. She hated to think that Kyle wasn’t the sweet, considerate guy that he appeared to be. But every psychopath she’d read about or seen in movies seemed to present a perfectly amenable façade.

As soon as she reached Pelican’s historic business district, she parked and jumped out of the car. Lia was already waiting for her at the bandstand. Maggie grabbed the bag with the photo and ran to her cousin.

“Lia, I wish there was an easy way to say this, but there’s not,” Maggie said. She was out of breath from running, so her words came out in puffs. “Kyle lied to us. Well, technically, he didn’t tell us something, but it’s the same thing. Anyway, I found something at Crozat and I have to show it to you because I’m scared for you. Here.” With that, she pulled out the photo and handed to Lia. Lia gave the picture a cursory glance and handed it back to her.

“I know.”

“You know? What do you mean, you know?”

“I know about the photo. I know about the wedding at Crozat. I know why Kyle is really here.”

Maggie stared at her cousin, annoyed and confused. “Well if you know all this, do you mind sharing it with me?”

Lia shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Oh, come on, Lia—”

“I can’t because it’s not my place to tell his story. Come.”

Lia motioned for Maggie to follow her, and the two women walked through the park across the street to Fais Dough Dough. Lia led Maggie to the back room, where Kyle was alone, once again hunched over the computer as he processed an online order. Lia laid a hand on his shoulder, and he started.

“Maggie knows about your wedding and Crozat,” Lia said.

Kyle froze for a moment. The room was silent. Maggie felt her chest contract and realized that she’d been holding her breath. She released it slowly.

Kyle spoke. “It was only a matter of time until someone noticed that picture. We were just playing a waiting game.”