The three women exchanged terrified glances.

“Am—am I being arrested?” Jan asked. Maggie noticed that her shivering had intensified and felt terrible for the woman.

“No, ma’am,” Bo said. “At least not until we get back DNA results on this scarf and see if they’re a match for Debbie Stern.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

As Bo and Cal Vichet led Jan out to Bo’s car for further questioning at the police station, they were followed by Angela and Suzy, who was issuing a stream of profanity that brought a flush to Cal’s weather-beaten face. “I haven’t heard language like that since my unit was bombed in Iraq,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

Gaynell left after making Maggie swear to let her know if she needed any help. Maggie, who’d promised to contact Quentin MacIlhoney on Jan’s behalf, called the lawyer, but his assistant said he was unavailable due to the fact he was shooting an episode of For Crime’s Sake, a local show that pitted an ex-DA against a defense attorney as they argued about a Louisiana murder cold case. Maggie stressed the urgency of the situation and extracted a promise of a return call as soon as taping finished. Then she made the rounds of Crozat’s guests—at least the ones that weren’t in police custody or murdered.

Shane Butler whispered to her that he’d given Emily a sleeping pill to help her get through the trauma of discovering Debbie. The Georgia boys were celebrating the capture of the “Crozat Killer,” as they dubbed Jan, by heading back to LSU for a party that they found via social media. The Rykers told Maggie not to worry about them for dinner but didn’t share their plans. She blamed herself for their sudden reticence and deeply regretted her crack about treasure hunting.

Maggie went to the front parlor, where she found her father ending a phone call. He looked grim. “That was the New York Times.”

“Seriously?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Any chance they wanted Mom’s recipe for Crawfish Crozat?”

Tug shook his head. “Nope. Apparently you can get away with one old geezer being offed at a B and B, but when a successful Manhattan businesswoman is ‘murdered by her best friend,’ that’s news. In print and online. I’ve hung up on a couple of Internet bottom feeders this morning.”

“How did they find out so fast?”

“I think we can thank the Georgia boys’ social media accounts for that.”

Maggie groaned and then massaged her temples as she contemplated how to do damage control. “There is a bright side. Print media is dying. And you know how voracious the Internet is. Stories have a short shelf life. Since the police think they caught Debbie’s killer, this should blow over pretty quickly.” Of course, as she well knew, it would pop up whenever anyone did an Internet search for “Crozat Plantation.” But she chose not to burden her father with this ugly reality.

“The question is, will Crozat still be standing when it does blow over?” Tug asked. “We’ve already had four cancellations for Labor Day weekend. We’re always full then. This is bad, Maggie.” Maggie gave Tug a comforting hug. Her father held on to her for a minute and then pulled away. “Please, honey, let’s keep this a secret between you and me. Your mom certainly doesn’t need to know.”

“Of course, Dad.”

Tug went back to work, and Maggie walked out onto the veranda to think. She stared out at the grassy levee that separated Crozat from the mercurial Mississippi. The river, like a hungry python, had swallowed plantations whole over the centuries. Yet it always spared Crozat, and she couldn’t stand the thought that her family home, having survived many a natural disaster, might be brought down by a human one.

She glanced back at the parlor, where her father was hunched over his computer keyboard. Was it her imagination, or had his copper hair dulled? Were there more lines on his face and darker shadows under his eyes? She scrunched her eyes to fight off tears. There wasn’t a day in her life when Tug and Ninette hadn’t offered love and support in a crisis, no matter how trivial. When mean girls in Maggie’s fifth-grade class anointed themselves “the Fashion Police” and made fun of her quirky outfit choices, Tug made sure that the school principal ended the group’s sartorial reign of terror. When Maggie threw a childish tantrum at seventeen because she got a bad haircut, Ninette made her feel better by showing how the cut could be fixed by simply flipping her part to the left.

As she watched her dad deal with the fallout brought on by the Crozat Killer—whoever he or she was—Maggie realized she’d reached that moment in a child’s relationship with their parents where the balance shifts. Instead of getting support, it was time to give it. She was going to make things better for her mom and dad.

She just had to figure out how.

Maggie walked toward the shotgun and passed the area where PPD CSI was still dissecting the crime scene, although with much less attention to detail now that the potentially incriminating scarf had been discovered. As soon as she got home, she sat on the couch with her tablet and typed in a search for “Crozat Plantation B and B.” Page one was nothing but links to e-bites about the murders, as were pages two through five. It wasn’t until page six that customer reviews from a travel website appeared—glowing reviews now usurped by the notoriety of recent events. Maggie mulled over something an old roommate, Kristie, once told her. Kristie had been an entry-level executive at a large public relations firm and, as low girl on the corporate totem pole, often found herself assigned the most heinous clients. “But,” she said to Maggie one day as she was in the middle of turning a starlet’s drug habit into a story of rehab redemption, “I always stick to the basic rule of PR: if you don’t like what people are saying about your client, change the conversation.” Maggie wished she could call on Kristie to help her out with Crozat, but Kristie’s success at changing conversations had led her to an executive vice president position at her firm’s LA office, and the last time Maggie had seen her was on television as she led an Oscar-nominated client down the red carpet prior to the Academy Awards.

Maggie lay back on the couch and closed her eyes, trying to think how she could change the current salacious conversation about Crozat into one that would staunch its financial bleeding. She was jolted out of her thoughts by her cell phone’s ring. Maggie checked and saw Gaynell was the caller.

“How fast can you get here?” Gaynell asked.

“Huh?”

“You’re on for the night tour, remember? The group off the riverboat cruise? They’re docking in fifteen minutes. I tried to find a sub for you, but no one else was free.”

Maggie jumped up. “Gay, I am so sorry. I totally forgot.”

“I know you had a day that was a gift from the devil, but if I have to spend two hours working this group with only Vanessa, I will volunteer to be Crozat’s next victim.”

“I’m on my way.” Maggie texted her parents to let them know that she was due at Doucet and then grabbed her purse and car keys. She ran to the Falcon, jumped in, and headed for Doucet.

*

As she drove, she found herself replaying her conversation with Tug. Something about it sparked memories of the Clabbers’ funeral. She had a sudden flash that there was a clue to the murders in an interaction she had that day, but hard as she tried, she couldn’t pinpoint the moment. It remained elusive.

Maggie slowed down as she drove through the town speed trap. She saw that Pelican PD had pulled a van over—a news van from the Baton Rouge television station. Cal Vichet was castigating the unhappy driver while handing him ticket. As she drove by, Cal caught her eye and winked at her. She smiled back. Pelicaners had a history of protecting their own, and no news crew or reporter would find themselves welcome in town. Maggie just hoped that Cal’s boss Rufus Durand didn’t find out about the solid that the officer had done the Crozats.