Maggie nodded yes. “But she’s not,” Maggie said as she pointed to Emily, who was making a futile effort to crawl away. Bo trained his gun on her and she stopped. “Emily murdered Beverly and Debbie, and she was going to kill me too. We have to free Gran’. Emily locked her in the closet in the shotgun.”

She began running toward the shotgun, but Gaynell pulled her back. “Your Grand-mère’s okay,” Gaynell said. “We found her when we went to look for you. Bo used GPS to trace your phone to the shotgun house. Gran’s on the veranda having a Gin Fizz and sharing her story with anyone who’ll listen.”

“Thank God.” Overwhelmed, Maggie sunk to the ground, the drama and danger of the morning finally catching up to her.

Gaynell knelt down and put an arm around her friend’s shoulder. “You can relax. It’s over.”

There was the rhythmic sound of steps in the woods, and they all tensed up. Bo quietly circled, gun at the ready.

“Em?” a voice whispered. “Emily are you there?”

“Shane,” Emily called. “Help! I’m hurt and these people won’t let me go. They think I killed those women.”

Shane shoved his way through a tangle of trees and ran to Emily’s side. “What the hell? Boo Bear, what happened?”

Emily burst into tears that Maggie figured were at least half-real, given her busted leg. “It’s awful. Maggie accused me of murder and chased me into the woods, and I fell in a big hole and I think I broke something.”

Shane whipped around and faced Maggie. “I’m gonna sue your ass off.” Then he turned to Bo. “And have you thrown off the force for police brutality.”

Maggie snorted. “Nice act, Shane.”

Bo held the gun on Shane with one hand and pulled out a pair of cuffs with the other. “You’re both under arrest for the murders of Francine-slash-Beverly Prepoire Roubideaux Walker Clabber and Debra Stern.” He holstered his gun and turned back to Shane. “Hands behind your back.”

“You can’t do this,” Shane said as Bo cuffed him. “It’s false arrest. I’m gonna sue your ass off too.”

The others ignored him. “It’s going to be hard to get a stretcher through these woods,” Maggie said. She motioned to Emily. “Do you think we should carry her or let her put an arm around each of us and have her hop out?”

“Don’t you touch her,” Shane shouted. “She might be pregnant.”

“That’s right,” Emily said. Maggie could see Emily looking for a way to use this to her advantage. “Pregnant suspects need to be treated very carefully.”

“Sorry to break it to you, Emily,” Maggie said. “But we happen to know you’re not pregnant.”

“Yup,” Gaynell said. “We found the negative pee stick in your trash.”

Maggie saw the relief on Shane’s face. Unfortunately for him, so did Emily. And it really ticked her off. “The whole thing was his idea,” she cried out. “He forced me into it.”

Shane stared at her. “What?! Are you out of your mind? You’re the one who came up with the entire plan. You said I’d get my own golf course in Scotland.”

“He’s lying,” Emily sobbed theatrically. “He only wanted me to have a baby as insurance. That way we’d definitely have an heir.”

“No, no way, she’s talking crazy.” Shane’s voice and panic level rose simultaneously. “It was all about the golf course. And hunting. I could hunt in England and Scotland at my mansions, but I wouldn’t have to wear a skirt unless I wanted to, and then I’d have my own, one of those kilt things.” Shane devolved into babbling while Emily continued to hurl blame at him.

Maggie marveled at how quickly the couple had gone from sugary “boo bears” to selling each other out. Had they ever really cared for each other, she wondered, or was their connection solely based on a mutual desire to live out some warped version of a fairy tale replete with duchies and castles?

An ambulance siren wailed in the distance. A moment later, a police siren joined in. Shane turned to face Bo. “It was all her idea, I swear. I’ll tell you anything you want to know, just cut me a deal.”

“Don’t believe him, he’s full of it,” Emily said, her tone vicious.

The sirens grew louder as the ambulance and police cruiser drew closer to Crozat. “As easy as listening to you two incriminate each other makes my job, I’m really not interested in some lovers’ quarrel,” Bo said. “I just want to get your statements and hand you over to the DA.”

The sound of sirens was replaced by screeching tires and slamming doors. Someone called Bo’s name and he yelled back his location. Soon the area was overrun with EMTs and police officers. Bo and Cal Vichet led Shane to the black-and-white while Artie got in the ambulance to escort Emily, now officially under arrest, to the hospital.

“Let’s get you home for some rest and a shower,” Gaynell told Maggie.

“That sounds so good right now.”

As she followed Gaynell out of the woods, she glanced back at the bayou and saw a pair of black eyes staring back at her. The gator’s head then rose just above the water, and Maggie could swear it was grinning at her.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

A warm shower and a couple of croissants revived Maggie, and despite the urging of her family, she refused to take to bed like a distressed damsel. She threw on a teal cotton tank top and shorts and then went to find the Rykers before they and their treasure-hunting gear got away. She’d been relieved to hear that both the Rykers and Cuties had delayed their departures, not wanting to leave until they got all the dirt on the morning’s events and arrests.

Maggie found the Ryker kids entertaining themselves on the lawn in front of Crozat. Alice was texting on her cell as the boys tossed a ball back and forth. “Hey,” she greeted them. “Have you seen your parents?”

“They went for a walk,” Sam said, pointing down the road. “We’re sticking around to hear the copper’s story.”

She thanked Sam and headed in the direction that he’d gestured to. After a short stroll, she saw Carrie and Lachlan resting on a boulder, pulling their damp clothes from where they’d stuck to their bodies. Maggie wasn’t surprised to see that they hadn’t gotten very far. It was the kind of clammy Louisiana day that could produce perspiration in only a few yards.

Maggie sat down next to the Rykers. “Hi, there.”

“Hello,” Lachlan said politely.

“You know,” she said. “I realized something very interesting about this week. Well, besides the murders, which pretty much top any list of interesting events. Anyway, what I realized is that most of our guests had an agenda for their visit. What Detective Durand would call an ulterior motive. The Butlers, the Georgia boys, the Clabbers . . .”

“We didn’t,” Carrie said. Her face was red and her voice weak. She was a terrible liar.

“Oh, I think you did. So let’s talk about your clandestine treasure hunting on our property.”

Carrie and Lachlan exchanged a guilty look. “We’re awfully sorry about that,” Carrie said. “It’s just . . . things have been rather hard for us lately. I owned a needlepoint shop in Sydney, but when the economy crashed, it took my store with it and left us with a pile of debt that we’re still paying off.”

“And then about eight months ago,” Lachlan said, “the daily paper I wrote for folded. You can imagine how hard it is to get a job as a reporter these days. I was born in Los Angeles, so I’m actually a U.S. citizen. We thought maybe we’d give America a go, you know, start over and all that. We were going to head straight to LA, where I still have family, but when we read about Louisiana and all the rumors of hidden treasure . . .”

“It was stupid, we know that now,” Carrie admitted. “Color us desperate, I guess.”

Maggie’s anger at the couple dissipated. She could certainly empathize with financial hardship. “Well, you’re not the first people who got sucked into that fantasy. And the hole you dug did save my life.” She paused. “What will you do now?”