Rebel Without a Cake Page 21

  Right up until the moment Miss Frankie decided to change the subject. “You haven’t told me how your meeting with Simone O’Neil went,” she said. “You did meet with her, didn’t you?”

  I kept my gaze straight ahead so I wouldn’t inadvertently shoot her the stink eye. “Yes.”

  “She’s a lovely girl, don’t you think?”

  “She’s hardly a girl,” I said. My voice came out tighter than I’d intended so I tried to temper it with a laugh. “But yes, she’s lovely.”

  From the corner of my eye I saw Miss Frankie turn her head to look at me. “Are you all right, sugar? You seem tense.”

  “I’m fine,” I said in a voice that even I knew sounded terse and defensive. “I’m just tired. It’s been a long week and today wasn’t exactly a walk in the park.”

  “Of course.” Miss Frankie looked out over the yard again. “When we get back home, we’ll need to get busy on our Christmas plans. Have you had a chance to think about what you’d like to add to the menu?”

  “No. I haven’t.” Tell her about Albuquerque, my conscience whispered. I was so tired of its constant nagging, I decided to take its advice so it would leave me alone. And maybe I wanted to drop a bombshell so I could gauge her reaction. “The thing is, I’m not going to be here for Christmas. I’m going to Albuquerque.”

  The rhythm of her chair changed slightly, but she didn’t look at me. “Oh? When did you decide to go there?”

  Bernice leaned back into the shadows. Was she anticipating trouble from Miss Frankie?

  “I made the decision a couple of weeks ago,” I said. “My uncle Nestor already bought the ticket. I haven’t been home in a year and a half. I miss my family, and it means a lot to Aunt Yolanda and Uncle Nestor.”

  “You didn’t mention it last time we talked.”

  “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  She slid a sidelong glance in my direction. “And you think that letting me believe you’d help me and then announcing your plans would hurt less?”

  It had been a long day. My head hurt. My lungs hurt. During supper I’d noticed a new ache in my neck. Plus, I’d been nursing hurt feelings over Miss Frankie and Simone for a couple of days. Add the fact that neither Sullivan nor Gabriel had tracked me down at Aunt Margaret’s house to see why I’d called, and I was feeling pretty low. Which may or may not have made my temper slightly more volatile than usual.

  I stopped rocking completely and gaped at her. “First of all, you blindsided me—again—with the Belle Lune job, which you didn’t even bother to discuss with me. And you blindsided me with the whole Christmas deal, as if you think I exist only to take care of your whim of the moment. Christmas at your house was Pearl Lee’s idea. She can help you. I’m going home.”

  Miss Frankie’s expression turned to ice. “What is wrong with you, Rita?”

  “Wrong? Nothing.” Too agitated to sit any longer, I stood and walked to the edge of the porch. “I take that back. Something is wrong. You set me up, Miss Frankie, and I don’t appreciate it.”

  “How did I do that?”

  “You lied to me,” I went on. “You told me that Philippe tried to get the Belle Lune Ball contract, and that wasn’t true. He’d turned down the offer because he didn’t want to work with Evangeline Delahunt.”

  “Who told you that?” Miss Frankie asked softly.

  I might have been angry with Ox, but I wasn’t going to throw him under the bus. “Does it matter? It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “There’s a lot of history there,” she said. “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand that you and Evangeline wanted Philippe to marry Simone Delahunt and that the two of you did everything you could to get them together. I understand that you were planning their wedding when Philippe left for pastry school. And I understand that you didn’t want Philippe to marry me. Do you know how much hearing that hurt me?”

  “I wanted Philippe to find a woman who loved him. One who wasn’t after his money. I didn’t know you, Rita. All I knew was that you came from a very different background. I didn’t know what you wanted from him. So yes, at first I was skeptical. I feel differently now.”

  My knees were shaking and I could take only shallow breaths. I heard what she said, but I didn’t know if I could believe her. I’d battled the feeling of not belonging my whole life—at least from the summer I turned twelve and I went to live with Aunt Yolanda and Uncle Nestor. They’d loved me as much as anyone could. They’d treated me like one of their own. I could never find fault with anything they’d done, but I’d still felt as if I was standing on the outside looking in.

  Miss Frankie stood and smoothed the legs of her pants. “I’m sorry you don’t want to believe me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m tired and I’m going to bed.”

  I dropped into my chair as soon as she went inside.

  “You’re so wrong about her,” Bernice said from the shadows.

  I’d forgotten she was still sitting there. The sound of her voice made me jump. “Excuse me?”

  Bernice got up and came to stand in front of me. “You’re wrong about her. She loves you deeply.”

  I desperately wanted to believe her, but the old doubts were just too strong. I thought I should say something, but the words wouldn’t come.

  “If she didn’t love you,” Bernice went on, “she could have fought you for everything you inherited when Philippe died, and she would have won. You were in the process of divorcing him. Any court would have taken one look at those divorce papers and handed everything to Frances Mae.” She sat in the chair Miss Frankie had vacated and put a gentle hand on my arm. “She didn’t fight you, Rita. In fact, she went to great lengths to make sure you stayed in her life. So whatever it is you think she once felt for Simone Delahunt has nothing to do with how she feels about you.”

  Tears filled my eyes and I still couldn’t speak. Bernice touched my cheek and smiled down at me. “One of these days, I hope you’ll learn to let her love you. It would mean so much to her.”

  I felt small and petty, embarrassed that I’d let all my old junk get the best of me again. I wasn’t completely wrong. Miss Frankie really had to stop committing me to things without asking. But getting her to change would be a long, slow process. We weren’t in a TV sitcom where one conversation could bring about a lasting life change. If it could, I’d be a changed woman every week.

  Twenty-five

  Thinking about everything that had happened that day ramped up the exhaustion I’d been feeling, but I wasn’t ready to go inside and settle in for a sleepover, so I tried to map out a plan for fixing the Mercedes and getting back to New Orleans.

  I wasn’t going to wait for Gabriel indefinitely, but I still didn’t want to call Ox, which meant I also couldn’t call Isabeau. She might be keeping secrets from him, but I wouldn’t ask her to drive to Baie Rebelle and not tell him where she was going. I could ask Dwight or Estelle, but I was almost certain that either of them would tell Ox where they were going, and if Ox thought I was in trouble, he’d come along for the ride. I liked knowing that about him, but that’s what makes our relationship so complicated. Edie was out in her condition, and I didn’t want to drag Sparkle too far away either when her niece or nephew might be born at any time.

  I’d just have to wait until morning and hope that sleep would clear my head so I could figure out what to do.

  Stars filled the night sky, and every so often something would rustle one of the nearby bushes. I tried not to think about what was out there. After a few minutes I caught the distinctive aroma of cigarette smoke and saw Eskil walk to the edge of the porch at the far end of the house. He looked tired. Maybe even a little sad. I wondered if I was looking at a killer. Had he finally found proof that Silas’s moonshine business should have been his? Had he had enough of Silas’s taunts? Had he flipped out? Spotted a toilet tank lid and lost control?<
br />
  He turned and caught me watching him. I held my breath and tried to look . . . I don’t know, maybe invisible.

  “What you doin’ out here all by yourself?” he asked.

  Apparently my invisibility cloak wasn’t working. “Just looking at the stars. It’s a beautiful night.”

  “It is that.” He crushed his cigarette under the toe of his boot and moved closer to where I was sitting. “What are you going to do about your car?”

  I shrugged. “I haven’t figured that out yet. The first thing will be to get it towed to a mechanic so I can find out what the damage is.”

  Eskil sat, groaning like an old man as his knees bent. “I hear those airbags can be expensive to replace.” He lit another cigarette and held it up as an afterthought. “This gonna bother you?”

  “Not really.” I could have just kept my mouth shut and looked at the stars, but I thought about Bernice and the promise I’d made the other night to help clear Eskil. And I remembered the disappointment on her face just a few minutes earlier. Most of all, I thought about all the times she’d been there for Miss Frankie in the short time I’d known her, and I knew that I couldn’t let the moment pass. It seemed that Eskil was feeling talkative. I couldn’t just walk away.

  “Aunt Margaret told me why you disliked Silas. She said you think Silas had something to do with your father’s disappearance.”

  Eskil stared out at the clearing and smoked in silence. Just when I’d decided he was no longer in the mood to share, he dropped his head and looked at me from the corners of his eyes. “I don’t think it. I know it.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “You know that for a fact? How?”

  “Sonofabitch told me, that’s how. He was always hinting around. Throwing it in my face. Every time I got on him for cutting one of my lines or poaching something I trapped, he’d tell me how he outsmarted my daddy and he’d outsmart me, too.” Eskil rested his arms on his thighs and looked down at his boots. “Silas was crazy. No doubt about that. And he deserved to die if anyone did. But I didn’t kill him if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  I believed him. At least I wanted to. “Can you prove it?”

  He laughed through his nose. “Well, now, how can you prove you didn’t do something you didn’t do?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you could provide an alibi.”

  “By admitting I went to New Orleans and scared the bejesus out of Bernice?”

  “That might be a start,” I said. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

  “Of course it was. How many people you know as ugly as me?”

  I laughed and let myself relax a little. “I don’t think you’re ugly at all. But you do have a distinctive look. So why all the secrecy? Will you tell me?”

  “Mama said she told you about Daddy’s still.”

  I nodded. “She mentioned it.”

  “Well, that’s why I went. That morning Silas stopped hinting around. He came right out and told me that he slit my daddy’s throat and threw him into the swamp. Somehow he’d tracked Daddy to the still. Daddy caught him spying and they got into it.”

  I shuddered at the image. “Silas told you this? Why? I mean . . . Why? After all this time?”

  Eskil shrugged. “I don’t know. He’d been acting weird for a while, but even weirder since his own mama died last month. Far as I know, he hadn’t seen her in years. He never stopped by. Sure as hell never called her. Didn’t act like he gave a damn. Didn’t even show up for his own daddy’s funeral. Or hers either. But I guess losing her made him go crazy.”

  “You don’t know why?”

  “I don’t have a clue, but it’s not as if the folks in that family tell me their secrets.”

  “This is a small town,” I said. “I thought everyone knew everybody else’s business. I thought that was the law or something.”

  Eskil chuckled. “Don’t believe everything you read.”

  “Okay. I won’t. But what does any of that have to do with you going to Bernice’s house?”

  “Silas told me he’d killed my daddy. He told me he’d stolen a still that had been in my family for a hundred years. Daddy died before he could give me the location of the still and nobody else would’ve known it.”

  “And you thought Bernice might?”

  He grinned and shook his head. “Not exactly. But her daddy got our granddaddy’s things when Granny died. I thought she might still have them tucked away somewhere.”

  “Why all the sneaking around?” I asked. “Why not just ring the bell and ask for what you wanted?”

  Eskil shrugged. “If she didn’t know what she had, I didn’t want her to know. It was a matter of pride. I didn’t want to be the first Percifield man to let the secret out. I’m pretty good at getting in and out without being spotted. I figured I could just look around without her knowing I was there.”

  Epic fail. “She was completely convinced that she saw Cooch’s ghost,” I said. “And after she found out that you were supposedly lost in the swamp, she thought Cooch had come to warn her.”

  Eskil looked sheepish, which I thought was the least he could do.

  “What was it you thought Bernice might have?”

  “I thought there might have been a message of some kind. A clue. Something that might give me an idea where to look for the still. It was a crazy idea, I know. I was pissed. I got drunk. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  “You drove to New Orleans drunk? Are you out of your mind? You could have killed somebody!”

  Since he was under suspicion of doing just that, I was embarrassed by my reaction. Eskil seemed to feel worse than I did. He wagged his head and took a long drag from his cigarette. “Yeah. I know. It was a stupid thing to do. I was so angry I would have killed Silas if I’d seen him again that night. It’s pure dumb luck I didn’t.”

  “Where were you when he confessed to killing Uncle Cooch?”

  “At the dock. He’d been up to his old tricks. He’d cleaned off a few of my lines. I saw him and confronted him about it.”

  “And out of nowhere he confessed?”

  Eskil’s beard twitched. “No. We had a talk. Then he told me that I’d never prove what he was doing, and then he confessed.”

  “And you just let him go.”

  “I took a couple of swings. Got in a solid punch or two. But I needed him alive to find what he stole.”

  “The family still.”

  “That’s right.”

  Parts of his story had the ring of truth, but I wasn’t completely convinced. “You expect me to believe that Silas admitting to killing your father and you just let him walk away? You got drunk and drove to New Orleans, knowing what Silas had done?”

  “How else was I going to prove it?”

  “You could have called the sheriff’s department. You could have told them what Silas said and let them investigate.” The irony of me giving him that particular piece of advice wasn’t lost on me, but we weren’t talking about me. And besides, the circumstances were completely different. “I take it you didn’t find a clue at Bernice’s house?”

  “Didn’t even look. She started screaming and I took off. I thought maybe everything would blow over and she’d forget.”

  I laughed softly. “Yeah. Good plan. Why did you tell everyone you’d been lost in the swamp?”

  “After I left Bernice’s, I found a parking lot and spent the night in my truck. Next morning I had breakfast at the Waffle House and killed some time in the city. I wanted to make sure I’d sobered up before I hit the road again. That afternoon I stopped to fill my truck with gas a couple of towns up the road from home. Heard people talking and realized all of Baie Rebelle was out looking for me. If I’d pulled up in my truck like nothing had happened, I’d never have heard the end of it. I didn’t figure on anybody realizing I wasn’t out on the water all night.”

  Un
believable. Something dark darted from one bush to another and I gasped. “What was that?”

  “What was what?”

  I pointed. “That. There. Something is out there.”

  Eskil watched for a moment and then shrugged off the question. “Maybe a possum. Maybe a rabbit. Maybe the rougarou comin’ to get me.”

  “Funny.” I watched for a little while longer and then returned to the conversation we’d been having. “So you went to New Orleans intending to break into Bernice’s house and rifle through her things. That plan failed, so you came home and perpetrated a giant fraud on the whole town to keep from being embarrassed? Is that about right?”

  “I’ve got my pride.”

  I still had questions, but that one statement seemed to sum it all up in his mind. He looked up at the sky and stood. “It’s getting late and I want to be out on the water by sunrise. If you need anything, just let Mama know.”

  He strolled away, whistling softly, and I went inside right away. Not because I believed the rougarou was lurking in the trees, but because I didn’t think I could stay awake another minute.

  Miss Frankie and Bernice were already asleep by the time I crept down the hall and into the guest room, but I found one of my mother-in-law’s nightgowns folded on top of my pillow. It had been a long, hard day and my emotions were raw. My car was stuck in the middle of nowhere, and I was stuck in Baie Rebelle with no way out. There was no other reason why seeing that nightgown waiting would reduce me to tears.

  Twenty-six

  Friday morning I was up with the sun, but I was still the last one out of bed. My chest still hurt and my neck was still sore from yesterday’s crash. The smell of air bag chemicals clung to my hair and skin, but otherwise I felt almost good. I was alive, and that counted for something.

  Miss Frankie and Bernice had somehow gotten past and out the door without disturbing me, but they’d left a pair of jeans, a plaid shirt, and a pair of granny panties on the foot of my sleeping bag. The jeans were too short and the shirt too large, but everything was clean so I wasn’t going to complain.