Arsenic and Old Cake Page 4

  “We’re not sinking yet,” I assured her. “But we can’t go on this way for long. We’re exploring options to bring in business, and Ox has some ideas he’d like to discuss with the two of us. He wants me to set up a meeting when it’s convenient for you.”

  She slanted a glance at me. “Good ideas?”

  I grinned and shook my head. “It really wouldn’t be fair for me to tell you what I think before you’ve had a chance to hear what he has to say.”

  She drummed her fingernails on the table—slowly. “I surely do hate the idea of changing things at Zydeco,” she said after a while. “You know it’s not what Philippe would have wanted.”

  “I don’t like it either,” I said. “But we can’t keep doing the same old thing in the same old way and expecting different results. Aunt Yolanda always told me that’s the definition of crazy. And who can say what Philippe would have done? He never had to face a situation like this.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said, but she sure didn’t sound as if she meant it. She put her fork on the table and smoothed her hands over her pant legs. “If we’re going to hear Ox’s suggestions, I suppose we should do it sooner rather than later. Shall we meet tomorrow morning around nine?”

  I hadn’t counted on her being so eager, so I didn’t answer immediately. I still had to pack for the weekend, which meant doing laundry first. Plus, I’d need at least two new pairs of pajamas. Maybe three. No way was I going on this honeymoon with only my old, faded sweats and T-shirts to sleep in. Just thinking about the worn-out elastic at the waistbands made me cringe.

  “I’m tied up this weekend,” I said when I realized she was waiting for an answer. “How about Monday?”

  “If you have an order to fill, I don’t mind talking while you and Ox work.”

  “That’s not it,” I said. “I’ve promised to do a favor for a friend. It’s going to take me away from the bakery for the next few days.”

  Miss Frankie’s hands stopped moving. “Oh? You’re going away somewhere?”

  “You don’t need to worry about the bakery,” I said, hoping to reassure her. “Ox will be taking charge while I’m gone. And I’m not going to disappear completely. I should be there for a few hours every day. Just not full-time. It’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

  She smiled, but I could tell she was still worried. “Well, of course it will be, sugar. I just worry that you’ll be stretching yourself too thin, that’s all. What kind of favor are we talking about? Or can’t you talk about it?”

  I shook my head and wiped my fingers on a napkin. “I don’t think it’s any big secret. You remember Old Dog Leg, the trumpet player down at the Dizzy Duke?”

  Concern flashed through Miss Frankie’s eyes. “Of course. But what on earth does he need from you? Is he in some kind of trouble?”

  “I really don’t know. It’s hard to say.” I explained about the letter he’d received and told her what I knew about Monroe’s disappearance forty years ago. “Dog Leg needs someone to find out if this guy is really his brother or if he’s an imposter.”

  “Well, of course he does. The poor man can’t do it for himself. But how does he expect you to identify his brother?”

  “Apparently Monroe has a distinctive birthmark on one shoulder. If we can get a look at that, we’ll be able to tell.”

  Miss Frankie pushed her plate away and stood. “Coffee?”

  “Please.”

  She got the pot started, speaking over her shoulder while she worked. “I’m glad to hear you’re not going alone. Is Dog Leg going with you, then?”

  “Not exactly. I’m going with Gabriel Broussard. You remember him, don’t you? He tends bar at the Dizzy Duke.”

  She turned abruptly. “Of course I remember him. Are you still seeing him? Socially?”

  Something in her tone gave me pause. Had she sounded edgy, or was it my imagination? “We see each other occasionally.”

  Her lips thinned slightly, making her smile look slightly strained. “Well, why don’t the two of you take care of Old Dog Leg’s problem tomorrow, then? We can meet with Ox on Saturday.”

  “We may not be able to get answers that fast,” I said. “Dog Leg is worried that we’ll spook the guy if he suspects we’re checking him out. He’s staying at a B and B over on the West Bank. Dog Leg wants us to get a room there and treat this as some kind of covert operation.” Hearing myself say it aloud made me laugh at the absurdity of the plan.

  Miss Frankie’s posture stiffened, and this time I knew I wasn’t imagining her reaction. “You’ll be sharing a room with Gabriel?”

  “Well, yes. We have to. The place is some kind of honeymoon getaway.” I carried my plate to the sink, uncomfortably aware of my mother-in-law staring at me through eyes of stone. “It’s not a big deal,” I assured her. “It’s not like we’re—you know—getting a room. It’s just a cover to keep Monroe, or whoever he is, from realizing that we’re checking him out.”

  “But sharing a room . . . I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Rita.”

  For a while after Philippe died, Miss Frankie had held on to the belief that he and I would have reconciled if he’d lived. Over time she’d begun to accept the idea that I would eventually move on with my life, and she’d seemed accepting of my decisions to date Gabriel and Sullivan. Now I wondered if she was backsliding. It wasn’t like Miss Frankie to be judgmental.

  I put a hand on her arm and met her gaze. “It’s not like that. It’s just . . . you know . . . a cover.”

  “But how is it going to look for you to spend the weekend at some bed-and-breakfast with that bartender?”

  “I thought you liked Gabriel.”

  “Of course I like him. It has nothing to do with that. But, really, Rita. Don’t you think checking into some hotel together will make you look a bit . . . common?”

  Everything inside seized up as if she’d slapped me. And in a way she had. My deepest fear was that she considered me too low class to fit into her world, and she’d just thrown it in my face. I’m pretty sure I stopped breathing for a second, and the greasy food I’d wolfed down turned over in my stomach. “That’s your objection? That I’m going to embarrass you?”

  She waved a hand between us, seemingly oblivious to the wound she’d just inflicted. “It’s not me I’m worried about, sugar. But have you thought about what this will look like for Zydeco? We serve an exclusive clientele. You have to consider how your actions will look to them.”

  I choked out a laugh. “It’s nobody’s business what I do in my personal life.”

  Miss Frankie put one hand over mine. “Sugar, I’m not suggesting that you’d do something inappropriate. I know you better than that. But like it or not, appearances matter, especially to the kinds of people who buy our cakes. You just told me yourself that Zydeco’s already struggling to stay afloat. Now is not the time to take chances with our reputation.”

  I felt my hackles rise and my remaining misgivings about Old Dog Leg’s plan evaporate in a wave of irritation and stubbornness. “I’m not asking permission, Miss Frankie. I just wanted to keep you in the loop.” My face burned with anger as I turned back to the sink. I would have rinsed my dishes and loaded them into the dishwasher, but Miss Frankie shooed me away and did the job herself.

  “I didn’t realize you and Gabriel were so serious,” she said, not meeting my eyes.

  “We’re not,” I said again. Was she even listening to me? “This isn’t about Gabriel or me. It’s about helping Old Dog Leg.”

  “And what about your policeman? What will he think of all this?”

  Guilt rolled through me, followed closely by anger and resentment. Did she really expect to have a say in my personal life? “I don’t know what he’ll think,” I snapped. “But that’s between Sullivan and me. You don’t need to worry about it.”

  Her face fell, and the hurt in her eyes brought me full circle to guilt again.

  “I see,” she said. “Well, then, I won’t worry any longer.”

&n
bsp; Two wrongs don’t make a right, Aunt Yolanda whispered in my ear, and I barely resisted the urge to beat my head against the wall in frustration. It’s bad enough to disappoint one of the mother figures in my life, but both of them at the same time? Brutal.

  I took a calming breath and said, “I know you care about me, Miss Frankie. I know you’re concerned about Zydeco. But I need you to trust me. I’m not going to do anything to jeopardize the bakery or its reputation.”

  We stared at each other for a moment while the coffee finished brewing. The gurgle of the coffeemaker scraped at my nerves, and the coffee’s earthy scent, usually one I find calming, made a dull ache form between my eyes. After a moment, she turned away and rinsed another plate.

  “This isn’t like you,” I said to the back of her head. “Is there something else bothering you?”

  She closed the dishwasher and latched it before she answered. “I guess I’m more tired than I realized. I’m sure to be dreadful company. You’ll forgive me if I turn in?”

  Confused, I turned toward the door, but I stopped there and asked, “Are we okay?”

  She looked over her shoulder and smiled. “Absolutely. I’m sure you’ll do the right thing, sugar. Forget I said anything.”

  Uh-huh. As if that would be easy. “Let me see how things go when I get to the B and B tomorrow. Maybe I’ll be able to break away for a while on Saturday so we can meet with Ox.”

  “That would be lovely. You don’t mind letting yourself out, do you?”

  And with that, I was dismissed.

  I trudged out to the Mercedes and sat there for a long time replaying the conversation in my mind. And the disquiet I’d been feeling earlier grew a whole lot stronger.

  Five

  I got home a little after ten and spent the next three hours doing laundry and packing for the weekend. It wasn’t as easy to put together a wardrobe as I’d expected. I wanted to look good without appearing overly concerned about my appearance, but in the three years since Philippe and I separated, my wardrobe had suffered a slow, steady decline that matched exactly the deterioration of my social life.

  Or at least that had been the case until I moved to New Orleans last year. I’d been meaning to update the contents of my closet since, but had been too busy to do anything about it. While I considered and rejected a stream of T-shirts and tops that had been in style a few years ago, I toyed with the idea of calling Sullivan to let him know about my weekend plans. I even got as far as punching in his number a few times, but I always talked myself out of hitting send.

  It wasn’t that I wanted to hide the truth or that I felt guilty about my decision. Somebody had to help Old Dog Leg, and I’d been elected. And Sullivan was levelheaded and understanding about most things. But I had a few doubts about how he’d react to my plan for the weekend with Gabriel, and after the conversation I’d had earlier with Miss Frankie I wasn’t in the mood to defend my decision. I finally decided that it would be easier to let Sullivan know what I’d been up to after it was all over, and climbed into bed a little before 2 a.m. When my alarm went off five hours later, I dragged myself out of bed, wolfed down two cups of coffee and an Asiago cheese bagel with cream cheese while I waited for Gabriel to pick me up.

  The Love Nest turned out to be a sprawling old house that stretched out over a couple of lots on the West Bank. The central part of the house, which looked as if it had been built early in the twentieth century, was flanked by a couple of more recent additions. By recent, I meant sometime in the middle of the twentieth century.

  The freshly painted white clapboards and dark green shutters tried to make the building look cheerful, but its location in the heart of a depressed neighborhood gave it a downtrodden quality. It sat back from the street behind a patchy lawn, in the center of which stood two palm trees so bent by the wind that their trunks formed an off-kilter heart.

  Traffic was light for a Friday, so we got across the bridge faster than either of us had anticipated. It was half past noon when Gabriel parked at the curb. Check-in wasn’t until one, so we sat there for a few minutes watching the neighborhood stroll by. Or maybe stroll is the wrong word. The neighborhood surged past us, bounced past us, danced past us, with everyone moving to the beat of the music that seemed to be playing everywhere.

  A handful of musicians sat on one corner blowing the desultory notes of a jazz number on trumpets and a saxophone while only a couple of buildings away a driving hip-hop beat poured from the doors of a tattoo parlor. Two old men sat on the crumbling stoop of a barbershop, smoking cigarettes and watching the neighborhood through narrowed eyes. A few feet away several young women lounged against the side of a building, sharing a can of Coke as they kept an eye on toddlers playing on the sidewalk.

  Gabriel slid down on his tailbone and visibly relaxed. I felt my nerves winding tighter by the minute. I hadn’t given much thought to the area of town we’d be staying in, but now I wondered if we should have spent more time planning. “Maybe Dog Leg should have asked somebody else,” I said, breaking the silence. “You and I aren’t exactly going to blend in here.”

  Gabriel grinned and rolled his head to look at me. “Why? Because we’re white?”

  I grinned back. “Speak for yourself, gringo. Do you think they’ll believe that you and I picked this particular bed-and-breakfast for our honeymoon? I don’t want to make them suspicious right off the bat.”

  “You’re letting your nerves show,” Gabriel said. “What does anyone have to be suspicious about?”

  I waved my hand vaguely. “Oh, I don’t know. Everything. Don’t you think people will wonder what we’re doing here?”

  Gabriel cut a glance at me. “Only if you keep looking like we’re up to no good.” He leaned across the seat and kissed me briefly. Flip. He rubbed his thumb gently near the corner of my mouth. “Relax. Act like a bride. You remember how to do that, don’t you?”

  Oh. Yeah. I felt the tingles, but I swatted his hand away and made a face. “I think my skills are a little sharper than yours. At least I’ve been married.”

  Gabriel laughed and opened his car door. “There. See? Sniping at me already. Right in character. Relax, Rita. We’ll be just fine.”

  Easy for him to say. He had the gift of making friends wherever he went.

  He paused with one foot on the pavement and gave me a look. “You want me to call Dog Leg and tell him we’ve changed our minds?”

  I shook my head quickly. “No, I’m just . . .” But I didn’t know how to put my concerns into words. They were so wrapped up in my childhood issues about fitting into a new environment and then the challenges of having married so far over my head, I wasn’t even sure they were valid. I shrugged. “No. Of course not. Just do me a favor. Remind me why we’re doing this?”

  “Because Old Dog Leg needs our help.”

  “Yeah. That’s it. I knew there was a reason.” I stepped out into the bright spring sunlight and adjusted my sunglasses against the glare. “So which one of us is going to get Monroe to strip down so we can check for the birthmark on his back?”

  Gabriel winked and popped the trunk. “I thought I’d leave that to you, honey.”

  “Well,” I said, “I guess it might be a little less weird for me to try getting him naked than for you to do it.”

  Grinning from ear to ear, Gabriel pulled our suitcases from the trunk. “Getting the man naked is optional. All we really need is a look at his shoulder. But hey! Whatever floats your boat.”

  “Leave my boat out of this,” I said. While he extended the handles on our suitcases, I closed the trunk. “Can we be serious for a minute? What if Monroe isn’t who he claims to be? What are we going to do then?”

  “I guess that depends on what else we learn about him along the way,” Gabriel said as we started walking. “We don’t know what we’re going to find here. I think we have to just take it one step at a time.”

  He was probably right, but I’m not fond of going with the flow. I’m much more comfortable when I have a
game plan. He was walking quickly, so I put on my best “wife” face—whatever that was—and scurried after him to the front door. He held the door for me, and I stepped into a room that smelled so strongly of carnations and roses it was more like a funeral parlor than a lobby.

  The hardwood floors gleamed, and sunlight spilled into the foyer through tall narrow windows on two of the walls. Several huge vases filled with massive flower arrangements accounted for the heavy floral scent, and a refreshment station out on a small corner table offered coffee, hot water, and an assortment of tea and cocoa packets. The place seemed a bit faded, but it looked clean and comfortable enough.

  An elderly black woman with graying hair cut close to her head looked up as we approached the front desk. She struggled to her feet and shuffled toward us, leaning a set of thick arms on the counter when she reached her destination. She watched us with a scowl so deep it formed several extra chins and hooded—maybe even suspicious—eyes. “Can I help you?”

  In spite of her advanced age, her voice was strong and clear, her eyes sharp and bright.

  Memories of visits to the principal’s office flashed through my head, and I swallowed nervously.

  Gabriel seemed oblivious to her pursed lips and no-nonsense expression. He put on his sexy smile and turned up the Cajun accent. “My wife and I would like to book a room for a few days. Do you have anything available?”

  His Sexy Cajun act usually renders women weak in the knees, but the woman behind the front desk seemed more annoyed than impressed. She ran a slow look over both of us in turn. “You want to stay here?”

  A big old “I told you so” hovered on my lips, but I swallowed it and nodded. “If you’re not completely booked.”

  She stared us down for another few seconds, then lifted one thick shoulder and reached for a book on the desk behind her. “Should’a made a reservation,” she muttered. “But we have a room. Seventy-five a night. Breakfast every morning between six and nine. Don’t show up at nine-oh-five and expect to be fed. We don’t serve latecomers.”