Polished Off (16 page)

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Authors: Barbara Colley

BOOK: Polished Off
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If only she could switch off her brain as easily, she thought as her mind swirled with bits and pieces of her conversation with Nadia.
Could she believe Nadia?
Should
she believe her?
Innocent until proven guilty... innocent until proven guilty ...
Once before she’d believed in someone she’d been close to, believed with all of her being. Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her forehead. But she’d been wrong that time, and just thinking about it was giving her a headache. Maybe a cup of hot cocoa would help—that and an aspirin.
A few minutes later, seated at her kitchen table with a cup of warm cocoa, she tried to sort out her feelings.
Just the facts, ma’am.
The line from the old sixties TV series Dragnet popped into her mind and made her smile. So what were the facts?
Charlotte grabbed a pen and spiral notebook she kept on the kitchen counter. She began jotting down the things she knew to be true.
Fact one: The remains of Ricco Martinez were found in an urn that belongs to Patsy Dufour.
Charlotte’s pen hovered over the sentence. No, that wasn’t truly a fact. Despite the evidence of the billfold, there was no forensic proof that the bones belonged to Ricco. Not yet.
Charlotte scratched through Ricco’s name and penned in the word
someone
instead. Then she wrote the word
billfold
and put a large question mark beside it.
For several seconds she stared at what she’d written. Adding an
a
on the next line, she wrote:
Patsy purchased urn at warehouse on Tchoupitoulas. Probably the same warehouse where stolen artifacts were found. Name of new owner? Old owner?
Next she wrote,
Fact two: Nadia disappears.
Beside it she wrote,
Why?
Then she added
Guilty? Or simply scared? Pregnant?
She skipped a line and wrote,
Fact three: Daniel arrested.
Under
Fact four,
she wrote,
Daniel denied bail.
Beside it she scribbled,
Why?
Fact five: Nadia calls and claims that Lowell Webster and son, Mark, are involved.
Charlotte narrowed her eyes as she stared at the words,
Nadia calls.
Was it possible that the police had tapped her home phone, or was Nadia being paranoid? Charlotte rolled the pen between her thumb and fingers. Maybe she should ask Judith. Judith could find out for sure.
Charlotte slowly shook her head. No, she couldn’t risk asking Judith. If she asked Judith, then she’d have to explain why she was asking. With Judith being a police detective, the whole situation might force her into a compromising position, or at the very least pose a conflict of interest since Judith was her niece and Nadia was now Judith’s sister-in-law.
Besides, if her phone wasn’t already bugged and she revealed that Nadia had called her, then for sure the police would put a tap on it. If not her home phone, then they might begin monitoring her cell phone, if that was possible.
Charlotte frowned. Was it possible? she wondered. She couldn’t recall such a thing being done in any of the mystery books she’d read or on any of the television shows she’d watched. Even so, she knew that there was something about certain frequencies, some kind of electronic technical stuff....
Charlotte sighed heavily.
You’re getting sidetracked.
She stared at her list of facts. Then she wrote,
Fact six:
But her eyes kept going back to
Fact five.
If Nadia’s claim was true, if a man of Lowell Webster’s wealth and influence was responsible, then Nadia was right to be skeptical about the police believing her. Given Lowell Webster’s political connections and influence, Daniel and Nadia’s prospects for being cleared would be almost impossible.
Impossible ... impossible ...
“No, not impossible,” Charlotte said with determination and conviction. “Never,” she added fiercely, her gaze scanning the facts she had written.
She tapped the pen on the blank line below
Fact five.
Then, slowly and precisely, she wrote
Fact six: Will Richeaux.
Under
Fact six
she added:
You can bet if he’s pushing things, there’s a reason behind it,
words that both Judith and Louis had spoken.
But what reasons? Charlotte stared at the list, but in her mind’s eye, she was reliving the day that the bones had been discovered. Three days had passed since Friday, but Charlotte could still picture Patsy Dufour’s strange reaction to Will Richeaux when he’d entered the room. Then there was his odd behavior toward Patsy as well.
Patsy had been frightened at the sight of him. But why? Why would the sight of Will Richeaux frighten her? In Charlotte’s experience, people were usually frightened of someone because they either knew them personally or knew something about them. If Patsy and Will knew each other—and Will had indicated that there had been a previous incident—that could very well explain his behavior toward Patsy.
Charlotte scribbled down:
Ask Patsy about Will Richeaux.
When she realized what she’d written, she took a deep, fortifying breath. Under ordinary circumstances, she would never consider questioning a client about their personal business. Doing so meant breaking her standing rule of minding her own business, and minding her own business did not include gossiping or being a busybody. It was a rule she’d tried to live by for most of her life, and a rule she enforced when it came to her maid service. Each of her employees was warned from the beginning of her employment that such infractions would not be tolerated and were grounds for immediate dismissal.
Charlotte tapped the pen against the notebook. But this was different. Wasn’t it? This didn’t involve just her maid service. This involved family; it was personal and was certainly a far cry from ordinary circumstances. And, like it or not, she was already involved. Besides, what was the alternative? Sit around and do nothing? Ignore everything?
Charlotte shook her head. No way could she just sit back and do nothing, not when her beloved nephew and his new family were in so much trouble.
Even so, the thought of prying into Patsy Dufour’s life made her squirm with discomfort. No matter the reasons, it just didn’t feel right.
With a sigh, Charlotte rolled her head first to one side, then the other, stretching the bunched-up muscles in her neck. What she needed was a good night’s sleep. Things always looked different the morning after a good night’s sleep.
Charlotte stood, and, after turning off the overhead lights in the kitchen and living room, she tiptoed into her bedroom. In the bedroom, she paused by the bed and stared down at Davy, who was curled up smack in the center.
Ever since the little boy had been staying with her, she hadn’t really gotten a good night’s sleep. For one thing, she wasn’t used to another person being in the house. For another thing, she was used to sleeping alone, and though Davy was just a small little boy, like a lot of children, he tossed and turned ... and kicked. And she had a sore back to prove it.
Charlotte reached for the alarm clock. She really needed to set the clock a bit earlier than usual so she could get a head start on the day before Davy awakened. But if she set it at all, the jangling sound was sure to awaken Davy, too.
After briefly debating the pros and cons of moving Davy to the spare bedroom, she decided it would be much easier all the way around if she simply moved the alarm clock instead and slept in the other room herself.
 
 
 
On Tuesday morning, Charlotte was once again able to get her shower and dress before Davy awakened. The coffee was brewing, and she figured that if she was very quiet, she might even have enough time to have a first cup and scan the newspaper headlines before the little chatterbox got up.
As quietly as she could, she unlocked the front door and walked out onto the porch. For a change, the Doberman across the street simply stared at her through the fence and didn’t growl or bark.
Once she’d retrieved the newspaper, she stood for a second staring up at the morning sky. The sun was just beginning to peek over the tops of the trees. According to the temperature gauge hanging on the porch, it was a glorious sixty-five degrees, the perfect weather to take a walk.
Charlotte sighed. The cooler weather wouldn’t last. With a shrug, she went back inside. By noon it would heat up to the high seventies, possibly the low eighties. But none of it mattered anyway.
Now that she had Davy, it was going to be almost impossible to take a walk, even in the evenings. His little legs were too short to keep up with the pace she liked to set, and though she’d considered pushing him in one of those umbrella strollers, the sidewalk was much too uneven for her to consider it.
 
 
 
When Davy did awaken, over breakfast, once again Charlotte asked him if he would like to play with the kids that day. His eager nod was a huge relief. After dropping the little boy off at the day-care, she drove to the home of Bitsy Duhe, her Tuesday client.
Bitsy lived on the same street as the famed author, Anne Rice. Though Charlotte much preferred mystery novels to the horror genre, she greatly admired the author and had had more than one fantasy about being hired to clean for her.
Bitsy Duhe’s home was a raised-cottage style, and, like Bitsy herself and most of the other homes in the Garden District, it was very old and very grand.
Depending on her mood, Charlotte sometimes dreaded Tuesdays. In most of the homes that she had cleaned over the years, the clients busied themselves with other things while Charlotte worked, and they were content to let Charlotte go about her business without interfering. But not Bitsy. There had been more Tuesdays than Charlotte cared to count when Bitsy had followed her from room to room, all the while chattering away about people that Charlotte either just knew vaguely or had never heard of. And on those particular days, Charlotte had to remind herself that Bitsy was simply lonely.
Edgar Duhe, Bitsy’s husband, had once been the mayor of New Orleans, and he and Bitsy had led an active social and political life. But Edgar had died three years earlier, and since his death, Bitsy no longer attended many social functions due to her advancing age. That, added to the fact that the only family she had were a son and two granddaughters who all lived out of state, left Bitsy with far too much time on her hands. To fill that time, Bitsy kept the phone lines hot, checking in with her old girls’ network of friends on the latest gossip going around or the latest scandal.
By the time Charlotte had unloaded her supply carrier and locked the van, she wasn’t in the least surprised to see Bitsy waiting for her at the front door.
“Good morning,” Charlotte called out as she climbed the steps to the porch.
As usual, Bitsy was fully dressed in one of her midcalflength, floral patterned dresses, and every purple-gray hair on her head was in place. She was a spry, birdlike woman with a face that had surprisingly few wrinkles considering her age, and Charlotte could only hope she would look that good herself when she reached her eighties.
Bitsy smiled and returned Charlotte’s greeting. “Good morning to you, too.” But her smile faded quickly. “Oh, Charlotte, dear, how
are
you?” She stepped back inside into the foyer and Charlotte followed her. “I’ve been so worried about you and that nice young nephew of yours.” Bitsy closed the front door.
Though Bitsy’s words and tone sounded sympathetic enough, and she probably meant well, Charlotte braced herself. The eager sparkle in the old lady’s faded blue eyes was all too familiar; it was a look that meant that Charlotte was in for the third degree.
“Such a shame,” Bitsy said, sighing heavily. “Just a crying shame, what with him just getting married and all. Of all things, someone like him being charged in a murder. Ridiculous! That’s what it is. Just ridiculous!” She looped her arm through Charlotte’s. “Now I want you to just forget about cleaning for the moment and come on back to the kitchen with me.” She tugged on Charlotte’s arm, leaving Charlotte little choice but to go along with her.
“That new juicer I ordered—you know, the one I told you about last week—well, it finally came yesterday, and I just finished squeezing some fresh orange juice. We’ll have a nice glass of juice before you get started.”
Bitsy hadn’t mentioned ordering another juicer, but Charlotte didn’t bother to correct her. Of late Bitsy had grown really touchy about her ability to remember things. That the older lady had bought yet another kitchen gadget didn’t surprise Charlotte in the least, though. Bitsy was obsessed with any and every kind of new gadget that came along, and if memory served her, by last count Bitsy already owned at least two juicers.
Bitsy’s attempt at subterfuge didn’t fool Charlotte in the least. Having a glass of juice was just an excuse for the old lady to interrogate her in order to have more grist for the gossip mill. Charlotte choked back a groan. From her past experiences of dealing with Bitsy, she’d learned that it was much easier and saved time to simply go along with her than to protest.

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