Prosecco Pink (20 page)

Footsteps pounded up the stairs as the responding officers returned from the makeshift command post they'd set up outside.

The sound awoke Chandra, who sat up and stretched. "I'm sheets!"

"Where'd you find liquor?" I asked. Now I was really envious.

She fluffed her bed-head hair with her fingernails. "Who said anything about alcohol?"

"You said you were 'sheets.' You know, as in 'three sheets to the wind?'" I mimicked a drunk chugging a drink.

She gave an exasperated sigh. "'I'm sheets' is a Boston expression for 'I'm tired.'"

"Too bad." I walked over to the window. "I could use a drink."

"Right?" She stood up and tugged at her miniskirt. "We've already told the police everything we know. When are they going to let us go?"

I pulled the curtain to one side and saw the CSI unit van in the parking lot. "After they've secured the crime scene and questioned the staff."

The door opened and Delta entered. Her hair was spikier than usual, and with her black jeans, smudged white work shirt, and red neckerchief, she looked like a cowgirl Cruella. She furrowed her brow and gave Chandra the once over. "Are you one of those police psychics?"

Chandra put her hand to her chest. "I
am
a medium. How did you know?"

"Just a lucky guess," Delta drawled.

I repressed a laugh. It didn't take a psychic to figure out that Chandra was a psychic. She was covered in stars and moons, and her T-shirt said, "I talk to dead people." I cleared my throat. "Sorry, Delta. I didn't even think to introduce you after what happened. This is Chandra Toccato."

"Charmed, I'm sure," Delta replied dryly.

Chandra's face beamed like a full moon. "I believe you are."

"Well, apparently you're not, because you didn't look into your crystal ball and see this disaster coming," Delta snapped.

The glow on Chandra's face waned as Delta's dubious charm wore off.

"For that matter," Delta continued, "neither did you, Miss PI."

I sighed. "No one saw this coming, not even the police."

"Well, that's why I hired you, isn't it?" she asked, pointing her finger at my chest like a gun. "To figure out the things the police couldn't?"

I held up my hands in surrender. "Scarlett refused to cooperate with me, so there was nothing I could do. But speaking of doing my job, I have a few questions for you, starting with where you, Miles, and Troy were when Scarlett was killed."

Delta glared at me and began pacing, as though agitated by the mention of Scarlett's death. "We were in the little mill pulling artifacts for a photo shoot.
Southern Living
magazine contacted me last month about doing a feature on plantation life in the Old South. It's scheduled for tomorrow—that is, if it's still going to happen."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chandra handling items in a curio cabinet. I moved to block her from Delta's view. "How long had you been there?"

"Since eight this morning," she said, massaging the back of her neck as she paced.

"Did any of you leave the mill?"

She stopped and put her hand on her cheek. "Just Miles, when I sent him to the hardware store for rust remover. That was around ten forty-five or eleven."

Fifteen minutes could have been enough time for Miles to go to the house and kill Scarlet before I saw him in the parking lot at eleven. But he'd been coming from the little mill, and I wasn't sure that he could have committed a murder and then returned to the mill in that time frame. Also, I couldn't understand why he wouldn't have gone straight from the house to the hardware store. "Did Miles come back to the mill for any reason before he left?"

Delta shrugged. "He may have, but Troy and I didn't see him. We were in the back of the mill."

I chewed my thumbnail. I couldn't rule Miles out as Scarlett's killer. But if he wasn't the culprit, then the only other suspect I knew of was Adam. The problem was that I had no way to connect him to her. "Do you know what Scarlett was doing in the house?"

"She had a tour booked for one o'clock, but she came early to do her cleaning," she replied, twisting the tips of her neckerchief. "Miles saw her arrive at around nine thirty."

"Wait." I scratched my head. "How did he see her if none of you left the mill?"

She wrinkled her mouth into a smirk. "One of the mill windows overlooks the parking lot. That Miles is always watching the goings-on at the plantation."

"Oh, right." I remembered her mentioning that before. I was also reminded of the day Scarlett had seen him looking in the window when she was cleaning in her corset and petticoat, and then a thought occurred to me. "Did Scarlett usually clean in her costume?"

"Of course not," she said with a wave of her hand. "Corsets and crinoline dresses are uncomfortable as hell, and they're expensive too. Even if she'd wanted to wear her costume to clean, I wouldn't have allowed it."

"And yet she was hanged in her red crinoline dress," I observed.

"Odd, isn't it?" she asked. "You might want to talk to Troy about those dresses. He's spent a lot of time studying them, from what I understand."

I nodded. Delta had a point. It was possible that the killer attached some sort of significance to Scarlett's red dress, as with Ivanna's pink one, and Troy's historical knowledge of plantation chic might offer some clues.

Chandra gave a sonorous yawn and plopped down on the bed.

Delta spun around to face her. "What do you think you're doing? That bed is almost three hundred years old."

"Someone has a brown aura," Chandra muttered. Then she shielded her lips from Delta's eyes and mouthed the word
greedy
to me.

Delta grabbed a giant rolling pin from the foot of the other bed. "Well, someone is going to have a black and blue aura if they don't get off my antique furniture."

"There's no need for violence," I said, extending my hand to stop her. "Why don't you give that to me, and I'll take it down to the kitchen?"

"It doesn't belong there," she snapped. "In the Old South, it was used for smoothing moss mattresses." She looked pointedly at Chandra. "But nowadays it's used for smacking mouthy mediums."

Chandra slid her "aura" off the bed and rushed to my side, just in case.

There was a knock at the door.

Delta threw the rolling pin onto the mattress. "Come in."

I stifled a gasp when the policeman entered. It was Officer Quincy from the bank.

"Oh, John. Thank God you're here!" Delta exclaimed. "It's so nice to have a friend from the New Orleans PD by my side at a time like this."

"I came as soon as I heard," he said, smoothing his gray-blond comb over.

At the sound of his voice, Delta forgot all about her furniture and collapsed onto a pink cushioned armchair near an antique crib. "I'm ruined, John!" She buried her face in her hands. "Over two centuries of my family's legacy down the drain."

"Now calm down, Delta." He placed a hand on her shoulder.

"How can I?" she wailed. "I was planning to turn the plantation into a bed and breakfast, but no one will stay here now."

"You're right about that," Chandra agreed, taking cover behind my back.

I turned and gave her a dirty look. "You never know," I said, feigning an optimism I didn't feel. "The guests may return in time."

Officer Quincy lowered his glasses on his hawk-like nose and narrowed his piercing blue eyes at me. Then he looked down at Delta. "Do you know this woman?"

She looked at me and frowned. "This is Franki Amato, the private investigator I hired to look into the Jones murder. A lot of damn good it did."

"Oh, I know Miss Amato." He sneered. "I had the pleasure of making her acquaintance the night before last."

"At my boyfriend's bank," I hurried to add. Then I shot him a pleading look. If Delta found out I'd burgled a bank, I could kiss this case
arrivederci
.

He opened his mouth to speak, but my phone began to ring.

I answered before he could say a word. "Hello?"

"Franki," Nonna began, "we need-a to talk."

Surrounded by the enemy
, I thought. "Just a minute, Nonna."

I looked at Officer Quincy. "It's my grandmother—a family emergency," I said, which was never a lie where my nonna was concerned. "Can I take this in the hall?"

"Don't you contaminate that crime scene, you hear?" he growled. "You stay just outside that door."

I gave him a blank stare before escaping into the hallway, careful to shield my eyes from Scarlett's body. "Okay, Nonna." I sighed. "I'm at work, so please make this quick."

"Your mamma told-a me that-a your new-a case is at a
piantagione
."

"Plantation," I corrected. "And yes, I'm there now. Working."

"Is it a big-a place?"

I nodded in greeting at a crime scene investigator as he passed by with a camera. "It's three stories, maybe forty thousand square feet. Why?"

"The Internet-a say it's-a fifty-five-a thousand."

I leaned against the door in shock. The last time I was home, my nonna couldn't turn on a TV, much less surf the net. "You know how to use a computer?"

"I'm-a chock-a full of surprises," she replied, dead-pan.

Don't I know it
. I heard the clicking of the crime scene investigator's camera behind me, and then something clicked in my head. "So, why are you looking up information on Oleander Place?"

"It's-a really interesting," she said with no enthusiasm whatsoever. "We don't have-a no plantations in
Sicilia
."

The only things my nonna had ever expressed an interest in were
ragù
, babies, and my marital prospects, so now I knew she was up to something. But I decided to play dumb. "Sicily might not have plantations, but it does have noble palaces that are older and far more luxurious, like the one you took me to in Palermo when I was little."

"You mean-a
Palazzo Ajutamicristo
?"

The palazzo was named after a sixteenth-century baron whose surname meant
Help me Christ
, which is exactly what I was thinking in that moment. "That's the one."

"It's-a too far away."

Here we go
, I thought. "Too far away for what?"

"I'm-a thinking about-a having a
festa
."

I clenched my teeth and started to respond, but the door behind me opened without warning, and I had to grab the doorjamb to keep from falling flat on my rear end. Officer Quincy escorted Delta out, scowling over his shoulder at me as they descended the stairs. "What kind of party would that be?"

"Eh, for the
famiglia
."

Chandra popped her head into the hallway.

I turned my back to her. I wasn't equipped to deal with the medium and the meddler at the same time. "Nonna, you and I both know that this is for me and Bradley. But since we're not engaged, drop the party plan, and
pronto
."

"Maybe if-a he knows you can-a get a discount on the plantation, he'll ask-a you to marry him."

I laughed incredulously. "Why? Because I'm frugal?"

"
Sì
. It's a fine-a quality in a woman."

I closed my eyes and ground out, "I'm not going to book the plantation for my engagement party. Not now, not ever."

"Why-a not?" she asked in a perplexed tone. "Now that there's-a been a murder, you can get a real-a deal-a."

I felt my whole body tense. I didn't dare tell her that there'd been two murders, otherwise she'd want me to reserve the plantation for my wedding reception too.

"Your grandmother's right, you know," Chandra whispered from behind me. "After today, you could rent this place for a song."

I turned and pushed Chandra by the forehead back into the children's room and pulled the door closed. "Nonna, I'm only going to tell you this once. Stop trying to marry me off to Bradley because we're not getting married." I should've stopped there, but my anger got the best of me. "We're just going to live in sin."

She let out a combined gasp-gag—the kind of sound you'd expect from an elderly Sicilian woman who believes that her only granddaughter has just been possessed by the devil.

"
Ciao ciao
," I intoned and closed the call.

I leaned the back of my head against the door. A wedding-planning call from my nonna was the last thing I'd needed today. Not only were Bradley and I not getting married, we weren't going to live together either. And after he'd found me in the bank security room, I was pretty sure we weren't going to be doing anymore sinning. But I couldn't think about that now. I had another murder to solve, and this one was personal.

Chandra knocked on the other side of the door.

"Come out," I called.

She pulled open the door. "I think they forgot about us. And if I don't feed Lou dinner soon, he's likely to pass out."

And if I don't let Napoleon out soon, he's likely to p—
. "Um, I'll find the detective in charge and ask if we're free to go."

Her saucer-sized eyes grew to the size of plates. "And leave me alone in here?"

"This place is crawling with cops," I said, putting my hand on my hip. "The killer won't come after anyone now."

Chandra folded her hands in front of her mouth. "It's not the killer I'm afraid of."

"Ghosts are afraid of cops too," I said as I patted her on the shoulder and pushed her back into the room. "I know because they never show up at crime scenes."

"If you say so," she said uncertainly.

"I do." I closed the door and hurried downstairs. As I made my way outside, I put in a call to Adam to find out whether he had an alibi for that morning, but I got his voice mail. I hung up and headed for the command post, which had been set up in one of the cabins in the slave quarters. When I approached the doorway, Troy stepped out, looking pale and slightly dazed. "How are you holding up?"

"It's rough," he began, running his hand through his hair, "but I'll deal."

I nodded. "Listen, have you seen Detective Sims?"

Troy shoved his hands into his pockets. "You just missed him. The district attorney and the medical examiner pulled up a few minutes ago, so he went to meet them."