Prosecco Pink (30 page)

"Hello, Delta," I said as I made my entrance.

She sniffed and looked down her nose. "Nice of you to say hello considering that you couldn't be bothered when you came to the plantation yesterday. But then I guess you had investigating to do, what with a third murder and all."

"Now, Delta," Veronica intervened, "Franki did her best to find the culprit. And don't forget that the police were on the case too."

"Thank goodness they were!" she exclaimed with her hand on her chest. "Otherwise, that belladonna might not have been found, and I could've been next on Adam's list."

I rolled my eyes. She hadn't been at all pleased with the police the day she'd come to Private Chicks looking for a PI. "Actually, I have a few questions about Adam's arrest."

Delta stared at me through half-lidded eyes. "Don't you think it's a little late for questions? The case is solved."

"I'm not so sure," I said as I eased onto the couch across from her.

Delta's eyes widened—then she turned to Veronica. "What's going on here?"

Veronica angled an annoyed glance in my direction. "Well, Franki was just telling me that she thinks the police may have rushed to judgment where Adam is concerned."

"That's preposterous," she declared with a shooing motion of her hand. "The police found the murder weapon in his laboratory."

I leveled a glare at Delta. "Someone could have planted it there."

She clutched her pearls and began to laugh. "My, you're quite the sleuth, aren't you?"

My Italian blood was getting hot, but I couldn't let it reach the boiling point. If I did, it could cost Veronica that check she was holding, and we needed to get paid. "One thing I am is cautious," I replied with a pointed look. "Because I know that if the wrong man is behind bars, someone else could be killed. And since I'm the only one who's received a bona fide death threat in this case, that someone would most likely be me."

Delta sighed. "What do you want to know?"

I repressed a satisfied smile. "Has Adam actually confessed to the murders?"

"He's lawyered up, which says to me he's guilty."

"It says to me he's smart," I retorted. "Especially if he's being set up, which brings me to my next question. Do you know where, exactly, the police found the belladonna?"

Delta crossed her arms. "I'm not privy to that information."

I found that hard to believe since she'd been privy to every detail of the case until now. She was either really eager to see an end to this case, or she was hiding something. "Did they ever determine how the belladonna got in Ivanna's system?"

"No idea," she said with a shrug. "Maybe the killer made her drink it or put it in her eyes or something."

"Put it in her eyes?" I repeated. That was an awfully specific answer from someone who claimed to have no inside knowledge of the manner of death. "Why would you say that?"

"I must've read it somewhere," she said, grabbing the handle of her Louis Vuitton. "Now, are you almost through? Because I have an appointment with a public relations firm in less than an hour."

I glanced at Veronica, who was willing me to put a lid on it with her eyes. "Just one more question," I replied, since I'd never been good at keeping my mouth shut, not even when explicitly asked to do so. "Were you aware that Ivanna was descended from the Lacour family?"

She narrowed her eyes and fingered her Baron Samedi brooch. "Like I said to her father," she began in a soft but defiant tone, "I didn't have the faintest idea."

I could tell that I'd upset her, and I didn't think it was because I'd offended her Southern honor.

"If you don't mind, I'll be on my way." Delta rose to her feet. "I've got a company to rebuild."

"Thank you for so much doing business with us," Veronica said, following her to the door.

Delta grasped the doorknob and locked eyes with me. "I'd like to say it was a pleasure," she drawled, "but it wasn't."

I leapt off the couch as she exited in a swirl of red fur.

Veronica blocked the doorway, extending her arms to either side of the frame. "No you don't, Franki."

"Just give me one minute in the parking lot with her," I breathed. "That's all I need."

"Sit," she ordered, pointing to the couch. "You know she'd have you arrested if you so much as looked at her the wrong way."

I slunk back to my seat with Veronica running defense behind me. "I'm so sick of her hateful attitude that it would almost be worth a trip to the slammer."

"Well, you don't have to deal with her ever again," she said, hands on hips. "Now why don't you take the rest of the day off? I can handle things around here."

Some time to decompress did sound nice. "Are you sure? I know you need help with your caseload."

"I am." She patted my arm. "Now scram."

I looked up at her. "I'm sorry about the way this case turned out."

"Don't be. There are going to be lots of other cases we can't solve. It's the nature of the business." She smiled. "See you tomorrow."

I watched her walk down the hallway and noticed David poking his head out of my office.

"Is the coast clear?" he asked.

Even though I was miserable, I had to laugh. "Yes, the pestilence has passed."

He wrapped his arms around his chest and shuddered. "That lady freaks me out, man."

"Don't I know it," I muttered. "But thankfully, we've seen the last of her."

"Yeah," he said, returning to his workstation, "Veronica said that Adam guy had belladonna at his lab."

The mention of belladonna reminded me of Delta's bizarre comment. "David, I'm curious about something. Would you do me a favor and google
belladonna
and
eyes
"?

He nodded and keyed in the search. "Okay, so that pulled up
atropa belladonna.
Is that right?"

"I guess that's the scientific name," I replied, thinking it sounded familiar. "Do you see anything about using it in the eyes?"

He scanned the page. "Well, ophthalmologists dilate eyes with it."

I chewed my fingernail. "Anything else?"

"Hang on." He paused. "It says the ladies of the Venetian Court, whatever that is, used a tincture of belladonna eye drops because they thought dilated pupils made them look seductive."

My stomach contracted like someone had attached a vice grip to it. I rushed to his computer. "Where did you read that?"

"It's toward the end of the second paragraph," he said, pointing to the text on the screen.

The second I looked at the passage, one sentence jumped out at me as though it had been highlighted in boldface.

The genus name
Atropa
comes from Atropos, one of the three Fates in Greek mythology.

Finally, all the pieces fell into place—the belladonna, the Venetian Court, the three Fates. And the whole horrible reality of what had happened at Oleander Place came crashing down on me like a
grande
sugar cane kettle.

"Oh my God." I whispered, putting my hand on David's shoulder for support.

"Troy!"

David looked up at me, his forehead wrinkled with concern. "What about Troy?"

"Oh, I just remembered that I promised to read his master's thesis," I fibbed. I hated lying to David, but Veronica had taken me off the Jones case in no uncertain terms. If I was going to go rogue, I couldn't drag him into it. "That reminds me, do you know whether Tulane publishes its students' theses online?"

He tapped his fingers on his mouth. "Let me check the library catalog."

While David clicked away on his keyboard, I thought back to my various interactions with Troy. Things I hadn't thought about at the time took on new meaning for me now. In some ways, he fit the obsessive profile. There weren't many people who loved plantation clothes so much that they planned to devote their entire careers to them. Plus, I'd noticed that he was extremely meticulous—in the careful way he'd wrapped the pirate clothes, straightened the silverware in the dining room, placed his mug in the exact center of the coaster—a quality that would lend itself well to the staging of a dead body. But on the other hand, he was a personable, down-to-earth guy, and I hadn't seen any signs of mental instability.

"So, the theses and the dissertations are online," David said, disrupting my thoughts. "Want me to email you the link?"

"That would be great," I said as I headed for the hallway. "I'll go pull it up now."

To avoid arousing Veronica's suspicions, I tiptoed into my office and sunk quietly into my chair. Then I opened David's email and clicked the link. Within a second of entering Troy's name in the advanced search field, his thesis title popped up on the screen.
Poison and Poisoning in the Venetian Republic
. And I gave myself a good, swift, mental kick for not looking up his research sooner.

It didn't take long to find what I was looking for. As I'd suspected, there was a section in the paper that described the cosmetic use of belladonna among Venetian courtesans—and its fatal effects from misuse.

I chewed my thumbnail while I pondered the ramifications of Troy's thesis. The focus on belladonna looked bad, but it didn't prove anything. I had to have more evidence. Specifically, I needed to find out whether he had a history of mental illness. Of course, if he did have any mental health records on file, they wouldn't be available to the public. So I had to find someone who knew him well, someone other than Delta. The only other person I could think of was his dissertation advisor, but Troy had never mentioned his name.

"I thought you were leaving for the day!" Veronica exclaimed.

I jumped at least a foot—the guilty kind of jump, not the startled one.

"I didn't mean to scare you," she said, sashaying up to my desk. "I came for the Jones file. I want to get this case wrapped up ASAP."

"Sure," I replied, feigning nonchalance. I reached into my lower right drawer and pulled out a manila folder.

Veronica took the file from my hand and sat in front of my desk. "You know, we really haven't had a chance to talk about Bradley."

"What's there to say?" I asked, unprepared for this line of questioning.

"Oh, I don't know," she replied as she straightened a bent corner of the file. "I just thought you might want to vent."

Of course, I wasn't one to be short on opinions. But the shock of Bradley's betrayal had left me kind of numb. And now wasn't the time to try to open that wound, not when I had a killer to catch. "Honestly, I haven't had time to process what happened. But even if I had, I don't think I'd have much to say about it."

She tilted her head. "Why's that?"

"Because it was so unexpected and yet so utterly predictable," I retorted. "Even though I didn't trust Pauline, I never really believed that Bradley would leave me for her. But then, I have such a dismal history where men are concerned, so why should I be surprised?"

"Has he ever given you an explanation for why he did this?"

"Well, when I called him about Corinne's case this morning, he tried to tell me that things weren't what they seemed."

She flinched. "Did he explain what he meant by that?"

"No, and I didn't ask," I replied, picking at my chipped purple nail polish.

"Aren't you the least bit curious?" she pressed. "That's a pretty provocative statement under the circumstances."

"I saw them spoon-feeding each other over candle light, Veronica. Do you think I'm going to believe a word he says?" I shook my head. "Uh-uh. I'm through with that guy."

"I suppose you know what's best," she replied, rising to her feet.

That was highly debatable, but I kept my mouth shut. This conversation needed to end—because I was through discussing Bradley and because I had to track down Troy's dissertation advisor before it was too late.

"Anyway, you'd better get going," she ordered, shaking the folder at me, "or I might change my mind and put you to work."

I managed a weak smile. "Then I'm leaving now."

As soon as I heard Veronica enter her office, I googled the Tulane Department of History and scanned the list of faculty members. Only one specialized in the Antebellum Era, a Professor Claude Miller, and his office hours were from two until five. Since it was only eleven, I had plenty of time to run some errands and grab lunch before heading to Tulane.

On my way out of my office, I saw a photo from the case file on the floor. It was the close up of Ivanna on her deathbed.

I picked up the picture and stared at Ivanna's image, marveling once again at her fairy-tale-like beauty—her rose-red lips, her porcelain skin, the fair hair that framed her face like a golden fleece. And I was reminded of something Troy had said the first day I met him, that Ivanna's hair had been arranged exactly like Evangeline's. It occurred to me that since there were no known photographs of Evangeline in life or in death, the only way he could have known what her hair had looked like on the day of her murder was if he'd scoured over the historical records of the crime scene. Like a man obsessed.

I laid the photo on my desk. I'd return it to the Jones file tomorrow. Right now I had the rest of the day off—to find Troy's dissertation advisor.

*  *  *

As I walked through the first floor of Tulane's Hebert Hall, I hoped that the twenty or so students sitting cross-legged at the end of the corridor weren't camped outside Professor Miller's office. But no such luck.

I approached a geeky-looking kid at the end of the line. His pasty, acne-spotted skin practically exuded panic, along with copious amounts of oil. "Are all of you waiting to see Dr. Miller?"

He nodded. "We've got an essay exam tomorrow on colonization," he replied, glancing at the professor's door. "It's worth forty percent of our grade."

I slid my back down the wall as I eased onto the tile floor beside him. Thinking of the lengthy wait that lay ahead of me and not the lopsided grade breakdown, I said, "That sucks."

"Right?" he commiserated, clutching a notebook to his "I know H.T.M.L. (How to Meet Ladies)" T-shirt. "Especially since we lost our teaching assistant like a month after class started."