Prosecco Pink (32 page)

"As I was saying," she drawled, "because you weren't smart enough to figure out your last investigation, I thought for sure you'd fall for my Troy trap."

I wanted to look at Troy to see his reaction, but I didn't dare take my eyes off Delta. "Impossible," I spat. "Unlike you, he's too nice a person to harm a fly, much less murder three innocent people."

"I'd say that's a matter for debate," she countered, raising her chin. "After all, he's a mental case with an intense personal interest in poison, which makes him the obvious candidate for the killer."

I grimaced. "He was never anything but a scapegoat to you, was he?"

Delta put a hand to her chest. "In my defense, he handed me the murder plot on a platter. That love-struck loon was obsessed with everything Evangeline—her painting, her personal papers, the records of her death." She laughed. "He was practically begging to be set up."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Troy hang his head. I willed him to get angry, to find his strength, because we were going to need it to escape this house of horrors.

"But then one day a real, live Lacour showed up on our doorstep," Delta jeered. "And the little harlot was a carbon copy of Troy's beloved Evangeline."

"Then you did know that Ivanna was a descendent of the Lacour family," I said.

"Of course I did," she snapped. "Her mother mentioned a daughter in her letter, and Ivanna looked just like Evangeline. I'd have to be a buffoon not to put two and two together, especially when Ivanna came back to the plantation on the pretense of taking several tours of the grounds."

"But you figured out that what she was really doing was seducing Troy to get him to help her find the Lacour diamond," I said.

"That imbecile took one look at her and fell hook, line, and sinker," she said, her voice thick with contempt. "He didn't give a damn about what that would mean to me or to my plantation."

I could see Delta's anger rising. If I could get her to look at Troy, I could shoot before she had time to react. I had to keep her talking and her temper flaring. "Then what happened?"

 "Troy succumbed to Ivanna's charms, because she was as close as he was ever going to get to living out his fantasy of sleeping with Evangeline." Her brow furrowed. "They started having Friday night trysts—in Evangeline's bed. Ivanna would dress up in Evangeline's pink crinoline dress, and Troy wore pirate clothes, trying to be her Beau."

 "So, you caught them in the act," I said, trying to stoke the fire.

Her eyes narrowed to little slits. "If I had, I would have killed them on the spot. Scarlett was the one who saw them when she came up here after hours to do her cleaning." Delta sneered. "I caught her washing the soiled bed linens the next morning. The filthy pigs didn't even bother to clean up after themselves."

Troy's shoulders slumped.

Look at Troy, Delta. Look at him
, I thought. My arms were aching from holding the shooting position, and I didn't know how much longer I could keep my gun level.

"At first I thought Scarlett had dirtied the sheets with some white trash boyfriend of hers. But when I confronted her, she told me the whole sordid tale. I assured her that I'd take care of it."

Now I understood why Delta had killed Scarlett. "So when Ivanna was found dead, Scarlett figured out that you'd 'taken care of it' by killing her."

"Yes, and she said she'd go to the police if I didn't pay her off." She frowned. "Can you imagine the nerve of that girl, accusing me of committing a crime and then trying to bilk me out of my money? Why, just for that, even if I hadn't killed Ivanna, I would have wrung her impudent little neck."

I shivered at the callous way she'd referenced Scarlett's hanging. And my mind started to drift to a bad place—thoughts of what she might have in store for Troy and me. But I couldn't go there now. I had to focus on a plan. "What about Miles?" I asked. "Did he try to blackmail you too?"

She snorted. "You bet he did. That good-for-nothing bum demanded fifty thousand dollars to keep his mouth shut."

"What did he have on you? The belladonna you made him grow behind the little mill?"

"He was too stupid to know what that was," she said with a wave of her hand. "The morning Scarlett was killed, when we were pulling artifacts for the photo shoot in the little mill, he looked out the window and saw me entering the house." She shook her head. "That was his problem—sticking his nose where it didn't belong. Just like that Adam Geyer character."

The mention of Adam surprised me so much that I almost jerked my gun. "He came out here?"

"A couple of times. He wanted access to the plantation for himself and his attorney. When I denied his request, he came out after hours, smashed a window, and let himself in."

I was stunned to hear that Adam had broken in to Oleander Place. I guess he'd meant what he said when he vowed to find Ivanna's killer. "How did you know it was him?"

"He set off the alarm. I'd left a few minutes before, so I rushed back in time to see a car speeding away. I had Officer Quincy run a check on his plates. I was about to press charges, but then he left belladonna in his lab and got himself arrested." She gave an incredulous laugh. "Men are such idiots."

So I was right—Delta hadn't framed Adam. Liam had.

"Speaking of idiots," she continued. "How did you manage to figure out it was me?"

I returned her insult with one of my own. "Well, besides your deplorable character, it was your reference to the belladonna. The medical examiner concluded that Ivanna had ingested it. You were the only one who suggested that it might have been put in her eyes."

She smiled. "Thanks to Troy's exceptional thesis, I knew exactly what to do."

I stole a glance at Troy. He was once again staring enrapt at Evangeline's portrait, oblivious to our predicament. Meanwhile, my arms were growing weaker. "But how did you pull it off?"

"It was easy," she said with a shrug. "The day before Ivanna's death, I sent Troy on a wild goose chase to a conference in Nashville. I told him that I'd made an appointment for the following morning for him to meet with one of the attendees, a history professor who'd discovered a letter from an ex-slave detailing Evangeline's death. When Troy heard the news, he was only too happy to go."

So he'd told the truth about attending the graduate student conference on the day Ivanna died, but he'd lied to me about the date of his return.

"Obviously, there was no such professor," she continued. "And poor Troy had no idea that John would be waiting to pull him over on false charges when he tried to come back for his rendezvous with Ivanna."

My jaw dropped to the floor, but luckily my gun didn't. "Officer Quincy is in on this too?"

"I should say so," she said in a haughty tone. "He's my lover. We tell each other everything."

My already shaky arms got even shakier as the skin practically crawled off my body. "What happened when Ivanna arrived?"

"I'd planned to knock her out with chloroform and then douse her eyes with the belladonna. But when she saw me here instead of Troy, she fainted." She giggled. "I couldn't have planned it any better myself."

Bile rose into my throat, but I had to keep my stomach—and my arms—in check. I took a deep breath and said, "So, you put the poison into her eyes and then you positioned her on the bed, just like Evangeline."

Delta pursed her lips. "Not exactly. As I'm sure you know from Troy's thesis, belladonna causes a violent death—confusion, hallucinations, seizures. So, I had to wait that out and try to minimize the damage Ivanna did to the pink room. The torn sheer was no big deal, but I'm still upset about that priceless perfume bottle."

I was sickened by her account of Ivanna's death. I couldn't imagine the terror and the pain Ivanna had experienced, and it was particularly appalling to hear that Delta's only regret was the loss of an antique. "There's one thing I don't understand about all of this."

She lowered her eyelids, as though bored by my curiosity. "Oh?"

"Why would you intentionally drive your family legacy and your business into the ground with these murders?"

"Isn't it obvious?" she asked, surprised by my question. "Haunted plantations are passé. There are lots of us in Louisiana, and we're all struggling to keep the tourists coming. In the meantime, we're competing with haunted houses that spend tens of thousands of dollars every year to create new themes and props, while we're stuck showing the same old things. And those places aren't just for Halloween anymore—they're becoming trendy year around, especially for Valentine's Day."

I looked at her open-mouthed as I tried to comprehend how the murders of Ivanna, Scarlett, and Miles would bring big bucks to Oleander Place.

"There's a haunted house near here that made twelve thousand dollars in one day with their "My Bloody Valentine" attraction. Do you know how much alligator jerky I'd need to sell down at the gift shop to make that kind of money?"

I shook my head.

"Three
years
' worth."

I was starting to think that Delta was more unstable than Troy because none of this was making sense. "But you've lost all your customers thanks to these grisly crimes. How do you expect to attract them now?"

She smiled like a Cheshire cat. "With the big finale."

I didn't want to ask, but I had to. Because I had the distinct feeling that Troy's life—if not mine too—depended on it. "What does that involve?"

Delta face seemed to light up with excitement. "Troy poisoning himself at Evangeline's shrine. Can't you just see it?" she asked. "A handsome young man becomes obsessed with the portrait of Evangeline, a beautiful plantation owner's wife who was poisoned with a cup of oleander tea. He transfers his obsession onto her gorgeous lookalike relative, but then he kills her when he realizes that she can never live up to his beloved. In despair, he drinks a cup of oleander tea to join his unrequited love." Her eyes flashed. "Now that's what I call a Greek tragedy."

More like a horror story
, I thought. I glanced at Troy hoping that her gruesome plan had snapped him out of his trance, but he continued his adoration of Evangeline.

"Of course, those fools Scarlett and Miles got in the way, but I did what I could to minimize the damage. I put Scarlett in her red crinoline dress to make for a more striking image, and then John and I threw Miles into the sugar kettle to sweeten the pot." She let out a raucous laugh. "Get it? To sweeten the sugar cane pot?"

I got it, all right, and it nauseated me.

"But once the dust has settled, people will only remember Evangeline, Ivanna, and Troy. Business will boom, and everyone in the country will know about Oleander Place."

I shook my head. "They'll know it as a place where unspeakable things happened. No one will come here."

"What do you know?" she shouted. "Contemporary murders have a mystique about them. They draw huge crowds year around."

She had me there. I could think of lots of places where people gathered to seek pleasure from others' tragedies. It was a vile business—one that a vile person like Delta was perfectly suited for. There was no point in arguing further, and I knew I couldn't hold up my arms much longer. I sighed and said, "We can't keep this up all night. It's time for you to surrender."

"Surrender?" she asked, taken aback. "Why would I want to do that?

"Because I called the police before I came. They'll be here any minute."

"Oh, I know that," she said with a gleeful twinkle in her eye. "John got an automated phone message about your 9-1-1 call."

My heart sank, and my stomach fell. Some police departments had a system that enabled officers to receive phone alerts about 9-1-1 calls regarding specific locations. Apparently, the New Orleans PD was one of them.

"In fact, he's on his way right now to help me stage the poisoning. But I told him to take his time." She smiled. "I said that you and I had a lot of catching up to do."

By this point, I wasn't sure whether my arms were trembling from exhaustion or fear. "Don't do this, Delta. You'll never get away with this many murders."

"You're forgetting that I have police connections," she said. "Besides, you won't have to watch, if that's what you're worried about. Because Troy's going to kill you first."

I stared at her as I processed the news that I was part of the Oleander Place murder plot.

She frowned. "It's a shame you're not blonde, because everyone knows that dead blondes make for a better story. But that can't be helped." She squinted as she sized me up. "The real issue is what to dress you in. Not even a hoop skirt will fit over those hips."

I promised myself that if I survived, I'd make her pay for that last crack. But at the moment, I had bigger problems than my hips to deal with. I'd been following standard police procedure for standoffs—talking the perpetrator down. But that had gotten me nowhere fast. Trying to buy time, I said, "Then I guess you'll have to let me go."

"Sorry, but I warned you." She smirked. "Twice."

As I desperately tried to think of something to say or do, I saw the glow of headlights through the window—but no flashing lights. That could only mean one thing.

Officer Quincy.

Risky or not, I had to take the shot before he entered the house. Otherwise, Troy and I could kiss this world goodbye.

"Too bad I don't respond well to threats," I said. Then I pulled the trigger.

Instead of gunfire there was silence.

I broke out in a cold sweat as the reality of what had happened dawned on me like a nuclear bomb. My gun had jammed.

I looked from the barrel to Delta.

Her face was as black as her Baron Samedi brooch. "I should blow you away for that stunt," she seethed. "But I'm not going to let the likes of you ruin my plan."

I swallowed hard, trying to choke down the growing fear that I was destined to become part of the plantation's lurid lore.

"Now drop the gun and walk over to Troy," she said, motioning with her pearl-handled pistol.

I let my Ruger fall to the floor and went to his side.