Body on the Bayou (12 page)

“I believe so,” Bo said with a laugh.

“She’s lucky that Rufus kept his guest list short, otherwise there wouldn’t even be guys to invite.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure if that was intentional or a result of guys he’s ticked off over the years enjoying the opportunity to RSVP a big, fat no. Anyway, I hope you have some kind of fun tonight. I’m sorry I won’t be there.”

“Me too.” Maggie felt a pang of loneliness. “And I hope you
don’t
have much fun tonight.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t. I’ve never been one for strip clubs.” Bo dropped his voice so that it was low and sexy. “I’ll be thinking of you the whole time.”

The pang inside Maggie turned into something else, and she ended the call before it got any more heated. She leaned back against the car seat, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath to regain control of her emotions. Bo was still interested in her. Still attracted.
Shame on me for feeling threatened by Whitney,
she thought.

Maggie was brought back to earth by the sound of her cell phone ringing. It was Lia.

“I saw your car,” her cousin said. “Kyle’s going to watch the store so I can go up to Baton Rouge to see Bibi. She
already has some sketches and swatches to show me. Want to come?”

“Sounds great. We can go to a party supply store while we’re there. I need to pick up some stuff for the bachelorette party. And a backup helium tank in case JJ’s runs out. Van wants the balloons to cover the whole ‘tacky’ ceiling.”

“You mean ‘tacky’ as in the beautifully handcrafted, historic tin ceiling tiles?” Lia said, her tone dry.

“Do
not
get me started. I’ll drive. It’s warm today—I’ll put the top down.”

Moments later, Lia appeared and hopped in Maggie’s Falcon convertible. She tucked her mess of brown curls under a blue bandana, Maggie put the car’s top down, and the women took off. The balmy air whipped around them as they drove along the interstate, singing along to whatever tunes Maggie was able to drum up on the car’s fifty-plus-year-old AM radio. Maggie couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so free—just her and her dearest friend enjoying an in-the-moment outing devoid of drama and murder. At least until they got to Socher-Starke Design, where Maggie hoped to glean any new information she could on Bibi’s complex relationships with Fox and Trent.

They followed Bibi’s directions and found themselves driving down a tree-lined boulevard in the city’s Garden District. Maggie located the address, and they parked in front of a charming gray-and-white Creole-style bungalow. Banana plants lined a stone walkway that led to a bright-red door. The women walked up the steps to the home’s portico
and were about to ring the bell when Bibi opened the door. She was dressed in jeans and a paint-smeared T-shirt.

“I saw you pull up,” she greeted them. “Come on in. Pardon the smell; I’ve been painting the back bedroom.”

They followed Bibi inside, and she led them on a tour of the small home, pointing out the eventual function of each room. The tour ended in Bibi’s office, where Maggie was thrilled to see her paintings on display. She was even more excited to see a red dot on one of them, indicating that it had been sold. “I’m designing the interior of a new tea shop in the neighborhood, and the owner loved that painting,” Bibi said in response to Maggie’s obvious excitement. “She’s got an eye on a couple of others too. I don’t know if you’ve ever done any textile design, but I was thinking that if you’re interested, maybe you could design a fabric for the tablecloths and chairs that complements your artwork.”

“I
love
you,” Maggie said, overwhelmed.

Bibi laughed. “Just doing my job. Speaking of which, here are some of my thoughts for Grove Hall, Lia. I only had time to do the front parlor and dining room, but you’ll get the general direction I’d like to go in.” Bibi opened a file on her computer and a stunning 3-D design of a living room filled the large screen. “My goal is to make sure every historical detail of the home is highlighted, like that gorgeous carved-cypress rosette around the chandelier. I’d also like to do a bit of architectural archeology to see if we can figure out the original paint colors and then let that determine the palette for each room.”

Lia analyzed the rendering. “Oh, this is spectacular. I love you, too! Draw up a contract. You’re hired.”

“That’s wonderful!” Bibi clapped her hands gleefully. “Let’s celebrate. I have a bottle of champagne in the kitchen. It’s cheap, but who cares?”

“We don’t!” Maggie and Lia chorused as they followed Bibi into the bungalow’s compact, old-fashioned kitchen.

Bibi poured them each a glass and then led them to a backyard patio, where they toasted, sipped, and chatted. Maggie was debating how to steer the conversation toward Ginger’s murder when Bibi saved her the trouble. “So I heard about that guy Ginger left a bunch of money to,” she said. “Who knew she had a child?”

“She never said anything to you or Trent?” Maggie asked.

Bibi shook her head. “Certainly not to me, and judging by Trent’s anger when he heard about it, not to him either.”

Maggie picked up the satisfaction in Bibi’s voice as she shared the news of Trent’s unhappiness. “I heard that Ginger’s husband was blown away by the news, too,” she said, adopting a gossipy tone. “
And
I also heard that the police caught him in a lie about where he was the night before Ginger was killed. He said he went back to Houston, but he didn’t. So they’re very suspicious about where he was.”

Bibi stiffened. She looked down at the worn bricks of the bungalow patio. “Fox is a really good guy. If he lied, he had his reasons.”

Maggie sensed the woman was hiding something. She took a chance and pushed a little harder. “I don’t know. I
mean, this is a murder investigation. A lie could send him to the electric chair.”

Bibi’s head snapped up. “He was trying to protect someone.” Bibi’s hand shook, and champagne splashed from her glass onto the ground.

“Maybe he just told you that to cover where he really was.” Maggie said. She knew she was being ruthless in pressing the designer, but she also sensed that she was close to getting the truth from her.

“No,” Bibi said. “It wasn’t a cover. It’s true. Fox didn’t drive back to Houston because he was with me. We spent the night together at Crozat.”

Maggie’s surprise at Bibi’s revelation lasted less than a second. A man cuckolded by his wife. A younger woman desperately infatuated with him. When she thought about it, the liaison seemed inevitable.

“He didn’t want anyone to know, so we hid his car on a back road and I drove him to it in the morning,” Bibi said. “He hasn’t told the police because he’s trying to protect me. He’s afraid they might suspect me of . . . of trying to get Ginger out of the way.”

“That sounds very noble, but he’s also protecting himself,” Maggie pointed out. “The police could see it as a classic case of a husband with a mistress who wants to get rid of his wife.”

“No,” Bibi responded. “I was never his mistress. It only happened that once. Fox felt terrible about it, so we agreed
to keep it a secret. Fox swore there was still good in Ginger and was determined to help reclaim that part of her.”

Bibi wiped her eyes with her hand. Lia handed her a tissue, which she accepted gratefully. She might be lying to cover for Fox’s whereabouts that evening, but the pain of a woman dismissed after a one-night stand was too obvious. Maggie had been there herself a few times in New York; she knew there was no faking it.

Bibi’s cell rang, and she checked the screen. “It’s Trent,” she said. “I better take it.” She answered the call as she walked back into the house.

As soon as she was gone, Lia turned to Maggie. “Talk about blinded by love. She doesn’t even see that Fox used her.”

“Yes,” Maggie said. “And no. He took advantage of her attraction to him, for sure. But I don’t think he used her to establish an alibi. I think Fox was devastated by Ginger’s betrayal, and Bibi offered him comfort. And it didn’t hurt that it was a way to get back at Ginger for her own affair, although he seemed to have second thoughts about throwing that in her face.”

Their conversation was disrupted by a stream of foul language that came from inside the bungalow. Bibi stormed out a moment later, her face flaming with anger. “Um . . . everything okay?” Maggie asked, although it obviously wasn’t.

“That lying, manipulative, useless . . .” Bibi spewed venom at her business partner. “He agreed with me that we shouldn’t use Ginger’s name in our company name anymore,
especially in Baton Rouge. If anyone here knows her at all, it’s as a murder victim, which isn’t exactly the best advertising. He promised to include my name instead, but do you know what he did? He went and ordered a sign and stationery and everything with the name ‘Trent Socher Design Group.’ I do all the work and he gets all the credit. And what do I get? I’m ‘Group’!”

Bibi collapsed into a chair. Maggie took what was left of her champagne and poured it into Bibi’s glass. “Here. You need this more than I do.”

“Thank you.” Bibi gulped down the contents of the glass. “How did I ever get involved with that snake? He’s a cheat and a user and not fit to walk this earth.”

The women made the appropriate sympathetic noises, and then Lia subtly showed Maggie the time on her phone. “We should go,” Maggie said.

She and Lia stood, then Bibi jumped up. “I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have gone on like that. It was totally unprofessional of me.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lia said as she gave Bibi a hug. “We completely understand.”

Bibi relaxed. “I’ll see you at the bachelorette party tonight. It was nice of Vanessa to invite me. I promise I’ll be in a better mood.”

“Don’t worry about it. Just come and enjoy yourself.” Maggie chose not to mention that Vanessa’s invitation to this virtual stranger was motivated by the bride-to-be’s panic that her regular crowd had wearied of buying presents for her battery of wedding-related celebrations. To allay her fears,
Van had fattened her guest list with new potential gift-givers like Bibi.

The designer walked Maggie and Lia to their car and waved them off. “Well, that was something,” Lia said as they drove out of Bibi’s neighborhood and made their way back to the interstate.

“Oh, it was very much something,” Maggie agreed. “And I’ll tell you one thing for sure: as much as Bibi is in love with Fox, it’s half as much as she hates Trent.”

*

Maggie and Lia stopped at a party store for supplies on their way out of town and used the car ride home to go over the last-minute details of Vanessa’s bachelorette party. Kyle and Lia’s gift to the bride was picking up the tab for the photo booth the Bridezilla had demanded. Originally Vanessa envisioned it for her wedding reception, but Maggie put the brakes on that idea by declaring, “You’re getting married, not throwing a bat mitzvah.” Once Maggie explained to the woman what a bat mitzvah was, Vanessa agreed that the photo booth was better suited to a more casual event.

Maggie dropped Lia off at Fais Dough Dough and headed for Crozat. Having decided she’d earned some downtime before the bachelorette party, she parked and made her way to the Crozat library, where she searched the centuries-old bookcases until she landed on an ancient photo album. She carefully removed the album from its home on the shelf and then traipsed home to the shotgun house. There, she sat on the couch with the album on her
lap, carefully turning its delicate pages filled with photos of Newcomb Pottery, the storied clayware created by Newcomb College students in the early years of the twentieth century. Maggie and Lia’s great-great-aunt Sylvie Doucet had been one of those students, and now Maggie turned to her ancestor for design inspiration. Within minutes, her mind was brimming with potential fabric patterns, so she pulled out her battered container of colored pencils and quickly sketched a few. When she was done, Maggie felt a peace within her that she hadn’t experienced in weeks. Whether she was painting a landscape, creating plantation souvenirs, or experimenting with fabric designs, art grounded her in a way that nothing else did.

She put away her art supplies and treated herself to a long, luxurious bath, then dressed for the evening’s festivities. She opted for a stretchy, purple halter minidress that she’d splurged on in New York and paired it with strappy, black high-heeled sandals and minimalist jewelry—gold hoop earrings and a gold chain sporting a crawdaddy charm that Tug and Ninette had given her when she moved back home. She was surprised to find herself looking forward to the party.

Maggie had just finished her makeup when there was a tentative knock on the front door. “Be right there,” she called.

“Take your time,” Whitney Durand Evans called back. Maggie got the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that she’d come to associate with any mention or sighting of Bo’s
ex-wife, but she fought it back and welcomed Whitney into the shotgun.

“I know you’re getting ready for that party, so I’ll keep it short,” Whitney said, “but I needed to talk to you.”

Go away, tummy feeling!
Maggie told herself.

“I think it would be great for Xander to have a pet. When the time comes, I wondered if you might be willing to give us either a pup or a kitty.”

That’s it? Phew!
“Oh, yes.” Then Maggie backtracked. “My only concern is Xander going back and forth between houses like he does might be traumatic for a pet. And, of course, for him separating from the pet.”

“That is something to think about. But I’m sure Bo and I could find a way to make it work.”

“They’re still weeks away from going anywhere, so we have time to figure it out.” Maggie made a point of looking at a clock on the mantle above the fireplace, but Whitney didn’t take the hint.

“There is one other thing.” Whitney spoke slowly. She sat down on the living room couch. “I need to talk to someone, and you’re the only person I feel like I know well enough here in Pelican.”

Maggie instinctively clutched her stomach. She sat in a chair across from Whitney. “Okay,” she said tentatively.

“Zach and I are having . . . problems,” Whitney began. “He’s gone so much. It puts a strain on our relationship. I see Bo with Xander, how gentle he is and how caring and . . . sometimes I think I made a mistake ending the marriage. Maybe I got it right the first time and I was just too dumb
to know it.” Whitney paused. She looked down, and her red-gold hair fell in soft tufts around her angelic face. Even in the midst of emotional trauma, she was dazzling. “I know you and Bo are good friends. Has he ever said anything about me? Like regrets that we broke up?”

Maggie didn’t rush to answer. The landscape was littered with potential emotional landmines—Whitney’s, Bo’s, hers . . . even Xander’s. “Bo’s a very private person,” she said, picking her words with precision. “I think he respects you and what you shared too much to talk about it with someone else.”

Whitney chose to read what she wanted to into Maggie’s words. “So he does care about me. Couples who get divorced do remarry sometimes. I’ve read articles about it.”

Oh, dear God,
Maggie thought.
This woman is on a mission.
“Whitney, here’s what I think’s going on,” Maggie said, channeling her best lay therapist. “You miss Zach and you know he has to do what he has to do, but you’re also angry at him for his absence. You have a fantasy of what it would be like rekindle a relationship with Bo. Before you give in to that and find out the hard way that it may be just that—a fantasy—I think you need to work on your marriage. I’m sure he’s a good guy. Bo’s only said positive things about how he is with Xander, and that’s important. You need to reconnect with the reasons why you fell in love with and married Zach. And you need to
talk
to him, even if it is long-distance. I think you both need to commit to doing whatever it takes to make your marriage work before you do anything rash.”

“That’s really good advice, Maggie. Thank you.” Whitney sighed. So did Maggie—with relief. It
was
good advice, even if self-serving. “I just wish I’d followed it with Bo. We might still be married.”

And the sinking feeling in the pit of Maggie’s stomach returned.