A Cajun Christmas Killing Read online

  Bo nodded sympathetically. “Sometimes I try to remember when life wasn’t complicated. And I can’t. Any chance y’all could just buy Crozat back from Tig’s company?”

  Maggie shook her head. “Dad already thought of that. We’d have to buy it back at the price the investors set based on what they consider current market value, and we can’t afford it. The proceeds from the original sale are already half out the door. We need them for improvements that will barely keep the place from falling down around us.”

  Bo made a left and drove slowly down the hard-packed decomposed granite road leading to Crozat Plantation B and B. Branches of centuries-old oak trees intertwined to form a canopy above the road, then split left and right to frame the manor house. The elegant old place was encircled by thirty-two imposing square columns, and galleries wrapped around both floors. Each of the columns was festooned with giant red bows, which was Gran’s contribution to the holiday decorating scheme. Maggie and Ninette had made the large wreath that welcomed guests at the front door. Tug had searched resale shops and found two six-foot-high plug-in candles whose lightbulb flames flickered like the real thing; each graced a side of the wide oak front door. Maggie savored the serene image and, always the artist, debated whether oil paint or watercolor might best portray the home’s beauty.

  Marie Shexnayder, who helped the Crozats with housekeeping, came out of the house onto its wide veranda and waved to Maggie. “Thanks, chère,” Maggie said to her boyfriend. She gave him a quick kiss and hopped down to the ground from his SUV. “I’ll keep you posted on my dad.”

  Maggie bounded up the manor house’s front steps. Marie had a sour expression on her face, which was unusual for her. “Uh-oh. I don’t like that look,” Maggie said. “Which guest is a problem? I hope it’s not anyone from the Japanese tour group.” The preholiday visitors included a group of eight from Tokyo being shepherded around the region by tour guide Marco Cornetta, who also happened to be Uncle Tig’s ex. Crozat had become popular with Japanese tourists for no particular reason Maggie could discern, but she was grateful for it, as well as for Marco, a loyal and entertaining customer. The other guests filling out the preholiday week roster were a family named the O’Days from Ohio and Donald Baxter, a California businessman.

  “The Japanese group is fine. Marco took them to see Whitney and Oak Alley. The O’Days took their girls on a swamp tour.” Marie pursed her lips. “It’s Mr. Baxter.”

  Maggie wasn’t surprised. There was something about Donald Baxter that bothered her. It was the rare male executive who tacked a plantation stay onto his business trip. If he did, the businessman usually explained that his wife had sent him, and he went home laden with souvenir mugs and tea towels. But not Don. Maggie had studied facial expressions and body language in a college portrait painting class, and when Don claimed the need for some R and R after stressful business negotiations in New Orleans, his darting eyes indicated that he was lying.

  Marie looked around to make sure she and Maggie were alone. “He complains about everything,” she said, keeping her voice low. “And he keeps writing things down on his phone like he’s taking notes. I think he may be a travel blogger.”

  “Oh, that’s not good. Sometimes they think they don’t have a story if there isn’t something to snark about. Do you know where he is?”

  “The office. He’s all yours. I’ve run out of nice.”

  Marie marched off, and Maggie went inside. As she walked down Crozat’s wide center hallway, she inhaled the woodsy scent emanating from the gaily decorated pine garlands that draped every doorway. Maggie crossed a threshold into the men’s smoking parlor that her family had turned into the B and B’s office. Computers and printers rested on heavy walnut furniture that had been in the family for generations. The walls were a dark-forest green, and the intricately carved Cypress molding was painted black. It was the family’s tradition to paint this particular room in dark colors; their ancestors had used this technique to hide the accumulation of tobacco stains. The room glowed with color from the lights of several small Christmas trees. A twelve-foot Douglas fir stood bare and majestic in the manor house front parlor, waiting for its ornamentation. Trimming it on Christmas Eve was a Crozat family tradition.

  Don Baxter was standing with his arms crossed in front of his wiry chest, staring at a small painting hanging above the office desk. “Nice of you to drop by,” he said without looking at Maggie. The man was only a few inches taller than her five-foot-four height, but his body radiated a tensile strength. The only question he asked when checking in was, Does Crozat have a fitness room with weights? He wasn’t happy when Maggie informed him it didn’t.

  “I’m so sorry,” Maggie said, summoning her sunniest smile. “We had a family emergency.”

  “And not much of a backup plan,” Don said, still staring at the painting. “You advertise a full, hot breakfast. Lukewarm biscuits and cereal do not a full, hot breakfast make.”

  “Our apologies. You and all the guests will receive a credit on your bills for this morning.”

  Baxter gave a dismissive grunt. “You’re using single-ply toilet paper. I’m not a fan.”

  Maggie couldn’t resist responding, “Of single-ply, or toilet paper in general?” Baxter merely stared at her, a cold look in his eyes. “They were out of two-ply at the store when we shopped the other day,” she said. “I’ll make sure you have it by this evening.”

  The businessman nodded and turned his attention back to the artwork. “This painting,” he said, gesturing to it, “it’s contemporary.”

  “Yes. Those are our family pets. My boyfriend’s son painted it. He’s very talented, especially for a seven-year-old.”

  Don finally turned around, his eyebrows raised. “The artist is seven? Wow.” He turned back to the painting. “How much do you want for it?”

  Maggie gritted her teeth. “I’m sorry, but it’s not for sale.”

  “Ha. Everything is for sale.”

  “Not something that has sentimental value to me.”

  “Even that. It’s just a matter of landing on a price. When you decide on yours, let me know.”

  Don exited the room without looking back, which was fortunate for Maggie because he missed the nasty hand gesture she was making behind his back. She pulled a chair up to the office computer and activated a Skype session. After a blurry few seconds, Uncle Tig appeared on the screen. Although Tig and Tug were identical twins, their lifestyles had sent them down different paths of aging. Tug, with his penchant for outdoor living and Ninette’s fine cooking, looked his fifty-seven years. Brother Tig, a self-proclaimed “city boy,” didn’t. Tig’s pale, freckled face was barely lined, and thanks to one of New York’s finest colorists, his copper hair didn’t sport a single strand of silver.

  “Hey, darlin’,” he greeted his niece. Tig still retained his accent, despite a thirty-year absence from Louisiana. Maggie was sure this was intentional, having seen her uncle turn on the Cajun charm to seduce the snobbiest Manhattan maître d’ into giving them a great table. “Mama called me about Tug,” Uncle Tig said, his brow creased with worry. “How is he?”

  “I think he’s going to be okay. We’re waiting to hear from the doctor. Uncle Tig, what’s going on with the company?”

  Tig dropped his head, as if unable to look his niece in the eye. After a moment, he looked up. “There’s a hedge fund manager named Steve Harmon, and he has a company called Harmon Equities. About a year ago, he came calling. Told me how much he respected my dedication to adaptive reuse of historic structures and how impressed he was that I’d turned my passion into profit. He wanted to invest in PPC and help grow it. At first my other investors were resistant. The SEC’s got Harmon Equities in its crosshairs and nailed a couple of employees on insider trading. But Harmon insisted his underlings acted without his knowledge.”

  Tig paused. Maggie could hear the sounds of New York City in the background: horns honking, a distant siren. For a second, she was overwhelmed by longing for her
former home. Then she pulled herself out of it. “Uncle Tig . . .” she prompted.

  “A few months ago, bad reviews started appearing on some property sites. It didn’t take long to realize we were being hit by trolls, but every time we blocked one, another popped up. Our cybersecurity team finally got everything under control, but the damage was done. We lost bookings, had to lay off people. Harmon put the blame on me. He sent letters to all my investors accusing me of incompetence and mismanagement. At first I had their support, but Harmon was relentless, and one by one, they began doubting me.”

  Tig leaned toward his computer’s camera. Maggie could see that his green eyes, so similar to her father’s, were flecked with fury. “They’re trying to push me out, Maggie. Of the company I loved and nurtured and grew. They’re trying to take me down.”

  “Oh, that’s awful.” The ramifications of Tig’s crisis hit Maggie hard. “And if you go down . . .”

  She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence, so Tig did it for her. “Crozat goes down with me.”

  Chapter Three

  The conversation ended with Tig backtracking from an apocalyptic scenario for Crozat. In an attempt to convince his niece that he would be David to Harmon’s Goliath, he strung together a bunch of clichés: “I’m not down for the count. I’m not going down without a fight. It ain’t over ’til it’s over. It ain’t over until the fat lady—”

  Maggie was relieved when the Skype connection failed, cutting off Tig’s flailing attempt to lessen the gravity of the situation. Panic was useless; what the Crozats needed was a game plan. Maggie thought for a moment and then typed an e-mail to Tig requesting contact information for the general managers of all his properties. If she could organize a show of commitment for Tig from his troops, it might make the PPC investors second-guess their support for the rapacious Steve Harmon.

  Maggie pulled her cell phone out of the back pocket of her jeans. When she wasn’t pursuing her art career or helping to run Crozat, she worked as a tour guide at Doucet Plantation on the west side of the Mississippi, and she was due there in fifteen minutes. She speed-dialed her coworker and close friend, Gaynell Bourgeois, and explained the crisis. “Any chance you can cover for me today?” she asked. “I need time to try and fix this.”

  “You know I would.” Maggie picked up tension in her friend’s voice. “But Tannis is on a tear. She’s got some new ‘experiential’ format for the guides she’s ‘rolling out’ today.” Gaynell emphasized the words that their new boss, the proud recipient of a junior college degree in marketing, liked to throw around. “I’m sorry about what’s going on with your uncle, but I think you better get here.”

  Maggie muttered an expletive, thanked her friend, and ended the call. She raced out of the manor house, across the backyard and the graveled parking lot behind it to the shotgun cottage she shared with Gran’. She grabbed her purse and car keys, then jumped into her car and took off for Doucet. In a flurry of ill-conceived last-minute executive actions, Louisiana’s outgoing governor had transferred control of several state-run historical sites to private nonprofits. Doucet Plantation, the ancestral home of Maggie’s mother, Ninette, was one of those properties. With the change came the new boss: Tannis Greer, a thin, slightly bug-eyed young woman of twenty-eight, four years Maggie’s junior, who in her first position of power, operated more as a dictator than a manager. Maggie was not looking forward to Tannis’s new “format.”

  Her cell rang, and Ninette’s name flashed on the screen. Maggie pressed a button on her earbud to accept the call. “Hey, chère,” her mother said. “I wanted to give you an update. Lee’s bringing Gran’ home, so she’ll look after things while you’re at work. Your dad seems to have dodged a heart attack or stroke, but his blood pressure is all out of whack, so they’re keeping him here until they get it under control, and I’m going to stay with him. How’s everything at Crozat?”

  “Fine,” Maggie said, keeping her response vague so as not to pile more stress on her already stressed-out mother. “As soon as I’m done at Doucet, I’ll go straight home to relieve Gran’. Give Dad a big kiss for me.”

  Maggie ended the call and parked in the grassy field next to the overseer’s cottage, which housed the Doucet employee facilities. She changed into her costume of pale-pink polyester-masquerading-as-silk ball gown and stuffed her thick chestnut hair under a wig bouncing with banana curls. She then hiked up her hoop skirt and rushed into the staff lounge for the morning meeting. She sidled up to Gaynell and her other close friend at Doucet, Ione Savreau, the only African American employee at the plantation. Tannis had replaced her as general manager, but Ione swallowed her pride and stayed on as a tour guide. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Ione muttered as Tannis clicked into the room in black platform high heels. She wore a tailored navy suit and carried a black leather briefcase. Her blonde hair was slicked back into a ponytail, exposing small gold knot earrings. It was the perfect ensemble for a boardroom and couldn’t have been less appropriate for the casual, almost ramshackle employees’ area.

  “I have some superexciting news,” Tannis said, her light-brown eyes confirming her excitement by seeming to jut out more than usual. “I’m sure some of you have heard of Living History tours.” Tannis articulated each word as if speaking to either a deaf or mentally challenged audience. “It’s when you play a character rather than just lead a boring old tour. Well, we here at Doucet will now be embracing that format.”

  “It’s not the worst idea,” Gaynell whispered. “I do get bored saying the same old thing all the time.” Ione gave a skeptical grunt.

  “Since I took a playwriting course at Three C”—Tannis was proud of the nickname she’d given her alma mater, Coastal Community College, and used it frequently, hoping it would catch on—“I took the liberty of writing out individual scripts for each of you after work. Nothing like earning a little overtime pay, huh?” Tannis giggled. Her employees, who’d never seen a dime of overtime pay, didn’t. She opened her briefcase and pulled out a stack of papers that she distributed among the tour guides, assigning them their characters as she did so. She reached Maggie’s group last. “Maggie, you’re the mistress of the house, who must manage the plantation while her husband is at war. And Gaynell, you’re her ten-year-old son.”

  “What?!” Gaynell yelped. “Why am I a boy?”

  “Because you’re the youngest and smallest guide. Is it a problem?” Tannis’s sharp tone indicated it better not be, and Gaynell meekly shook her head no. “Good. New costumes for anyone who requires one are in my office. I’ve also hired a couple of day players from town to perform adult male roles when we need them, since this staff is female-heavy. I want everyone to memorize their scripts tonight and be ready to go in the morning.” Tannis turned to walk away, ignoring the grumbles from her employees.

  “You missed me, Tannis,” Ione said. “I’d love to know who I get to play.”

  There was a challenge in Ione’s tone, but Tannis was immune to it. “Your costume hasn’t arrived yet, so you’re assigned to the gift shop until it gets here. Okay, people, time for work. Let’s make it another great Doucet day!”

  Tannis’s peppy sign-off did nothing to invigorate her staff, who shuffled off, clutching their scripts. Maggie, Gaynell, and Ione were the last to leave.

  “Are you okay?” Maggie asked Ione.

  Ione shook her head. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” she repeated.

  Maggie and Gaynell exchanged a look. “So do we,” Maggie said.

  *

  Maggie checked her phone throughout the workday, but her uncle had yet to get back to her with the list of his general managers. She did get a text from Marco saying he was shuttling his Japanese tour group to New Orleans for dinner, so not to worry about them. Maggie loved Marco, whom she had known since she was a girl. He never seemed to have a down moment and ended every correspondence with a “Laissez les bon temps rouler!”—the ubiquitous Louisiana saying that translated to “Let the good time
s roll!” Maggie was convinced the sweet man was her uncle’s soulmate and wished Tig would come to the same conclusion.

  When her day at Doucet finally ended, Maggie headed home to Crozat. As she parked, she saw the O’Day family exiting their rental car. “Hi there,” she said, summoning up her best hostess smile. “How was the swamp tour?”

  “We saw two gators fighting,” Sophie, the younger of the two O’Day girls, piped up. Both hovered around eight or nine and looked so much alike that Maggie was sure they were often mistaken for twins. The whole O’Day family resembled each other in a blandly suburban way. In her time back at Crozat, Maggie had come to realize that there were guests who made an indelible impression and guests she would be hard-pressed to pick out of a lineup a week after their stay. The O’Days fell in the latter camp.

  “Wow,” Maggie said. “I’ve seen a lot of gators, but I’ve never seen them fight.”

  “It was awesome,” Sophie said.

  “It was scary,” Sophie’s older sister, Allison, countered flatly. Maggie pegged her as the daughter who would give her parents a lot of grief when she hit her teens.

  “Thank you so much for the discount coupon; it really helped us out,” their mother, Lindy, said. “We were wondering if we could have dinner in our room tonight. We downloaded a movie for the girls.”