Bones of a Feather - Carolyn Haines [62]
“Why didn’t you ask Eleanor? Or Monica?”
I gave a tolerant laugh. “One reason Delaney Detective Agency is so highly regarded is because we do a thorough job of investigating. Asking our employer isn’t exactly … impressive.”
Jassine chuckled with me. “There’re tricks in every trade, right?”
“That’s right. Did you find anything on the wedding?”
“Hold on a minute.” There was the sound of something heavy dropping onto a desk and pages turning. Jassine was flipping through the bound issues of the paper. She was a very good friend of Cece’s to go to all this trouble for me.
Finally, she came back on the phone. “You aren’t going to believe this.”
I knew from her tone it was bad. “What? Was she dumped?”
“The night before her wedding, Gaston was murdered Under-the-Hill.”
I felt as if a fist were pressed against my sternum. Breathing was difficult. “What were the circumstances?”
“It’s a huge story. ‘French Artist Stabbed in Brutal Robbery’ is the headline. The bachelor party was going on, and the group of young Natchez men left the rehearsal dinner at the Eola and went Under-the-Hill. At the time, there was a club offering adult male entertainment.”
It wasn’t hard to imagine. Bachelor parties where the groom had one last fling at freedom were standard practice. Groomsmen did their best to insure a hangover so intense the actual wedding was a foggy memory.
“Was there a fight?”
“No, it seems Gaston went outside to get cigarettes from his vehicle. The other groomsmen finally missed him and went out to check. They found him in the parking lot. He’d bled to death. Can you believe the luck of it? Eleanor has lost everyone she ever cared about, except Monica. No wonder those two have such attitude. They act like the rest of us aren’t fit to wipe their feet.”
“No wonder,” I repeated. Jassine didn’t know Eleanor now stood to lose her sister. “Thanks, Jassine. I’ll tell Cece she owes you big-time.”
“Tickets to the Black and Orange Ball in New Orleans this year would be a nice compensation.”
“I’ll put a bug in her ear.”
I’d just hung up when I heard my hound’s low, serious growl. Sweetie stood at the front door, her hackles raised and her lip curled as she snarled. Easing back a curtain, I studied the front lawn. Night had fallen, a soft, misty summer night that gave the stars a magical glow. I didn’t need Sweetie Pie taking off after a deer, and it was highly possible wild game hovered at the edge of the woods, so I slipped outside and gently closed the door. Behind me, I heard Chablis’s frantic little paws at the door trying to dig her way out to me. The sound brought to mind old movie clips of fingernails digging at a coffin, a cheerful thought that made me want to rush back inside and slam the door locked.
Briarcliff was a house that invited visions of the macabre. Edgar Allan Poe would have been right at home.
Planting my feet on the front porch, I listened to the sounds of the night. Laughter, dim and muffled by the fog, drifted up from Under-the-Hill. Inside the house, Sweetie bayed a complaint accompanied by Chablis’s ear-piercing bark. I had to get back inside before they woke Eleanor.
As I put my hand on the knob I heard the sound of horse hooves. They came toward the front of the house hard and fast. Without thinking I rushed down the steps and into the driveway. The ground trembled beneath the weight and power of the horse, but I couldn’t see anything. Fog carpeted the front lawn, disguising even the familiar shapes of the trees.
“Barclay!” I called, my heart thudding. I knew it was Barclay, but at the base of my reptilian brain, a red alert sounded. Childhood fears of bogeymen and headless horsemen made me want to turn tail and run for safety. Instead, I held my position. “Barclay!”
The horse burst from the fog, a black mountain of muscle and flying mane. The massive creature slid to a halt in the gravel of the drive three feet in front of me. It reared, a wild whinny