Chapter 1 #2
Room Two was on the quieter side of the house. I left Allison arranging her notebooks on the writing desk with the focused intensity of someone establishing territory. I wondered what books she had published but she looked more interested in unwrapping than chatting.
I wasn’t curious enough to look her up though, at least not right now.
When I went back downstairs a sleek black car rolled up out front.
“No rest for the wicked,” I told Teddy, who was resting in his pet bed in the laundry room. He chittered in acknowledgment, but made no move to follow me.
It was moments like this that I wished I had the budget to hire staff. I was getting dizzy from all the back and forth of checking in my new guests.
The man who climbed out of the black car was somewhere in his early forties, dark-haired, and handsome.
Not as handsome as my neighbor Hollis, but he sported a symmetrical face and a stately nose that most humans would deem attractive.
He paused on the sidewalk to look at Midnight House. Reginald's gaze had been analytical, but this man's was something warmer. Nostalgic, almost.
He caught me watching from the porch and smiled. "Taylor McIntosh," he called up. "Small-batch distiller. Afterlife Spirits, out of Kentucky."
"The bourbon, of course." I had seen the label at the bar around the corner, which my friend Demarcus, the bartender, stocked specifically because it sold well. The name was a good fit for a NOLA crowd. "Popular pour around the corner."
"Glad to know it's found a warm reception." He grabbed his bag and came up the steps. His handshake was friendlier than Reginald’s. Less business-like. "My bourbon is being featured at the gala tomorrow. Evelyn Carrington arranged it."
He said Evelyn Carrington's name with the relaxed confidence of someone who was not even a little bit worried about her. Which made it hard to believe he’d actually met her.
Or maybe they were old chums, who was to say? I filed his response away and showed him to Room Four.
By the time I came back downstairs for what felt like the fortieth time—you’d think my backside would be much perkier than it was after constantly using the stairs—there was already a fourth car in the driveway.
A young woman was standing on the porch filming the exterior of the house on what appeared to be a very expensive camera.
"You must be Vivienne,” I said.
She was the only arriving guest whose occupation I already knew because if anyone wanted to film at Midnight House, I required permission. She’d asked, I had agreed.
"Yes. Vivienne Okafor." She didn't lower the camera. "Documentary filmmaker. As we discussed, I may want to film some B-roll here. The house has a wonderful atmosphere."
"As long as you let me know when you’re filming," I said. "And my skunk has approval rights on all footage he appears in."
Vivienne glanced down at Teddy, who had followed me to the door and was sitting on the welcome mat looking positively cinematic. She raised her camera and took a single shot.
"He'll do," she said, glancing at her camera screen.
That made me frown. That was a decidedly lukewarm reception to my very extraordinary skunk.
Vivienne was a few years older than me with close-cropped natural hair and a confident stride as she fully entered the foyer and swept her gaze over the parlor and the grand staircase.
The chandelier flickered at the top of the stairs.
Almost instinctively, she raised her camera and took a few rapid shots.
“That’s just bad electrical. Or ghosts. Depending on what makes you feel better,” I joked.
“Hmm.”
I guess she wasn’t about that ghost life.
“I saw you’ll be attending the gala as well,” she said.
I had no idea how she knew that but I didn’t really care. The guest list wasn’t exactly a secret, especially now that I was a member of the Society.
“I have full access, which Evelyn approved personally." She finally dropped the camera from her face and looked at me with the brisk energy of someone who had seventeen things to do after this.
Clearly none of which would be doing a photo shoot of my skunk.
In spite of that, I put Vivienne in Room Five, which had the best afternoon light. I figured she would appreciate it.
With all four guests checked in and the house humming with the particular energy of occupied rooms—the sound of rolling bags and running water and someone opening and closing a window—I retreated to the kitchen and poured myself a very justified second cup of coffee.
Teddy plopped down on his usual spot next to the kitchen table.
“Maybe not as stodgy as I thought,” I told him. “More eclectic than stodgy.”
It was either talk to Teddy or talk to myself and while that was usually sufficient, it wasn’t cutting it today. I knew Hollis was home because his car was in his driveway so I texted him.
Coffee?
He gave me a thumbs up emoji in return.
Sometimes he surprised me. In all the time I’d known him I would have never taken him for a thumbs up emoji guy. But then again, he wasn’t a big texter in general. He preferred face-to-face.
Through the kitchen window, I could see the magnolia in the side yard, its blossoms fat and white and almost aggressively lovely in the April sun. And somewhere across the next yard, through the gap in the hedge, I caught the brief movement of a blue jacket.
A moment later, my back door opened.
"No one got killed today?” I asked.
Hollis Broussard came in, helped himself to a coffee mug, poured himself a full cup, and leaned against the counter. He crossed his feet at the ankles in what was his favorite kitchen stance.
“What makes you say that?”
“You still have your tie on. If you were just getting home you’d be more rumpled. You look positively fresh as a daisy,” I told him, shooting him a smile that teetered on a smirk.
He grunted. “That’s what it says on my dating profile.”
That made me cackle out loud. “Whoa. You just told a joke. You must be on a homicide-free streak right now.”
As a homicide detective in a city that had its fair share of them, Hollis worked long hours and was underpaid. He saw the worst of the worst and more often than not, he was a little cranky, with good reason.
“I slept for twelve hours straight after we made an arrest yesterday. I feel amazing.” He took a huge sip of his coffee and made a loud, “Ah,” sound of approval.
He gave me an affectionate smile that both unnerved me and made me feel a little warm from the inside out.
“Glad to hear it,” I said, and I meant it. “Sleep is one of life’s greatest pleasures.”
His eyebrows rose up and down. The corner of his mouth turned up.
It made me so flustered I raised my mug too fast and knocked my tooth with the edge. “Ow.”
"Full house?" Hollis said. “The street’s been busy this afternoon.”
"Four bookings."
"Gala crowd?"
"Every single one of them." I turned around and leaned against the opposite counter, wrapping both hands around my mug. "They all know the woman who's chairing the event tomorrow night and only one of them seemed thrilled about it."
He looked at me over the rim of his coffee. "Harper."
"I'm just observing."
He sighed. Set down the mug. "Which woman?"
His voice sounded heavier. I was personally responsible for sucking all the light and joy out of Hollis this morning.
"Evelyn Carrington."
Something moved across his face. Not alarm. Just…awareness.
"You know who she is," I said.
"I know of her." He picked his mug back up. "She's well-connected. Old Garden District family. Very involved in historic preservation." He paused. "Not universally beloved."
"I can see why.”
"Yep. She's powerful and she knows it and she doesn't always use that power gently."
I looked at Teddy. Teddy looked back at me.
"Great," I said. "So I've got a full house, a charity gala, and a potentially divisive authority figure who all four of my guests have some kind of complicated history with."
Hollis gave me a look. "Or you’re overreaching and overreacting and borrowing trouble.”
I nodded. “Could be. I won’t even deny it.”
“They're just members of the same small social world and you're reading into it because you've had two solved murders in six months and your pattern recognition is running hot."
"Probably." I picked my mug back up. "I'm just saying I'm paying attention."
"You're always paying attention."
"And yet somehow it's a surprise every time."
He almost smiled at that. He finished his coffee, ran the mug under the faucet the way he always did, and set it on the drying mat.
He then dried his hands and looked at me with an expression I had started to recognize over the past several months—the one that meant he was going to say something he hadn't fully decided to say yet.
"Be careful tomorrow night," he said.
"It's a charity gala, Hollis. There will be canapés."
"There were canapés at the last thing you got mixed up in."
I considered that. "There weren't, actually. There was charcuterie."
He pointed at me.
I thought he was going to admonish me again.
Instead he said, “Nice dress.”
It didn’t sound like a compliment. “I’m trying to look professional!” I protested.
“You look like you’re going to film videos of yourself baking bread.”
My jaw dropped. “What’s wrong with baking bread?”
“Not a dang thing.” He let himself out the back. Through the window, I watched him cross back toward his house with the long, unhurried stride of someone who had nowhere to be but was always slightly braced for wherever he ended up.
I looked down at Teddy.
"There is nothing wrong with this dress," I told my skunk.
Teddy sneezed.
“Harper! Harper! I desperately need your help!” Allison called out, bursting into the kitchen, wild-eyed and frantic.