Chapter 9
Nine
Maggie lived in a shotgun duplex in the Bywater, with a very professional podcast studio that was her pride and joy.
"You look like a raccoon," Maggie said, by way of greeting, when she opened the door.
"Chubby?"
“Dark circles,” she said, gesturing under her eyes. “And ready to fight someone.”
I stepped over her trumpet as I entered the front door and moved through the living room. “That sounds about right.”
"Bad night at the gala, obviously."
“And Hollis dropped by this morning to both question me and my guests and warn us.”
I set my bag down and dropped into my usual chair in her living room.
Teddy had stayed home, sulking, because Maggie's next door neighbor had a very large, very judgmental porch cat, and the last time I'd brought him along there'd been a standoff through the mail slot that took twenty minutes to de-escalate.
Besides, Teddy didn’t always adhere to the sign Maggie would put on the studio door that read, “Shh, recording.” He obviously didn’t read but I suspected even if he did he wouldn’t care.
Maggie handed me a mug of coffee I hadn't asked for but definitely needed and dropped into the chair across from me, pulling her knees up under her, headphones already looped around her neck like a scarf.
"I've heard four different versions of what happened to Evelyn Carrington today and at least one of them involved a swarm of bees. "
I almost laughed. "There were no bees. Don’t trust the internet."
“I never do. My facts are two-factor authentication, baby.”
"You ready to record, or you need a minute?" she asked. “We can hash it all out.”
That’s why she was my best friend. She had never once, since I met her, made me feel like I had to pretend I was fine in front of her. Or tell her if I didn’t want to. She always let me get there on my own time.
"I need several minutes. But we don't have several minutes, so let's just do it and I'll fake competence."
"That's your whole brand, Harper. I don't know why you're stressed."
“I did have a server ask me for my number last night before the whole dead hostess thing and you’ll be happy to know I gave it to him.” I sipped my coffee and stood back up.
Maggie looked delighted. “I’m so proud of you! Has he texted you?”
“He did, to tell me Evelyn was dead. Come to think of it, I didn’t actually answer him.” I winced. “Guess I should do that.”
“I guess so,” she said dryly.
We entered the studio. Maggie pulled her headphones up, and I did the same, and there was a small, familiar ritual to it—the click of her interface powering on, the soft hiss of the mic gain.
She counted down on her fingers instead of saying it out loud because she liked the drama of a silent countdown.
Three, two, one, and then her voice dropped into the warm, slightly theatrical register she used for the show, half genuine curiosity and half campfire storyteller, and I felt myself sliding into the version of me that went with it.
"Welcome back to Gumbo and Gris Gris: Murder in the Crescent City, the podcast where two lifelong New Orleans girls talk about the crimes that make this city equal parts beautiful and terrifying. I'm Maggie."
"And I'm Harper.”
“Today is Saturday,” Maggie said. “And this is a special episode for unexpected reasons.”
“Normally around now I'd tell you what case we're covering this week, some cold file from 1987 or a lurid little scandal from the French Quarter's less glamorous decades, but this week is going to look a little different."
"Because you were there," Maggie said. "Harper was a guest at the Magnolia Heritage Gala at Belle Rêve Manor just last night, when socialite Evelyn Carrington collapsed and died in front of nearly two hundred people."
We did the recap the way we always did, trading lines back and forth, me giving the facts as I'd lived them and Maggie asking the questions a listener would ask. We did the whole “allegedly” and made sure we weren’t disparaging anyone or the organization.
I kept it careful. I didn't mention the straw, or the mechanism, or the four millimeters Hollis had described over breakfast with his mouth full of eggs.
That part wasn't mine to give away, not yet, not until it was public record, and Hollis would have my head if I turned his coroner's briefing into content before he'd cleared it.
But I talked about the toast. The magnolias. The way Evelyn had lifted that heirloom cup like she was about to say something we'd all remember, and then hadn't gotten the chance to.
"There's something about it," I said. "that's sitting with me different than the other stuff we cover."
"How so?"
I thought about how to say it without it sounding like I was fishing for sympathy on a podcast that people listened to on their commutes.
"Most of what we do is history. Old cases.
People who are already gone, cities that have already grieved and moved on and turned the story into something they tell tourists on ghost walks.
There's a distance to it. This isn't that.
This is a woman I stood three feet away from. And it's a house. Or rather, it was."
"Belle Rêve."
"Belle Rêve. Which is the kind of place that gets held up as this shining example of what preservation is supposed to look like.
Evelyn built her entire identity around being the person who wouldn't let the truth get sanded down for convenience.
And now she's dead in the middle of the thing she cared about most. It feels so odd. "
Maggie was quiet for a second, letting our exchange breathe the way she always did, a trick she was better at than I was. "You've been weird about houses since Aunt Odette passed. You know that, right?"
And here I thought she’d about to say something brilliant.
“I have not been weird about houses. Just my house.”
“You cried when Ralph fixed your air conditioning.”
“Who wouldn’t cry when their air conditioning is fixed? New Orleans in August is like being cremated.”
"Uh-huh." She didn't push it further on mic, because she was a good enough host to know when to let a thread hang instead of yanking it. But I felt a heaviness sitting in my chest the way it had been sitting there since I'd watched Evelyn go down with a mint sprig clinging to her lip.
Now that I knew a spring that jabbed her straw up inside her throat?
Shudder.
We wrapped the segment, did our usual sign-off, the part where Maggie promised next week's deep dive on a decades-old disappearance in Algiers Point and I reminded everyone that no, we did not have merchandise yet, but soon.
She clicked off the recording, pulled her headphones down around her neck, and reached for her coffee, which had gone cold enough that she made a face at it.
"Okay. Off mic. Tell me the real stuff."
"There is no real stuff. That was the real stuff."
"Harper."
I exhaled, and some of the performance drained out of me, the version of myself that knew there was an audience even if I couldn’t see them.
"It's not just that a woman died in front of me.
It's something…I can’t quite pinpoint. You did the B&B research I asked you for, right?
Tell me that first, actually, I need something normal for a second. "
Maggie brightened, because if there was one thing Maggie loved more than a good murder, it was a spreadsheet, and she reached over to her laptop and spun it around to show me.
"Okay, so. Marigny and Bywater, like you asked.
There are eleven bed and breakfasts within about a mile of Midnight House claiming some kind of haunting.
Eleven. One of them says they have a ghost who reorganizes the spice rack.
Another one has a Victorian woman who cries in the third-floor bathroom, which, honestly, relatable.
Bad lighting does us all dirty. And the Devereux House two streets over from you claims their ghost pays the water bill early, which I choose to believe is a scheduling error and not a benevolent spirit with strong opinions about utilities. "
“Why don’t I have ghosts with the power to pay my bills?”
“Technically, you do. We. Have. Ghosts. It’s a great slogan and it’s drawn a ton of guests in for you.”
"True. Plus, none of them have Teddy."
"None of them have Teddy. You're clear there. Also none of them have quite your recent body count, so." She winced. "Sorry."
"It's fine." It wasn't entirely fine, but I appreciated her trying to lighten it. "I mean, it’s been literally months since anyone died in my house. Are these places, like, legitimately old, or is it more marketing?"
"Bit of both, honestly. Some of them have real documentation, deeds going back to the 1800s, actual recorded deaths on the property.
And some of them—" she made a face, "—some of them, if you dig two inches, the 'original 1850s cypress beams' were installed during a renovation in like, 1994.
It's very much a spectrum of how much anybody's checking. "
And there it was. The thing that had been sitting under my ribs since breakfast.
"That's what's getting to me," I said slowly.
"Everybody in this city sells history. I sell history.
Midnight House has a whole legacy about Aunt Odette's ghost stories, and I know for a fact some of those stories got better every time she told them, because I watched her do it.
Watched her add a detail here, soften an edge there, because a good story needed shaping.
But she never lied about what the house was.
She never claimed provenance she didn't have.
If she wasn't sure a story was true, she told you she wasn't sure.
She'd say, now, some folks say this happened, and I can't swear to it, but isn't it a good one.
There was always daylight between the story and the truth, and she made sure you could see it if you looked. "
“Is this about these other rental places or about last night?”
"Evelyn built her whole reputation on being the last honest voice in a city that likes its history pretty.
And right before she died, she said something about truth coming to light.
I heard her say it. I thought it was just gala theater at the time, being dramatic in front of a chandelier. Now I can't stop turning it over."
Maggie leaned forward, elbows on her knees, all the podcast performance gone out of her voice too. She was just my friend now. "You think somebody killed her over a story."
"I think somebody killed her over what happens when a story stops being just a story.
Reginald's whole career is authenticity.
Restoration architecture, provenance, the paperwork behind why a house gets called historic in the first place.
If Belle Rêve's history is worth what everyone thinks it's worth, that's grants, that's tax status, that's a small industry propping up half the Garden District's reputation.
If it's not…" I trailed off, because I didn't actually know, I was just doing what Hollis called poking my nose in, except I was doing it out loud, to my best friend, over cold coffee. “I don’t know where I’m going with this.”
"You’re trying to suss out motive. I get it. But you don’t know about Evelyn Carrington’s personal or professional life to get there," Maggie said quietly.
“You’re right. There are also really random reasons for murder.”
"People kill for really stupid reasons. I did a whole episode on a guy who murdered his neighbor over a fence line."
"I remember. Season two. I still think about that fence."
"Everyone still thinks about that fence."
“Except that someone rigged a straw into a murder weapon. That’s not heat of the moment stuff.”
She reached over and squeezed my arm.
"For what it's worth, you being weird about houses means you’re a good person. You care about your aunt’s legacy. You care about people. You care about New Orleans."
"I do," I agreed.
“Now if we could just get you to care about a man,” she said with a grin. “Was the server hot?”
“I have no idea. I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup.”
“That’s because you have the hots for Hollis.” Maggie stood, stretched until her spine popped audibly.
I could try to deny it because she was probably right.
Maggie went to go dig through her fridge for something that wasn't cold coffee, tossing a final thought back over her shoulder. "Just be careful with it, okay? If somebody really did build a weapon, they're not going to love you turning over rocks to find out why."
“I will be.” The thought settled into my stomach after I said goodbye and stayed there the whole drive home, probably past the eleven allegedly haunted bed and breakfasts.