up to the mansion, Mr. Solomon’s car still sat under a clump of kudzu. I quickly parked my Volkswagen and walked up to the gate. Once inside the property, I passed the rosebush with its noisy cicada and skirted under the plastic tarp. A symphony of clanks, whirs, and bangs echoed through the walls and made the light fixtures tremble.
Mr. Solomon would never hear me above the noise. Since I couldn’t yell for him, I’d have to hunt him down to get his permission to measure the chapel. Heaven forbid he find me there by accident and wonder why I snuck onto the property—without a hard hat, no less—for the second time in one morning.
Maybe I should check the library first, since that was where I’d found him last time. So I entered the east hall and made my way across the tarp. I had a clear shot to the double-wide doors at the end of it.
One closed door after another passed in a blur. I did my best to ignore the other rooms, although my fingers itched to turn a doorknob or two. There was no telling what secrets lay on the other side of those closed doors.
I hurried before temptation could strike, and then I even worked up a respectable smile to help me sweet-talk Mr. Solomon into letting me measure the chapel. Once I entered the library, though, my grin faltered. No one stood under the ladder this time, and nothing greeted me but a squat cardboard box from Olde Time Books of New Orleans.
Drats. I quickly retraced my steps and reentered the hall. Mr. Solomon wasn’t on this side of the building. Maybe he’d wandered to the other end. That’s it. No doubt he wanted to check on Erika Daniels’s work over there, or, more likely, he wanted to criticize her work over there.
I set off again, but this time I noticed something odd after only a few feet. Every other door in front of me, about eleven doors in all, had been closed, except for the first door on my right. That one stood open an inch or two, and weak lamplight spilled onto the drop cloth. Tiny motes of dust swirled prettily through the yellow light before landing on the muslin.
Since I “cain’t-never-could,” as we said here in the South, resist the lure of an open door, I paused. Although the room probably wasn’t an office, given the insufficient light, there was no telling what else it could be. Perhaps it was a storage closet, with cleaning supplies and whatnot, or maybe an electrical room with breaker boxes for the property. Either of those could’ve lured Mr. Solomon away from the library. My conscience assuaged, I softly pushed the door open.
“Hello?” I carefully entered the room, convinced I might find him there.
Unlike the plaster walls in the foyer and library, this room was covered in wallpaper. Bright green leaves twirled up curlicued vines and ended just shy of some thick crown molding. Even after so many years, the leaves’ green color was vibrant.
Above the climbing vines, an antique gasolier hung from the ceiling. The frosted globes cast a pale halo on everything under the light fixture.
I waited for my eyes to adjust to the half light. Then I noticed a boxy object covered in an old bedsheet, which sat against the far wall. A dresser, maybe? I stepped forward and waited for the back half of the room to come into focus.
Next to the mysterious object was something left uncovered: a beautiful cherrywood bed, the posts carved in ornate swirls. Under its canopy lay a lumpy mattress covered by an old quilt. The quilt was rumpled and whorled, which meant I’d definitely stumbled across someone’s bedroom.
My curiosity piqued, I cautiously approached the bed. A folded newspaper lay on top of the quilt, which I lifted to the light. It was the front page of the Bleu Bayou Impartial Reporter, with today’s date printed in the upper-righthand corner.
How very strange. I softly put the newspaper down again. Judging by the knots in the bedding, someone had spent the previous night in this room. Their tossing and turning had even jostled a pretty glass finial that hung above the carved headboard.
The finial, which tilted sideways, was swirled with browns and golds, and it reminded me of the old cat’s-eye marbles I used to play with as a child.
I reached for the glass ball to straighten it, but I stumbled against a corner of the bed instead and knocked the globe off its base. The finial dropped to the quilt and quickly rolled over the side before I could stop it.
I grimaced and waited for the crack of glass. When nothing sounded, I quickly stepped around the bed. A pile of men’s laundry lay on the other side, and the globe wobbled on top of it. Hallelujah! The clothes must’ve broken the finial’s fall.
It took a moment or two for the truth to dawn. A pile of fabric had broken the finial’s fall, all right, but it wasn’t dirty laundry. It was someone’s back. A kneeling figure, whose head was tucked close to his chest, and whose feet were painfully askew.
Nothing moved for at least a minute. Not the finial, not the form…and certainly not me. I did, however, finally back away, and then I let loose a scream louder than any electric belt sander or hammer or skill saw I’d yet to hear at the mansion.
CHAPTER 3
After what felt like forever, a stampede of work boots thundered down the hall and into the bedroom.
The next thing I knew, someone grabbed me from behind and yanked me away from the bed. Soon I stood in the hall, which seemed much too bright after the gloom of the bedroom.
“What…what happened?” I asked.
“You’re okay now.” It was a man’s voice, and the stranger continued to grip my shoulders, even though we’d come to a standstill. “Take a deep breath. That’s good.”
I wrenched out of his grasp and turned. My captor was the ponytailed owner of the Ford dually.
“But who was that in there?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about it right now. Everything’s okay.”
“Please tell me. I went in there to…” My voice faltered. Why did I go in there again?
Mr. Solomon never said I could wander around the mansion all willy-nilly. In fact, he didn’t want me in the house—and especially not without a hard hat.
“Are you breathing?” the stranger asked. “You have to take some deep breaths.”
I did as he suggested and inhaled loudly. Slowly, my head cleared and I could think again. “I was looking for Mr. Solomon.”
“Well…I think you found him.”
“Excuse me?”
He didn’t flinch. “You found Mr. Solomon in the bedroom.”
“Is he—”
“Yes, he’s dead. Someone already called for the coroner.”
My knees turned to jelly. The stranger carefully helped me sit on the ground. “I’m sorry you had to be the one to find him.”
“Me, too. Wow. I can’t believe it.”
He pulled off his hard hat and joined me on the floor. “Were you a friend of his?”
“No, but I knew his wife. Ivy Solomon was a great lady.” Poor Ivy. First, her stepdaughter, Trinity, was murdered at another plantation down the road. And now this. “I’ve got to
