Dead with the Wind Read online

  “Why do I keep forgetting that young man?” An’gel shook her head. “Yes, he was here, too. Although I really can’t see him harming Sondra. She was his ticket out of St. Ignatiusville.”

  “He’s not exactly a deep thinker,” Dickce said in a wry tone. “If Sondra made him angry, he might not stop to think about lashing out at her.”

  “She falls and hits her head on a sharp corner or something in her room.” Benjy nodded. “Then he panics, the storm hits, and he drags her out to the gallery and tosses her over the railing.”

  An’gel could envision the scene all too easily. She wondered if that was what really happened. Whether it was Lance who was responsible or someone else remained to be determined, but it seemed like a plausible scenario.

  The quiet was shattered a moment later by the sound of Peanut barking frantically across the hall.

  CHAPTER 25

  Benjy shot up from his chair, out the door, and into the hall before either An’gel or Dickce rose from their respective perches. Peanut kept up the barking until the sisters reached the hall. Then the dog fell silent.

  The door to Tippy’s room stood wide open, and An’gel and Dickce hurried inside. They found Benjy rubbing the dog’s head and talking to a small mound under the bed covers.

  “It’s okay, Tippy, it’s gone. Peanut didn’t mean to scare you.”

  The mound moved, and a small face peeked out from beneath the cover. “You pwomise?” Tippy said solemnly.

  “I promise,” Benjy said. “That old spider won’t scare you or Peanut anymore.”

  Tippy remained still a moment longer, then evidently decided to take Benjy at his word. She crawled out completely from under the covers and slid to the floor beside her bed.

  An’gel felt weak in the knees. Her heart was still racing, and she was annoyed with Peanut. A spider, of all things! A moment later she saw the humorous side of it as she pictured the dog and a spider confronting each other, and neither of them being happy about it. She started laughing.

  “Why are you waffing?” Tippy demanded.

  Dickce poked An’gel in the side to stop her laughing and answered for her. “My sister laughs when she’s afraid of something, like spiders. When she laughs, she isn’t afraid anymore.”

  Tippy considered that a moment and then giggled. “I don’t wike spiduhs, but I’m not as scared of them as Peanut. He’s a siwwy doggie.”

  “Yes, he can be silly,” Benjy said.

  “Where is Endora?” An’gel asked. She didn’t see the cat anywhere. Then she spotted another small lump under the bedclothes when it started to move. A moment later the Abyssinian wiggled out. She yawned and stretched.

  “Endowa was napping,” Tippy explained. “She’s not siwwy like Peanut. That siwwy ole spiduh didn’t bodder her.”

  “No, I’m sure it didn’t,” Dickce said. “Endora is a brave cat.”

  An’gel was mightily relieved that everything was calm again. When she first heard Peanut barking, she feared that someone had come into the room to harm Tippy. The child was all too vulnerable if left on her own for even a brief period. An’gel was thankful that Peanut had been with Tippy.

  “My heart is finally back to its normal pace,” she muttered to Dickce. “I don’t know about you, but I was terrified there for a moment.”

  “I was, too,” Dickce admitted. “We have to protect this child.”

  Tippy, evidently unaware of their muted conversation, was rooting around under her bed. She emerged shortly with her teddy bear. “Wance musta hid unda de bed. Siwwy bear.”

  “Yes, he is silly,” Benjy said. “I bet he hid under there when Peanut started barking at the spider.” He winked at the sisters over Tippy’s head.

  An’gel figured the bear must have been knocked off the bed by one of the animals.

  “I’m hungwy,” Tippy announced. “So is Wance.”

  “I’m hungry myself,” Dickce said. “We’ll go down and get something to eat in a minute. First, though, why don’t we brush your hair and make you look all pretty.”

  “Okay,” Tippy said. “Mommy wikes it when I wook pwetty wike she does.”

  An’gel and Benjy exchanged stricken looks while Dickce found Tippy’s hairbrush and began to work gently on the tangled light brown strands. “Why don’t y’all go on down,” she said, a slightly noticeable catch in her voice. “We’ll be down in a minute.”

  “Peanut, come,” Benjy said. In an aside to An’gel, he explained that the dog probably needed to go outside.

  “What about Endora?” An’gel asked when they were in the hallway with the dog.

  “Here she is,” Benjy said. “Watch this.”

  An’gel watched while Endora leapt onto the dog’s back and then quickly launched herself onto Benjy’s shoulder. “You’re so clever,” Benjy told Endora. The cat thanked him by rubbing her head against his ear.

  “She is clever,” An’gel said. “Not to mention agile. I didn’t realize cats could jump like that.”

  Endora rode on Benjy’s shoulder all the way down to the first floor. “We’ll be back in fifteen minutes or so,” Benjy told An’gel. “I’m going to let Peanut burn off some energy after that nap he had. Then I’ll put them in my cottage until I eat. They’ll be fine there for a little while.”

  “That sounds good to me,” An’gel said. “I’ll go to the kitchen and see whether Estelle has done anything about lunch.”

  She turned down the hall, and Benjy went out with the animals. An’gel listened as she neared the kitchen, but she didn’t hear any sounds of food preparation. With a sigh she walked through the open door, wondering what on earth she would find to prepare for lunch. She had not spent much time in the kitchen over a stove for years. Dickce was a better cook than she was, but both sisters had been spoiled for years by their housekeeper, Clementine, who was a very fine Southern cook. Just thinking of Clementine made An’gel hungry for one of the housekeeper’s amazing desserts. Her particular favorite was Clementine’s carrot cake.

  Stop thinking about cake. That’s not going to get lunch ready for anybody. An’gel checked the refrigerator and found several pounds of ground beef. There was a bundle of asparagus in the crisper, a head of iceberg lettuce, and several tomatoes. Satisfied that she could cope with what she’d found, An’gel went to the sink to wash her hands.

  When she pushed the sleeves of her dress up to keep from wetting them, the scrap of fabric she had found earlier fluttered to the floor. An’gel retrieved it and stood staring at it. The white satin brought the memory of that terrible scene, when Sondra stood upstairs, gleefully ripping the antique gown and throwing the swatches of fabric down to the first floor.

  An’gel rubbed the scrap between her fingers. It was warm from having been tucked in the sleeve against her arm. It was also soft, but something about it didn’t feel quite right. She held it under the fluorescent light over the sink and examined it more carefully. She quickly came to the conclusion that the piece of fabric she held had not come from an antique wedding gown. The weave was not that of old satin. Instead, it looked like a blended material, perhaps silk and rayon, the kind used to make drapes.

  Where had it come from? Had Sondra not destroyed the antique gown after all and instead cut up a piece of drapery?

  An’gel shook her head as if to clear it. She tucked the scrap back into her sleeve. There were two answers to this particular puzzle, she decided. Either this was a random piece of material that had somehow found its way to the spot where An’gel discovered it, or Sondra had cut up something besides the dress.

  The first answer seemed too bizarre a coincidence, like the freakish accident that supposedly claimed Sondra’s life. The second answer was just as bizarre, but for a different reason.

  An’gel recalled what Jacqueline had told her and Dickce earlier, about Sondra’s care for clothing and how she wouldn’t have gone out o
nto the gallery during the storm wearing her blue gown. Had that care extended to the antique dress? Perhaps Sondra had wanted to punish her grandmother by cutting up fabric that only looked like it came from the dress.

  There was one way to answer at least part of the question, An’gel realized. Look for the dress.

  She was about to head out of the kitchen when she realized she had no time to hunt for the dress right now. Tippy would be downstairs soon asking for something to eat. She had better focus on putting together a meal for the child and for herself, Dickce, and Benjy.

  Before she finished seasoning the ground beef, however, preparatory to forming it into patties, Estelle turned up and informed her that she would take care of lunch. “You can go back to whatever you were doing,” Estelle said. “I don’t need any help.”

  “Very well,” An’gel said. She went to the sink to wash her hands. “Tippy will be down shortly. She’s hungry, and we promised her food.”

  “I’ll see to it,” Estelle said. “She likes hot dogs and macaroni and cheese. I’ll have them ready for her in a few minutes.”

  An’gel nodded and left the kitchen, relieved that she wouldn’t have to cook after all. Instead, she could go in search of the wedding dress. The likeliest place would be Mireille’s room, she decided, because her cousin would have wanted it to hand to prepare it for the wedding. Moreover, Mireille probably wouldn’t have trusted Sondra to handle it properly in her absence.

  As she neared Mireille’s door, An’gel heard Dickce and Tippy on the stairs above her. She didn’t want to have to explain to her sister what she was doing and ducked quickly inside her cousin’s room and shut the door. She would share whatever she discovered later on.

  She flipped the light switch but left the curtains closed. She stood by the door and surveyed the room to determine the likeliest place to look. Her eyes settled on the old chifforobe in the corner. Its doors were open, and An’gel noted the two long drawers at the bottom, under the compartment for hanging clothes.

  She doubted her cousin would keep the dress on a hanger because of its age. The drawers were likelier. They were low, and An’gel had to squat to open them. She started with the bottom drawer, grasping the elderly drawer pulls and sliding the drawer gently out.

  There it was. An’gel, even though she had halfway expected to find it, was still a bit surprised. She knew it was the wedding dress because she had seen both Mireille and Jacqueline walk down the aisle in it. The fabric looked fragile, and An’gel wondered why Mireille had been so insistent that Sondra wear it. Surely any damage would have been irreparable.

  An’gel slid the drawer closed and slowly got to her feet. Her muscles protested, and she leaned against the chifforobe for a moment to rest.

  Sondra had not destroyed the antique gown. So what had she destroyed instead?

  CHAPTER 26

  Other questions followed quickly. Did Jacqueline know the wedding dress was still intact? And who cleaned up the mess Sondra made?

  The answer to that last question was Estelle, An’gel reasoned. Sondra wouldn’t have, and Jacqueline had gone with her mother to the hospital.

  When Estelle picked up the scattered pieces of fabric, had she realized they did not come from the antique gown?

  An’gel wanted to talk to Jacqueline first. Given the loss of her mother and her daughter, Jacqueline might not care in the least about the survival of a piece of clothing. Still, An’gel thought it better to tell her now than have her find it on her own and get a potentially unsettling surprise.

  After she talked to Jacqueline, she would confront Estelle. This time she would demand some answers, even if Estelle tried to stonewall her with her usual rudeness.

  Once lunch was over, An’gel decided. She left Mireille’s room, making sure the door was securely closed behind her. She walked downstairs. When she heard voices coming from the front parlor, she turned that way instead of toward the dining room.

  Inside she found Horace and Jacqueline. Horace had his cell phone to his ear while Jacqueline watched him from her perch on one of the armchairs.

  “That’ll be fine,” Horace said. “Soon as you can get somebody here.” He ended the call and snapped his phone into a holder attached to his belt. “They should be here in about an hour, Roy said.”

  “That’s good,” Jacqueline said, “though I wish someone had thought to call them earlier.”

  “Hello, my dear,” An’gel said. She nodded to Horace. “Are you feeling any better?”

  “A little,” Jacqueline said. She still appeared drawn and tired to An’gel, but perhaps the nap had helped.

  “Miss An’gel, I’ll have to be heading back to town in a few,” Horace said, “and Jackie’s got things to do. I got a crew coming to do the cleanup upstairs. Would you mind showing them where to go when they get here?”

  “I’ll be happy to,” An’gel said. “Anything to help.”

  “Thank you, Tante An’gel.” Jacqueline smiled briefly. “I’d rather not be here while they’re up there.” Her voice faltered on the last two words, and for a moment An’gel thought her goddaughter was going to break down. Jacqueline rallied, however, and asked An’gel to have a seat. “Estelle won’t have lunch ready for another ten minutes or so.”

  An’gel chose a seat on the sofa near Jacqueline. She wished Horace would depart because she was eager to question her goddaughter about the dress.

  “I’ll grab something in town.” Horace moved close to his wife, leaned down, and kissed her cheek. “You take it easy, sweetheart, and I’ll see you later.” He ducked his head in An’gel’s direction. “Miss An’gel.” Then he strode from the room, pulling his cell phone loose from its holster as he walked.

  Jacqueline stared after him with what An’gel thought was a curious expression. Affection, An’gel decided, but laced with doubt. Did Jacqueline suspect her husband was responsible for Sondra’s death?

  “I’m glad we have a few minutes alone together,” An’gel said, gently claiming her goddaughter’s attention. “I have something to tell you, and I’m afraid it’s a bit startling.”

  Jacqueline appeared alarmed. “It’s nothing to do with Tippy, I hope.”

  An’gel shook her head. “No, Tippy is fine. Dickce and Benjy are taking turns looking after her. She’ll be safe with them.”

  Jacqueline sighed. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am. There’s so much to do, but I can’t take her with me. I haven’t even explained to her about Sondra.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “How do I tell her she’ll never see her mother again?”

  “Oh, my dear.” An’gel got up from the sofa and went to her goddaughter. She bent down and wrapped her arms around Jacqueline, who leaned against her. An’gel rocked her goddaughter gently.

  Jacqueline sighed. “Thank you. I’ll be okay.” She gently loosed herself from An’gel’s grasp, and An’gel resumed her seat.

  “If you’d like one of us with you when you tell her, all you have to do is say so,” An’gel said.

  “I’ll think about it,” Jacqueline replied. “Now, what is this startling news you have?”

  An’gel pulled the scrap of fabric from her sleeve and leaned forward to hand it to Jacqueline, who looked at it blankly.

  “What is this?” she said.

  “I thought it was a piece of cloth from the antique wedding dress,” An’gel said. “I found it in the hall under a table. When I examined it more closely, however, I realized the fabric wasn’t old enough, nor is it satin.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jacqueline said. “If it didn’t come from the dress, what is it?”

  “I don’t know,” An’gel said, “but I aim to find out. Once I realized it wasn’t from the dress, I wondered if the dress was still intact. I suspected, you see, that Sondra might have cut something else up. I confess I went snooping in your mother’s room, and I found the dress, unharmed, in th
e bottom drawer of the chifforobe.”

  To her surprise, Jacqueline laughed. She stopped abruptly, however, and dropped the scrap onto the coffee table.

  “Do you know what it came from?” An’gel asked.

  Jacqueline nodded. “It must be from the replica Maman had made of the gown a few years ago. The last time I saw it, it was hanging in her closet.” She shook her head. “I suppose when Sondra went looking for the gown, she must have found the replica instead. Probably didn’t realize it was not the original.” Her eyes filled suddenly with tears.

  An’gel started to get up, but Jacqueline waved her back. “I’m all right. I’m happy the gown wasn’t harmed, for Maman’s sake. She’ll—” Jacqueline halted abruptly.

  “Yes, I know,” An’gel said. “It’s hard to realize she’s gone.”

  “I still don’t understand why Sondra would do such a thing.” Jacqueline picked up the scrap of fabric and stared at it. “It wasn’t like her to do something so cruel.”

  An’gel was taken aback. From her own assessment of Sondra’s character, the girl’s act of destruction wasn’t all that surprising. She decided not to say this to her goddaughter. Instead she settled for a blander statement. “She was terribly angry over Mireille’s refusal to deal with Estelle. Perhaps she was so enraged she acted out of character.”

  Jacqueline shook her head. “She was angry, certainly, but I’ve seen her that angry numerous times, and she never did anything like this.” She brandished the scrap. “I’d almost swear someone put her up to it, but I can’t imagine who would.”

  An’gel could imagine it. The person who killed Sondra might have incited the act for reasons of his own. Then Sondra might have repented of it in the wake of her grandmother’s collapse and threatened to confess. There was a twisted mind at work here, whatever the answer.

  “If someone talked Sondra into doing it,” An’gel said, “it would seem to me that person wanted to hurt Mireille. Perhaps not to the extent of having her collapse, but to upset her if nothing else.”