That’s right. Mina’s grandmother would be there as well. I thought of the cranky eighty-something-year-old with renewedaffection, and the investigator side in me wondered what insights she might be able to add. “What kind of roles has Doris held at the pageant since she won?”
“Most recently, a judge. She did that for a couple of decades or so,” Aunt DeeDee said. “Back when I competed in the nineties, she was a liaison, reaching out to the contestants in the weeks running up to the pageant to give advice. Afterward, she would act as a mentor to the winner. That’s how I originally got to know her.”
“Did she know Brett?”
“I would think so. Though she lives in Richmond, she was in Aubergine every summer, and we aren’t exactly a burgeoning metropolis.” Aunt DeeDee considered and then snapped a finger. “In fact, Brett worked the show a few times during his high school and college days. They’d have certainly run into each other then.”
I tried to recall if I’d seen Brett at the pageant this past summer. Surely I would remember if he’d been in attendance, although my view of Brett until this weekend had been the less of him, the better.
Aunt DeeDee must’ve read my mind. “He wasn’t here this year, but I’m sure I’ve seen him in the audience at other pageants. He liked to come home and show off his accomplishments, talk about whatever new thing he was planning. None of them were really successful until that dreadful song and the TV show.”
“You mentioned the film crew. Are you going to record tonight?” Lacy asked me.
“We’ll set up a camera in the corner. Just so we can catch any possible confession on film.”
“From your mouth to God’s ears.” Aunt DeeDee lifted her eyes to the heavens. “I’m just ready for all this to be over. Savilla and you two and The Rose have seen enough tragedy.”
She wasn’t wrong. I looked to Aunt DeeDee. “Are you joining us in the Vampire Room?”
“I’ll watch from the wings, as they say. But, honestly, that space has always creeped me out.”
“Because of the murals?” I recalled what Savilla had told me about her great-grandmother’s décor choices.
“No, not that,” Aunt DeeDee answered. “Though how anyone could think that a painting of a little boy being chased by a giant bat with fangs is a good idea for wall art is beyond me.”
I was intrigued.
“No,” Aunt DeeDee continued, “it’s the true story that disturbs me. Years ago, when Mr. Finch was a kid, his father employed a butler who had terrible sleep issues.” The mention of the butler reminded me of Savilla’s story about how the butler had died here decades earlier. “Insomnia and sleepwalking. It grew so bad in fact that every night around two a.m., Frederick would awaken to hear the poor man climbing up and down the sub-basement stairs.”
“But aren’t all the family bedrooms on the third and fourth floors?” Lacy asked.
“That’s what was so strange. Mr. Finch swore that he could hear the squeaking all the way from the bottom floor of the house to the top.” Aunt DeeDee ran a hand along the wall of the family room, covered in simple blue paint. “I’ve heard strange sounds myself during pageant week. I think it’s something to do with the construction.”
Lacy and I caught one another’s eye, the memory of that locked room with no exit still on both of our minds. The Rose had more mysteries and hidden spaces than I’d ever imagined.
“One night, sometime in the nineteen fifties, I can’t quite remember the year, the butler was sleepwalking, and he fell headfirst down the stairs,” Aunt DeeDee continued. “Mr. Finch heard the noise and ran down six flights of stairs to find thebutler’s body lying across the threshold of the Vampire Room. It looked like he’d somehow crawled there after breaking his neck.”
“Or the room had pulled him inside,” Lacy said in a mock-spooky voice, as she wiggled her fingers in the air.
“Child, no. The good Lord has a plan for those he calls home,” Aunt DeeDee protested. “Still, some say that the butler’s footsteps can still be heard tromping back and forth, up and down the stairs. Not that I put any credence in that kind of nonsense.”
I shivered, despite the fact that I also refused to believe in such things.
“Your momma did some looking into our ancestry years ago and found out that the butler was our third cousin twice removed.”
That made me stop.
“We’re related to someone who worked at The Rose?” The idea of coming from a lineage on both sides of The Rose’s wealth distribution wasn’t one I’d considered.
Aunt DeeDee studied me, knowing that I was reckoning with my past in all sorts of ways this weekend.
I could suddenly see a family tree branching in two very different directions, one side providing the green canopy of shade for people to bask in and the other winding toward the forest floor, weighed down by heavy rains.
I now had to navigate both sides.
THIRTY-ONE
It was almost 10:30 p.m. when Savilla, Jemma, Lacy, and I began to descend into the bowels of the Rose Palace.
