"I looked it up," she said, a little defensive now, like she expected me to laugh. "After breakfast, when Hollis said mechanism, I went down a research hole. For the book, originally, and then just because I couldn't stop. There's a whole world of antique restoration forums, and the way they talked about fitting tiny working parts into old pieces without ruining the patina, well, it's not that different from what a locksmith or a watchmaker does, except slower, because you're not allowed to leave a mark. You have to work invisible. That's the whole discipline. Make the fix disappear into the object so completely that nobody can tell it was ever touched." She shrugged, deflating a little. "I don't know. It felt important. Probably it's nothing, like the rest of it."
"It's not nothing," I said.
Taylor gave up on his chopsticks. "You're telling me the theory about the secret blood-oath society was garbage but the little handwritten footnote about jeweler tools is the good part."
"That does track with the rest of my career," Allison admitted.
Vivienne looked at me carefully, the way she looked at everything, like she was already framing the shot. "Where’s Reginald?”
“Must have found a filly at the Celebration of Life to go home with,” Taylor said.
There was so much wrong with that sentence I didn’t even know where to begin.
Maggie, bless her, changed the subject then, asking rather pointedly when everyone was leaving New Orleans the next day for their respective homes.
There was chatter about carpooling to the airport and the quality of the Thai food, and then thankfully, the three guests all headed off to bed, Allison still clutching her notebook.
Maggie departed with a wave and a warning. “Sometimes where there is smoke, there’s fire. Sometimes the fire is already out.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I asked. “Guru doesn’t work on you.”
She cracked a laugh. “That was trying too hard, wasn’t it? Just chill. That’s what I’m saying.”
As she left, I took Teddy to the porch.
It was just the two of us in the cool night, the neighbor’s wind chimes tinkling.
I laid everything about the weekend out loud to Teddy, because apparently my process required narrating my own detective work to a skunk like he was Watson and not just a small striped animal with a taste for shrimp.
"Means," I told him, and he chittered like he was taking notes. "Somebody built a spring-loaded spike narrow enough to fit inside a hollow silver straw, precise enough to fire on pressure, and delicate enough that nobody noticed anything wrong with it until it was already in Evelyn's mouth. That's not a butter knife and a prayer, Reginald said so himself, sitting right there at my breakfast table like he was quoting somebody else's crime instead of his own. That takes real skill. The kind of skill you get from decades of working tiny mechanisms into old, breakable things without leaving a mark. The kind of skill a restoration architect has."
Teddy settled onto the porch boards, listening, or at least pretending to, which I appreciated either way.
"Motive," I continued. "Evelyn Carrington built her whole reputation on being the last honest voice in a city that likes its history pretty. Right before she died, she stood up in front of two hundred people and said something about the truth coming to light. And Belle Rêve's provenance — the letters, the Civil War pedigree, the whole reason that house gets called historic instead of just old — might not be as solid as everybody's grant applications say it is. Somebody signed off on that history a long time ago. Somebody with a license and a reputation to lose if it turned out to be fabricated. And Evelyn, being Evelyn, wasn't going to let that stay quiet. Not once she decided the truth needed to come out. She said it herself, right before she lifted that cup."
I thought about Reginald at Dorothy's, standing at the fireplace, watching the rotation of Evelyn's photos. Not grieving. Studying. The way you study something you're trying to make sure has actually, finally, stopped being a threat to you.
"Opportunity," I said. "Reginald had weeks. Everyone agreed on that, that night at breakfast, that this wasn't something you rig the morning of. He's the one person in this whole cast who'd have a legitimate reason to be handling antique silver, examining heirloom pieces, being trusted around Belle Rêve's most valuable and fragile things without anybody blinking twice. Nobody questions the preservation architect for wanting a close look at a hundred-and-fifty-year-old julep set. That's not suspicious. That's Tuesday, for him."
Teddy chittered again, softer this time, and shifted his weight against my ankle.
"But there's Hyacinth," I said, and here was where it got messier, where the thread I'd been so sure of at that café table on Royal Street started fraying in my hands. "Hyacinth's hand is definitely the one on Vivienne's footage. Hyacinth's the one who buried the bracelet in the hedge. Fifteen thousand dollars from Evelyn, and then two thousand more, three days before the gala, and a fight where somebody said you can't keep doing this to me and somebody else said you knew the terms. That's not nothing. That's a woman who did something for Evelyn, or to her, right at that table, ninety seconds before Evelyn ever lifted the cup." I exhaled. "But Hyacinth didn't build that mechanism. I don't care how well she did or didn’t do in school. Nobody develops that kind of precision metalwork alongside a full committee calendar and a divorce and salon appointments. She might even have a job for all I know. Whatever she did with her hand on that table, it wasn't engineering. It was placement. She swapped something, or set something down, or moved something into position. Somebody else built the thing she was moving."
I sat with that for a second, the whole shape of it finally sliding together in a way that made my stomach hurt more than the vague, formless dread had.
"Means and motive and knowledge. That's Reginald," I said. "Access to Hyacinth, and whatever leverage got her hand moving on that footage, that's still a gap. But it's a gap, not a wall. Evelyn paid her. Somebody else could have too. Or threatened her. Or both." I scratched the top of Teddy's head, and he leaned into it, unimpressed by the fact that I'd just built a fairly credible murder case out loud on my own back porch at one in the morning. "The bracelet, the tools, the identification of whose hand that was — none of it stands alone. But put it together, and it stops looking like Hyacinth acting alone and starts looking like Hyacinth acting for somebody."
The porch light buzzed overhead. Somewhere down the block, a dog barked twice and gave up.
"I don't love where that points," I told Teddy. "Because he corrects everyone's grammar and reads architecture magazines at breakfast like they're scripture and once told Taylor that straws don't spontaneously develop sharp ends, which, in retrospect, was a weirdly specific thing to be so confident about."
Teddy chittered his agreement, or possibly his opinion on the dog down the block. Hard to say with him sometimes.
My phone buzzed against the porch boards, and I nearly knocked over my glass of sweet tea reaching for it, some part of me already braced for Hollis, or Maggie, or another disaster wearing the shape of a text message.
It was a number I didn't recognize, though the name that came through with it stopped me cold.
This is Robert McClintock, forgive the late hour and the imposition. I understand you and Hyacinth are acquainted. She's awake, resting comfortably, doctors are optimistic. She's asked for you specifically. She'd like to see you tomorrow morning, if you're able. Room 412 at Touro. She was quite insistent it be you and not the police, said it’s urgent.
