Epilogue

Pogue failed to read Carly Neely her Miranda rights. He questioned her while in police custody about incriminating events, which triggered the recital of the warning. That technicality could get a case thrown out of court.

Sure, it wasn’t Pogue’s fault. He probably would have read them to her if Auntie Zanne hadn’t kept interrupting him. But just the same, it never happened.

Of course, Auntie found and paid a lawyer for Carly who knew just how to exploit that technicality and she walked.

Free as a bird.

Then we had to stop Auntie from trying to adopt Carly, her father and all three of her children.

Morishita was an uncommon name for a black person in Texas. Or for that matter, anywhere. But that was the family my father believed we belonged to.

23andMe will tell me for sure.

Auntie had known all about my father finding out he and Aunt Julep were adopted, but she never mentioned it to me. Not even after I told her I knew. My Aunt Julep never really cared about it. She was happy with the family she had.

As to the murder—Avoyelles Kalty wanted to be the Lessor Mambo. She wanted it so much that she was willing to kill for it. But for some reason, after the conversation I had with Auntie Zanne in the car, or maybe because of all the mysticism that surrounds Auntie and her world of potions and spells, she had decided to “suggest” to the Society that Delphine Griffith be given the position instead of Avoyelles, even before she knew of Avoyelles deadly deeds. Delphine was voted in unanimously.

Avoyelles and her car-detailing nephew were both arrested. Come to find out, he’d been the one who suggested the hydrofluoric acid as the murder weapon. He had seen the same MythBuster show that Logan found on the internet and wanted to put it to the test for himself. It had been a bad choice. They’d both gotten more than they bargained for using it. It had made everyone that handled it sick. Avoyelles with what she thought were hot flashes. Carly’s flu-like symptoms.

And then there was me. Middle-aged, highly educated, but still thoroughly confused me.

Coming back home turned out to be a good thing. It made me realize the things I was really running from were things that were all in my mind. I didn’t need a big-time job or big-town life to make me happy. Happiness came from within. And it seemed, my happiness place was found within Roble, right where my family lived.

So, I made it official. I took all of my stuff out of storage in Chicago and converted the upstairs—all six bedrooms—to my suite. Auntie never came up there anyway.

I gave Alex the boot.

I was officially put in charge of the tri-county medical examiner’s office. But folks around Roble called me for stomachaches, broken arms and stitches, too.

And I found that most days I could be seen wearing a smile.

And Rhett? Well, unlike the dead downstairs, he roamed the upstairs’ halls quite often.