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SHOCK RIPPLED THROUGH my body like a streak of lightning, but it didn’t stop me from bolting up the stairs. I moved quickly enough to elude Kase’s attempt to hold me back. I also ignored his shouted orders to come down and wait with the guests. He could stay downstairs if he wanted, and he could call 911 while he was at it, because based on the screams I was hearing, someone had been badly hurt.
Make that shot. Possibly killed, judging by the amount of blood that had escaped Donny Master’s chest cavity. He lay in the middle of the upstairs landing. I stopped short, grateful to feel the solid weight of Kase’s chest as I took a step backward.
“Dios mio, he’s dead.” Carmen sank to her knees beside her husband’s body. Her English gave way to Spanish, but it wasn’t hard to translate her keening. She ignored Kase’s command to not touch her husband. She grabbed Donny’s hand.
Kase shoved his cell phone into my hand as he moved past me. “Call 911, get an ambulance. Then call Carter and tell him what happened. Don’t let anyone up the stairs unless it’s the paramedics or law enforcement.” Once he’d barked orders at me, he crossed the landing, pulled a sobbing Carmen from her husband’s body, and knelt beside Donny.
My hands shook as I dialed for help, and I felt lost in a fog as I gave the operator the information she needed. I watched as Kase checked for Donny’s pulse. It didn’t escape my notice that he wasn’t attending to Donny’s gunshot wound. Hardly an encouraging sign.
The door to my right flew open. Cassandra, in all of her bridal finery, stepped into the hallway. “For God’s sake, Carmen, be quiet—” but her angry protest died on her lips as she took in the scene in front of her. She sagged against the doorframe. “Oh, my God, what happened?”
“Don’t move,” Kase ordered her. “Stay where you are.” He turned to meet my eye. “You made those calls?” His voice was barely audible above Cassandra’s panicked cries.
I nodded, but I was unable to form words. I shifted my attention to a sobbing Carmen. I should go to her. I should do something, say something, but I felt paralyzed.
“Stay where you are, Stephanie,” Kase instructed me as if he could read my frantic thoughts. “I need you to keep your eyes on the stairs.”
Again, I nodded. My eyes swept over the scene. I didn’t see a gun, so whomever shot Donny must have taken it with them. Unless...oh, no, it couldn’t be. I stared at Carmen in horror. Had she shot her husband? Was her behavior that of a shocked wife or a murderess? Her dress was a dark navy-blue chiffon, and if there was any of her husband’s blood on it, I couldn’t tell.
Cassandra’s piteous cries of “Daddy, Daddy” were painful to hear. But were they sincere? Was she shocked to see that her father had been shot? Or was her reaction a clever cover for a premeditated act?
“Lord almighty!”
I whirled around. Gertie stood on the step below me, her eyes wide.
“Oh, Gertie, thank goodness you’re here.” I reached out for her hand. “We need Carter.”
She stared at Donny’s still form. “What you need is a miracle.”
That too.
Kase got to his feet. “Gertie, have Bull stand at the bottom of the stairs and not let anyone up here except Carter and the paramedics. They should be here soon.” As he spoke, the sound of approaching sirens reached our ears.
“Will do,” Gertie said. She turned and had a word with her date, who nodded and hustled down the stairs. “Where’s Lenora?” she asked me.
Good God. I hadn’t thought about Donny’s step-mother. “Isn’t she with Walter and Aunt Ida Belle?”
Gertie shook her head. “Last I saw Ida Belle she was madder than a hornet because Walter slipped away with Lenora when she went to fetch a drink. You want me to go look for them?”
The arrival of the paramedics cut off any further conversation. Gertie and I stepped aside as they swept up the stairs. Within moments of their arrival, the swell of wedding guests that had been awaiting the ceremony out on the lawn somehow squeezed into the house. I peered down the stairs. It appeared as if Bull Dozer was struggling to keep anyone from coming up the stairs. Deputy Breaux was attempting to herd guests back outside.
Carter jogged up the stairs, nodding to us as he made his way to where the paramedics were kneeling over Donny’s body. He and Kase spoke in such low tones that I couldn’t make out their actual words, but it was obvious that while Donny’s body was still here, his soul had departed this earth. The paramedics would soon leave and someone from the coroner’s office would come in instead. The landing would transform from a death scene to a crime scene.
“Donny?” The bewildered voice of his first wife floated up the stairway. “Stephanie, what’s going on? Has Donny shown up yet?”
My stomach clenched. Oh, yes, he’d come. And gone. But I couldn’t find my voice.
Luckily, Gertie had no such problem. “Bull, honey, let Kitty come on up.”
Kitty ran lightly up the stairs. “Is Donny here? Is he drunk?” She stopped next to Gertie. From the angle where we stood the only part of her ex-husband that was visible were the bottoms of his black dress shoes. “He’s passed out drunk, isn’t he?” Her hands clenched by her side, and she shook with a barely contained rage. “I knew he’d find a way to ruin Cassandra’s day, the bastard. I’m going to kill him.”
But as the words left her lips, the paramedics moved away from Donny’s body, showing Kitty Masters that she wasn’t the first person that day to have the same idea.
***
AN HOUR LATER WE WERE gathered at the police station. Carter looked weary and Kase looked worried. Donny’s body had been taken to the morgue, and the former and current Mrs. Donny Masters sat in separate meeting rooms giving their statements to deputies. Cassandra and her fiancé were at the hospital at Shawn’s bedside waiting to see if he’d recover from an overdose. Carter and Kase had their heads together conferring over notes while Fortune, Gertie, and I loitered in the police station hallway like law enforcement groupies.
“I don’t like this,” Fortune said. “Not one bit.”
I shot an annoyed look in her direction. “Really? The rest of us are having so much fun.”
Gertie frowned. “Don’t start, either one of you. It’s not going to help us figure out where Ida Belle is.”
And this was the crux of our problem. Somehow, in the melee at the Masters house, we’d lost my great-aunt, Walter, and Lenora. So far as we knew, Lenora had no idea her step-son had been killed. We were anxious to get word to her before she heard it from someone else. One of the sheriff’s deputies who was at the hospital keeping an eye on Cassandra and Shawn was under strict orders to let us know if Lenora showed up at the hospital.
“Could the three of them have gone off to hash things out?” I suggested.
“Bash it out would be more like it,” Gertie said. “Last I saw of Ida Belle, she was madder than a wet hen on a hot tin roof.”
I was too tired to point out the absurdity of her metaphor. “Could they have been kidnapped by the murderer?”
Fortune shrugged. “To what end? Whoever pulled the trigger would be desperate to get out of there. You can’t move fast when you’re hustling hostages around.”
I watched her carefully. She was nervous, which did nothing to reassure me. Her pensive expression told me what her words didn’t. She thought that the three missing seniors had met the same fate as Donny. But she couldn’t be right. Aunt Ida Belle couldn’t be dead. Not now, not like this.
“Maybe it was the wife,” Gertie suggested.
“Which one?” Fortune asked.
Gertie threw up her hands. “Either one, I don’t have a preference. Maybe the newer model? She was upstairs when you and Mayeux got up there, wasn’t she?”
I nodded. “Yes, leaning over her husband’s body.”
“Did you see a gun?” Fortune asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. If Kase had, he’d have pointed it out to Carter.” I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to replay the scene in my mind. I shook my head. “I can’t remember any details. All I could see was the blood on Donny’s shirt.” I crossed my hands over my stomach, willing it not to retch. “There was so much blood. Maybe Carmen hid the gun before we got upstairs. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be hard on yourself,” Fortune said. “It takes years of practice to learn to assess a crime scene.”
Years? Perhaps this was true for the Queen of Delusion, but I could never get used to seeing freshly murdered bodies. I certainly couldn’t speak about it so dispassionately.
Gertie reached out and laid a hand on my shoulder. “Try one more time, kiddo. Tell us everything you remember from the moment you last saw Ida Belle. Don’t over-think it, just talk.”
I nodded. “Okay. After you and Bull left us, Kase and I stood on the lawn with Aunt Ida Belle. She was distressed that Lenora had spirited Walter away. Kase offered to go find him but that just set her off.”
Gertie snorted. “I can see it.”
“She then took off toward the house, but I didn’t watch her. She might have gone into the house or in another direction. I don’t know. I feel so stupid for not paying more attention.”
“Don’t be silly, honey. If you hadn’t been enjoying the day with your man, you’d have been wasting precious time,” Gertie said.
Kase wasn’t my man, but this wasn’t the time to set Gertie straight. We could do that after we found Aunt Ida Belle. “Kase and I talked for a few moments more, and then Kitty came up to us and asked for my help. She said that Donny hadn’t shown up and that she wanted me to help calm Cassandra down. I agreed to accompany her to the house.”
“How did Kitty seem?” Gertie said. “Maybe she shot Donny and then rushed out to get you and Kase so she could lead you upstairs and act stunned with the two of you as witnesses.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. She appeared flustered, but that seems normal for her.”
“How did she act when she saw the body?” Fortune asked.
I shrugged. “She didn’t go upstairs with us. On the way to the house so many people stopped her that she suggested we go ahead without her. She said she’d be right along.”
“Odd that she’d stop to talk to guests at a time like that,” Fortune said.
“It’s not odd at all,” I disagreed. “It was the only polite thing for a hostess to do.”
“Ida Belle needs our help.” Gertie said. “I can feel it in my old bones.”
Her concern for my great-aunt was so palpable that tears filled my eyes. Gertie was easy to make fun of, easy to tease or dismiss as wacky, but she was a dear and loyal friend to Aunt Ida Belle. I wrung my hands. “What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to find them, that’s what we’re going to do.” Gertie rubbed her hands together, a determined look on her face. “Ida Belle would come looking for us, wouldn’t she?”
Neither Fortune nor I dignified this with an answer. Of course she would come after us, guns blazing, of this I had no doubt.
“That’s settled. We’re going after her.” Gertie grabbed her purse. “C’mon.”
“Wait,” I protested, “We don’t know where she is.”
Gertie grinned. “We’ll figure it out on the way there. Let’s roll.”