Maid for Murder (Charlotte LaRue Mystery Series, Book 1) Read online

  The grand foyer of the old home was a room unto itself, and unlike the mere sixteen-foot ceilings of the other rooms in the house, the foyer soared upward the full two stories. Placed along the walls were several gilded lyre-back chairs and an Empire chaise longue upholstered in red brocade with gold trim. An antique rug, worn thin from decades of wear and all the more valuable because of its condition, covered the wooden floor.

  “Today why don’t you start upstairs in Mother’s room while I serve her breakfast,” Jeanne told Charlotte as she pulled the door shut. “She’s been so grumpy lately that I thought I would serve it out on the upper gallery so she could get some fresh air and a little sunshine.”

  Charlotte truly admired Jeanne as well as sympathized with her situation. Jeanne’s mother, Clarice St. Martin, had suffered a debilitating stroke just before Charlotte had begun working for the Dubuissons. Clarice could have well afforded the best nurses and round-the-clock care that money could buy, and her condition had somewhat improved over time, but Jeanne had insisted that her mother move in with her so that she could personally care for her.

  Charlotte could understand why Jeanne, or any daughter, for that matter, would want to ensure that her mother had the best of care. Even so, the whole situation still seemed a bit strange, especially given their financial means, and she couldn’t help wondering if Jeanne had some kind of martyr complex.

  “I already have Mother’s tray ready in the kitchen,” Jeanne said. “I won’t be but a moment.” She walked past Charlotte toward the entrance to the formal dining room that led back to the kitchen.

  “Do you need some help with the tray?” Charlotte called after her.

  “My goodness, no,” Jeanne answered. “Besides, you’ve already got enough to carry.”

  Within moments, Jeanne reappeared with a large wicker tray. On the tray were several covered dishes, but it was the pink rose in a cut-crystal vase that caught Charlotte’s eye.

  “I see you’ve already been out to the garden this morning,” she said as she followed Jeanne up the sweeping stairway. Though Charlotte knew that Jeanne hired out most of the yard work, one of the few self-indulgent activities she allowed herself was her rose garden.

  “Don’t I wish I could get out in the mornings,” Jeanne answered, her tone wistful. “I really love gardening, and truly the best time is early mornings, before the dew evaporates and before it gets too hot. But lately Mother has taken to waking up so early, and what with Jackson working later, I’ve had to switch working in the garden to the evenings instead.”

  The stairway opened to a central hall on the second-story level, a hall similar to the foyer on the first level and wide enough for a claw-foot settee and a pair of pillar-and-scroll mahogany tables. Connected to the central hall were four large bedroom suites, each suite containing its own private bath.

  Clarice’s bedroom was the closest to the stairs. The old lady was still in bed, her television tuned to QVC, a popular shopping channel. She was dressed in her nightgown, just one of the many soft flannel granny-type gowns that she preferred to sleep in and lounge around in.

  “Mother, look who’s here.” Jeanne set the tray down on the foot of the bed.

  Totally ignoring Charlotte, the old lady pointed to the television screen. “Quick, Jeanne, look at that.”

  Jeanne didn’t bother looking, but Charlotte glanced at the screen. A sparkling ruby-and-diamond necklace was being displayed.

  “Wouldn’t that look stunning on Anna-Maria? And rubies are her birthstone.”

  With an impatient shake of her head, Jeanne walked around to the side of the bed and pulled back the covers. “I don’t know why you insist on watching those shows. Now, come along. I have a special treat for you today.”

  Though Clarice allowed Jeanne, to help her to the side of the bed, her expression grew hard and resentful. “How else is an old crippled woman supposed to shop?”

  While Jeanne was busy assisting Clarice into a terry robe, Charlotte opened the French doors leading out onto the upper gallery.

  “Besides,” Clarice continued, “with July only a couple of months away, I don’t have that long to find her a birthday present.”

  Outside on the gallery, Charlotte quickly wiped the dust off the top of a small glass-topped wicker table. But even from outside, Charlotte could hear Jeanne’s exasperated sigh.

  “Mother, I’ve told you that anytime you want to shop, all you have to do is agree to a wheelchair and I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

  When Charlotte returned for the breakfast tray, Clarice’s lower lip was protruding into a pout. “I refuse to be seen in one of those things,” she said “I’m not that crippled.”

  Charlotte picked up the wicker tray and took it out to the table.

  “Come along, then,” Charlotte heard Jeanne tell Clarice. “It’s such a beautiful day, I thought we could have breakfast out on the gallery.”

  “I’ll get cold out there,” the old lady complained.

  “No, you won’t,” Jeanne argued. “Besides, if you don’t come outside, you won’t get breakfast.”

  Within moments, Charlotte heard the slide-thump of Clarice’s walker, and she quickly slipped back inside before the old lady reached the doorway.

  Charlotte retrieved clean sheets and pillowcases for Clarice’s bed from the hallway linen closet. As she stripped the bed, she could hear the murmur of Jeanne’s and Clarice’s voices coming from the gallery. Clarice was complaining again, only this time she was grumbling about having oatmeal for breakfast for the third day in a row.

  “I want eggs—fried eggs over easy,” she whined “And bacon—lots of bacon fried nice and crisp. Why can’t I ever have bacon?”

  “Mother, you know fried foods are bad for your cholesterol.”

  Once Charlotte had dusted in the bedroom, she began wiping down the sink and countertop in the bathroom. From outside, the murmurs between the two women grew louder.

  Charlotte did her best to ignore what was being said. Instead, she concentrated on replacing each item on top of the counter once she’d cleaned beneath it, especially Clarice’s numerous prescription bottles. By the time she’d cleaned the toilet and started on the shower stall, the loud murmurs had turned into a shouting match that was hard to ignore.

  “He’s stealing you blind!”

  “Now, Mother, how could you know that?”

  “Leopards don’t change their spots. That’s how I know. You mark my words, missy. He’s a no-good scoundrel, and what’s worse, he’s smart. And if you weren’t such a nambypamby, you’d see him for what he is.”

  “Mother, stop it!”

  “I won’t stop it. It’s time—past time—you grew a backbone. If you’d had the guts to refuse to marry him in the first place, your father might still be alive today.”

  “That’s not true, and you know it.”

  “Don’t you walk away from me!

  “I’m not listening to any more of this.”

  “Jeanne, you come back here!”

  Charlotte had just finished scrubbing the scuff marks off the bathroom floor made by Clarice’s walker and was mopping the bathroom floor when Jeanne stalked across the bedroom.

  At the hallway door, Jeanne hesitated, then turned toward Charlotte. Tears filled her eyes, and her voice shook with emotion. “Would you please make sure that she gets back to bed okay?”

  Before Charlotte had time to answer, Jeanne fled through the doorway. Seconds later, Charlotte heard a door farther down the hall slam shut.

  “Charlotte!” Clarice called out. “Are you still in there?”

  Charlotte set the mop aside and hurried out onto the gallery. There she found the old lady struggling to get out of her chair. “I’m cold,” she told Charlotte. “I want to go back inside.”

  “Here, let me help you.” Clarice wasn’t much bigger in size than Charlotte, but it was like lifting dead weight. As she struggled to get the old lady to a standing position, she wondered how on earth Jeanne
managed day in and day out by herself.

  “I swear, I don’t know what gets into that daughter of mine,” Clarice said as she aimed her walker toward the open French doors. Then, without so much as a please or thank you, she began her arduous journey back inside.

  Charlotte simply shook her head and wondered yet again about the strange relationship between the two women. Why did Jeanne continue to put up with her mother’s rudeness, a rudeness that at times bordered on abuse?

  By the time that Charlotte cleared off the outside table and set the tray on the floor in the hallway, Clarice was entering the bathroom. Except for vacuuming, Charlotte was finishing cleaning Clarice’s suite. Even so, she waited a few minutes before leaving the room just in case Clarice needed more help.

  “Be careful, Miss Clarice,” she told her. “I just mopped that floor, and it might still be a bit damp.”

  Clarice stopped, turned her head, and glared at Charlotte. “I’m not going to mess up the floor, Charlotte. I just want to rinse my teeth.”

  Messing up the floor was the least of Charlotte’s concerns, but she figured trying to explain that she only feared Clarice might slip and fall wouldn’t do a bit of good. The old lady only heard what she wanted to hear.

  Once Clarice was safely back in her bed, Charlotte gathered her supplies and started on the bedroom next to Clarice’s. Within the hour, she’d cleaned all of the bedrooms except the master suite. Since the door to that room was still firmly shut and she hadn’t heard Jeanne come out, she decided she would wait and clean it later.

  After dusting the small tables in the hallway, Charlotte moved to the staircase. The handrail and balusters were fashioned from antique mahogany, but the steps were of oak, sanded and finished to a high gloss.

  It was rumored that when the original owners of the Dubuissons’ house had built it, they had procured the handrail and balusters from a house that was reputed to have been the temporary headquarters for Andrew Jackson when he had defended New Orleans against the British. Just thinking about the historical significance of the staircase gave Charlotte a lot of pleasure, and she took a great deal of pride in the polishing and upkeep of the old wood.

  From her supply carrier, she removed a bottle of lemon oil and a special cloth she used to apply the oil. She also removed a polishing cloth, which she tucked into the waistband of her slacks.

  After sprinkling the first cloth with lemon oil, she rubbed it into the handrail, tediously working her way down the staircase. It was when she was working her way back up as she polished the handrail that she noticed the scuff marks on the steps, scuff marks almost identical to the kind made by Clarice’s walker.

  Impossible, she thought. Even as wide as the steps were, Clarice’s walker was wider. Charlotte frowned in thought as she stared at the scuff marks. The only way they could have been made by Clarice’s walker was if the walker had been folded and dragged down the stairs, which meant that Clarice would have had to hold on to the banister for support....

  “Oh, for pity’s sake,” she muttered. What on earth was wrong with her, standing there, wasting time obsessing about such a silly thing? Something else or someone’s shoes had to have caused the marks. The only time Clarice ventured down the stairs was when she had her monthly doctor’s exam. Even then, Jeanne enlisted the help of Max, a part-time chauffeur she’d hired to assist her mother.

  It was almost noon by the time that Charlotte had scrubbed away the scuff marks on the stairs and cleaned and vacuumed all but the main parlor and the kitchen downstairs. She was ready to begin dusting in the parlor when she heard the clink of dishes coming from the kitchen.

  Jeanne, she decided, had finally come out of her room and was preparing lunch. Once again, she had to admire the younger woman. Jeanne might be hurt or angry with her mother, but she would still take care of her needs.

  Charlotte quickly gathered the supplies she needed and climbed the stairs. Now she could finally clean the master suite; then she would take her own lunch break.

  By midafternoon, Charlotte was almost finished with everything but one last chore in the kitchen. As she stacked the last of the plates from the dishwasher into the butler’s pantry, Jeanne entered the kitchen.

  “Charlotte, could we talk for a moment?”

  “Of course.” Charlotte nodded, then closed and locked the door to the dishwasher.

  Jeanne motioned for Charlotte to take a seat at the small breakfast table. But instead of seating herself, Jeanne began to pace the distance between the table and the cabinet. After a moment and a deep, steadying sigh, she finally stopped behind a chair across from where Charlotte sat. Her hands gripped the back of the chair so hard that her knuckles were white.

  “I’m—I’m truly sorry about what happened earlier,” she told Charlotte in a halting voice. “I want to apologize.”

  “You don’t owe me an apology,” Charlotte said gently. “I really understand. Your mother has—er—she has problems.”

  Jeanne grimaced and sat down hard in the nearest chair. “Oh, Charlotte, what am I going to do about her? What Mother has is more than just problems. She’s going senile and seems to be getting worse with each passing day.”

  Charlotte’s heart went out to the younger woman. “Sometimes simply talking about a situation helps,” she suggested. “At least talking seems to work for me.”

  Jeanne placed her arms on the tabletop and leaned forward. “You’re right, I’m sure. With Anna-Maria off at school and Jackson gone most of the time, I don’t have a chance to talk to anyone much.”

  Charlotte reached over and patted Jeanne’s hand. How sad, she thought. She couldn’t begin to imagine leading such an insular, lonely life. “Well, I’m here now,” Charlotte told her, “and my middle name is discretion, so you just talk all you want to.”

  Jeanne seemed to hesitate, but only for a moment. “She’s always making accusations about someone or something,” she blurted out. “Take for instance that stuff she was saying this morning about Jackson. Why, Jackson isn’t even home half the time, what with all of the late nights he’s been keeping at the office lately. When he is home, he stays holed up in the library. And who could blame him?”

  How convenient for him, thought Charlotte. And how totally selfish. Charlotte didn’t really know Jackson Dubuisson that well, since most of the time he was at work when she cleaned. But from the different things that Jeanne had let slip over the years, Charlotte’s opinion of the man was zero on a scale of one to ten. She had often wondered how such a warm, loving woman like Jeanne could have ever married someone like him.

  But if, as Jeanne pointed out, Jackson was never around, why would Clarice choose to pick on him? she wondered. Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire. The old saying played through Charlotte’s mind. Over the years, Charlotte had seen the truth in the cliché more than once. “Why do you think your mother is so fixated on maligning your husband?”

  Again Jeanne hesitated as a myriad of emotions played across her face. After a moment, she seemed to compose herself. “For one thing, when Jackson and I married, Father made him a full partner in the firm. Ever since, Mother has always claimed Jackson only married me to get control of the firm. She says all he cares about is money, specifically my money. But even worse, she still blames Jackson for Father’s death. Never mind that it’s been fifteen years since Father was murdered. Mother simply won’t stop harping on it.”

  Murdered. Charlotte’s stomach turned queasy. “Oh, goodness, I’d forgotten that your father had been murdered.”

  Even now, Charlotte only vaguely recalled the incident. At the time, though, she hadn’t paid much attention to the story or the gossip. She’d been too caught up in her own tragedy, that of trying to console her son after his wife had purposely aborted their child, her grandchild, a child Hank had wanted badly. “The murder of someone close leaves its mark on the whole family,” she murmured, still thinking about the loss she and her son had suffered. “It’s a terrible thing.”

 
Jeanne nodded and lowered her gaze to the tabletop. “It was terrible,” she whispered. “A burglar broke into the house, robbed the safe, then killed Father.”

  Charlotte reached out and squeezed Jeanne’s arm. “Oh, you poor thing. I’m so sorry.”

  Jeanne suddenly laughed, but it was a bitter sound filled with irony. “Don’t be too sorry. My father would never have won any Father of the Year Awards, and he had a cruel streak.” She shrugged. “But my mother loved him just the same, something I never understood.”

  Charlotte immediately thought about Nadia’s situation with Ricco. “I know exactly what you mean,” she said, “but I’ve never understood how a woman could stay with a man who was cruel or abusive. I guess love takes on many forms, but I sometimes think women confuse love with other things, things like security, or they feel trapped or feel there’s no other choice.” She shrugged. “For whatever reason,” she added.

  “Yes . . . well, I figure that Mother felt she had no other choice, since my father controlled the money. Even so, she just couldn’t accept that he was gone, and she went a little crazy at the time. As if Father being murdered wasn’t enough, she made terrible accusations about Jackson to the police. You see, Jackson and Father had argued the night before . . . something about some investments Father had made using the firm’s money. But of course Jackson had an alibi the night of the murder. As usual, he was working late on an upcoming court case with his secretary. But not even that seemed to convince Mother he was innocent. Never mind that it completely satisfied the police.”

  “Was the murderer ever caught?”

  Jeanne shook her head. “No—No, he wasn’t. And after a while, I think the police gave up.”

  Jeanne’s next words chilled Charlotte to the bone.

  “My father’s murderer is still out there,” she said. “Somewhere . . .”