Dickce decided An’gel could handle that request. She scooted out of the parlor and headed for the kitchen.
When she returned ten minutes later with the serving cart, An’gel was talking about the history of their house, Riverhill, and the Ducote family. Dickce tuned it out. She knew it every bit as well as An’gel and could recite it in her sleep. She presumed one of their guests must have asked a question, because it wasn’t like An’gel to talk at such length about family history without being prompted.
Dickce placed the cart near one of the sofas. She figured their guests could help themselves when they were ready. An’gel had seen her, she knew, but her appearance hadn’t stopped the flow of words.
She decided she might as well sit for now because there was no telling how long she would have to wait for An’gel to stop. She took the one empty chair near the sofas and settled back.
Then she squirmed. There seemed to be something under the cushion. She could feel the lump under her right side. She stuck her hand down between the cushion and the base of the chair and felt for the object.
Her fingers encountered what felt like plastic. She tried to get a good grip on it but couldn’t. She stood, turned, and pulled up the cushion.
She blinked. A water pistol?
CHAPTER 18
What in the name of Sam Hill was Dickce doing?
With one part of her brain, An’gel registered that her sister was standing over a chair, cushion in hand, staring down at the seat. The other part kept her spiel about the house’s history running right on course. She had given this talk so many times, she felt like she had a tiny on-off switch for it in her brain and connected to her tongue.
No one else seemed to have noticed Dickce’s odd behavior. No one, that is, except for the deputy by the front window. Dickce evidently called him over, An’gel realized, because he moved quickly to join her sister by the chair.
An’gel kept going, but Juanita Cameron must have noticed something about her expression because she turned toward where Dickce stood with the deputy. Once Juanita’s head turned, other heads began to turn as well, until everyone in the room was looking at Dickce and the deputy.
An’gel stopped in the middle of a sentence about repairs to the house after a fire in 1893. “What’s going on over there?” She stepped forward.
Dickce dropped the cushion back in place and turned to An’gel with a smile. The deputy left the room. “I found something—sat on it, actually—that I think Deputy Berry will want to see.”
“What is it?” Wade asked.
“Yeah, what is it?” Junior said, followed by similar inquiries from his cousin and his mother.
“I think the deputy should see it first.” Dickce stood in front of the chair.
An’gel was determined to find out, and she approached her sister. She reached down to pull up the cushion, but Dickce smacked her hand lightly.
“You have to wait, too,” Dickce said with a smarmy grin.
An’gel frowned at her. Dickce was being childish. It was one thing to keep her discovery from their guests, but surely she had as much right as Dickce to know what it was.
Before An’gel could protest, Kanesha returned with the deputy. She did not speak as she motioned for the deputy to remove the cushion. An’gel noticed that both Kanesha and her subordinate now wore plastic gloves.
She peered around Dickce’s shoulder to see what the cushion had hidden. Her eyes widened when she saw the water pistol. How on earth had it come to be under the cushion of that chair? Where had it come from in the first place?
One of the guests had to have brought it, An’gel decided after a moment’s reflection. There was no reason she or Dickce would have one in the house—although with Dickce’s occasionally odd sense of humor, she couldn’t be completely sure of that. She would be interested to hear what her sister had to say.
Kanesha indicated that her deputy should replace the cushion. “Thank you, Miss Dickce,” she said. “I’ll want to talk to you and Miss An’gel about this later, along with everyone else. Deputy Rhodes here is going to remove the chair for a little while to have a little closer look at it. He’ll be really careful with it”—she shot an admonitory look at the deputy—“because he knows it’s a valuable antique. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to Mrs. Sultan.”
An’gel nodded. She turned back to face the curious glances of her guests as Kanesha and Deputy Rhodes left with the chair. Dickce found another chair farther away from the sofas while An’gel resumed her spot in front of the fireplace.
“What was so interesting about that chair?” Maudine’s voice was strained. “Was there blood in it?”
An’gel wanted to snap at the woman for such a ridiculous question. She held on to her temper as she replied, “No, it wasn’t blood. I’m not at liberty to say what it was, because Deputy Berry prefers to examine it first. I’m sure she will talk to each of you about it when it’s your turn with her.”
She barely registered the frowns of her guests. Her mind was busy grappling with the implications of her sister’s discovery. She realized that one person in the room, other than she herself and Dickce, knew about the water pistol because one of them had hidden it there.
After using it to squirt water on the stairs.
In a sense that water pistol was the murder weapon—along with the petroleum jelly on the banister. An’gel marveled at the devious mind that had come up with such a simple yet effective method of killing someone.
She glanced at each of her guests in turn. Which of them possessed that devious mind? She didn’t think Maudine was smart enough to think up such a plan—but perhaps that stemmed from her dislike of the woman. Maudine could be far more clever than she appeared.
Bernice didn’t impress her as being any more intelligent than Maudine, but that mousy demeanor could be the perfect cover for a cunning mind. An’gel thought that either Wade or Juanita was a more obvious choice. Junior appeared to be an innocuous young man, about as dim as his mother.
She also considered Rosabelle, mindful of the discussion last night with Juanita. The girl’s concern that her grandmother had dreamed up the prank in order to dramatize her imagined persecution had stuck with An’gel. She had told Dickce about the conversation this morning before Dickce had gone to set the table for breakfast. Her sister had been as troubled by the idea as An’gel herself was. After Rosabelle’s performance at the breakfast table, An’gel decided, she couldn’t dismiss Juanita’s worries.
She realized with a start that her guests were staring at her expectantly. Should she continue with her mini dissertation on the house? At the moment she couldn’t think of any other innocuous subject for conversation, and she wanted to forestall further questions about the water pistol.
“Now, where was I? Oh, yes, the fire of 1893. It started, I believe I told you, because a guest was smoking in bed, despite warnings not to.” An’gel glared for a moment. Thus far she had no evidence that any of Rosabelle’s family smoked, but if one of them did, she wanted it clearly understood that smoking was not allowed inside the house. She resumed her narrative. “Fortunately the fire was quickly contained, and the resulting damage wasn’t extensive.” She went on autopilot from that point.
During her lecture An’gel had been vaguely aware of the occasional flash of lightning, followed by a boom of thunder, but had paid them little heed since they appeared to be several miles away. Now, however, lightning struck somewhere nearby, and she heard thunder two seconds later. She felt the house shudder and heard the parlor windows rattle. She also noted the alarmed expressions of her guests. “I suggest that we move out of the parlor now, and gather under the back side of the stairs. The area between there and the kitchen. Now, please.”